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And So You Try Your Best. Sometimes You Go In With One Thing, With One Desire And Come Out With Something Else. In The Case Of 'the Aviator' It Was To Create A Hollywood Spectacle, But By About The Second Or Third Week Of Shooting You Just Want To Literally Survive It. Because Don't Forget, I Also Go Through The Editing Process Too, And When The Film Is Released I Have To Talk About It. So, I Take All Of That Very Seriously.

-Martin Scorsese

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And So You Try

Martin Scorsese

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And So You Try Your Best. Sometimes You Go In With One Thing, With One Desire And Come Out With Something Else. In The Case Of 'the Aviator' It Was To Create A Hollywood Spectacle, But By About The Second Or Third Week Of Shooting You Just Want To Literally Survive It. Because Don't Forget, I Also Go Through The Editing Process Too, And When The Film Is Released I Have To Talk About It. So, I Take All Of That Very Seriously.

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Eradicating A Religion Of Kindness Is, I Think, A Terrible Thing For The Chinese To Attempt.

I Just Wanted To Be An Ordinary Parish Priest.

If We Just Sit And Exist, And Understand That, I Think It Will Be Helpful In A World That Seems Like A Record That's Going Faster And Faster, We're Spinning Off The Edge Of The Universe.

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My Working-class Italian-american Parents Didn't Go To School, There Were No Books In The House.

We’re Face To Face With Images All The Time In A Way That We Never Have Been Before... Young People Need To Understand That Not All Images Are There To Be Consumed Like Fast Food And Then Forgotten – We Need To Educate Them To Understand The Difference Between Moving Images That Engage Their Humanity And Their Intelligence, And Moving Images That Are Just Selling Them Something.

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There Must Be People Who Remember World War Ii And The Holocaust Who Can Help Us Get Out Of This Rut.

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Being Independent... Is Being Innovative Out Of Inspiration As Well As Necessity.

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You Gotta Understand, When Moving Images First Started, People Wanted Sound, Color, Big Screen And Depth.

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On The One Hand, You're The Same Person, But As You Get Older, You Change Somewhat, And You Never Know How It's Going To Affect Your Work.

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I Grew Up Within Italian-american Neighborhoods, Everybody Was Coming Into The House All The Time, Kids Running Around, That Sort Of Stuff, So When I Finally Got Into My Own Area, So To Speak, To Make Films, I Still Carried On.

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And So You Try Your Best. Sometimes You Go In With One Thing, With One Desire And Come Out With Something Else. In The Case Of 'the Aviator' It Was To Create A Hollywood Spectacle, But By About The Second Or Third Week Of Shooting You Just Want To Literally Survive It. Because Don't Forget, I Also Go Through The Editing Process Too, And When The Film Is Released I Have To Talk About It. So, I Take All Of That Very Seriously.

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Your Job Is To Get Your Audience To Care About Your Obsessions.

Could You Double-check The Envelope?

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Cinema Is A Matter Of What's In The Frame And What's Out.

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I Don't Think There's A Subject Matter That Can't Absorb 3-d; That Can't Tolerate The Addition Of Depth As A Storytelling Technique.

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I'm Trying To Find Out What The Hell We - Who We Are.

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Hong Kong Cinema Is Something You Can't Duplicate Anyway.

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I Happen To Like Vampires More Than Zombies.

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I Know That I Come From Mid-20th Century America, Urban, Specifically Downtown New York, Specifically An Italian-american Area, Roman Catholic - That's Who I Am. And A Part Of What I Know Is There's A Decency To People Who Tried To Make A Living In The Kind Of World That Was Around Us And Also The Skid Row Area Of The Bowery; It Impressed Me.

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I Think If You Think Of Yourself As Religious And If You're Given A Gift, Some May Not Think It's That Great A Gift - Some Critics. But Others Might, You Know. So You Say, Look - Whether It's Good, Bad Or Indifferent, This Is What I Do.

Every Scene Is A Lesson. Every Shot Is A School. Let The Learning Continue.

