Conversations with Scorsese by Richard Schickel

Author:Richard Schickel [Schickel, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780307595461
Publisher: Random House, Inc.

Tilling the field: Marty directs the cornfield scene. He says it is the most brutal sequence he’s ever made and believes he will never make anything like it again.

RS: It’s absolutely true.

MS: Okay, it’s all right. We can do it. But the interesting thing was the blast of Vegas, the idea of Vegas, especially in the seventies. In the fifties and sixties, Vegas was for people who liked to gamble. But later you have Sinatra and the Rat Pack and all. And it gains a swagger: Listen, you don’t like it, don’t come here. You can’t take the heat, get out. Fine.

But by the seventies, it went further, and a lot of it was due to Lefty Rosenthal. He brought in Siegfried and Roy. He made it into one big Crazy Horse Saloon, and also got the place to make a lot of money for back home, for Chicago. But what was interesting to me is that it just reflected a complete embrace of excess. And that’s why the first image in the film has to be this beautiful car. Man walks out in wide-screen and color, he’s wearing salmon-colored pants. In fact, we had to tone it down from the actual clothes that Lefty had. Anyway, he turns the key, and the car blows up. That seemed to me what we’re doing in our society—the values that we have. Anything that’s good has to make money. How is cinema judged today, aside from a few critics or reviewers? Basically it’s judged by how much money you make on a weekend. Is cinema serious anymore? I don’t know. At the time when I was making certain films, I took cinema seriously.

RS: You still do.

MS: Yeah, I still do. But the next generation doesn’t, because of the excess.

RS: That’s a good point, because of all your movies, this is the one that’s most satirical about excess. I mean, the décor in Lefty’s house is just amazing.

MS: Toned down.

RS: There comes a moment where there’s no humor or horror in it for you.

MS: Nothing.

RS: No frisson, as we might say.

MS: There’s no enjoyment.

RS: I guess it’s saying something that you hadn’t quite said as openly in your previous excursions into this world.

MS: I think so. And at Universal, Tom Pollock really wanted me to make the film, and Nick had that story. He hadn’t finished the book yet, and so we worked on the script together for about six months, in a hotel, and we ordered transcripts and whatever other interviews we could get. And we had papers everywhere. And I decided it had to be an epic—a three-hour epic, but very fast. Very fast, because in the world that they’re in, things go faster. You get more—it’s consuming, consuming, consuming. It represented to me—I’ve got to say—what we’re doing in this society. It really did.

RS: But it’s gotten much worse.

MS: Yes, much worse. In Casino there’s no such thing as law, there’s nothing. It just goes. And then they self-implode.

RS: One

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