TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. A new five-part biographical documentary about Martin Scorsese analyzing the film director's life and work is appearing now on Apple TV+. Directed by Rebecca Miller, it's called "Mr. Scorsese," and our TV critic David Bianculli has this review.
DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: If the thought of a five-part, five-hour study of Martin Scorsese might sound excessive, then maybe you haven't seen enough of his movies or, for that matter, feasted on any of his multipart documentaries on the history of film, both domestic and international. They're treasures loaded with insights, passion and hints about which films to seek out next for even more riches. In Rebecca Miller's new "Mr. Scorsese," he turns that focus and knowledge on his own work, with Miller providing visual aids to underscore his points.
Take, for example, one of Scorsese's most famous films, "Taxi Driver." Robert De Niro plays New York City cab driver Travis Bickle, who's rejected by some elements of the city and repulsed by others. Scorsese explains to Miller how he set out to emphasize Travis' sense of alienation visually by subtly but intentionally selecting how he presented De Niro's character on screen.
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MARTIN SCORSESE: So we always tried to - kind of psychologically tried to keep him separate from everybody else. That was the key thing in that film. Who's in whose frame? And so I was trying always to keep him in a single frame, nobody in his frame. And then when I cut to the other person, he's in their frame, but they're not in his.
BIANCULLI: We're given lots of other insights about "Taxi Driver" and not just from Scorsese. Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster talk about how their improv sessions during rehearsals defined their characters and led to some of the movie's most indelible scenes. The film's screenwriter, Paul Schrader, talks about how both the director and the actors elevated what was written on the pages of his script. And Schrader, when asked by Miller, also talks very chillingly about how the pent-up potentially violent loner of "Taxi Driver" is a much more familiar character today in real life.
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REBECCA MILLER: It feels like there's a lot of Travis Bickles, especially right now.
PAUL SCHRADER: They're all talking to each other on the internet. When I first heard about him, he was talking to nobody. He really was, at that point, the underground man. Now he's the internet (laughter).
BIANCULLI: One of Scorsese's friends and fellow directors, Steven Spielberg, offers some "Taxi Driver" insights, too. He tells how Scorsese avoided an X rating for that movie, which the film board threatened to impose because of its bloody climax, by adjusting the color of the blood on the finished prints from bright red to a much more muted brown. Scorsese learned that lesson well. Later, for his brutal boxing epic "Raging Bull," he drained the color of blood completely, shooting the entire film in black and white.
Most of Scorsese's films are dissected with the same loving detail by those who know him and his movies best. The people interviewed include not only De Niro, Foster, Schrader and Spielberg, but actors Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci, Margot Robbie and Cate Blanchett, directors Spike Lee and Brian De Palma and rock stars Mick Jagger and Robbie Robertson. Then there are his other creative collaborators, such as Thelma Schoonmaker and his grown children, his wife and ex-wives and childhood friends. All of them have some informative and wild stories to tell. Early on, Scorsese sits down with some guys from the old neighborhood, including De Niro, to talk about old times.
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SCORSESE: I'll never forget. One night, we're standing outside, and there was a guy lying in the Jersey Street. Remember?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Yeah.
SCORSESE: And we start looking. We're talking by the graveyard, and we're going, oh, the guy's not moving.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Remember seeing his hands?
SCORSESE: Yeah. Yeah. I said, guy's not moving. Yeah, he's dressed nicely.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: And - oh, he is.
SCORSESE: You kind of go over, Robert. You were going over, looking around like, huh, really? You came back and said Jimmy just put a pencil in his head.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Yeah.
SCORSESE: To make sure that it was a bullet hole.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Yeah.
SCORSESE: That was when Mulberry Street was still...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: The dumping ground.
SCORSESE: ...The place where they dumped the bodies. They called it Murder Mile.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Yeah, yeah.
SCORSESE: It used to be called. And the Bowery was called Devil's Mile.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Yeah.
SCORSESE: So we were in between Murder Mile and Devil's Mile.
BIANCULLI: But even while growing up in that tough neighborhood, young Marty Scorsese found solace in the local movie theater and began drawing his own make-believe stories. Essentially, they were comic strip storyboards for the movies in his mind, violent period epics with titles like "The Eternal City," complete with gladiators and bloody battles and with credits that read, even at age 11, directed and produced by Martin Scorsese.
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SCORSESE: I became obsessed with all kinds of films. And I used my imagination. I was making up all these stories. So I started drawing these little pictures that showed the impression of movement, like the storyboard for a film. These images move. This is a boom, a tracking shot here. Here's the wall of Rome, and here are the trees here. And the camera is on a crane. And the camera comes all the way down over the backs of the first group of men, and the doors open. But it's a big crane shot because you go from here and then it goes behind, and you go down. I'm still doing this shot. I'm still doing it. It doesn't quite work all the time.
BIANCULLI: The documentary "Mr. Scorsese" spends its first installment on his early days, his childhood, making student films at NYU, being on the movie camera crew at Woodstock and eventually getting his break with low-budget movie producer Roger Corman to direct a Bonnie and Clyde knockoff called "Boxcar Bertha." When Scorsese showed it to his filmmaking friends, they were unimpressed. And when he showed it to his mentor and hero, independent filmmaker John Cassavetes, the reaction was even worse.
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SCORSESE: So he looked at "Boxcar Bertha." I saw him afterwards. He looked at me. And he was like 10 feet away from me. And he goes, come here. And I went up to him, and he embraced me. Then he held me aside, pushed me aside. He goes, you just spent a year of your life making a [expletive]. Don't do this again, don't do this again.
BIANCULLI: And he didn't. Instead, Martin Scorsese made "Mean Streets" with Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro and took all their careers to a higher level. Mr. Scorsese takes us on that journey. And some of the stops along the way are breathtaking. "The Last Waltz," "Raging Bull," "Goodfellas," "Casino," "The Aviator," "The Wolf Of Wall Street."
There are a few regretful omissions in "Mr. Scorsese." But in an overview of this type, that's inevitable and completely acceptable. This new Apple TV+ series is self-described as a film portrait by Rebecca Miller. And as portraits go, it's by no means a hasty sketch. With its many interviews and film clips, and its exciting use of split screen comparisons and music by the Rolling Stones, "Mr. Scorsese" is closer to a patiently painted masterpiece.
MOSLEY: David Bianculli reviewed "Mr. Scorsese," now streaming on Apple TV+. Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, what's happening with the American economy, how constantly changing tariffs, AI, the immigration crackdown and uncertainty in the job and stock market affect everything from the global economy to our daily lives. We speak with Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at @nprfreshair.
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MOSLEY: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Heidi Saman, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tonya Mosley.
(SOUNDBITE OF BERNARD HERRMANN'S "THANK GOD FOR THE RAIN") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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