Martin Scorsese - biography

1942-

Biography

Martin Scorsese is best-known for the following films:

Martin Scorsese Quotes

“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.”

“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.”

“I’m going to be 60, and I’m almost used to myself.”

“Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out.”

“I can’t really envision a time when I’m not shooting something.”

“I hate shooting - getting up at 5.30 am. I prefer moon to midnight. I’m not awake until 3 pm.”

“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.”

“To make the movies I make in Hollywood, it’s like a gift. And sometimes they even pay me for it.”

“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.”

“In 1975, I started to wonder what this David Cronenberg cult could’ve looked like: thick glasses , runny noses, celibate since birth and probably Communists for all we knew.”

“More personal films, you could make them, but your budgets would be cut down.”

“Howard Hughes was this visionary who was obsessed with speed and flying like a god... I loved his idea of what filmmaking was.”

“I don’t agree with everything he did in his life, but we’re dealing with this Howard Hughes, at this point. And also ultimately the flaw in Howard Hughes, the curse so to speak.”

“I was born in 1942, so I was mainly aware of Howard Hughes’ name on RKO Radio Pictures.”

“I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.”

“Eradicating a religion of kindness is, I think, a terrible thing for the Chinese to attempt.”

“I also saw the Dalai Lama a few times.”

“I just wanted to be an ordinary parish priest.”

“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.”

“There must be people who remember World War II and the Holocaust who can help us get out of this rut.”

“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 certainly wasn’t able to get it when I was a kid growing up on the Lower East Side; it was very hard at that time for me to balance what I really believed was the right way to live with the violence I saw all around me - I saw too much of it among the people I knew.”

“I do know that some Buddhists are able to attain peace of mind.”

“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.”

“I know there were many good policemen who died doing their duty. Some of the cops were even friends of ours. But a cop can go both ways.”

“I love the look of planes and the idea of how a plane flies. The more I learn about it the better I feel; while I still may not like it, I have a sense of what is really happening.”

“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.”

“I’m very phobic about flying, but I’m also drawn to it.”

“If it’s a modern-day story dealing with certain ethnic groups, I think I could open up certain scenes for improvisation, while staying within the structure of the script.”

“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.”

“It seems to me that any sensible person must see that violence does not change the world and if it does, then only temporarily.”

“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.”

“There’s no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.”

Filmography

The Film Director