Martin Scorsese, super genius

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People saying Scorsese doesn't have a unique style...

I think Iroquois already made the best point:

Besides, the dude's one of the most notable and influential filmmakers of the past half-century so it's easy for some of his stuff to look generic - what if it's not a matter of seeing his films as being like every other film so much as how much the other films want to be like his? It's like saying that Wolf of Wall Street looks like a generic 2010s black comedy biopic just because it came out in the same decade as stuff like The Big Short and War Dogs.
Completely correct. Scorsese's style is massively influential and that's why people who don't take into account the historic chronology or the deeper quality and intentions behind certain techniques, may think Scorsese's style isn't that unique.

The truth of the matter is that films like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street litterally transformed entire genres. They moved the standard. Hundreds of mainstream films that were made after these pieces of brilliant Scorsese cinema copied the techniques and storytelling, and almost always in a much less interesting manner.

And I'm not even talking about the influence of his generally lesser known work in other genres. He's one of the greatest cinematic legends of all time and could be put on the same level as practically every filmmaker who ever lived in terms of importance, in my opinion.

And to the people who are saying that he simply uses great scripts:

I agree he has made some great choices in that regard (which is of course a compliment), but the most important thing is that he has always elevated the already brilliant material. I invite you to read the original scripts and then watch his films. You'll see he often dramatically improves the material because of his directing choices. Actually study his work before you make this kind of (frankly) ridiculous statements.
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Cobpyth's Movie Log ~ 2019



Thelma warns everybody not to expect GoodFellas 2: Netflix Boogaloo...

Scorsese’s Netflix movie ‘The Irishman’ “Is not Goodfellas” says Thelma Schoonmaker



BAFTA and Oscar winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker is going to be honoured with the Fellowship at the EE British Academy Film Awards on Sunday. Awarded annually, the Fellowship is the highest accolade bestowed by BAFTA, and former award-winners include Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Billy Wilder, Martin Scorsese, and Schoonmaker’s husband, Michael Powell. It’s a big deal, basically. And, if anyone deserves to join those iconic names, it’s Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese’s editor since 1980’s Raging Bull (for which she won the Best Editing Oscar).

In addition to Raging Bull, Schoonmaker’s name appears in the credits of half of your favourite films, including GoodFellas, Casino, The Wolf of Wall Street, and so many more. Her credit’s about to appear in The Irishman, and Schoonmaker wants to make it clear to Yahoo Movies UK that it’s unlike anything her and Scorsese have ever made before. Especially GoodFellas.

The Irishman is not GoodFellas,” Schoonmaker says. “And that’s what they think it’s going to be. It’s not. It is not GoodFellas. It’s completely different. It’s wonderful. They’re going to love it. But please don’t think it’s gonna be GoodFellas, because it isn’t.”

What it is going to be, is groundbreaking – pushing de-aging technology to its very limits, as Schoonmaker reveals exclusively to Yahoo Movies UK. And, as with any cinematic evolution, the pioneers are having to be brave. “We’re youthifying the actors in the first half of the movie. And then the second half of the movie they play their own age. So that’s a big risk. We’re having that done by Industrial Light and Magic Island, ILM. That’s a big risk. We’re seeing some of it, but I haven’t gotten a whole scene where they’re young, and what I’m going to have to see, and what Marty’s going to have to see is, ‘How is it affecting the rest of the movie when you see them young?’”

“Interestingly, we’ve only been able to screen for very few people, because they’re wearing some things on their faces, and on their clothes, that tracks their movement… Nobody minds. Nobody minds watching them play young, because they’re gripped. Very few people have seen it, because we can’t show it to a big audience. But the characters are so strong, it doesn’t matter – it’s really funny. I don’t know what it’s going to be like when we get it all – that’s the risk. And it’s an expensive project, [Netflix are] taking a risk there.”

But Schoonmaker’s career is full of risks, and pioneering moments. We sat down with the iconic editor for a career-overview interview, covering films as important as The King of Comedy, After Hours, Bringing Out the Dead, GoodFellas, Casino, Raging Bull and many more.

If you’re a cinephile, welcome to heaven.

Yahoo Movies UK: So, I made my first movie last year and working with the editor was my favourite part.

SCHOONMAKER: Oh yes, it’s most directors’ favorite part. It’s certainly Scorsese’s favourite part. It feels to me like it’s a space where magical moments can happen, where amazing accidents can happen…Accidents are great. We love them.

Were there any memorable moments in any of the films you’ve worked on, where there have been those magical accidents?

You know, it just accidentally happens, we put together two things together, and ‘Wow!’ That really is great. Marty loves that on the set, when an actor does something that’s not expected, or something that just happened to happen. He loves that, he capitalizes on it. He says, ‘Oh, that’s great. Let’s go further with that.’ But, yes, accidents are very important.