I Prefer People Who Don't Get Caught, And If They Do Get Caught, I Prefer People Who Don't Give In.

I Have A Desire To Tell Stories. And I'm Never Quite Satisfied.

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Actually, I Was Rock Climbing On This Film At 7 In The Morning. It Was Quite Unique! But In Any Event, The Colour Of The Leaves Disturbed Me So We Had To Work On That. On The Other Hand, I Didn't Want To Drench It In A Kind Of Depressing Tone.

You Can Be Born-again And Believe In Jesus, Believe In Jesus' Ideas And Try To Live Them Out, Without Becoming Totally Intolerant Of Other People.

When I'm Making A Film, I'm The Audience.

There's A Way That The Force Of Disappointment Can Be Alchemized Into Something That Will Paradoxically Renew You.

I've Been Extremely Lucky To Work With Elmer Bernstein, Howard Shore Over The Years, But I've Always Imagined Films With My Own Scores, Because I Don't Come From That World Or That Period Of Filmmaking. And So How Could I Make Up My Own Score On A Film Like This Where It Isn't Necessarily Made Up Of Popular Music From The Radio Or The Period; It Isn't Necessarily Classical Music. But What If It's Modern Symphonic Music?

Well The Thing Is That The New York Of 1846 To 1862 Was Very Different From Downtown New York Now. Really Nothing From That Period Still Exists In New York.

The Real Truth, I Thought, In Terms Of What Faith Is And What Christianity Is.

I Still Dislike Phones, Yeah!

I Tried For About Two Semesters In A Preparatory Seminary. But I Was About 15 And Didn't Fully Understand What A Vocation Means.

People Want To Classify And Say, 'ok, This Is A Gangster Film.' 'this Is A Western.' 'this Is A... ' You Know? It's Easy To Classify And It Makes People Feel Comfortable, But It Doesn't Matter, It Doesn't Really Matter.

The Problem With Anger Is That It's So Consuming. You've Got To Take It Easy On Yourself At A Certain Point.

An Interviewer Once Asked Me To Discuss My Collaboration With Elmer Bernstein, And Precisely Why I Chose To Work With Him. My First Thought Was: How Could I Not Work With Elmer, When I Had The Chance? Simply Put, He's The Best There Is-the Very Best.

All I Can Do Is Try To Do The Best Work I Can. I Need To Work, I Like To Work... Although I Complain About It, But I Do Like It - And I Just Need To Make The Best Film I Can.

Sometimes God Picks You Up And Tells You, "you've Been Messing Around Now. You're Going To Have To Stop This, Stop That, But I'll Give You Another Chance." And You Wonder Why You're Given Another Chance. It Must Be For Something; It Must Be To Celebrate Life.

Well, I Think In My Own Work The Subject Matter Usually Deals With Characters I Know, Aspects Of Myself, Friends Of Mine - That Sort Of Thing.

Our World Is So Glutted With Useless Information, Images, Useless Images, Sounds, All This Sort Of Thing. It's A Cacophony, It's Like A Madness I Think That's Been Happening In The Past Twenty-five Years. And I Think Anything That Can Help A Person Sit In A Room Alone And Not Worry About It Is Good.

We Cannot Burn Mick Jagger. We Want The Effect, But We Can't Burn Him.

Working With Hbo Was An Opportunity To Experience Creative Freedom And 'long-form Development' That Filmmakers Didn't Have A Chance To Do Before The Emergence Of Shows Like 'the Sopranos.'

The Tone Of The Picture And The Atmosphere Was In My Head And In My Blood In A Way Once I'd Decided To Make The Picture. I Had To Find My Way Through That To Choose, Select, Emphasise Certain Visual Elements And Sound.

Rock & Roll Seemed To Just Come To Us, On The Radio And In The Record Stores. It Became Our Music. . . But Then We Uncovered Another, Deeper Level, The History Behind Rock And R&b, The Music Behind Our Music. All Roads Led To The Source, Which Was The Blues.

