‘Mr. Scorsese’ is a Joy To Watch (Unless You’re Martin Scorsese)
Mr. Scorsese, Apple TV’s documentary miniseries series about the GOAT Martin Scorsese, kind of feels like a miracle. Director Rebecca Miller manages to pull in key collaborators from across his long and winding career, including Robert De Niro, Daniel Day-Lewis (an easy get, as he’s Miller’s husband), Leonardo DiCaprio, Robbie Robertson of The Band, his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker and Margot Robbie—everyone, basically, save Joe Pesci, who declined to participate. And then there’s Marty himself, who sat for 20 hours’ worth of interviews.
The series is remarkably honest, with the director opening up to Miller about his drug problem in the 1980s, his struggles with his faith, his early experiences with the mob, his oscillating relationships with his daughters and his wife Helen Morris’ struggle with Parkinson’s. It’s also just a very fun insider’s look back at the making of GoodFellas, The Wolf of Wall Street, Raging Bull and the rest. There’s simply nothing like this out at the moment.
Over a Zoom call last month, Miller told GQ how she got the best out of Scorsese and his pals.
GQ: You’ve said that making this series has been a highlight of your career. Can you articulate why?
Rebecca Miller: Well, I think to spend such a long time talking to this artist—it’s like you are learning about his life, but you’re also learning about film and all the films that influenced him. So there was almost like a going to graduate school quality about it. The idea that Abbott and Costello were an influence on him and De Niro—that’s something that I absolutely loved. I was just really interested in all the different ways in which [Scorsese], like a magpie, synthesized his influences and then metabolized them, and it comes out as this new art form, almost, that he created.
How long did you spend with him?
It started at the beginning of the pandemic. We had a couple of interviews that were about four hours each, and then we worked over a period of five years. It was about 20 hours [in total] – we would have these very long conversations [where] we talked and talked and talked and talked. I really did not expect this whole thing to be so big. I thought it was a feature film. I didn’t think it was a docuseries, which is what it became. And when I interviewed [director] Brian de Palma and he said, “You cannot do this in one film.”
What was your relationship with Martin Scorsese before you embarked on this journey together?
I had a slight relationship with him in that I had visited the set of Gangs of New York, and I knew him a little bit socially. But when I had met him, I was about to make Personal Velocity, which was a film that I was going to make for very, very little money. I knew that I was going to use a lot of voiceover, and I asked him if he could advise me [about that]. And of course he gave me a lot of different titles of wonderful English films that had used voiceover, and it was really helpful to me. After that I showed him Personal Velocity and he gave me a note or two, and then that tradition kept going. I showed him the next one and the next one. And so every couple of years, he would see one of my films and give me a little bit of advice.
It feels like it’s going to wind up being the definitive portrait of Martin Scorsese. And I guess for him it required putting a lot of trust in you. Did you find he had any hesitance to get into some of the thornier stuff, like his drug problem in the 1980s?
I didn’t have a problem with him in that way. I would call my approach in the interviews a kind of radical listening. I was really listening and looking for the openings, and I was asking the follow-up questions. I was very much looking at the films all the time and thinking about the films, but in terms of his personal life, I didn’t know that much. And so once he decided that he was going to make a film with me, I think he decided to do me the honor of being honest. And I honored him by making an honest film.
Has he seen it? What was his reaction?
I think it was very hard for him to watch. I mean, I think for anyone to watch the film of their life and people talking about you… I think it was a shock to the system. But I think he also felt it was very well made, and that was, for me, very important.
This story originally appeared in British GQ.