Marty thinks like a director when he conceives with the film, when he co-writes it, but when he directs, he’s thinking like an editor all the time, and then he directs the editing with me. He says the films are made then. They’re really made in the editing room. What he loves is he can trust me to do the best for his work, and we collaborate intensely together, we shape it. As you know, you drop scenes, you have to shorten things, you link things, you have to move things around, ‘Maybe that will be better as the first thing in the movie.’

So it’s a fascinating, constantly changing, and inspiring thing to do. I’m glad you understand how important it is.

Oh, absolutely, it’s thrilling. Can you think of a moment when you’ve actually surprised Scorsese with something you’ve brought?

I mean, there have been times when I’ve shown him something. Say a scene is way too long, it’s wonderful, but it’s way too long, and I’ll come up with a sort of special way to shorten it and he’ll go, ‘Wow, okay, that works.’

But that’s my job, you know, that is my job. I often make two or three edits for him. Sometimes I’ll make six before he comes in. I do the first assembly. Then when he comes in after shooting is when we start working together, and so sometimes make I’ll six edits for him, because there’s so much rich footage. We could go that way, we could go that way, and then he looks at those six and he chooses two, or and we start re-editing again.

That’s really cool.

That’s very much an important part of my work, to find solutions. Moments might be great, but they’re not working in the body of the movie. Dropping scenes is the worst for us, it’s like cutting off your leg.

I’ll bet.

Oh, it’s awful. Yeah, we’ve dropped some great scenes, and Marty doesn’t believe in director’s cuts, he fights to the death to get what he wants. But one film he allowed me to put all the stuff we had to drop off on the DVD…

After Hours, right? I love After Hours.

After Hours! I said we have so much beautiful footage here, can we please put it on the DVD and he finally allowed that! [laughs]

I’m such a fan of that film, it has such a unique energy.

It’s great!

Did you take a new approach with that movie? I know Scorsese was working with a new DP, but in terms of the edit energy?

Yeah.

It almost feels like if there was no After Hours, there’d be no GoodFellas.

You know, that may be true. He did want to be very fractured with it, because that’s what’s going on in Griffin’s mind. For example, the key drop. At one point, this woman drops the key down to him on the street. We spent days on that shot, we tried 15,000 different ways of dropping that. Marty shot it with a very specific… he wanted to be a very special moment. He does a lot in his films, there will be one little thing like that, that’s kinetic but it has great symbolic importance.

So, we just sweated blood over that thing. But he did want it to be a nightmare, because it was. Marty himself had even experienced that wild taxi ride, where the money flew out the window, you know? He had had that experience himself [laughs]. So he wanted to make it very abstract and weird and crazy, and everybody is crazy in that movie. We loved that, it was fun to cut, man it was fun.

You didn’t cut Taxi Driver, but you did cut Bringing Out the Dead, which feels like it was influenced by Taxi Driver. Were you influenced by that movie?

Yes, I would say so, because it’s the streets of New York. Yeah, it is.That’s the one film that I wish would be recognized. His films take a long time to be recognized. Raging Bull took ten years. It was badly reviewed. A lot of his movies are the same, except for Taxi Driver, GoodFellas and Wolf. They were all immediately recognized because they’re so powerful and entertaining.

But all of them have been rediscovered. For example, Age of Innocence, when it came out people poo-pooed it, but now there’s a new version of it that just came out, and everybody thinks it’s great. King of Comedy – disaster, disaster!

Yeah, I’m really interested in that, because that was your first experience of this – because obviously Raging Bull got you the Oscar.

Yes, it did get Oscars. But it didn’t get him one. But no, you’re right. I mean, King of Comedy was a disaster at the box office.

Did you guys know you’re taking a risk when you were editing it?

Marty felt that he wanted it to be like a TV show, because that’s what the whole milieu was. So he wanted to make it particularly uninteresting visually, really more like TV of that time, to reinforce the world that that Rupert wanted to be in. So we knew that was different, and that people might not get it, and they didn’t. And now everybody loves that movie. So, sometimes as an artist, you have to wait and it’s painful.

Marty’s always been able to stay alive because he’s learned how to walk that difficult tightrope between art and commerce. My husband never learned that, because [Powell and Pressburger’s] first films were made during the war, everybody left them alone. Then when The Red Shoes came out Rank hated it and tried to kill it. And my husband didn’t understand it. You have to try and understand them and keep your avenues open; he burned all his bridges.

