Martin Scorcese
Interview by: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com
Martin Scorsese is undoubtedly one of Hollywood’s greatest modern directors. He’s parlayed his Italian-American New Yorker upbringing into an impressive body of work, running the gamut from Taxi Driver to Raging Bull to Goodfellas. His most recent film is the urban crime thriller The Departed. It boasts an impressive cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, and Mark Wahlberg.
The film continues Martin Scorsese’s cultural focus on Irish-Americans, which he first explored in the 2002 period crime drama Gangs Of New York. Scorsese feels his interest in Irish-American culture is quite similar to his Italian-American New York upbringing.
"The Italians felt very close to the family culture of the Irish," Scorsese explains. "Yes, there were some differences when they first moved in the same neighborhood. Irish literature is very important to me and the poetry of the Irish is something that’s extraordinary. The Irish sense of Catholicism is an interesting contrast to the Italian sense of Catholicism for me."
It wasn’t only the film’s cultural aspects that interested Scorsese, it was more about the solid script from writer Bill Monahan and how the story harkened back to the old gangster films of which Scorsese is a fan. These aspects combined are what compelled him to make the film.
"It had a lot to do with the way the characters were reacting, the dialogue that Bill had in there, the attitudes of the people, and the nature and stance against the world that they had particularly, not only the main characters, but the parts played by Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin," Scorsese says.
The story for The Departed is loosely based on the critically-acclaimed and commercially-successful Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs, which has since spawned a trilogy. In an age where Hollywood constantly carbon-copies and Americanizes popular films from overseas, Scorsese had no intention of merely making a simplified and Americanized adaptation and at first was totally unaware of the script’s original source.
“I didn’t think of it as Hong Kong,” Scorsese explains, “I reacted to what Bill Monahan put together in the script. I liked the idea.”
He adds: “Taking from the Hong Kong trilogy of Andrew Lau’s film, that’s the device, the concept of the two informers. [I am] totally, whether I like or not, drawn to stories that have to do with trust and betrayal. I found that I kept being drawn back to the script and to the project. It became something else.”
Adapting a foreign film was something new for Scorsese, as was working with Hollywood acting icon Jack Nicholson. Marty notes of how he managed to work with the meticulous performer, who had his own ideas for how to approach his character.
“Nicholson and I worked in a different way,” he explains, “But that is something that is kind of a private situation. When we are a part of that process, it’s something that we developed it as a character that was a little different than what Bill had put in there. Basically, we
