Name: Martin Scorsese Says Dave Is Partially Responsible For The Success of "Raging Bull" Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-02-01T16:01:50.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Martin Scorsese Says Dave Is Partially Responsible For The Success of "Raging Bull" Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-01. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Martin Scorsese Says Dave Is Partially Responsible For The Success of "Raging Bull" Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-01. Transcript available.

Martin Scorsese is one of the movie world's really distinctive directors.
His list of credits include Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Mean Streets,
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, and The Last Waltz.
His latest to be released shortly, I'm guessing,
The King of Comedy stars Robert De Niro and Jerry Lewis.
Would you please welcome Martin Scorsese?
Certainly is a very impressive list of work that you've been responsible for.
Responsible, yes.
Well, I certainly meant that in a good way.
Oh, I know, I know.
Oh, you must be quite proud of those.
No, I guess I am.
They are mine.
Oh, yeah, these are yours.
Nobody cares.
Since you live in New York City.
Yes, we're trying to.
Trying to. Any particular part that you live in?
Well, we moved downtown.
Downtown being the, oh, what they call Tribeca area.
This means nothing to anyone watching outside of New York.
Well, it's sort of where the island, well,
sort of where the island sort of comes to a tip and a point and the whole thing.
And then this, it's where the Dutch was settling and then the British bought it.
And then the, well, whatever.
It goes on like that.
Yeah.
And the really old New York is kind of nice.
The British is kind of nice.
It's an old warehouse district.
Yeah.
And you work down there as well, huh?
Yeah.
What is it?
You have your editing facilities or whatever?
Yes.
And.
Basically, it's really to, it's really a work room where we put a whole series.
My God, we have collected over the years a number of posters, for example, film
posters.
Oh, maybe several, 4,000 of them now.
Cataloging them, archiving them.
And we keep moving from place to place.
So you see these things have to be constantly, we worked on books of films,
films of books,
other scripts of, in other words, really trying to build a library.
How does it get to be that directing movies is more to you than just a job?
I mean, did this start very early?
Your interest in collecting and seeing a lot of movies or did you come to it
later?
Well, no, I went to, I practically spent most of my time in movie theaters.
How, I mean, how, how did that happen?
Uh, well, it wasn't allowed to play any sports.
Uh-huh.
So, because of asthma, sort of thing, in the 40s.
How old were you then?
Oh, I was about, about three years old.
Mm-hmm.
I'm completely, um, that's all I can remember is movies.
So you, instead of, every morning, you'd get up and go to a theater and spend
the day there?
Well, my father would take me, or somebody would take me, I forget whom.
Yeah.
But I would go in and see these things.
Yeah.
And color, and the use of color, and the black and white, and the westerns.
I love the westerns.
I was allergic to animals, too, so I couldn't do any of the horses, so.
Um, what were you, well, as a kid and even now, what were your favorite kind of
films?
Well, I loved westerns.
Mm-hmm.
I loved westerns.
Now, and I love science fiction and horror, horror films, for me, are the most
fascinating.
I just love them very much.
Um, somebody once wrote, I think it was a British critic, and said, if you don't
really understand
or appreciate the, the, the, the horror film, the horror genre, you really have
no understanding
of the love of film itself.
Mm-hmm.
And, of course, that's a very inside thing, in the sense, you're, what's, what's
so important
about really loving film itself?
It really doesn't matter.
You know, you can live without film.
But the idea is, in a sense, a horror film shouldn't be, uh, um, dispensed with
as,
as junk or trash.
Yeah.
It's one of the, uh, one of the things I'm talking about, archiving.
The idea of collecting articles and building a library.
I don't understand.
Give us, in your estimation, the best horror film, because you're right, most
of them are
lumped into the area of B or C films.
What would be a really good horror film?
Oh, there are, uh, that's, that's a hard one.
Uh, because horror films, naturally, uh, uh, for example, there are
supernatural films about
the supernatural ghost stories.
One film called The Uninvited, Ray Moland and Gail Russell.
Mm-hmm.
Directed by Lewis Allen.
Stella by Starlight is the theme song.
That's where it comes from.
