Martin Scorsese Quotes

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out

I was born very far from where I'm supposed to be, and so I'm on my way home.

Your job is to get your audience to care about your obsessions.

And as I've gotten older, I've had more of a tendency to look for people who live by kindness, tolerance, compassion, a gentler way of looking at things." ~ Martin Scorsese

Movies touch our hearts and awaken our vision, and change the way we see things. They take us to other places, they open doors and minds. Movies are the memories of our life time, we need to keep them alive.

Violence is not the answer, it doesn’t work any more. We are at the end of the worst century in which the greatest atrocities in the history of the world have occurred... The nature of human beings must change. We must cultivate love and compassion.

You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.

Now more than ever we need to talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we see the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this.

If you’re looking for the origins of film culture in America, look no further than Amos Vogel.

All they needed was a title. Carmack had the idea. It was taken from The Color of Money, the 1986 Martin Scorsese film in which Tom Cruise played a brash young pool hustler. In one scene Cruise saunters into a billiards hall carrying his favorite pool cue in a stealth black case. “What you got in there?” another player asks. Cruise smiles devilishly, because he knows what fate he is about to spring upon this player, just as, Carmack thought, id had once sprung upon Softdisk and as, with this next game, they might spring upon the world. “In here?” Cruise replies, flipping open the case. “Doom.

I don’t just want a gripping story line. I shoot for the three dimensional literary Braille to a silent Scorsese movie

There's no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.

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.

The most interesting of the classic movie genres to me are the indigenous ones: the Western, which was born on the Frontier, the Gangster Film, which originated in the East Coast cities, and the Musical, which was spawned by Broadway. They remind me of jazz: they allowed for endless, increasingly complex, sometimes perverse variations. When these variations were played by the masters, they reflected the changing times; they gave you fascinating insights into American culture and the American psyche.

No matter where the cinema goes, we cannot afford to lose sight of its beginnings.

You can't be wise and in love at the same time. – Bob Dylan, No Direction Home (2005) Directed by Martin Scorsese.

How can Martin Scorsese’s New York City be the same as Woody Allen’s New York City, which is not the same thing as Spike Lee’s New York City and Mike Nichols’s New York City? That was my introduction to perspective.

There's a way that the force of disappointment can be alchemized into something that will paradoxically renew you.

I would have practically done all my films in 3D. There is something that 3D gives to the picture that takes you into another land and you stay there and it’s a good place to be. (…) It’s like seeing a moving sculpture of the actor and it’s almost like a combination of theater and film combined and it immerses you in the story more. I saw audiences care about the people more. The minute it started people wanted three things: color, sound and depth. You want to recreate life.

I had a fascination with 3D that goes back to the View-Master. I'd always dreamed of making a film in 3D. It's like a combination of theatre and film. There's something 3D gives to a movie that takes you to another land. Working with RealD creatively was a liberating experience. Thank you RealD for allowing us to make something like Hugo.

My father took me to see this film in 1950, when I was eight years old. And I’ve never forgotten it. I wouldn’t know how to begin to explain what this film has meant to me over the years. It’s about the joy and exuberance of film-making itself. It’s one of the true miracles of film history. What keeps nourishing me over the years is the spell the film casts, how it weaves the mystery of the obsession of creativity, of the creative drive. It all comes down to that wonderful exchange early in the film when Anton Walbrook confronts Moira Shearer at a cocktail party. ‘Why do you want to dance?’ he asks, and she answers, ‘Why do you want to live?’ The look on his face is extraordinary.’ Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about that exchange. It expresses so much about the burning need for art – the mystery of the passion to create. It’s not that you want to do it, it’s that you have to do it. You have no choice. You have to live it and it comes with a price. But what a time paying it. [on, The Red Shoes (1948)]

Epictetus, I think, said not to be concerned with death, because life is the presence of feeling and emotion and awareness, and death is the absence of all of that, which means you won't have any awareness. So why worry about it ?

The Scorsese Principle Hold attention with visual images that illustrate a story. I think most who have seen Martin Scorsese’s film Goodfellas remember the scene of Paul Sorvino thinly slicing a garlic clove with a razor blade in prison. That visual illustrated the gourmet lifestyle his wiseguys were living even behind bars. Through your words, craft stories that are so engaging that the listener is hanging on every detail. Direct the film that plays in your listener’s mind.

