Audio Interview with Martin Scorsese
Interview conducted by Tony Macklin. Audio interview originally published on June 9, 2009 @ tonymacklin.net.
Listen to the audio interview with Martin Scorsese (MP3 format, approximately 90 minutes).
My interview with Marty Scorsese was in his apartment in Los Angeles, high in the hills above La Cienega Boulevard.
I vividly remember his bookshelves and his multitude of books. During the interview I stepped out in the hall outside his apartment to give him privacy when he received a personal phone call.
In the hall I scribbled as many titles and authors as I could remember -- Bazin, Sarris, Farber, Agee, et al.
We were both men of words. And he was a man of unforgettable images.
Scorsese had studied film at NYU. It's no surprise that he later had a dedication to his professor Haig Manoogian at the end of Raging Bull, released in 1980, the year of Manoogian's death.
The most revelatory thing about our interview was when Marty interpreted the end of Mean Streets.
I'm still a bit leary about his comments about the end of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.
But I can still hear the echo of his staccato voice shooting down my doubts.
Because we hit it off, he sent me his own copy of his documentary Italianamerican, which I showed in a film series in Dayton, Ohio.
The audience loved his mom and dad.
For audiences everywhere, Marty Scorsese is family.
The following is the introduction to the interview as it appeared in Voices from the Set: The Film Heritage Interviews (2000).
Born in Flushing, New York. Martin Scorsese has directed more than thirty-five films, including Mean Streets, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Age of Innocence, and Casino. He received the Cannes best screenplay award for After Hours in 1986; Cannes' Golden Palm Aawrd for Taxi Driver in 1976; and British Academy Awards for best picture, best director, and best screenplay for Goodfellas in 1991. He was granted the American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.
The Scorsese interview was in his apartment in the hills above Los Angeles. Published in the Spring 1975 issue of Film Heritage.