Shadowing Practice: Martin Scorsese Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films | GQ - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Taxi Driver, who the hell else are you talking to me?
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It really goes back to Brian De Palma.
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Independent cinema in Hollywood started saying, hey, maybe these indie films could, these kids could work in the industry.
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And so we were all out in L .A.
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And he introduced me to Paul Schrader.
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Schrader wrote Taxi Driver.
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Travis comes from his vision, but more psyche.
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I connected with it through Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground it was like enlightening you know
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and so for me
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when i read the script brian gave it to me he
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said you know i can't i don't want to do it i can't do it
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but maybe you should do it
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but i didn't have enough cachet as they say at
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that time to make the picture
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but then they saw the rough cut of main streets
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and they changed their mind especially when they saw de niro in it and
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so they said for the two of you we could probably
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get this film made why won't you talk to me why Why don't you answer my calls when I call you?
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You think I don't know you're here?
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We kept thinking in terms of the character and his loneliness and his acting out.
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Not condoning the acting out, but he does act out.
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And yet, an empathy with him, which is really tricky.
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We wanted to make it so badly nobody would make it
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that we were thinking of going to different cities to make it San Francisco, Los Angeles.
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The taxi driving wasn't the same.
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And we said, no, it has to be Manhattan.
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Ultimately, what stayed with us was the psychological and emotional state of that character.
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As we know now, tragically, it's a norm.
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Every other person is like Travis Bickle now.
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For me, the visualization of the movie was to always try to keep you off balance, keep the audience off balance.
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I felt that when he made that phone call, it was so painful, we shouldn't witness it.
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So the camera should track away, but not pan away.
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It should move completely to a hallway.
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And in the hallway, you think somebody's coming, but nobody's gonna come.
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Nothing's gonna happen.
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we're all alone but we don't want to experience the depth of his pain at that point
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and at the same time there's a sense of anxiety on
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the viewer what's gonna happen in the hallway well apparently nothing
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that was the first shot I came up I said that's
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the style there's another thing too with a taxi pulls up
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at the beginning of the film into the taxi garage taxi
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is coming in with panning with it as it comes in
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and normally it goes this way in the camera with pan with it
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and it stops well as it came in i went the other way
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and as we rested the car came in
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and stopped wait i'm supposed to be looking at the car no we're gonna go another way
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and so every shot as much as possible was uh designed to be slightly disconcerting
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but ultimately ultimately satisfying that was the philosophy of the shooting
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Gangs of New York Us natives born rightwise to this fine land For the foreign hordes,
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they're filing it
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Well, Gangs of New York comes out of those cobblestone streets Around the church on Mott Street
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and Mulberry Street And also coming off the other element
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that I grew up with Really was the Bowery At
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that time the Bowery was what you call now homeless At
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that time really basically alcoholics Guys dying in the streets basically very very difficult place to grow up around
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and in and so but there was something about that bowery
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and something about the neighborhood and the way the buildings were
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created in the cellars the cellars there's so many cellars and my father would talk about growing up
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there and going into one building going down the cellar
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and coming out two blocks away running away from the cops
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some of the guys you know it had its own life
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and it was like an organism
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and it had a history with Leo DiCaprio was interesting
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because De Niro we were acquainted with each other
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when we're 16 years old so because of my relationship with him going back to
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when we were 16 he experienced what I experienced growing up
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so he's the only one I know who around who's around
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that and who was working in that capacity
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that knows who I am where I came from
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and the world we were in he then called me
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and said at one point he just made a film called this boy's life
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and he was working with this kid
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that he he cast named leo dicaprio he's very good you got to do work with him someday
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and bob never really used to tell me
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that work with somebody you know just we'd go from picture to picture
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if we work together dicaprio uh liked our pictures came together
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and they said why don't we you've always wanted to do gangs in new york a bit
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we started it many times it got cancelled here's a chance
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this kid leo dicaprio really likes your films at least meet with him
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and he was willing to go whatever i could do to make
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that film so that's how it all started with him coming off of titanic
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and a couple of other films then we convinced daniel day to get into it as bill the butcher
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and daniel day is very intense and very specific actor.
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What I love about
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working with him is that Daniel has a thing where
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if he starts he stays in that character people think it's kind of a mystique
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but it really makes sense and also because
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if I'm talking to Bill the Butcher
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and in between takes it's Daniel I'm still talking to Bill he stays in
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that character and he'll be one of the other actors Irish
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and he's not supposed to like the Irish and you know he treats
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that person that way I don't give a tough any fuck about your moral conundrum you meat -headed shitsack.
