Martin Scorsese's Period Drama Themed Film Trilogy (with Pop Culture Five!)

[00:00:00] This podcast is a production of Unfiltered Studios. If you would like to know more about joining Unfiltered Studios, please visit our website at unfpod.com for more information. No, I didn't. All right. Glad that you approved of all that. Oh, I love it. All right. Thank you very much. Listen, I've been looking forward to having you on the show for quite a while. I'm a huge fan of the movies that you've made.

[00:00:22] And the first thing I wanted to ask you was we live at a time right now where movies are rigorously tested and very difficult to get your own vision made. And the movies you've made pretty much 201, actually. Movies like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull. My first question is, how do you get movies like that made? How did you get them made at the time? Didn't you get a ton of interference? Oh, yeah. On Taxi Driver, we had a lot of problems, but we had a good basis. What we did there basically was a very low budget, about a million dollars all in.

[00:00:51] And this is 1975. And De Niro had just won the Academy Award for Godfather II. And they had just seen my film Mean Streets, which De Niro was also in. They figured they sold the two of us together into a sort of package for Taxi Driver. And we shot it 40 days, actually 40 days and nights here in New York. A million dollars to make a movie. Yeah. Because that's what this episode cost tonight. Did you know that? These togas are $600,000 almost apiece. I think they're great. I'm an ancient world buff.

[00:01:21] Oh, great. Well, then you're here on a good night. Perfect timing. All right. So a million dollars. But specifically, didn't you have people on the phone saying, with Raging Bull, you're saying, okay, what I want to do is make a movie about a boxer that few people remember. I want to shoot it in black and white. I want it to really focus on the misery of his life and the misery of the people around him. Didn't they say, wait a minute, in the end, can he win a lot of money? And they did say, wait a minute, a number of times.

[00:01:45] But we had a very good producer, two producers, Bob Irwin Winkler and Bob Chartoff, who kind of shielded me from that. And we were in the 70s, you know, was a different thing. The 70s is sort of like a golden age of American cinema, along with the 50s and the 40s and 30s, because you had a lot of actual personal films, original voices making films, Robert Altman, Bogdanovich, Cimino, a whole bunch of the Coppola, Spielberg started, Lucas, all of that sort of thing, and De Palma.

[00:02:11] And at that time, it was the time of the director, up until when we're finishing Raging Bull. Raging Bull was at the same studio as Heaven's Gate, which Cimino is... Which Cimino made, which is actually quite an extraordinary movie. But what happened was that it went way over budget, da-da-da. Next thing you know, it opened, it closed in one night because of one bad review, I understand. The film was cut, and we opened nine days before that. And we went down with it. So they were kind of running interference for you, in a way.

[00:02:39] In a funny way, they were sort of running interference because they had to deal with that film, which is, as I say, some extraordinary stuff in that film, and hasn't really been given its due. But that ended a period of filmmaking in America, which is more personal, I think. And it's a problem now to get the pictures made. And now, apparently, when pictures like that are made, they're sort of treated like this is, you know, this is a weird little movie. And that's almost how they're promoted. I know, I know. You know, this was made in a foreign country, or this is an art film. Exactly.

[00:03:09] It's almost like art has become a bad word, in a way. And it's a funny thing to think about. It's almost 20 years ago. I mean, Taxi Driver is now the 20th anniversary. It's playing down... Which was reissued. Playing down with the film form right now. That's right. In stereo and restored. Because we mixed it. It took five days to mix it originally. And now the remixing has been done with the stereo tracks and all that. But it's much more difficult to get the kind of picture I make made these days. And it has to do with, you know, people like De Niro and Sharon Stone, and the film helps. That sort of thing. Now, what about a film like Taxi Driver?

[00:03:37] You don't look at your films, do you? Once they're made. I don't look at any of my pictures. No, that's it. I've had enough. Really? But so much time has gone by. Yeah, no, I can't. And Taxi Driver is such a classic, you'd think you'd want to go back and look at it. I can't take it. But we actually... It's too much. I can't. It's too personal and too embarrassing. I get like... You get re... Oh, I know that feeling. Sure. You think I'm looking at this show tonight when I get home? You're going to get home and watch this? Yeah. Oh, yeah. What? I'm wearing a dress.

[00:04:09] We mixed. We loaded. We edited. Sometimes we get so deep into conversation. That we have separate segments worthy of their own place in the sun. Is a reshuffled mini episode.

[00:04:45] If I had to start with this periodic drama trilogy, I would probably go, that's Boxcar Bertha, then there's Raging Bull, and then there's The Age of Innocence, which is where he first works with Daniel Day-Lewis. Mm-hmm. Boxcar Bertha and her boys took what they wanted. Now, 50s. It's 50s. Meet Boxcar Bertha, queen of the gun toters. Invitations, please. I think we got them. Here he is, right here. That's it.

[00:05:16] That's it. Yeah. The lady would like to say something. Yes, I'd just like to say, this is a holdup. Bertha was a fun-loving gal. Sit down. And open your mouth. Yeah, don't move. She had a taste for lovin' and an empty boxcar for a boudoir. I've been lots of places.

