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I Don't Think There Is Any Difference Between Fantasy And Reality In The Way These Should Be Approached In A Film. Of Course If You Live That Way You Are Clinically Insane.

-Martin Scorsese

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I Don't Think There

Martin Scorsese

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I Don't Think There Is Any Difference Between Fantasy And Reality In The Way These Should Be Approached In A Film. Of Course If You Live That Way You Are Clinically Insane.

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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.

During Prohibition, Atlantic City Created The Idea Of The Speakeasy, Which Turned Into Nightclubs And That Extraordinary Political Complexity And Corruption Coming Out Of New Jersey At The Time. The Long Hand That They Had-and Maybe Still Do-even Had To Do With Presidential Elections.

I Always Wanted To Make A Film That Had This Sort Of Chinese-box Effect, In Which You Keep Opening It Up And Opening It Up, And Finally At The End You're At The Beginning.

I Still Dislike Phones, Yeah!

The Term 'giant' Is Used Too Often To Describe Artists. But In The Case Of Akira Kurosawa, We Have One Of The Rare Instances Where The Term Fits.

As A Child I Had Terrible Asthma.

I Think There's Only One Or Two Films Where I've Had All The Financial Support I Needed. All The Rest, I Wish I'd Had The Money To Shoot Another Ten Days.

I Go Through Periods, Usually When I'm Editing And Shooting, Of Seeing Only Old Films.

Zombies, What Are You Going To Do With Them? Just Keep Chopping Them Up, Shooting At Them, Shooting At Them.

I Don't Know How Else To Tell The Story Except To Utilise That Vocabulary: The Rain, The Darkness, The Mansions, The Framing, Etc, The Lighting And That Sort Of Thing.

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I've Seen Many, Many Movies Over The Years, And There Are Only A Few That Suddenly Inspire You So Much That You Want To Continue To Make Films.

I Also Saw The Dalai Lama A Few Times.

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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.

I Was Born In 1942, So I Was Mainly Aware Of Howard Hughes' Name On Rko Radio Pictures.

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I Think When You're Young And Have That First Burst Of Energy And Make Five Or Six Pictures In A Row That Tell The Stories Of All The Things In Life You Want To Say... Well, Maybe Those Are The Films That Should Have Won Me The Oscar.

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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.

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

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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.

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Popular Music Formed The Soundtrack Of My Life.

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Basically, You Make Another Movie, And Another, And Hopefully You Feel Good About Every Picture You Make. And You Say, 'my Name Is On That. I Did That. It's Ok.' But Don't Get Me Wrong, I Still Get Excited By It All. That, I Hope, Will Never Disappear.

The Only Way I Was Able To Defend Myself Was To Be Able To Take Punishment. Then I Got A Lot Of Respect. They Said, "oh, He's Okay, He Can Take It. Don't Hit Him." The Guys Were Pretty Big, And I Had Asthma.

You Don't Make Pictures For Oscars.

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Music And Film Are Inseparable. They Always Have Been And Always Will Be.

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

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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.

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I Think What Happened There Was Just The Budget Would Be Too Big To Build These Sets Because Nothing Really Exists Here In New York Of That Period; You Have To Build It All.

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.

I've Been To North Africa Many Times.

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When Everything Is Added Up, The Frequent Blows Weighted Against The Sporadic Triumphs, This Is I Have To Say Not Just A Vocation, It's A Great Gift. But You Also Know This, For Your Work, For Your Passion, Every Day Is A Rededication. Painters, Dancers, Actors, Writers, Filmmakers. It's The Same For All Of You, All Of Us. Every Step Is A First Step. Every Brush Stroke Is A Test. Every Scene Is A Lesson. Every Shot Is A School. So, Let The Learning Continue.

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The Five Points Was The Toughest Street Corner In The World. That's How It Was Known. In Fact, Charles Dickens Visited It In The 1850s And He Said It Was Worse Than Anything He'd Seen In The East End Of London.

Every Year Or So, I Try To Do Something; It Keeps Me Refreshed As To What's Going On In Front Of The Lens, And I Understand What The Actor Is Going Through.

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

You Have To Put Yourself In A Situation, A Lifestyle, That Makes You Do The Work. Even If It's A Monastery.