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They said, why is he asking that?
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That's what that is, just, we're not playing.
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I mean, we're playing, but we're living it.
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And so he's very good that way.
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DiCaprio's another way entirely, and he comes at a character from every possible angle, and we find that with Leo,
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most of the work is done before we shoot.
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Goodfellas.
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As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.
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Goodfellas was made 18 years after Mean Streets.
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I didn't really want to go to do another genre, gangster genre, right?
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I mean, there is no main character.
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I mean, Ray Liotta is a wonderful actor, but he's like Virgil taking Dante through the underworld.
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The real character in the movie is the underworld.
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After doing the film Last Temptation of Christ, when I got back, I owed Warner Brothers Goodfellas, or became Goodfellas.
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It was called Wise Guys at the time.
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I didn't really almost didn't want to make it.
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It was Michael Powell, the director of the Red Shoes, co -director, I should say, and other masterpieces who read the script and insisted I make it.
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Every shot may feel like a documentary, but the camera moves, everything you see,
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it's all clearly, it's all there in the script we had to stage bits of action Joe Reedy did
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and Michael Ballhaus my cameraman they worked out all the background
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action for the long Copacabana shot all I said was we
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start out in the front he gives the guy the money
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next thing you know we go through the thing we go
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through here we go through here we go through here we
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go you know we wind up on it the famous comic
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Henny Youngman everything has to flow with no obstruction he's got
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to impress her they send him bottles of champagne everybody knows
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that's his height so
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that shot had to be now I wanted Joe Pesci to be in the film
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and I think he resisted it I know he resisted it he said I don't know gangster stuff and yeah
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but Joey said this character is really interesting based on a real real guy he said well I
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if you do it I gotta tell you something
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and I said well what is it because not here
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and he acted out this scene
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that happened to him i knew exactly where to put it went through the scene over
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and over again recorded it all each take
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and then i created from the actor's improvisations and try to make sure
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that it accelerated the right way
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because the slightest change you know of like why am i
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funny what do you mean i'm funny i'm not funny otherwise
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it'd be just repetitious funny like i'm a clown i amuse
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you i make you laugh i'm here to fucking amuse you what do you mean funny funny how how am i funny.
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And I decided we'd just do it with two cameras.
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We squeeze it in on a day that wasn't scheduled.
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The two cameras would be medium -wide shots because it was important to see, not just, there are no close -ups,
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it was important to see Joe's character and Ray's character in relation to the people around them.
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And while the intensity builds, you see the body language of everybody around them change.
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And it just happens.
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And I said, well, that's even better.
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So close -ups, No, let's get out of here.
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You know, we shot it like in an hour and a half.
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Improvised, too, with the bottle breaking on Tony Darrow's head and that sort of thing.
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He had the nerve to ask to pay the bill.
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The Departed.
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Those guys you tuned up, they're connected down Providence.
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What they're going to do is come back with some guys and kill you.
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I always wanted to work with Jack Nicholson and be in a film and offered him the part and then he said, you know, give me something to play.
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And he was right.
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Because the way the script was, Bill Monahan's script, which is a very good script, but the character of Costello was still presented as your generic big shot gangster.
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He hears this young kid in town who just beat up somebody in a bar, he calls him in, checks him out, and then he says, come and talk to me.
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Because he looks at him and says, maybe I can use this kid.
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We've seen that scene many times in Westerns and gangster films because it's very truthful.
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That's what happens You could do it in business to suddenly make a big hit with something
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and everybody calls you
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And they want to see what you could do for them in this case It's the underworld
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and there was a scene where he's eating a lobster lunch.
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It said in his apartment And he has this kid coming the basic line was what can you do for me?
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Well, you want to work with me or tough guy?
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What can you do for me?
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I'd seen that scene many times and Nicholson said what if call me he said what if while we're at lunch,
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on the table in a little plastic bag is a severed human hand.
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I said, now that's a job interview.
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And you never mention it.
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Don't even discuss it.
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We went off on a whirlwind of the fact that Costello would be losing control, and in a sense, losing his mind, really.
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That's something that was very controversial at the time.
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Some people went with it, some didn't.
