Martin Scorsese: “I Have To Find Out Who The Hell I Am.”

Hmm, where were we? Ah, yes, he was talking about how movies can be built or deconstructed because of Killers, which has the elliptical, episodic structure of many of his other films. Less narrative, more atmosphere, more information by way of anecdote, by way of scene, by way of character. “What I had hoped to do, and I didn’t do this intentionall... See more

the very grammar of cinema

Getting older is a relentless process of paring down. Getting older is an exercise in letting go. Let go of anger: “I’m at the age now where you just—you’ll die.” Let go of fitting in, of going up to Rao’s with important people. Let go of other people’s opinions: “That doesn’t mean you don’t take advice and you don’t discuss and argue, but at a cer... See more

Let go of self-delusion, which is maybe the hardest thing of all to let go of. Shape the thing you’re making into a pure expression of the thing you’re making: “Cut away, strip away the unnecessary, and strip away what people expect.”

Scorsese said he wanted to see how the Band’s music was made. Where did it come from? “I wanted to see what that magic was,” he said. “But ultimately there’s a lifestyle, too, that goes along with it. And a lot of it has to do with partying. And, okay: Partying went way out of hand for me. Because I didn’t know how to control it. But, I also wanted... See more

Studios, he said, are not “interested any longer in supporting individual voices that express their personal feelings or their personal thoughts and personal ideas and feelings on a big budget. And what’s happened now is that they’ve pigeonholed it to what they call indies.”

Otherwise, what’s the point of making it? You’ve got to be saying something.

And if I’m honest in the work, maybe I could be honest as a person. Maybe.

he does see trouble in the glut of franchise and comic book entertainment that currently makes up much of what you can see in a theater. “The danger there is what it’s doing to our culture,” Scorsese said. “Because there are going to be generations now that think movies are only those—that’s what movies are.”

I think people already think that.

“The time you spend is really spending time,” he said. “It isn’t wasting time. Then one has to find within that spending of time an allowing oneself to just not feel you’re wasting it if you’re just existing for the moment. Just exist.