Martin Scorsese Talks Cinema, Lasagna and The Rolling Stones at Freewheeling Berlin Press Conference
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Everybody loves Marty.
Martin Scorsese got a hero’s welcome in Berlin, greeting journalists at a jam-packed press conference in Berlin on Tuesday, Feb. 20 — eager Marty fans were seen lining up two hours in advance to secure a seat — to receive rapturous praise from reporter after reporter.
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“Thank you for making me the person I am today,” said one enthusiastic journo fan. One Georgian reporter invited him home for a glass of wine. Another, from Bulgaria, took a break from asking his question to act out his favorite scene from The Departed.
Most of the questions aimed at the ironic American director of Raging Bull, Taxi Driver and Goodfellas were less softballs than soft soap, with reporters as interested in Scorsese’s favorite food — his mother’s lasagna recipe — as the movies in his peerless filmography.
Asked about his favorite 30-second moment, Scorsese joked, “You mean in cinema?”
But Scorsese did dip into some of his moments from his career, noting that he first “realized I was free” after making The King of Comedy. “[After that movie,] I didn’t know anything anymore,” he said. “I put it all into Raging Bull, then Taxi Driver, then New York, New York and The Last Waltz. And I said I don’t know anything, meaning I’m free now to rethink everything … I had to start all over again. And I find that, thankfully, gratefully, that has happened a number of times in my life.”
He reflected on how watching international films when he was younger, from Satyajit Ray or Akira Kurosawa, “on television, dubbed into English, with commercials,” helped expand his understanding of the world and his empathy for people far from his own little neighborhood in New York.
“Maybe, similar kids around the world might see a film and be affected by it; they might not make films or anything, but it could change their lives,” he said. “I’m very sad about the impermanence of life, but it doesn’t have to be that impermanent so soon. People say the whole world’s going to die and I know we’re heading toward the sun or the moon or something, but in the meantime, we’re all here. So let’s communicate. Let’s communicate through art.”
Touching on younger filmmakers, Scorsese singled out Celine Song, whose debut Past Lives screened in Berlin last year, as one of the new voices that inspire him. On the other side of the age demographic, he noted he would love to make another film with Mick Jagger — Scorsese’s Rolling Stones concert film Shine a Light opened the Berlinale in 2008 — but, failing that, he will try and stick to his tradition of including the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” in his movie soundtracks.
“Mick Jagger told me, and I couldn’t believe it, that Shine a Light is the only film I’ve done where I didn’t put ‘Gimme Shelter’ in,” he said. “Actually, I had some dental work done recently. And they put me out for it. And while I was under, the dentist was listening to ‘Gimme Shelter.’ And it worked!”
Scorsese will receive an honorary Golden Bear from Berlin for his life’s work Tuesday evening.
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