Childhood ‘isolation’ inspired his passion

Martin Scorsese. Photo by Ruben V. Nepales

LOS ANGELES – Martin Scorsese recently revealed a new project and talked about how being isolated as an asthmatic child nurtured his passion for films.

The filmmaker arrived lugging a leather portfolio for this interview, looking like a college professor. Make that a film school professor because, as usual, Martin was a thoroughly engaging interview subject, regaling us with anecdotes from his encyclopedic film knowledge. He appeared tired, perhaps from the mad scramble to finish “Hugo” on time. Still, he often broke into his usual hearty laughter.

One of the greatest directors of our time disclosed that among his next projects is “The Snowman,” his movie adaptation of the best-selling crime thriller by Norwegian author Jo Nesbo. “The Snowman” is part of Jo’s nine-book series featuring an Oslo detective investigating a serial killer.

“I’m developing ‘The Snowman,’” he confirmed. “In the first meetings we had, we talked about keeping the Norwegian names and the setting. But we haven’t gone any further because I had to deliver this other film [‘Hugo’]. We’re going to be meeting one or two writers in January. Then we move on from there. I hope to film in Norway.”

On what attracted him to adapt a thriller like “The Snowman” to the screen, Martin explained: “I love the genre and I tried something in my own way – my pictures of ‘Shutter Island’ or even ‘Taxi Driver.’ I am constantly attracted to that genre and the landscape, the world in which it’s set, the psychological approach to the writing. All of this seemed to be, at this point in time, the right project to try to bring to the screen. There are so many others who are doing such great work with that kind of film that you have to be very careful and make sure all the elements are in place. I love the story.”

In the meantime, there’s “Hugo,” his joyous ode to cinema, a visually sumptuous rendition of another book, Brian Selznick’s bestseller, “The Invention of Hugo Cabret.” A movie that appeals to all ages, “Hugo” tells the story of a boy who leads an undercover life within the walls of a Paris train station in the 1930s, whose secret world intersects with those of the colorful characters that populate the busy terminal. The film is rich with good performances by Asa Butterfield (in the title role), Chloe Moretz, Ben Kingsley and Sacha Baron Cohen (yes, the “Borat” actor, no less, in a Scorsese movie).

“Hugo” marks a milestone for Martin – it’s his first film in 3D. “I’ve always been a great fan of 3D,” he admitted. “I still have these Victorian slides that are stereoscopic. You used to hold up a little device and you could see the image in stereo. Often the images are from the 19th century. In some cases, the American Civil War and French troops in World War I. As a child looking at them, I could feel the weather in the shot. I could feel much more than with just a flat surface.”

Martin said that David Cronenberg sent him a comic book in 3D, which only fueled his obsession to do a film in that format. “I never thought I’d have to do it, but once Jim Cameron did ‘Avatar,’ the possibility became strong,” he said. “When Graham (King, producer) gave me the book of ‘Hugo Cabret,’ we finally decided to make the film. When I mentioned that to my daughter (Francesca) who was maybe like 10 at the time, she had her friends with her. They immediately said, ‘It’s in 3D, right?’”

He gushed about his cast: “Asa is a great actor. He’s a natural. Chloe is wonderful. But all the other actors were terrific. Sacha was interesting because he has a facial structure that is perfect for 3D. We didn’t even tell him. It was perfect. He would just move in the lens and we were suddenly like, ‘Wow, look at that!’ We were like a bunch of kids. And the dog, too. The Doberman’s eyes were very pretty. There were other dogs that were to replace her if she was tired but they didn’t have the same expression as hers.”

Best-seller’s inspiration

In Martin’s words, the themes of Brian’s book, the boy’s “loneliness, his association with the cinema, with the machinery of creativity,” resonated with him. There is a palpable sense of delight as Martin recreated in the movie the world of Georges Melies, a pioneering French filmmaker whose 1902 movie, “A Trip to the Moon,” inspired Brian to write his bestseller.

Martin proceeded to describe his own childhood: “At the age of three, I contracted asthma. It was 1945, 1946. I was isolated from everything. My parents didn’t know what to do with me. I couldn’t run and play sports. I was joking the other night on television that I couldn’t really laugh. Well, you could stop breathing, go to the hospital and get all kinds of medication. So my parents took me to the movies. And I had some friends – we were in the Lower East Side—and I started hanging out on the street but I couldn’t play with them the way they did. I also couldn’t fight that well, too. So there was a lot of time that I had to spend alone. We didn’t go away for the summer. We couldn’t go to camp. We didn’t have enough money for that.

“I had a few friends who were also kind of odd in a way. We’d gather together and go to the movies. So I had a very sheltered life until I was 15 or 16. I was sad at times but it forced me to think of other ways to express myself. It made me start to draw and make movies by myself before my parents would come home from work. I’d have that hour and a half where nobody was in the apartment. I could draw and do things. I saw certain films. I was also doing homework. When I read the Hugo book, and how this boy is isolated in the train station and that was a dangerous world, too, I was drawn in by it. I was compelled to read the rest of it. It turned out that the story is resolved through the invention of movies which is interesting.”

