Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and film historian, whose career spans more than 53 years. Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Sicilian-American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, machismo, modern crime, and gang conflict. Many of his films are also notable for their depiction of violence and liberal use of profanity...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth17 November 1942
CityQueens, NY
CountryUnited States of America
We've seen growing awareness of film preservation, yet the deterioration and eventual disappearance of films have not come to an end. There's still a race against the clock to save what we can at some point.
When I was growing up, I don't remember being told that America was created so that everyone could get rich. I remember being told it was about opportunity and the pursuit of happiness. Not happiness itself, but the pursuit.
I'm trying not to let the anger and the violence that erupt take over my life. I guess it comes with the growing process, I don't know. A little mellowing.
When I was growing up in the mid-'50s, the Roaring Twenties were a huge part of the culture. There were a number of films and a bunch of television shows that dealt with the mythology of the underworld from that period.
I was saying as a joke the other day that I love film editing, I know how to cut a picture, I think I know how to shoot it, but I don't know how to light it. And I realize it's because I didn't grow up with light. I grew up in tenements.
I certainly wasn't able to get it when I was a kid growing up on the Lower East Side; it was very hard at that time for me to balance what I really believed was the right way to live with the violence I saw all around me - I saw too much of it among the people I knew.
Etta James' voice is just as commanding as it was when she was young, but it's different -- deeper, tougher. How could it not be? That's what life can do to you.
We couldn't have cared less about the government, especially the city government, which produced policemen who did nothing but take graft.
I've admired and enjoyed his many musical transformations. For me, there is no other musical artist who weaves his influences so densely to create something so personal and unique.
He represents the American tradition of excellence and honesty and integrity. In a sense, he was the Steven Spielberg of his time.
Cause who's gonna figure the man out? We want an answer for everything, but he can't give you the answer! You know the man through his art, and he's still going. He doesn't know where he's gonna wind up. He's trying to get home. Like all of us, I guess.
Many of these names on the Walk of Fame bloom larger than life. They created the grammar of cinema.
Most people have stereo vision, so why belittle that very, very important element of our existence?
I mean I have a project that I have been wanting to make for quite a while now; and basically, it's a story of my parents growing up in the Lower East Side.