I seriously doubt that Agnès Varda ever followed in anyone else’s footsteps, in any corner of her life or her art…which were one in the same. She charted and walked her own path each step of the way, she and her camera. Every single one of her remarkable handmade pictures, so beautifully balanced between documentary and fiction, is like no one else’s—every image, every cut… What a body of work she left behind: movies big and small, playful and tough, generous and solitary, lyrical and unflinching…and alive. I saw her for the last time a couple of months ago. She knew that she didn’t have much longer, and she made every second count: she didn’t want to miss a thing. I feel so lucky to have known her. And to all young filmmakers: you need to watch Agnès Varda’s pictures.

Tony Williams: You’ve often mentioned that Tales of Hoffmann (1951) has been a major influence on you. George Romero: It was the first film I got completely involved with. An aunt and uncle took me to see it in downtown Manhattan when it first played. And that was an event for me since I was about eleven at the time. The imagery just blew me away completely. I wanted to go and see a Tarzan movie but my aunt and uncle said, “No! Come and see a bit of culture here.” So I thought I was missing out. But I really fell in love with the film. There used to be a television show in New York called Million Dollar Movie. They would show the same film twice a day on weekdays, three times on Saturday, and three-to-four times on Sunday. Tales of Hoffmann appeared on it one week. I missed the first couple of days because I wasn’t aware that it was on. But the moment I found it was on, I watched virtually every telecast. This was before the days of video so, naturally, I couldn’t tape it. Those were the days you had to rent 16mm prints of any film. Most cities of any size had rental services and you could rent a surprising number of films. So once I started to look at Tales of Hoffmann I realized how much stuff Michael Powell did in the camera. Powell was so innovative in his technique. But it was also transparent so I could see how he achieved certain effects such as his use of an overprint in the scene of the ballet dancer on the lily ponds. I was beginning to understand how adept a director can be. But, aside from that, the imagery was superb. Robert Helpmann is the greatest Dracula that ever was. Those eyes were compelling. I was impressed by the way Powell shot Helpmann sweeping around in his cape and craning down over the balcony in the tavern. I felt the film was so unique compared to most of the things we were seeing in American cinema such as the westerns and other dreadful stuff I used to watch. Tales of Hoffmann just took me into another world in terms of its innovative cinematic technique. So it really got me going. Tony Williams: A really beautiful print exists on laserdisc with commentary by Martin Scorsese and others. George Romero: I was invited to collaborate on the commentary by Marty. Pat Buba (Tony’s brother) knew Thelma Schoonmaker and I got to meet Powell in later years. We had a wonderful dinner with him one evening. What an amazing guy! Eventually I got to see more of his movies that I’d never seen before such as I Know Where I’m Going and A Canterbury Tale. Anyway, I couldn’t do the commentary on Tales of Hoffmann with Marty. But, back in the old days in New York, Marty and I were the only two people who would rent a 16mm copy of the film. Every time I found it was out I knew that he had it and each time he wanted it he knew who had it! So that made us buddies.

[Luchino] Visconti came from the Milanese branch of one of Europe’s oldest families, whose roots can be traced back to the early 13th century. He might have appeared as a character in one of his own films about the aristocracy, such as Senso or The Leopard – that’s the life he was born into. But at a certain point in the 1930s, his passion for theatre, opera and the cinema set him on a radically different path. (...) He has often been referred to as a great political artist, but that’s too limiting and frozen a description. His sense of European history was vast and he knew the lives of the rich and powerful first hand – but at a certain point he became drawn to understand the other side of life, that of the poor and powerless. He had a strong sense of the particular manner in which absolutely everyone, from the Sicilian fishermen in his neorealist classic La Terra Trema to the Venetian aristocrats in Senso, was affected by the grand movements of history.

