Conversations with Scorsese (28 page)

The essence of
Raging Bull:
The most visceral—and sometimes sickening—boxing sequences in movie history.

RS:
In other words,
Raging Bull
is perhaps an expression of not just your own rage, but all that Italian immigrant anger and misunderstanding and desperate struggle to move up. All that is sort of coalesced in this figure?

MS:
I think so. I mean, Jake’s job is to go into a ring and beat people up while getting beat up. And then there’s his own masochism of getting beaten up because he feels so bad about himself. Somebody once wrote that Jake LaMotta fought like he didn’t deserve to live. That’s it.

RS:
Is that at least a little bit like the way you were feeling when De Niro came to visit you in the hospital?

MS:
Maybe. I couldn’t understand Bob’s obsession with it until I went through that rough period of my own. Ever since then—like they always say, but it’s true—every day is special. You always have to remember that every day is kind of a gift.

So through Bob I was able to find something about myself again—the difference between the genre director and the director who is trying to be a filmmaker. We worked it out in a sort of unspoken way, meaning that we were never articulate about it. We talked about feelings, we talked about a sense of impotence, about
how you couldn’t change some things in life, and about trust and what happens when there is a betrayal of that trust.

Up to a certain point in life, you’ll kill everybody around you. You’re killing yourself. And that’s ultimately what I saw in the picture.
Mean Streets
and
Who’s That Knocking
are about who I am and where I came from.
Raging Bull
was a break from everything else, and sort of a new beginning—an acceptance of everything.

RS:
That’s the most enigmatic thing about that movie, the end, when Jake retires from the ring and puts on sixty pounds and does the worst standup routine I’ve ever seen in my life.

MS:
It was based on his actual routine.

RS:
And at the end, when he’s doing recitations in a little theater—

MS:
Which is based on reality, too.

RS:
And he’s doing—

MS:
On the Waterfront.

RS:
Brando’s “contender” speech. We think, Oh my God, he’s finding redemption in show business.

MS:
Not necessarily show business. No, not at all. I don’t know if I had experienced it myself, I don’t think I did, but I was hoping that by that point in time Jake would be more accepting of himself. That’s all. He’s more gentle to himself and to the people around him. If he gets that far in his life, that would be good. It’s like the line from
Diary of a Country Priest:
God is not a torturer; he wants us to be merciful with ourselves, just take it easy on ourselves, really. And Jake kind of gets there.

Originally we were going to do one of the speeches from Shakespeare that he was doing in his act. But
Michael Powell read the script and said, Shakespeare’s all wrong for him. I said, But that’s what he actually did. And Powell said, Well, it doesn’t mean anything if he actually did that, not for a film. Bob felt that we should tackle the
On the Waterfront
speech because that was our iconography, not the
Globe Theatre.

RS:
However, it is significant that between the standup routine and “I could have been a contender” he beats his head against the jail wall in an astonishingly brutal way. Is that finally knocking something out of himself, whatever it is?

MS:
I think it’s the old story of having to reach the lowest level with yourself. I always think of the great
Bible story of David having to put his hands on the Ark
after reaching a point where he can’t get any lower. And then God comes and lifts him up. I felt that was what was happening. We never said that, though; I’m just thinking of it now, because I love the story of David. I always reread it and I’m fascinated at how he could have done so many bad things. He sends Uriah out in the front lines to get killed so he can have the guy’s wife. I mean, it’s an incredible story, and still he’s one of the anointed of God. It has a lot to do with what I feel about humanity: If you’re lucky, there’s some grace. Whether you make that change yourself, or whether you believe in a supreme being, that’s up to you. A lot of it has to do with how you treat yourself.

I think that’s what happens in the jail scene. That’s why De Niro wanted to hit his head on stone walls. There were all kinds of things we were talking about doing in the jail cell, but he felt that he wanted to do that. Jake had described that to him, acted it out. As I said, Schrader originally was thinking of having him masturbate in the jail. Bob felt that the character wouldn’t do that. By the time it all worked itself out, a lot had changed from the draft that Paul had written. It became a really collaborative experience, all of us working together. Bob slamming his head against the wall that way seemed to have the most power. As did his expression, “I’m not an animal.
I’m still human. I’m still human.
”

What he meant, I think, is an animal doesn’t have consciousness, is not aware that it’s alive. I have a friend who, unfortunately, may have to go through a heart operation. He said, It’s like a machine. The machine breaks down, they have to go in there to fix the machine. The only thing is, there’s a spirit attached. You’re a much more complicated creature than just an animal.

RS:
I’ve only met De Niro once or twice. He seems like a very shy guy. Is he with you?

MS:
It depends on the day. It depends on the frequency of our meeting, or the frequency of being around each other. By the time we were doing
Raging Bull
we were like brothers, in the best and worst senses. You know, we had the same trust, but at the same time, there were annoyances: “Is that your jacket on the floor? Would you pick it up?” I have a brother, and I keep projecting that into all these relationships.

Now it’s a little different. But in those days he’d be very articulate and get right to the point. “This scene I have a problem with,” he’d say, or “I want to try something here.” Or “What if he moves a certain way?” I’d say, “Well, show it to me.” He’d get up and do it. A number of times I wished I had the camera. I would’ve shot it immediately if I’d had a camera.