[00:05:46] You ever been with a man? America in the 30s was a free country. Bertha was just a little bit freer than most. Big Bill Shelley was a man fighting all the wrongs in the world. Make it a grind, I mean it!

[00:06:26] He was a doer, but the newspapers were too polite to print it.

[00:07:39] You're dead. You're married. Make the young girl's familiar. There's no way I'm going down. I'm going down for nobody.

[00:09:24] And it's like, Bertha is interesting because that's when he's first working for Roger Corman. And you see a bit of spark in there. And David, to make it even more complicated, Barbara Hershey and David Carradine were actually having actual sex on set. And so the romance in the movie is very real. You feel it? Yeah. Jeez.

[00:09:52] This was 1972, so the standards and practices or whatever were on set. He's trying to do a real tradition kind of movie. And yeah, I think it's just one of those, you should watch it if you want to be a completist. Otherwise, you're just going to be like, that's one of Roger Corman's lesser movies that happen to have a future A-lister attached to it. Yeah, absolutely. I haven't completed Scorsese. There's a few movies. I haven't seen The Age of Innocence. I actually haven't seen Boxcar Bertha before.

[00:10:20] So there's a few, like, I'm kind of a completist. I'm sure they're on Tubi now. Yeah, yeah. I could probably go look. Age of Innocence is one of those kind of like mini period dramas. You respect it. But unless you love that kind of thing, you're not going to want to see this movie unless you must see everything. Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel Day-Lewis are in. But yeah, I mean, it's worth a watch at least once just because he recaptures that feel of that period.

[00:10:48] I mean, some of the some of the all of these great directors have have those movies were like with Spike Lee. Like we love Spike Lee. We did an episode on Spike Lee. I turned on Chirac. He got game. Ten minutes of Chirac and I had to turn it off. I'm like, I don't know if I could do this. Yeah, sometimes that happens. They just have the vision and they try. I appreciate the wild swings, though.

[00:11:09] You know, all I ask is that a filmmaker not get so full of themselves to where they're like they just let the camera roll and it's just no one yelled to cut. Raging Bull, though, I would say is his Schindler's List. Like, it's so good, but it's so depressing. You're only going to want to watch it once. Yeah, I think you make a case. But that or that one is up there or Taxi Driver.

[00:11:38] I mean, Taxi Driver is fair. Do you feel good after watching Taxi Driver? No, so that's a good point. I think it's just Raging Bull did such a good job of showing how you're fighting for peanuts, how every fight is, you know, not glamorous. It's just like. He does a good job in the opening of just, you know, someone's like bleeding out of their leg and the crowd is, you know, just like a gladiator stadium. They're all animals. They're all eating this up.

[00:12:07] You know, this is a pre-reality TV day. And I think. It just. But it's just one of those you're seeing. How he he's he's a monster in the ring and he's a monster when he gets home, just mentally. He's just. Yeah. He's. And so it's it's great if you want to see get a feel for what it was like being a boxer back in the 40s. It's just. No, I was just going to say, Cam.

[00:12:39] It's it's funny. I think that's why, like, we all like doing podcasts and look at it because how things shift. So when I was growing up. Like, you know, into the 90s, like Goodfellas was out and people love Goodfellas. But if there was like one movie that people were picking as like Scorsese's best, it was always Raging Bull. And I feel like over time now it's shifted where a lot of people are picking Goodfellas.

[00:13:04] But I will say probably not looking at like a favorite, just like his best like cinematic. You put it in the top 10. Raging Bull. And like even as like greatest sports movies, that was like it was like that Hoosiers in the natural for the longest time. Yes. It's like those three. Yeah, we're called the greatest sports movies. And now for like the natural and Hoosiers, I'm glad I don't hear them anymore. But like Hoosiers is big thumbs down.

[00:13:33] And the natural I don't love. But people now saying greatest sports movie. I don't hear Raging Bull as often as I did growing up. I guess it's an anti sports movie, I guess, if you think about it. Yeah, it's probably just not depression factor. It's not told it's not like rewatchable like Goodfellas is. But you guys did bring up a good point. Like it was on all the lists of must see movies and I would see it in all the film history books and be like, I guess I better watch this. We'll return after these messages.

[00:14:06] Hey, it's Brent Pope, the host of Brentfist with Brent Pope. You've seen me on some of your favorite TV shows saying things like, give it up, Jimmy. You got to sink this put to win on Brentfist with Brent Pope. I sit down with guests for the entertainment world and we do it all over breakfast. Or should I say Brentfist? Every week on Brentfist, you get inside Hollywood info and tips. Great breakfast wrecks and booty debates. Most of all, you get the most delightful 30 minutes of your week. So dig in. It's Brentfist time. Listen at Brentfist.com, Apple Podcasts or wherever fine podcasts are found.

[00:15:00] The Muppets vs. the Iron Giant, classic matchups like Robocop vs. Terminator and even the Muppets vs. Sesame Street. That one was crazy. So if you're a fan of geek culture and love a spirited debate, check out the Who Would Win Show wherever you get your podcasts. Or check us out at whowouldwinshow.com. Follow us on the web on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

[00:15:30] The podcast is available on Podbean, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Anchor, Apple and anywhere else podcasts are available. Feel free to review our show and leave comments on any of those sites. Thanks a million for listening.