Minhas primeiras experiências com amor, basicamente, foram com meus pais. Então o conceito de amor em si veio através da doutrinação da igreja no começo dos anos 50. Passei por uma porção de mudanças desde então. Mas olhando para quem nós somos como espécie, o amor parece realmente ser a única resposta. Então como alimentar isso? Como isso se desenvolve nos seres humanos? Em nossas ações, particularmente. Muitas vezes, eu penso em 'A ponte de San Luis Rey [The Bridge of San Luis Rey - cinco pessoas numa ponte, todas são mortas por um terremoto. O romance de Thornton Wilder e o filme de Mary McGuckian, de 2004, perguntam se suas mortes foram parte de algum plano cósmico ou meros acidentes]. Parece não haver nenhuma razão particular para elas estarem lá. A enfermeira, no final - creio eu que era uma freira -, esta cuidando de todas as outras vítimas e de repente pensa: E se não existir Deus? Então ela olha em torno e diz para si mesma: Eles precisam de sua ajuda de um jeito ou de outro, e volta diretamente para o trabalho. Essa é a beleza da coisa.

This maneuver is what got Senator Joe Biden elected,” Sheeran claimed in the 2004 deathbed biography, I Heard You Paint Houses—whose macabre title is a mob euphemism for the mess a hitman makes when he blows someone’s brains out. Martin Scorsese’s movie The Irishman was based on the book.

Anyone comparing photos of Glenn Frey and Don Henley in 1972 and, say, 1977 could track the price of the years of drugs and high living. Julia Phillips's drug addiction incinerated her Hollywood career. Martin Scorsese barely survived his own cocaine addiction in the mid-seventies. Since the days of Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, Los Angeles had sold a vision of personal liberation. A decade later, liberation had curdled into license. The theme song for Los Angeles in the buoyant early 1970s could have been "Take It Easy" or "Rock Me on the Water." But by 1976, when the Eagles released Hotel California, the mood of lengthening shadows was more precisely captured by their rueful "Life in the Fast Lane.

Then the center of influence shifted to London, with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Cream, the Who, the Kinks, and all the bands that orbited them. San Francisco, with the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Santana, had its moment in a psychedelic spotlight around the Summer of Love and the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, but as the 1960s gave way to the '70s, the center of the musical universe shifted unmistakably to Los Angeles. "It was incredibly vital," said Jonathan Taplin, who first came to LA as the tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band and later relocated there to produce Martin Scorsese's breakthrough movie, Mean Streets. "The nexus of the music business had really moved from New York to Los Angeles. That had been a profound shift . . . It was very clear that something big had changed."'' For a breathtaking few years, the stars aligned to glittering effect in Los Angeles. The city attracted brilliant artists; skilled session musicians; soulful songwriters; shrewd managers, agents, and record executives; and buzz-building clubs. From this dense constellation of talent, a shimmering new sound emerged, a smooth blend of rock and folk with country influences. Talented young people from all over the country began descending on Los Angeles with their guitar cases or dreams of becoming the next Geffen. Irving Azoff, a hyper-ambitious young agent and manager who arrived in Los Angeles in 1972, remembered, "It was like the gold rush. You've never seen anything like it in the entertainment business. The place was exploding. I was here—right place, right time. I tell everybody, `If you're really good in this business, you only have to be right once,' so you kind of make your own luck, but it is luck, too. It was hard to be in LA in that time and have any talent whatsoever in the music business—whether you were a manager, an agent, an artist, a producer, or writer—[and] not to make it, because it was boom times. It was the gold rush, and it was fucking fun.

PEDRO ALMODOVAR Iako su mi to često predlagali, nikada nisam htio predavati film. Razlog je tome, po mojemu mišljenju, činjenica da se film uči, ali se ne predaje. To je umijeće koje ne počiva toliko na tehnici koliko na načinu rada. Film je posve osoban oblik izražavanja. Svakoga tehničara možete zamoliti da vam pokaže "konvencionalan" način snimanja određene scene. No snimate li je slijedeći njegove upute, u ishodu će uvijek nešto nedostajati, a to nešto ste vi i vaše gledište, vaš način izražavanja. Režija je sasvim osobno iskustvo, sami moramo otkriti filmski jezik, kao što se kroz taj jezik moramo otkriti. Želite li naučiti taj zanat psihijatar će vam možda biti korisniji od profesora! Martin Scorsese: Sve se svodi na jedno pitanje: imate li što reći? Jean-Pierre Jeunet: Svakom je režiseru cilj kršenje pravila. Claude Sautet: Film je prije svega atmosfera. Bernardo Bertolucci: Nastojim sanjati kadrove noć uoči snimanja. Steven Soderbergh: Vizualni kontinuitet nije najbitniji. Važan je samo emotivni kontinuitet. Claire Denis: Svaki se film napaja frustracijama iz prethodnoga filma.