I Think All The Great Studio Filmmakers Are Dead Or No Longer Working. I Don't Put Myself, My Friends, And Other Contemporary Filmmakers In Their Category. I Just See Us Doing Some Work.

Food Tells You Everything About The Way People Live And Who They Are.

Michael Jackson Was Extraordinary. When We Worked Together On 'bad,' I Was In Awe Of His Absolute Mastery Of Movement On The One Hand, And Of The Music On The Other. Every Step He Took Was Absolutely Precise And Fluid At The Same Time. It Was Like Watching Quicksilver In Motion. He Was Wonderful To Work With, An Absolute Professional At All Times, And It Really Goes Without Saying... A True Artist. It Will Be A While Before I Can Get Used To The Idea That He's No Longer With Us.

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Now More Than Ever We Need To Talk To Each Other, To Listen To Each Other And Understand How We See The World, And Cinema Is The Best Medium For Doing This.

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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.

My Father Had This Mythological Sense Of The Old New York, And He Used To Tell Me Stories About These Old Gangs, Particularly The Forty Thieves In The Fourth Ward.

I Do Know That Some Buddhists Are Able To Attain Peace Of Mind.

Death Comes In A Flash, And That's The Truth Of It, The Person's Gone In Less Than 24 Frames Of Film.

I Just Wanted To Be An Ordinary Parish Priest.

My Whole Life Has Been Movies And Religion. That's It. Nothing Else.

The Storyboard For Me Is The Way To Visualise The Entire Movie In Advance.

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

[action's] A Western Thing. We Think Of The Hero Going Into Battle, Rebelling Against A Government Or An Oppressor, But [in Kundun] Action Is Nonaction Or What Appears To Be Nonaction. That's A Hard Concept For Western Audiences. . . . We Wanted To Show A Kind Of Moral Action, A Spiritual Action, An Emotional Action. Some People Will Pick Up On It; Some Won't.

I'd Like To Do A Number Of Films. Westerns. Genre Pieces. Maybe Another Film About Italian Americans Where They're Not Gangsters, Just To Prove That Not All Italians Are Gangsters.

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.

Always Stay Open To Surprise.

Could You Double-check The Envelope?

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

Any Film, Or To Me Any Creative Endeavour, No Matter Who You're Working With, Is, In Many Cases, A Wonderful Experience.

The Cinema Began With A Passionate, Physical Relationship Between Celluloid And The Artists And Craftsmen And Technicians Who Handled It, Manipulated It, And Came To Know It The Way A Lover Comes To Know Every Inch Of The Body Of The Beloved. No Matter Where The Cinema Goes, We Cannot Afford To Lose Sight Of Its Beginnings.

Vertigo Is Probably My Favourite Hitchcock Film And Probably One Of My Favourite Films Of All Time. It's A Film That I'm Obsessed With. I Saw It On Its First Release In Vista Vision, Projected In Vista-vision, At The Capitol Theatre In New York. That Moment When The Nun Comes Up In The End... It's Just An Extraordinary Shot.

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?

The More You See, Especially Being Young, The More You See The Past, The More You Can Draw Upon That And The More You Can Make The Present And The Future. It's How You Process The Past And At Oftentimes In The Picture, There Are References To Certain Imagery From Certain Pictures, And Certain Novels.

I'm Not Videotaping My Life, But In A Way I Am Trying To Put Certain Things About Myself On Canvas.

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

I Remember The Korean War Very Well. And I Remember The Soldiers Who Were Pows Who Supposedly Were "brainwashed," Quote, Unquote, Who Gave In, So To Speak. And When They Came Back, They Were Treated Like Pariahs And Traitors.

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.

It Is Not The Most Brilliant That Excel In Film, But The Most Patient!

If Your Mother Cooks Italian Food, Why Should You Go To A Restaurant?

I Can't Really Envision A Time When I'm Not Shooting Something.

One Of The Things Is That The Good Intentions Of Prohibition, From Reading Over The Years And From Becoming Obsessed With The Research Of Gangs In New York City, Seems To Have Allowed Crime Figures At The Time, Like Luciano, Capone, Torrio And Rothstein, To Organize To Become More Powerful, Which Pulled All The Way Through Until The '70s.