Mm-hmm.
And it's a beautiful film.
And still very chilling.
Mm-hmm.
Very strange.
Um, and now, of course, we're going into different, uh, different phases of, uh,
horror films.
The, uh, electronic effects.
Oh, no, you're right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
David Cronenberg's films.
David Cronenberg, uh, is the director.
His latest film, uh, is called Scanners.
I like that very much, but his earlier films are even better.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, a little hard to take.
Mm-hmm.
I can only see them once.
Uh.
I can only see them once.
That's right.
But he's quite extraordinary.
Quite extraordinary.
Do you object to talking about your movies?
Uh, and by that I mean the one that's yet to be released, but has already, uh,
created a lot of interest and anticipation?
The King of Comedy?
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, we can talk about it a little bit.
Actually, The King of Comedy was in preparation while we were mixing Raging
Bull.
Mm-hmm.
We were mixing Raging Bull.
This is how, uh, it became a very difficult process, the mixing of the film.
The sound was very complicated.
Yes.
We didn't realize.
It became 16 weeks scheduled, and my God, we were one week overdue in the
theaters.
Yeah.
And, uh, actually, your morning program used to keep us going.
Yeah.
And there was really almost a mutiny for my people.
Yeah.
We sent you something.
You did get it.
Very nice.
Yes.
It was very nice of you.
We were very upset because we didn't know what to do.
Yeah.
There was nothing to do.
Yeah.
I had a year and a half of nothing to do.
Yes, but this was, it was gone, you see.
Yeah.
I mean, so we took, even if we took the TV back into the room with us, it didn't
work.
It didn't work.
So then, in a certain regard, we're sort of responsible for the success of Raging
Bull.
I think so.
Is that the point of this?
Yes.
Eventually, we finished the film.
Eventually, we finished it.
We have some, I guess we're going to look at some photographs of the principles
of your
new movie, The King of Comedy, and we're going to ask you to describe what we're
seeing here.
Well, the fellow on the left is Jerry Lewis, and the fellow on the right is Bob
De Niro,
and they're in Sardis.
It's, you don't really want to know the plot of the film.
Well, yeah, now they're in Lindy's.
It's the same still.
It's the same still.
Two guys just go restaurant to restaurant.
No, tell them what the plot is, yeah.
The plot is basically about a young guy who wants to be a comedian, a stand-up
talk show
host, comedian, whatever, and who idolizes the character that Jerry Lewis plays,
called
Jerry Langford, and becomes, in a sense, friendly with him, but more friendly
than he realizes,
in a sense.
The Langford character is just being polite, and automatically he thinks he's
made a great
friend, and it's his opening at a show business, it's the big time, this is it,
and the series
of normal rejections, which is say, thank you very much, call back next week,
or the stuff
material is not good enough, but keep working, where you're playing, we'll go
and see you,
these are rejections which he takes quite seriously, and eventually winds up
kidnapping
him to get on a show.
Yeah.
I have two questions about this.
One, everybody, I guess, has asked you now about the casting of Jerry Lewis,
himself being
a director, was it difficult to direct a director in a film?
No, no, you see, we had talked about Jerry for about two years, actually, on
and off, and
in a sense, it was very helpful.
Sometimes, he would be able to help me when I was in certain situations, body
movement,
the sun is coming up, and you had to rush and keep, and actually, he was quite
good to
work with.
What was it like, De Niro and Jerry Lewis?
That was fun.
That was fun.
See, the film is not really a comedy.
It's, in fact, it's humorous, but not really a comedy, but working together,
the improvisations
together were quite good.
Bob and him.
Yeah.
Wonderful.
Gee, I really appreciate you being here, and you mentioned that you're off to
work now,
you work nice?
Yes.
Yes.
Well, it's a great pleasure for me to have you here, and I appreciate the favor,
and
the movie will be out...
Uh, sometime.
Christmas, Christmas, I think.
Christmas, yes.
Christmas.
Well, that'll be terrific.
Thank you very much.
Okay, thank you very much.
Martin Scorsese.
We'll be right back with the world premiere of Nightcap Theater.
Thank you.