Before Martin Scorsese took the stage Saturday night at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Nancy Buirski, festival founder and longtime Scorsese friend, told the crowd, “He is a man who needs no introduction, but I’m going to give it to you anyway.”
Festival-goers had lined up hours beforehand to spend an evening with the famed director. The event, sponsored by VH1 and held at downtown Durham’s Carolina Theater, brought Scorsese to the stage before an audience of more than a thousand to discuss his work in fictional film, documentary and film preservation.
Before his evening presentation, Scorsese hosted a special tribute to Italian filmmaker Vittoria de Seta, whose documentary work he called “revolutionary.” Scorsese has been the chair of the Full Frame documentary arts board since its inception in 1997.
Scorsese began the evening by showing clips of several of his films, including Mean Streets, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy and Goodfellas. When prompted by Buirski to reveal how someone so famous for such fictional films became involved in documentary, Scorsese referred to what he saw as an interplay between documentary and fiction. He said his fiction has drawn upon certain aspects of documentary to create realistic portraits of certain societies or ways of life, citing his early work Mean Streets as an example.
“I tried to make as accurate a picture of the Sicilians I knew downtown as I could,” he said. Scorsese mentioned how an improvised monologue in the middle of the film by Robert De Niro truly brings to life the Italian neighborhoods of New York that De Niro and Scorsese knew as children growing up in the area.
Scorsese also said in many of his films he has used other documentary elements, such as incorporating actual audio from historic events as he does with the radio announcer featured in Raging Bull when Sugar Ray Robinson defeats Jake LaMotta.
Another element Scorsese frequently incorporates into his films, he said, is the use of non-actors in background roles.
Referring to a clip from The King of Comedy, Scorsese said, “The FBI guys, they’re real FBI. The guy with the sweater around his neck, that was my agent at the time… and the guy with the line ‘who you gonna sue?’ and he says ‘I’m gonna sue you personally,’ well, that was my lawyer.” The crowd responded to this inside insight with laughter and applause.
In addition to his fictional films, Scorsese spoke of his work in pure documentary, including a famous chronicle of his own parents, Italianamerican, commissioned by the National Endowment of the Arts.
After he spoke, the filmmaker opened the floor up to questions from the audience, most of which revolved around Scorsese’s use of violence in his movies. Scorsese explained that violence is a part of life, but he tries to use it in his films to enhance the story being told. “The violence was so strong in Casino, that I didn’t think I could do a film with violence ever again,” he said.
For this reason, Scorsese said he chose to stylize the violence in Gangs of New York, to avoid overwhelming his audience while still accurately portraying a world of which “violence was very much a part.”
Buirski also pushed Scorsese to discuss other recurring elements in his film, including the “outsider” character and a deep sense of spirituality. Scorsese explained he has always seen himself as an outsider and was thus attracted to the stories of “people who lose”—from De Niro's neurotic crusader in Taxi Driver to Harvey Keitel’s Judas in The Last Temptation of Christ.
Scorsese emphasized the human commonality between characters as diverse as the Dalai Lama from Kundun to the corrupt gambling tycoons of Casino.
“We’re humans; we’re all the same, with different clothes and different societal rules and customs,” he said.
Scorsese lamented there are too many societies to explore and endless stories waiting to be told. “I'm getting old,” he said, “and so every film I choose I try to shoot faster.”
Two upcoming projects Scorsese referred to are a documentary about Bob Dylan and a fictional film about Irish-American gangs starring Leonardo DiCaprio, this one occurring in modern times unlike his previous 2002 film Gangs of New York.
“This is the first present-day film I’ve made in 20 years,” Scorsese joked.
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