Name: Fan Request: Martin Scorsese On "Taxi Driver" Connection To Dave, Michael Powell | Letterman
Uploaded: 2023-10-20T15:00:31.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Fan Request: Martin Scorsese On "Taxi Driver" Connection To Dave, Michael Powell | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-10-20. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Fan Request: Martin Scorsese On "Taxi Driver" Connection To Dave, Michael Powell | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-10-20. Transcript available.

You know, folks, from Taxi Driver and Goodfellas to Cape Fear,
our next guest, without doubt, is one of America's finest directors.
He is also the executive producer of the current release, Search and Destroy.
Do me a favor, please welcome Martin Scorsese.
You know, when I see you, when I have you here for all too brief a time,
I have many, many, many questions, because you've led that kind of a life.
You've had a fascinating and a wonderfully successful career.
So I'm going to start with something that happened on our show a couple of
weeks ago.
Don Rickles was here. You know Don.
Don, yes.
And Don was shooting his mouth off about working in a movie with you and Robert
De Niro in Las Vegas called Casino.
Is that the name of the film?
Casino, yes.
Tell us a little bit about that experience.
It seems like a great idea for a movie for you guys.
Well, with Don, Don was with us for, I think, oh, about five months.
Pain in the ass, Don.
Oh, absolutely.
Don was amazing.
We were, for the first six weeks of shooting, we were shooting at night at the
Riviera Hotel,
from about 10 o'clock at night to 9 or 10 in the morning.
That's Las Vegas.
Yes, yes.
And it was a live casino, too.
And what they did outside was they said, come and watch the film starring
Robert De Niro and, you know,
Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone.
Oh, this is a great cast.
It was just, you know, it was a wild cast.
But Don, I needed Don.
He was playing the casino manager.
I needed him every shot, if I could, with De Niro.
Because he only had to follow De Niro around.
He has a great look, especially because he comes out of Vegas in the 50s and 60s
and 70s.
And the suits were great and the ties.
And, but we never really got to him after about four or five hours.
He was waiting.
So when he finally would come on the set, the first thing, he'd come on the set
looking around
for me.
And he'd find me.
He'd say, I have a life.
I have a life.
I don't need this.
And then he'd start with the crew.
He'd go to each crew member.
You don't have to take this.
Leave this guy.
I mean, mutiny.
Insurrection.
Hours and hours.
And after a while, if you were in his eyeline, too, you'd get it.
So it was very, you know.
Now, does he have a big part?
You say he's a casino manager.
He's a casino manager, yeah.
He's there all the time.
It's not just a walk-on.
He's not an extra.
He actually is around.
There's some dialogue, too.
And it's, you know, it's a big picture.
When will this be released, this film?
This is in the early fall, October, November.
This is going to be another great movie for you guys.
It's a wonderful combination.
You and De Niro can do, you can do my life story, and it would be a hint.
Let's talk a little bit about, historically now, your first actual theatrical
release,
fully commissioned motion picture.
Mean Streets.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah, Mean Streets, yeah.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Big budget?
Not a big budget.
No, about $600,000.
$600,000 in those days was small money.
Very, very small.
And now it's like a nickel.
$600,000 is a nickel.
At that time, we only had 25 days to shoot, 26 days or so.
And the first night of shooting, it was a solo budget, the first night of
shooting, we
were shooting in New York.
Harvey Keitel is supposed to get in a cab.
He's in a cab, and he's traveling around 6th Avenue and 8th Street in the
village.
And we get there, a small crew, and I look at everybody.
I say, okay, I said, all right, hail a cab.
That's it.
That was my brilliant, you know, a little crazy.
Hail a cab.
They hail a guy, give him $25 for a few hours, right?
I start to take the shot.
The car's coming around the corner.
I'm crossed by the old Howard Johnson there or whatever.
And the car's smoking.
It's a New York cab, of course.
Yeah, typical New York cab.
After a while, he got annoyed for the $25.
The poor guy was there for five hours.
We kept, we pushed the car.
We pushed it.
We did everything.
Nothing is easy.
Nothing.
It's smoking because he's roasting a goat in the back seat.
I think so, yes.
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes.