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But the thing was that I was around a situation like that when I was growing up, where somebody very powerful who was eventually killed in 1968 was,
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in effect, losing his mind and killing people.
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An atmosphere of fear that I saw around that area that was what I wanted to capture and departed.
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Worse than that, these guys were all informers on each other.
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And it's true in a world where everyone is informing on each other now.
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Complain about the guy, oh, he's out of his mind, he's overdoing.
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No, imagine that's, in effect, what it would be like you're completely under his control and he's out of his mind.
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And that's what I feel the world is like right now.
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Raging Bull.
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Jimmy, with everything you got, I want you to fucking lay me out.
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Go ahead.
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You sure?
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Yeah.
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All right.
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Honor.
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The 70s studio system changed a great deal and the week
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that film was released was the same week from the same studio that Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate opened.
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That, A Raging Bull, Apocalypse Now, all from the same studio, United Artists, that ended what the 70s, they call this, you know, golden age, that sort of,
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but really it ended the power of the director, in a way, in American filmmaking.
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And that had to come back through independent cinema, another way, through the 80s.
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The 70s was very much that way because things were wide open.
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And we went in and we took it, like the barbarians at the gate, and we transformed whatever we could, but they caught us.
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Raging Bull was a, we threw everything we knew into it, not knowing how it was going to be received.
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We understood that people didn't like him and even the crew, it turned out.
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I didn't know until later.
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Why are we making a film about this guy?
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He's a horror.
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But we stayed with it.
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This man may be this way, but still, he's a human being, he's got a heart, he's got a soul.
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By the end of it, he finds some kind of peace with himself and maybe the others around him.
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I think I was going there to try to find peace in myself
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that year there were I think four more films coming out
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about boxing the main event with Barbra Streisand prizefighter with Tim Conway
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Matilda the boxing kangaroo and Rocky 2 also
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and they were all in color that's when I realized
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that we should go black and white and also the black
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and white would work at distinctively different from the other boxing films
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that were being made comedies and Rocky 2
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and also Erwin Winkle pointed out to the studio that the films
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that were made in black and white up to that point in the 70s were Paper Moon and Lenny, and they were hits.
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I also thought, too, that the boxing scenes had to be very powerful.
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The rest of the film, anything else, was concentrated in an almost meditative state in terms of framing, holding those people in that frame.
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But the boxing scenes would be like you're on another planet.
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Primarily, it was based on, I came up with the idea when I I was doing last waltz, being on the stage with the band, and watching how the band worked.
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The ballet sequences from Red Shoes, where you don't really necessarily go head to toe, where you see the dancer.
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Instead, you see what's inside the mind of the dancer.
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What's in the mind, and what's the perception of the fighter in the ring?
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They don't even know where they are sometimes.
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The Wolf of Wall Street.
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They're gonna need to send in the National Guard of fucking Swart Team, because I ain't going no way!
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Again, like Raging Bull, I didn't want to make it, but I had to find my own way in it.
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And a lot of it had to do with style.
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The style, I felt, originally was more like Goodfellas.
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I had done it.
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And I did it again in Casino.
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What more could I bring to it?
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And we found a way, and that was ultimately through his character.
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And the whole idea of untethered capitalism.
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This is the spirit of it.
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Anything goes because you're making money.
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It doesn't matter.
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That's a little bit that way too in casino, but casino has organized crime.
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It's a different thing This is organized another way and
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so with that understanding then I was able to play with the structure of it and make it
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Right away first three or four minutes of the film you could see right away.
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This is going to be something unexpected
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Like every other shot something the shocking going on in a way
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or supposedly shocking in order to do that You have to have somebody who's playing that part
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Be prepared to do anything
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and he did I would provoke him he provoked me would go further But if you read the book, we could have gone even further.
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Mean Streets.
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Hey, hey, hey, what's the matter with this kid, huh?
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Hey, there ain't nothing wrong with me, my friend.
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I'm feeling fine.
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Keep your mouth shut.
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Hey, you taught me that in front of this asshole.
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I was living in the late 50s into the early 60s
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down in my old neighborhood of what they used to call Little Italy.
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At that time, it really was Little Italy.
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Families were loving, but you know, it was the tenements and it was not a really good place.
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And they were good people, but at the same time, it was steeped in a kind of organized crime.
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Mean Streets comes out of that violence, which I missed by chance, really.
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Now's the time.
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I was with these people in this car.