I would say, “The language is the body. The language is right there.” I’m thinking particularly of one scene in the jail at the end of
Raging Bull.
We were discussing
what Schrader had put in, and he said, “I had this idea.” He showed me how he was going to hit his head against the wall. And how he would hit the wall with his hands, punch the wall, in a very slow way. He had done that once before in a room at the Pierre Hotel, but I wasn’t really focused on it then. On the island he got up and did it again. When I looked at it there, I saw the scene, I saw the shot, what you see in the film.

The key to that scene, by the way, is how he’s forced into the jail cell by those two guards—those are real guards, incidentally. And when we said, “Action,” the guards weren’t prepared for his ferocity. They got frightened; that’s quite real. They toss him in, and the language is over the top, but it’s because the anger is so strong, the rage is so strong. We just started rolling the camera without him knowing. Then he calmed down—right before he gets up and hits the wall, I think, right after he sits down. [Cinematographer] Mike Chapman and I, we had two cameras. It was just on a little set, and the wall was treated, of course, but still it was very painful what he was doing. But we had total trust between us at that point. He knew I would turn the camera on at the right time. I just felt it from knowing what he was going to do.

Socially, Bob’s usually very quiet. If you’re in a meeting with him, it depends on the people. In some cases, after an hour he’ll open up and say something. I’ve
seen him in meetings be eloquent on certain points, defending certain issues or people in a very strong way. Not like a firebrand, but very articulate and very soft-spoken: You know, that’s the nature of this character, that’s who he is, that’s what he knows. I’ve seen that happen a lot.

Very often when we meet, it takes about forty-five minutes to get into the real stuff [
laughs
]. Usually, he meets me for lunch and it turns out to be three hours. But, finally,
Raging Bull
had a lot to do with trust, even in the editing.

In the arena: Cinematographer Michael Chapman stands at Marty’s left hand.

RS:
Did Bob remain involved at that stage?

MS:
That process has changed in recent years. Now we may run a rough cut of a picture eight or nine or ten times. In those days it was two times and basically the picture was done. I had one cut of
Raging Bull
and I looked at it with Thelma. I knew what to do. We did it. Then we showed it to
Irwin Winkler,
Bob Chartoff [Winkler’s producing partner], and Bob. They looked at it. They had a couple of comments, that was it. Then we screened it one more time.

I think after one screening Bob saw with Irwin, Bob suggested using another take for a certain scene. I didn’t think it was right, but I tried it. I still didn’t think it was right. Then later, when we were in
California, he asked, Do you mind if I look at the takes again of that particular scene with you before you lock the picture? It was the
On the Waterfront
monologue at the end. We did nineteen takes. He still wanted to make sure which one he liked better. He made a case again for the one he liked. So we screened it in a big screening room at
Warner Bros.—Stage 25, a giant room. There it was up on the screen. It’s the end of the movie. Bob is saying dialogue that comes from an iconographic work by Brando. I had certain ideas about it. Bob leaned to the one that was a little more expressive than the other. We looked at the two takes. I turned him and I said, “I still think the take I have in is the best.” And he said, “All right, let it go!” And that was it. You can only have a conversation like that with somebody you trust, because the bottom line is the actor could say, You’ve got to use that take I want, because the picture was made because of my name.

RS:
Right.

MS:
That’s a big issue. You don’t have to work with that person again maybe, but, right now, in the present, on the picture you’re working on, anything can happen. So I always use that example as a way of working together collegially, because I do like it when the actor brings something to the table.

RS:
Steven Bach, at the end of
Final Cut,
his very good book about the last days of the old United Artists, tells quite a wonderful story about your screening the
picture for
Andy Albeck, the studio chief, who was about to lose his job over
Heaven’s Gate.
He turns to you at the end of the picture and says, “Mr. Scorsese, you’re an artist.”

MS:
That’s right. My father was there, too; he came up the aisle and heard that. I remember he was standing next to Albeck, who was very nice to us. It was very interesting, because my father was rather shaken by the film. He was a little nervous when we showed the picture in Cannes. He said, disapprovingly, “The guy beats his wife.” We were just dealing with who this character was, and what his world is. There is domestic violence. It was the way it was.

You know, a man goes in a ring, fights, that’s his living. He comes out of the ring and he gets into a fight. I mean, that’s what he does for his living. How do you expect him to behave? There are certain instincts that are nurtured and move him. I’m not excusing it, this was the world he came from.

My friend
Raffaele Donato gave me the novel
Journey to the End of the Night
by Céline. The way he deals with the poor, and the people who live in tenements, it’s very accurate, very true.

RS:
As far as I know, though I know nothing firsthand about that world.

MS:
That’s the way people were. I’m telling you, some were very nice, but a lot were like that, the way it’s described in that book. When we did
Raging Bull
and
Taxi Driver
and even
Goodfellas
and
Casino,
that is the world we were depicting. It’s harder now to make a film like
Departed,
which is insulting to a lot of people. It uses language that’s offensive. And it’s violent. Maybe ten or twelve years before I made those films, it wasn’t that way. Maybe we were a little closer to something like a brutal reality. Or, to put it another way, if you were going to make
The Last Temptation of Christ
today, you’d be more aware of what the reaction would be.