True.
True.
It's hysterical.
And you yourself have appeared in a handful of films.
Now, the question, obviously, which do you prefer?
I know which you prefer, but how do you feel as an actor working through the
direction of somebody else?
Well, it's all right.
I mean, the idea is I can only do it if, like, basically, I'm sitting down, I
wear a good suit.
I got some good dialogue, and then they give me the suit.
Oh, you get to keep it.
Search and Destroy.
I got the suit.
It was great.
And I'm in the first scene.
Griffin Dunn, Roseanne Arquette, old friends.
You know, it was great.
Quiz show.
They didn't give me the suits, but they were great-looking suits.
Well, now, what was it like to be directed?
Now, here, the roles are completely reversed.
Yeah.
You have Mr. Big Shot movie star, Mr. Good-looking, million-dollar face, Robert
Redford, is now directing you, the consummate film director.
Yeah.
We had tried to work together for a while.
We said, look, the only way we're going to get to work together is if I direct
you.
So that's what eventually happened.
But he was very, very patient, and we shot everything in about two days.
But you have to do everything seated.
Yes.
Now, why is that?
Well, because I did one picture where I walked across a room.
That was around midnight, a Trent Tavernier film.
It was in Paris.
And he said, and this scene is very easy.
All you have to do is you're in a bar.
I own the bar, and there's a jazz, Dexter Gordon, playing there.
And he said, you're at the bar, and you just cross right over to the band,
watch the band.
I said, great, easy.
That's no problem.
And I start, on action, I start.
It's a widescreen picture.
And I start to walk, and I realize I'm walking.
I said, how does one walk?
One puts your foot in front of the other, and you push the earth back.
You push the earth back.
And you propel yourself forward.
And then I said, my God, they're going to see me.
I'm short, I'm balding in the back.
It's impossible.
And finally, I made it to the other side of the room.
And I said, never again in front of a camera.
It's not easy.
It's not easy.
It's what actors have to do.
And this building, this little complex, the Ed Sullivan Theater Building, I
understand it has special significance to you in your career.
Yeah, it does.
This building, the lobby of it, is where I, location scouts, found it for a
taxi driver, for one scene in Taxi Driver, in which, when I saw the lobby, I
realized how to shoot the picture.
It was one shot I made up, which kind of represented to me all his disorientation.
I think we have that.
And this is very special to us, because everybody who works here, we walk right
through this lobby each and every day.
Roll the film here, and let's see what he's talking about.
Did you get my flowers in there?
Yeah, that's it.
You didn't get them.
I sent some flowers.
Well, yeah.
Now, is the camera still out there or not?
All right, let's see what that shot looks like live right now.
There it is.
Now, we fixed it up just a bit.
We have no phone, but we have the phone books.
Yeah.
There's that same move.
Hey, somebody leaving early.
What the hell is going on here?
Oh, look at that.
Man, they're running like flies, like ramps off a ship.
Oh, look.
Same deal.
Yeah.
Now, this, I'm sorry, Martin, we're very late on time, but I just want to
mention this.
This is the million-dollar movie.
It's the second half of a biography about Michael Powell, and you wrote the
introduction for this.
Yes.
These guys have changed my life.
If you get a chance to go see a Powell Pressburger film, or if you can rent
them or buy them, whatever, and look at them, they're wonderful.
Every film that they make, even the ones that are not so great, they're so
interesting and so compelling.
The latest one is A Matter of Life and Death.
We just got it restored.
The British Film Institute's restored.
It's playing down at Film Forum, I think.
And Michael Powell had a huge influence on your life and career, didn't he?
Yeah, I met him back in 1974.
It's fascinating stuff.
It's the million-dollar movie, Michael Powell, the second half of his biography,
and, as I mentioned, the introduction by Mr. Scorsese.
It's a great pleasure to have you here.
Thank you for everything, sir.
Martin Scorsese, because we're right back.
Martin, once again, thank you very much for your time in Casino out in the fall,
you say, October?
Okay, good enough.
Nice to have you with us.
My thanks also to everybody who's here.
Thanks for watching, folks.
Have a great night.
We'll see you tomorrow.
We'll see you tomorrow.