Martin recalled that since he had asthma, his father (Luciano Charles) didn’t spend much time with him: “He pressed women’s dresses in the garment district in New York. I’d only see him maybe for an hour at night and I had to go to bed … He was pretty stern for quite a while until I got a little older. But he did take me to the doctor all the time. If there was a special doctor I had to go to, he would take me. He didn’t say very much but he took me to the doctor.”

Emotional bond

On weekends Martin’s dad would take him to the movies. “That’s where I experienced an emotional bond with him,” said Martin. “These pictures were saying so much to me. He didn’t discuss them with me, but we went through the emotional and psychological experience together, as part of the audience seeing ‘Rear Window’ or ‘The Heiress’ which was a very important movie at the time.”

He was only 10 years old at the time, but Martin related that “The Heiress,” which William Wyler directed from the famous novel “Washington Square” by Henry James, was a devastating film for him. “My father did comment a couple of times on that one because of the way Ralph Richardson, as the father, tells Olivia de Havilland that ultimately she’s not that attractive to have this young man be in love with her. That she has no character, wit and beauty. My father said that’s a terrible thing for a father to say to a daughter. That was the one thing I heard and I’ve never forgotten. It’s an incredible scene in the film,” he recounted.

Martin likewise recalled his father taking him to watch Westerns: “For example, ‘Shane’ was a very strong experience because I saw that when I was the same age as the boy, Brandon De Wilde, in the movie. I guess in those days, my father being somewhat distant at that time, I, as a boy, was thinking, well, gee, I would have liked Shane (played by Alan Ladd) as my father. But my father was more like the Van Heflin guy in the film. That’s the fantasy of a young boy. Then as I got older, it was different with my father. He began to actually work on the films.”

Martin stressed though that he didn’t intend “Hugo” to be a homage to his youth. “I was compelled by the story of the young boy,” he said. “I was very excited to attempt to do something that would resemble a George Melies work. But ultimately, when I read Brian’s book, the story was so strong but the illustrations were also compelling. Around that time, everyone was telling me, ‘Why don’t you make a film that your kids could see one day?’ I said, ‘Yeah, maybe one day I’ll do that.’”

“And this book was given to me so there was all this convergence. I was making ‘Shutter Island.’ And all these things were starting to converge. My daughter was beginning to understand more. I said, ‘It would be nice to make a film with children as the leads.’ It was just a happy coincidence that the story that Graham gave me dealt with these two elements of the little boy who was isolated and the cinema.”

Most influential

Asked which film had the most influence on him, Martin answered, “There are, of course, a few of them but the one that made it very clear that I could possibly make a film was ‘On the Waterfront’ because of the people that it showed. Before that, the films, including the Italian ones, had a realistic quality to them. But with ‘On the Waterfront,’ I really felt that the characters on the screen were exactly my friends, family, uncles and cousins. ‘On the Waterfront’ was the breakthrough that made me feel that people I knew could be up in the screen or the life that I was experiencing then was also valid to be on the screen.”

With his love for cinema, film preservation remains one of Martin’s fervent causes. The founder of The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving motion picture history, said: “In the past years we’ve tried to find filmmakers, writers and actors who have been forgotten. And at times, we tried to restore their work, a lot with the help of the Hollywood Foreign Press. The work should be preserved for generations. I do know people who are gone, all their work gone or have committed suicide. We read the stories all the time. It’s a pity that many of them never knew how much we loved their work. Or you don’t have to love the person – it’s the work, in a sense.”

Georges Melies, who is portrayed compellingly by Ben Kingsley, went into bankruptcy in 1913. Most of his 500 films were melted and used to make boot heels. He was forced to become a toy salesman. “They did find Melies in the Gare Montparnasse in 1928,” Martin said. “They were walking by a toy store and they went over to him. They asked, ‘Are you Georges Melies?’ He said, ‘Yes, I am.’ He was given the Legion d’honneur. He was celebrated and his films started to be restored. I think there were only a few that were available. But now, there are over 350.”

Film preservation

Martin explained that he keeps pushing for preserving and conserving film because “we don’t know what’s going to happen now with digital. The digital issues are really a problem. They’re a benefit but there are problems that come with it. We know that restoring celluloid is still the best way. That lasts 60 to 100 years.”

As far as his own films are concerned, Martin said he’ll never know if they’ll be remembered. “I’m very lucky now to be looking 40 years later and people are talking about them. I know a lot of people went away, never knowing it.”

We’ll say it now: Mr. Scorsese, you’ll be remembered by many generations for your excellent films.

We asked him if, God forbid, all his films were to be destroyed and he can only save one, which movie would that be?

“That’s a tough one,” he replied. “The safest answer I always give is the documentary that I made of my mother [Catherine] and father called ‘Italianamerican.’ That’s only an hour. That’s it for me. I can say ‘Mean Streets’ but that’s a selfish way of looking at it for me. Maybe other people would prefer ‘Raging Bull’ but I prefer the documentary because that’s where I came from. ‘Raging Bull’ is very personal but it’s part of another world. So, no, it’s the family film because it’s my kind of family.”

E-mail the columnist at [email protected]. Follow him at https://twitter.com/nepalesruben.