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I told my friend who was with me in the backseat.
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I said, oh, it's two o 'clock in the morning.
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This is nonsense.
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Let's go home.
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He says, yeah, yeah, okay, let's go home.
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The car drove off and they got shot.
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It had to do with a lot of street power, so to speak, a sense of certain rules that the underworld works with.
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And a lot of it had to do with, am I my brother's keeper?
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It also reflects my father and his youngest brother.
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My father was one of eight children.
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His youngest brother was always in jail, always in trouble.
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And my father was always trying to broker situations where he wouldn't get killed.
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He has about $30.
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He's always got honor, Michael.
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where's the rest yeah where's the rest the extent to
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which one is your real brother or one is such a close friend
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that you put yourself on the line is something that's really
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important to me in terms of how you live a life
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and try to live a good moral life but you're in a world
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that is completely corrupt you don't make up for your sins in the church
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you do it in the streets you do it at home
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and that's that's the essence of mean streets that's what I talk about in the beginning.
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You know, you can go to church all you want, but the real acting out of your morality is outside the church.
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It's outside the building of the church.
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It's in the home.
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It's with your friends and that.
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All the rest is an illusion.
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I was five years old in New York.
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It was late 40s.
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We had a television 16 inch.
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On Friday nights, there was an Italian film shown for the Italian American community.
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And my grandparents would come over and they didn't speak English only Sicilian
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and my mother and father my uncles
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and we get around this little TV set
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and we see the bicycle thief it had these words in the bottom the people
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that were speaking in the film they were speaking the same
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way as my family those Italian films were more than cinema they were a form of truth
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that I related to
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because it it somehow had something to do with who I who I am and
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so no matter what I shoot it isn't directly saying oh
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look we're gonna do a shot now from the bicycle thief no it's the emotional
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and and psychological impact of experiencing that film when I was five
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or six in the room with these people who lived it
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the Irishman I don't know it sounds funny that stops and starts it loses Over the years,
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seeing the difference in the technology, one of the key things to give us the energy to
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make our first film's features was John Cassavetes doing Shadows in 16mm, which came from France with the Eclair camera.
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So all of that happening at that time made it that we could make a film ourselves.
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We didn't have to have the studio behind us with giant lights and giant Mitchell BNCs.
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I've kind of stayed pretty much traditional we edit now with the computer
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but I don't really know how to do that Thelma does it
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if I can utilize the new technology for the kind of story I want to make why not go there
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and so in the case of Irishman De Niro
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and I had this idea for a long time
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and again I didn't want to do another gangster genre part of the problem was flashbacks
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and by the time we got to do it he was too old to play his younger self
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and they said well a different actor and I said what's then it's not like us making a film together.
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What's the point?
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And so we were talking about this idea of youthification
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and Pablo Herrmann of ILM was with us doing CGI or background material for us in Taiwan where we're doing silence.
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And he came up and he said, I think I can do it.
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What I have seen is that people have to wear golf balls on their faces.
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You can't have a scene with Joe Pesci and Bob De Niro and Al Pacino or whatever.
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They all have golf balls on their faces and they're the kinds of actors that, that kind of thing for this kind of movie.
317
It doesn't work.
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And eventually, by the end of the shoot of Silence, he had it.
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And we did a test with Bob and De Niro, and we tried it, and we all felt strongly about it.
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The drawback was the, financially, because it was extremely expensive, and also length of time.
321
It was an extra five to six months in the post -production.
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That's when Netflix came in and really helped us.
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It's not just CGI.
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We accept it if a person puts on a fat suit, or you paint their hair white, they're supposed to be old but what if you do it digitally?
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It's like makeup.
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It's just taking that leap of saying, oh, no, it's gotta be the old way to, this is now a transformation into a new way.
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Silence.
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Things that happen When I was making Last Temptation, that took me only up to a certain point.
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I found myself wanting more, and I found it in silence.
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And when I read the book, I was in Japan, actually.
331
It was 1989, and I tried to write a version of the script with my friend Jay Cox by 1990, 92.
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But I didn't get it, and it took me years, another 10, 12 years, to live a life and experience with different exploration going,
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making Kundun, for example, on the Dalai Lama, all of these things.
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And finally, by around 2006, 2007, I was able to put the script together.
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I felt that we could do it.
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Too many technical business problems.
337
It almost made it impossible to get made, but eventually it did.