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I'm Obsessed With New York. I Just Find It So Remarkable. You Really Treasure This City When You Go To Different Countries And You See That There Is No Mix. When You Get Back To The City, It's Such An Exciting Place.

Howard Hughes Was This Visionary Who Was Obsessed With Speed And Flying Like A God... I Loved His Idea Of What Filmmaking Was.

When I Was Growing Up In The Mid-'50s, The Roaring Twenties Were A Huge Part Of The Culture. There Were A Number Of Films And A Bunch Of Television Shows That Dealt With The Mythology Of The Underworld From That Period.

A Panoramic Vision Of Bob Dylan, His Music, His Shifting Place In American Culture, From Multiple Angles. In Fact, Reading Sean Wilentz's Bob Dylan In America Is As Thrilling And Surprising As Listening To A Great Dylan Song.

Oh, The Foghorns... Even The Foghorns, They're All Brass. It's Something By Ingrid Marshal Called Fog Tropes. It's Not A Sound Effect. It's An Actual Piece Of Music. If You Listen To What's Going On After He Has A Flashback About His Wife You'll Hear... It Sounds Like The Humpback Whales In A Way. But It's All Music. And We Use It Again Later, Too.

If You Don’t Like The Films Of Samuel Fuller , Then You Just Don’t Like Cinema.

What The Dalai Lama Had To Resolve Was Whether To Stay In Tibet Or Leave. He Wanted To Stay, But Staying Would Have Meant The Total Destruction Of Tibet, Because He Would Have Died And That Would Have Ripped The Heart Out Of His People.

[kubrick] Was Unique In The Sense That With Each New Film He Redefined The Medium And Its Possibilities. But He Was More Than Just A Technical Innovator. Like All Visionaries, He Spoke The Truth. And No Matter How Comfortable We Think We Are With The Truth, It Always Comes As A Profound Shock When We're Forced To Meet It Face-to-face.

People Have To Start Talking To Know More About Other Cultures And To Understand Each Other.

Violence Is Not The Answer, It Doesn’t Work Any More. We Are At The End Of The Worst Century In Which The Greatest Atrocities In The History Of The World Have Occurred... The Nature Of Human Beings Must Change. We Must Cultivate Love And Compassion.

The Most Important Thing Is The Script.

It’s Also True That I Might Have Never Made Taxi Driver [1976] Were It Not For The Success Of Alice [doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 1974]. The Question Of Commercialism Is A Source Of Worry. Must One Make A Choice, Must It Be A Matter Of Either Setting Your Sights On Winning An Academy Award And Becoming A Millionaire, Or Making Only The Movies You Want To Make And Starving To Death?

I Love Movies - It's My Whole Life, And That's It.

You've Got To Love Something Enough To Kill It.

I Always Say That I've Been In A Bad Mood For Maybe 35 Years Now. I Try To Lighten It Up, But That's What Comes Out When You Get Me On Camera.

I've Been Thrown Out Of Schools And Fired From Jobs. I Don't Want To Work. I Can Honestly Say I Haven't Done An Honest Day's Work In My Life.

The First Element That I Connected With Was The Emotion. Sorry, That's How It Goes.

I Do Prefer Doing More Takes. There's Something Very Organic That Comes From The First Take, But Certain Things Come Out. More Details Come Out, In The Way Another Actor Says Something. It's Always This Investigative Process. You Come Further And Further To The Truth, The More You Escalate. I Like To Do A Lot Of Takes. I Have A Hunger For It. I Like To See What There Is To Discover In A Scene, That Hasn't Been Thought Of.

The Vampire Thing Always Works For Some Reason. Always Works.

People Say You Should Do It This Way, Someone Else Suggests That, Yes, There's Financing, But Maybe You Should Use This Actor. And There Are The Threats, At The End - If You Don't Do It This Way, You'll Lose Your Box Office; If You Don't Do It That Way, You'll Never Get Financed Again... 35, 40 Years Of This, You Get Beat Up.

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