[A Tribute By
Carletto di San Giovanni:]
Welcome to my Martin Scorsese tribute page. I have posted lots of photographs and videos from his life and films. I will continue to update over time. Send a friend request, if you love his work. I approve all requests within 2 weeks time.
Best wishes,
--Carletto
myspace.com/giancarletto
Check out my other director tribute pages at this link:
http://myspace.com/directorspotlight
From the violent realism of MEAN STREETS, TAXI DRIVER, and RAGING BULL to the poignant romance of ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANY MORE, the black comedy of AFTER HOURS, and the burning controversy of THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, Martin Scorsese’s uniquely versatile vision has made him one of the cinema’s most acclaimed directors.Martin Scorsese was born in Flushing, New York in 1942. A quiet child with a strong case of asthma, Scorsese spent much of his young life alone— in the movie theater or watching movies on television. After attending high school in the Bronx he spent a year in the seminary before enrolling at New York University. The early 1960s was a time of renewed interest in American film, and he found himself drawn to NYU’s film school, where the emerging French and Italian New Wave and independent filmmakers such as John Cassavetes had a profound influence on him.Soon after graduating he became a film instructor at NYU and made commercials in both England and the United States. He also finished his first full-length feature in 1968, WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR? He followed this with a number of hard-hitting films throughout the 1970s. His style combined a rough and gritty attention to the everyday life of the urban jungle with a monumental visual sensibility. In one of his most famous films, TAXI DRIVER (1976), Scorsese focused on the particulars of an individual and his obsessions. Starring Robert DeNiro (with whom Scorsese has had one of the most celebrated collaborative relationships in American cinema), TAXI DRIVER elevates the obscure specifics of a disturbed life with the greatest drama.With two later films, RAGING BULL (1980) and THE KING OF COMEDY (1983) (both starring De Niro), Scorsese focused on a theme that has permeated nearly every one of his movies—the plight of the desperate and out-of-control individual. Often unsympathetic, his characters display a crazed violence that mimics the repressive social structures in which they live. With the protagonist in RAGING BULL we find a fighter possessed with anger both in and out of the ring, while in THE KING OF COMEDY we find one overwhelmed by the impossibility of breaking into the entertainment industry. Both are telling social commentaries and engaging films.Emotionally precise and visually overpowering, Scorsese creates lush landscapes in which every detail seems to pulse with energy. In his 1988 masterpiece THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, Scorsese used this elevation of the particular to present both Jesus and everything around him with a fullness required by such a loaded topic. The controversial nature of the film and the stunning visual reality it created stirred up Hollywood and met with strong reactions from the general public.In 1995's CASINO, Scorsese brought together much of the stylistic and theoretical content of his earlier works. The engaging world and controlling power structure of the Mafia (a source repeatedly tread by Scorsese) is brought to life in the loud and visually stunning world of the casino. In tone, style, and content, Scorsese is constantly pushing the boarders of the film, seeing how much we can come to feel about the most foreign and familiar characters. For many, Martin Scorsese is the most important living American filmmaker—one whose relentless search for the furthest emotional reaches of his genre have led him to the center of the American psyche.
--from PBS' American Masters series
Personal quotes:
"The only person who has the right attitude about boxing in the movies for me was Buster Keaton."On sports: "Anything with a ball, no good.""Because of the movies I make, people get nervous, because they think of me as difficult and angry. I am difficult and angry, but they don't expect a sense of humor. And the only thing that gets me through is a sense of humor."On Raging Bull (1980): "Bob wanted to make this film. Not me. I don't understand anything about boxing. For me, it's like a physical game of chess.""It seems to me that any sensible person must see that violence does not change the world and if it does, then only temporarily."
"I think when you're young and have that first burst of energy and make five or six pictures in a row that tell the stories of all the things in life you want to say... well, maybe those are the films that should have won me the Oscar. When Taxi Driver was up for best picture, it got three other nominations: best actor (Robert De Niro), best supporting actress (Jodie Foster), and best music. But the director and writer were overlooked. I was so disappointed, I said: 'You know what, that's the way it's going to be.' What was I going to do, go home and cry?""Basically, you make another movie, and another, and hopefully you feel good about every picture you make. And you say: 'My name is on that. I did that. It's OK.' But don't get me wrong, I still get excited by it all. That, I hope, will never disappear."
"I think a lot of it has to do with the nature of the community. I've lived here in Los Angeles, but I'm more of a New Yorker, and the nature of my films is regarded as somewhat violent and the language is considered tough. As you grow older, you change. I make different films now. You don't make pictures for Oscars.""I'm in a different chapter of my life. As time goes by and I grow older, I find that I need to just be quiet and think. There have been periods when I've locked myself away for days, but now it's different - I'm married and we have a daughter who is in my office the whole time."
"If I continue to make films about New York, they will probably be set in the past. The 'new' New York I don't know much about. It's not that I'm against contemporary film. I'm open to it in general, but I find the new colours of the city, the new Times Square, kind of shocking. I guess I'm stuck in a time warp."It probably is better I didn't win in the '70s or mid-'80s or something. My view on making films is somewhat different in a way, and I think maybe it's something that ... I was not able to handle at the time...Had I gotten an Oscar, maybe I would have gotten maybe an extra two days shooting, maybe a couple, you know what I'm saying?"I prefer celluloid - there's no doubt about it. Yet I know that if I was starting to make movies now, as a young person, if I could get my hands on a DV camera, I probably would have started that way...There's no doubt I'm an older advocate of pure celluloid, but ultimately I see it going by the wayside, except in museums, and even then it could be a problem.""My whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else."
"There is no such thing as pointless violence. City Of God, is that pointless violence? It's reality, it's real life, it has to do with the human condition. Being involved in Christianity and Catholicism when I was very young, you have that innocence, the teachings of Christ. Deep down you want to think that people are really good - but the reality outweighs that.""I'm a lapsed Catholic. But I am Roman Catholic - there's no way out of it.""One hopes that this kind of war can be done diplomatically, with intelligence rather than wiping out a lot of innocent civilians." [On the Iraq war]"You can hardly say anything about minorities now. It has made it extremely difficult to open your mouth." [On political correctness]
"There are a lot of Americans who also feel that a lot of this war talk is economic, part of this has to do with the oil. I think it really has to come down to respecting how other people live. There's got to be ways this can be worked out diplomatically, there simply has to be.""What does it take to be a filmmaker in Hollywood? Even today I still wonder what it takes to be a professional or even an artist in Hollywood. How do you survive the constant tug of war between personal expression and commercial imperatives? What is the price you pay to work in Hollywood? Do you end up with a split personality? Do you make one movie for them, one for yourself?"