I Always Tell The Younger Filmmakers And Students: Do It Like The Painters Used To...study They Old Masters. Enrich Your Palette. Expand The Canvas. There's Always So Much More To Learn.

Days That I'll Remember Is A Lovingly Assembled And Beautifully Written Collection Of Conversations, Observations, And Memories Of Music, Friendship, And Days Gone By. It's Good To Be Back Again With John Lennon, His Beloved Yoko Ono, And His Trusted Chronicler And Friend Jonathan Cott.

Because Of The Movies I Make, People Get Nervous. They Think Of Me As Difficult And Angry. I Am Difficult And Angry, But They Don't Expect A Sense Of Humor. And The Only Thing That Gets Me Through Is A Sense Of Humor.

There's No Such Thing As Simple. Simple Is Hard.

I Accept All Awards. I Like Them.

You've Got To Protect Whatever Creative Talent You Have Left.

As You Grow Older, You Change.

When I Was Growing Up, I Don't Remember Being Told That America Was Created So That Everyone Could Get Rich. I Remember Being Told It Was About Opportunity And The Pursuit Of Happiness. Not Happiness Itself, But The Pursuit.

Pursuit Of Happiness

I'm Often Asked By Younger Filmmakers, 'why Do I Need To Look At Old Movies?' I've Made A Number Of Pictures In The Last 20 Years And The Response I Have To Give Them Is That I Still Consider Myself A Student. The More Pictures I've Made In 20 Years, The More I Realize I Really Don't Know. And I'm Always Looking For Something Or Someone That I Could Learn From. I Tell The Younger Filmmakers, And The Young Students, That Do It Like Painters Used To Do—that Painters Do—study The Old Masters, Enrich Your Palette, Expand The Canvas. There's Always So Much More To Learn.

[david Lean's] Images Stay With Me Forever. But What Makes Them Memorable Isn't Necessarily Their Beauty. That's Just Good Photography. It's The Emotion Behind Those Images That's Meant The Most To Me Over The Years. It's The Way David Lean Can Put Feeling On Film. The Way He Shows A Whole Landscape Of The Spirit. For Me, That's The Real Geography Of David Lean Country. And That's Why, In A David Lean Movie, There's No Such Thing As An Empty Landscape.

If I'm Not Complaining, I'm Not Having A Good Time, Hah Hah!

Having A Good Time

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.

There Are Times When You Have To Face Your Enemies, Sit Down And Deal With It.

It's Interesting That These Themes Of Crime And Political Corruption Are Always Relevant.

If Everything Moves Along And There Are No Major Catastrophes We're Basically Headed Towards Holograms.

Mean Streets Dealt With The American Dream, According To Which Everybody Thinks They Can Get Rich Quick, And If They Can't Do It By Legal Means Then They'll Do It By Illegal Ones.

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

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

The Bottom Line Is, I Tend To Be Going Back To Older And Older Music.

It Did Remind Me Of Something Out Of Greek Mythology - The Richest King Who Gets Everything He Wants, But Ultimately His Family Has A Curse On It From The Gods.

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.

I Don't Think There Is Any Difference Between Fantasy And Reality In The Way These Should Be Approached In A Film. Of Course If You Live That Way You Are Clinically Insane.

I Don't Really See A Conflict Between The Church And The Movies, The Sacred And The Profane...there Are Major Differences, But I Could Also See Great Similarities...both Are Places For People To Come Together And Share.

And As I've Gotten Older, I've Had More Of A Tendency To Look For People Who Live By Kindness, Tolerance, Compassion, A Gentler Way Of Looking At Things.

Vic Armstrong Is, Of Course, A Legend

I'm Not A Hollywood Director. I'm An In Spite Of Hollywood Director.

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.

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

Being A Father At A Later Age Is Different From When I Had My Other Two Daughters When I Was In My 20s And 30s. If You're In Your 60s And You're With The Kid Every Day, You're Dealing With The Mind Of A Child, So It Opens Up That Childishness In You Again.

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.

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.

Movies Touch Our Hearts, And Awaken Our Vision, And Change The Way We See Things. They Take Us To Other Places. They Open Doors And Minds. Movies Are The Memories Of Our Lifetime. We Need To Keep Them Alive.

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

The Most Important Thing Is The Script.

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