“The whole mood of the country was different,” Scorsese said years later. The weirdos and wild ones who’d only recently brought Hollywood back to life, he fretted, were now being phased out, both on- and off-screen. Scorsese saw Star Wars’ success as further proof that mainstream audiences wanted feel-good success stories. Martin Scorsese’s Forgotten Gangster Movie “Yours is just a kids’ movie-and nobody’s going to take it seriously.”) (Even Lucas’s wife and collaborator, Marcia Lucas, was surprised by how the two films fared: “ New York, New York is a film for grown-ups,” she told her husband before Star Wars opened. It was a fate that would have been unimaginable in the years prior, when Scorsese was seen as one of the nerviest and more insightful members of cinema’s next wave. That summer, his messy big-band-era drama New York, New York was swallowed whole by George Lucas’s Star Wars. (They’d also put the director on a path toward the 1990 blockbuster that would forever confirm his status as a big-screen goodfella.) But before any of that could happen, Martin Scorsese had to survive the ‘80s.įor Scorsese, the first signs of the trouble ahead arrived in 1977. And as the decade went on, those movies would slowly revive his confidence, reaffirm his commercial standing, and sharpen his already formidable filmmaking skills. “Each one was a lesson,” Scorsese later said of the films he made in that period. So he threw himself into projects with small budgets and tight deadlines, resulting in some of his most daring, unexpected films: a pair of harshly funny New York City nightmares ( The King of Comedy and After Hours) a flashy, flinty pool hall drama ( The Color of Money) even a showstopping Michael Jackson video (“Bad”). “He was very, very aware that he had to prove something,” noted Scorsese’s editor and longtime collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker in a documentary about the making of After Hours. Scorsese, though, spent most of those years in a state of perpetual nervousness, convinced his directing days were numbered. And many of his less successful ‘80s efforts are now seen as crucial entries in his filmography, especially The King of Comedy, which is homaged throughout Todd Phillips’s hit Joker. Nearly 40 years later, of course, Scorsese is a cinematic crossfire hurricane-the rare filmmaker whose name is an above-the-title draw in itself, and who can secure huge stars and the occasional nine-figure budget (Netflix has reportedly spent close to $160 million on The Irishman, which opens in limited release on Friday). “The industry had changed, and the day of the personal film was gone,” Scorsese lamented ( and not for the last time). But as the Reagan era rolled in, it became clear the major studios were becoming more interested in sequels and special-effects adventures-many of them made by Scorsese’s peers-than in the brutal, truthful dramas that had flourished in the post-Vietnam era. That critical aut-streak would culminate in 1980’s sweat-soaked masterpiece Raging Bull. The director had made his explosive arrival in the ’70s, when the brash trifecta of Mean Streets, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and Taxi Driver established him as one of America’s crucial new directors. It was another deflating moment in what was shaping up as the most frustrating, panic-inducing decade of Scorsese’s career. “I was putting on my shirt and tie,” Scorsese recalled, “and Entertainment Tonight said, ‘Now, for the flop of the year: The King of Comedy.’ I just go, ‘Oh. But as he readied himself for a New Year’s Eve party, his TV set blaring in the background, the filmmaker received one final reminder of just how miserable his year had been. If anyone deserved a stress-free holiday, it was Scorsese. And his newest film, the biting celebrity-worship tale The King of Comedy, had vanished quickly from theaters. The past few months had been a grueling time for the 41-year-old director: His long-in-the-works religious drama The Last Temptation of Christ had just been canceled by jittery studio execs. It was December 31, 1983, and Martin Scorsese was suiting up for a much-needed night out.
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