Video: A Conversation with Martin Scorsese

Hosted by filmmaker Edgar Wright.

Here is a 1-hour plus conversation with Martin Scorsese moderated by writer-director Edgar Wright. The event was hosted by BFI at the London Film Festival 2023.

It is impossible to talk about cinema over the last 50 years without mentioning Martin Scorsese. The world of film preservation is no less indebted to him, for his championing the medium’s rich and storied past.

As he unveils his latest opus, the epic historical drama Killers of the Flower Moon, the director explores a body of work that is as daring as it is beautiful, and ground-breaking as it is thrilling. From Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull to The Wolf of Wall Street, Silence and The Irishman, Martin Scorsese has investigated masculinity, honour, the tenets of faith and the forces that shape the world around us. He has done so with a virtuosity that is rarely short of breathtaking.

00:00: Ben Roberts, CEO of BFI, intro 
02:11: Edgar Wright introduces Martin Scorsese 
03:58: Philosophy of cinema. Other filmmaker’s work
06:24: Asthma and feeling safe in the cinema 
11:14: The New York Underground 
12:40: Early attempts at storyboarding and Marty’s unmade Roman epic 15:03: How Mean Streets got made 
31:32: Where the characters in Mean Streets came from 
40:28: Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and working in Hollywood 
41:43: Taxi Driver 
50:24: Thelma Schoonmaker, editing and Taxi Driver’s X rating 
58:32: The King of Comedy 
01:05:23: Goodfellas and how Scorsese feels about homages 
01:09:30: Robert De Niro introducing him to Leonardo DiCaprio 
01:12:17: The Aviator 
01:16:23: The Wolf of Wall Street 
01:19:06: Trumpism 
01:19:38: Killers of the Flower Moon

Films Martin Scorsese mentions during this interview include:

Magnificent Obsession. Dir: Douglas Sirk 
A Place in the Sun. Dir: George Stevens 
The Heiress. Dir: William Wyler 
The Bad and the Beautiful. Dir: Vincente Minnelli 
Sunset Boulevard. Dir: Billy Wilder 
Bomba: the Jungle Boy. Dir: Ford Beebe 
Great White Hunter. Dir: Unknown 
The Macomber Affair. Dir: Zoltan Korda 
The Big Heat. Dir: Fritz Lang 
Murder by Contract. Dir: Irving Lerner 
Shane. Dir: George Stevens 
Pather Panchali. Dir: Satyajit Ray 
The River. Dir: Jean Renoir 
Wavelength. Dir: Michael Snow 
Before the Revolution (Prima della rivoluzione). Dir: Bernardo Bertolucci Fists in the Pocket. Dir: Marco Bellocchio 
Accattone. Dir: Pier Paolo Pasolini 
Road to Singapore. Dir: Victor Schertzinger 
Rocco and his Brothers. Dir: Luchino Visconti 
Red River. Dir: Howard Hawks 
The Brothers Karamazov. Dir: Richard Brooks 
Faces. Dir: John Cassavetes 
Midnight Cowboy. Dir: John Schlesinger 
The FBI Story. Dir: Mervyn LeRoy 
The Wild Bunch. Dir: Sam Peckinpah 
Two Rode Together. Dir: John Ford 
Shadows. Dir: John Cassavetes

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