The night before flying to New York, I watched Bowie's brief performance as a serene, pragmatic Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. 'That's a strange movie to watch before going on a plane flight,' Bowie laughs. 'It's like, shall we find out—is there a God?' Then, as if moving on to the next logical topic, Bowie says, 'I can't wait to see the other 10 percent of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They're in fragments, of course, kind of a Bill Burroughs effect...' and he recounts for me a certain conspiracy theory ('a '70s thing') about a secret section of the Dead Sea Scrolls supposedly written by a Jesus who'd escaped from the cross and ended up dying a revolutionary at Masada. This secret stuff is, according to the theory, held in the Vatican and shown only to each new Pope on the day of election. But what on earth, I ask, could the big secret be anyway? 'Oh,' laughs Bowie, 'that there really was a Brian.

That word “unreasonable” was meant to shut us down—to end the conversation, as it so often does. Instead, it started one, and became our call to arms. Because no one who ever changed the game did so by being reasonable. Serena Williams. Walt Disney. Steve Jobs. Martin Scorsese. Prince. Look across every discipline, in every arena—sports, entertainment, design, technology, finance—you need to be unreasonable to see a world that doesn’t yet exist.

Where do I go to get a director? I’ve never hired one in my life. I’ve only starred in three films. I said, “Marty, I don’t know how to interview anybody. This is completely crazy.” He said, “No, you’ve got to do it. That’s it.” So now I had to go to California. I was very unhappy. I went to San Francisco to talk to Peter Yates, who made Bullitt. I went to LA to talk to Mark Rydell. I wound up in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, in what I called the Pompous Room—I didn’t know any other name for it. I’m talking to some guy who’s sort of quiet like me, who’s young and just starting out, but he’s hot off an art film of sorts called Mean Streets, which I hadn’t seen yet, and I’m too busy looking at the tables with red and green felt and the wallpaper with ducks and peacocks on them to understand that I’m speaking to one of our finest filmmakers ever, Martin Scorsese. I was just dizzy and I don’t think we hardly said a word to each other. I guess he must have known I didn’t know my ass from my elbow when it came to hiring a director.

Martin: Chíngas a tu madre...

seems I have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. It’s a lifelong appointment and there are no dues, just glory and hobnobbery. I look at the list of current members and feel woozy. In the department of literature, there’s Ann Beattie, Michael Cunningham, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, Amy Hempel, Jamaica Kincaid, David Mamet, Lorrie Moore, Joyce Carol Oates, Sharon Olds, Ann Patchett, Jayne Anne Phillips, Francine Prose, Marilynne Robinson, George Saunders, Wallace Shawn, Anne Tyler, Edmund White, Joy Williams, and Tobias Wolff. Really? I think. These people are gods to me. It’s like I’ve been allowed onto Mount Olympus. Then there are the departments of art (Bruce Nauman, Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer, Susan Rothenberg), music, and architecture. Honorary members—people whose work falls outside these categories—include Bob Dylan, Meryl Streep, Frederick Wiseman, and Martin Scorsese.

A new generation of American directors, reared on Fellini and Godard, was itching to rewrite the rules: Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich.

addition, many feature films, books and media have been based on the Dalai Lama and Tibet, including Kundun, directed by Martin Scorsese, Seven Years in Tibet, starring Brad Pitt, and the novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton.

If you feel like having a beer, watch a Martin Scorsese's film; If you want to be an innocent child again watch a Spielberg movie. If you feel like reading a suspense thriller, watch a Hitchcock's movie. And if you want some enlightenment, watch a Nolan's movie.

Cops never fucked with David Simon while he was filming The Wire, and dudes who rock out at that rock club The Crown sing about drugs and addiction weekly, but Moose can’t do the same? Martin Scorsese can, but Moose can’t? Can you not be an artist if you’ve dealt heroin? If you’re a felon? If you’ve owned guns? So now being black and from the ghetto bars you from artistic expression?