"You made me clamp your f**g brains for Tommy M" (Martin Scorcese - Dougan Andy)

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Product:	Martin Scorcese - Dougan Andy
Date:	17/08/01 (16 review reads)
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Advantages: Hes directed most lads fav films, Hes the best bar Spielberg, Every film has been good bar one

Disadvantages: Bring out the Dead

ARE YOU LAUGHING AT ME.

No American director has been more influenced by his roots than this guy. He’s spent thirty years explaining his culture on screen in his brilliant movies. His films are what it means to be Catholic and repressed in America.Now im not a Catholic, but I feel your pain father.

With the usual immigrant pedigree, Scorcese slotted into his Little Italy New York stereotype as a kid. The book details his faith in his God and flirtation with the priesthood. But it would be the very gangsters and low life’s he writes and portrays that will steer him away from the church, be it the one of organized crime or God.

Being from Scillian parentage, it wasn’t long for him to see the graphic nature of Mafia life on the harder streets of the Big Apple.And it was these scummy thugs and gangsters he emphasized in his movies over the grandiose smart ones of De palma and other great Italian directors.

Theres eight chapters leading up to his earliest defining movie Mean Streets.Although its very dated now, it was deemed a break through movie of the day but suffered poor box office. Critics loved it and dumb Americans were luke warm on it.
The first seven concentrate on the student films that broke and made studios take his calls. With the ubiquitous friendship with his biggest alli, Robert De`niro. Hippie films and love stories with Kris Kristopheson didn’t bring him the fulfillment he earned.

Taxi driver was to be the film he longed to make and the team up with Deniro pushed him into the big time. This flick was also a good example of how Scorcese use religious symbolism rampantly in his movies, if seeking some kind of redemption for turning his back on the church.
He also likes to place a character called JR in his films, which to all intended purposes is his alto ego.
Hollywood finally took note of the director and showcased Taxi Driver on the West Coast.It was the violent nature of
the film and not its intelligence that was selling the film though, much to the director’s confusing disappointment.

I personally loved Taxi driver and the ultra wacko Travis Bickle (De`niro). Vietnam freaked out most of America and I suppose there are a few of these loners hovering on disappear with a gun in their shorts. When you watch the flick, you notice how Scorcese likes to have just Bickle in the shot to give him the feel of total loneliness.
The John Hinkley/ Reagan assignation connection to the film is also developed in the book. If you were unaware of it then you best get the book and find out more. Such was the concern, the FBI ran a covert protection at the Oscars that year that even the director was unaware off.
When three beefy guys followed him into the building he became very worried. They assured him who they were and ushered him away from the ceremony telling him the Redford picture will win! Well we all know they are rigged. He’s still to win an Oscar to this day surprisingly.

Like most great directors, the success and stability of two good films allows them to experiment. Sadly Scorcese chose the awful New York, New York and Liza Manelli.

The later chapters concentrate on the director’s slow destruction into drugs and alcohol. At one point his ear eyes and just about everything was hemorrhaging internally. If it wasn’t for the Raging Bull project, the director would have drunk himself to an early death.
The stunning Raging Bull was his catharcism and put him back on top of the tree with the equally stunning Deniro masterclass. His self-destruction was saved as De`niros ironic performance of a man suffering a similar fate re-energised the brilliant director.

The little watched, but equally excellent King of Comedy has a chapter and if you haven’t seen it then set the vid when it pops up. The film continues the almost incestuous relationship between the director and De`n
iro.
The actor’s performance as the mildly psychotic comic, who harrangs a director played by the strange casting of Jerry Lewis is his best performance to date. It’s a really weird film and the plot is uncomfortable to say the least in its own strange hypnotic way.

Theres a look at the way Scorcese went commercial with the big studios and The color of Money with the young Tom Cruise.Along with the powerful Cape Fear they were to be his best box office hits today grossing 70 and 100 million respectively.

I didn’t bother reading much about the Last temptation of Christ skimming through to the wondrous Goodfellas.Apparantly if you ask a gangster or Mafiosi what flick is nearest to the truth about the Cosa Nostra, Goodfellas gets the Sicilian nod every time.
Scorcese occasionally casts his parents in small cameos to keep them in his life. If you have seen Goodfellas or have it on tape, look out for the old lady that serves Pesci, De`niro and Ray Lolota a meal after they had done a hit..It’s the directors 67 year old mum who has three lines!.
His dad plays Vinnie!. The gangster who finally whacks the Joe Pesci character near the end. Not a small insignificant parts by any means.

This is the best chapter in the book and gives a great description of his genius camera touch and style. One he recalls is when Jimmy (Lolota) is just getting into the wiseguy status with a beautiful girl on his arm. He is tracked by one camera from the street into a glitzy big shot nightclub. Scorcese describes the take as “The seduction of her and the life style slowly seducing him”.Classsssss.

Interestingly in the last chapter on Cape Fear to the present day it explains that Scorcese and Spielberg actually swooped two famous scripts. Spielberg had Schindlers List in his hand already to make but didn’t have the bottle to make it.
He was contracted to make Cape Fear but had to surrender it to Scorcese
who was slightly the hotter man behind the lens at the time. The rest is history with Scorcese missing out on yet more golden statuettes.

By the time of Cape Fear the director explains how he had excorzised the final demons of guilt and Catholicism in this all-empowering film. Such was the power of direction to De`niros relentless characterization that the director felt he could walk away from film at this point in his triumphant life.

Of course he didn’t and bought us the outstanding Casino with all the old faces. Theres no more authentic a moment in his movies when Pesci whacks the guy in the car park with the 1930s silencer that clicked not thudded.
The last chunk off the book is given over to the “Variety Reviews”on his filmography from this illustrious American mag. Yes right like we care pal.

Its an ok read and will give you enough to pass the day. The chapters are very short and the paper thick. Its enough for a week and will give you excuse not to buy his biography in the future.
These days he’s drowning in commercialism, making awful films like Bringing out the Dead, his ambulance film he just had to get out of his system……..







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