338
Ang Lee's group helped us to shoot in Taiwan, you know.
339
A special experience for the entire crew making the film.
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The locations, the people, the scenes themselves, the Japanese actors.
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I mean, it was really a kind of spiritual journey.
342
Killers of the Flower Moon.
343
Their time is over.
344
This has taken six years.
345
We didn't intend to take it six years, but I was making The Irishman, and then there was COVID.
346
I was given the book and read the book, and I was very excited by that.
347
I didn't quite know how to go about it.
348
Eric Roth and I went through a process of a few years of pulling the script together and the story, and there were some wonderful things in it.
349
We got it to a point where we said, let's sit down and read this thing.
350
I got some friends, and we sat down, and Leo was there, Eric was good, but there was something about it that I felt we'd been there before,
351
and that was the idea of a police procedural.
352
And the character that he was supposed to play, Tom White, was a character that is straight -laced, you know, very strong, very proper guy.
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And so we thought about it for another week and a half, and then Leo came to me, said, where's the real, he came to me, he said, where's the real heart of this picture?
354
I said, the heart is with this guy, Ernest, and his wife, Molly.
355
The only problem is we don't know anything about Ernest everybody
356
else you've got tons of material on we don't know anything about them
357
so we came up with the idea of what
358
if instead of coming from the outside in what
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if we go from the inside out then i said oh yeah the story really is the relationship of ernest
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and molly and the betrayal i said the only problem there is
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that it's a creative problem which is you take the script you turn inside out
362
and how much of procedural do you need not very much
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it started to come together it gave me the direction
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that i felt comfortable in the other way i've seen that that kind of movies.
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I enjoy doing it.
366
Imagine doing it.
367
Horses and running Western tropes, in a way, they call it.
368
I would love that, but I've seen it, and they did it so much better.
369
Everybody else does it better.
370
So here, though, you're in the house, and there's a husband and wife, and this guy is dodgy.
371
He's being manipulated by this sort of angel of death, his uncle.
372
You know, you got nice color skin.
373
What color would you say that is?
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my color we had been working on the casting for quite a
375
while including indigenous people she says I have somebody I want you to see
376
but then I saw the scene from certain women Kelly Reichardt's film I thought she was wonderful
377
and after COVID we got to meet I was struck by the whole visage the face
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and her intelligence one could see that there's a lot going on in her face
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but they're not doing very much which is perfect for film acting also the intelligence
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and level of understanding and coming from indigenous people
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and being an activist we could learn from her
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which is what we did and we all work together myself her and Leo very very closely
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Who Will Benefit from This Video?
This video is perfect for intermediate to advanced English learners looking to boost their speaking skills, especially for IELTS speaking practice. The casual yet detailed dialogue—filled with storytelling and industry jargon—helps you master real-world conversation flow. If you’re into film or want to practice understanding nuanced speech, this is a goldmine. It’s also ideal for those using the shadowing technique (or shadow speak), as Martin Scorsese’s deliberate, expressive tone makes it easy to mimic rhythm and emphasis.
Words & Idioms to Add to Your Toolkit
The video is packed with standout phrases. Here are a few to steal:
- "Cachet": Status or prestige (e.g., "He gained cachet after his first hit film").
- "Acting out": Expressing emotions through behavior, often negatively (e.g., "Teens sometimes act out when stressed").
- "Off balance": Unsettled or confused (e.g., The unexpected question threw her off balance).
- "Disconcerting": Disturbing or unsettling (e.g., His silence was more disconcerting than anger).
Mastering Scorsese’s Pronunciation & Tone
To nail the accent, focus on Scorsese’s pacing—he pauses for emphasis, especially when sharing personal insights (e.g., "It was like enlightening, you know"). Notice how he shortens words like "gonna" and "wanna" in casual speech, a key feature of natural English. For shadowing technique practice, replay lines like "Why won't you talk to me?" and mimic his rising tone to convey urgency. Also, pay attention to stress: he emphasizes words like "loneliness" and "empathy" to highlight emotional beats. This not only improves pronunciation but also helps you convey meaning through intonation—critical for IELTS speaking practice.
Learning English with videos like this turns passive watching into active skill-building. Dive in, shadow the dialogue, and watch your speaking confidence soar!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to tell · used to call |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | were acquainted · was made · was called |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | you've always wanted · We've seen · has organized |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | him, which is · script, which is · friend who was |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.