I’ve seen Marty in meetings with people where I would just get up and walk out, and he says, ‘George, that’s a very good idea, but I couldn’t make that movie.’ Which means you’re not saying ‘That’s really stupid,’ which is what my husband would say. You don’t insult them, you say, ‘Oh, that’s a great idea, but it’s not my cup of tea.’ He’s brilliant at doing that.

To jump to GoodFellas, it’s an astonishing piece of editing, the confidence is overwhelming. Did you feel confident when you were putting it together?

Oh, we knew it was going to be a great one. And, you know, the wonderful thing is that my husband got that movie made, because Marty couldn’t get it made. All the studios kept saying to him, ‘Take out the drugs.’ And he said ‘The drugs are the story of the movie, we can’t take it out.’ He tried three times to sell it, and he was in despair. I came home to my husband and I said ‘Marty’s really having trouble’, and he said, ‘read me the script’ – because my husband, he could see, but his eyes had degenerated which meant he was not able to read.

So I read him the script. He said, ‘Get Marty on the phone,’ and I did – it was a Sunday, the one day I got off! – and he said, ‘Marty, you have to make this movie. This is the most brilliant script I’ve read in twenty years, you have to make this movie.’ Marty went in one more time and he got it made.

My husband died before he saw it, but he got it made, and it saved me. Because when my husband died, I didn’t want to live anymore, and I had to come back to GoodFellas. Marty shut the movie down, because he loved Michael so much, to let me take him back to England. I didn’t want him to die in America. He waited two months, until Michael died, and he shut the movie down, the editing, and then when I came back, I knew if I didn’t go back and help Marty, my husband would kill me.

So, I went back and it pulled me out of my grief, and so it’s a film that has much resonance, you know? It’s just a shame that Michael never saw it, he would have loved it.

I’ll bet, and that film is going to live forever.

Everybody says ‘I’m just going to put it on for ten minutes,’ and then they watch the whole thing. But, you know, The Irishman is not GoodFellas, and that’s what they think it’s going to be. It’s not.

Oh, that’s interesting.

It is not GoodFellas. It’s completely different. It’s wonderful. They’re going to love it. But please don’t think it’s gonna be GoodFellas, because it isn’t.

What’s the runtime on The Irishman at the moment?

We’re still editing it, we don’t know how long it’s going to be.

I’m just intrigued because it feels like Netflix offers a lot more freedom in that respect.

They do, they’ve been great.

And I know Wolf of Wall Street had a cut that you guys liked that was four hours, and you gradually chipped away.

That happens a lot on our movies and that’s okay, because that’s the way the movie was made. There were so much improvisation. You can’t always say, ‘Oh, we can’t improvise there’ or ‘You have to stop improvising because this scene can only be five minutes long!” So, you have to go with it, and you have to live with it, and let the film tell you what it is. It’s very common to have to cut the film down from that length.

I guess what I’m asking is, do you still have a sense of discipline with The Irishman, or is there that temptation to keep it longer?

It’s a different kind of movie, it’s episodic, it’s not narrative. When you do a narrative film, you’re always saying, ‘Oh well, you know, we could slim that down, we could move the shot, maybe we should integrate that, maybe we should flashback with that.’ That’s not the way this movie is. It actually came together very quickly, it’s very different. You will see. It’s extremely different and it really works, which is very exciting.

One last question on The Irishman. Scorsese said that Netflix is taking risks with The Irishman. What is the biggest risk on the project for you?

Well, we’re youthifying the actors in the first half of the movie. And then the second half of the movie they play their own age. So that’s a big risk. We’re having that done by Industrial Light and Magic Island, ILM. That’s a big risk.

We’re seeing some of it, but I haven’t gotten a whole scene where they’re young, and what I’m going to have to see, and what Marty’s going to have to see is ‘How is it affecting the rest of the movie when you see them young?’ Interestingly, we’ve only been able to screen for very few people, because they’re wearing some things on their faces, and on their clothes, that tracks their movement…Nobody minds. Nobody minds watching them play young, because they’re gripped. Very few people have seen it, because we can’t show it to a big audience. But the characters are so strong, it doesn’t matter – it’s really funny. I don’t know what it’s going to be like when we get it all – that’s the risk.

And it’s an expensive project, they’re taking a risk there.

You see all the alternate takes obviously, so you know better than anyone – what is it about Leonardo DiCaprio that makes him so special, in terms of his collaboration with Scorsese?

What Leo has done is he’s just given himself over to Marty, he loves working with Marty. He wants to learn from him. And so he he takes direction wonderfully. And he’s just grown, you know, as an actor. He’s wonderful, and he’ll do anything for Marty – anything. I think it’s just he’s so open to direction, he thrives on it.

Casino had kind of a weird response, in that some people said it wasn’t GoodFellas.

That’s right.

But some people said it was too similar to GoodFellas, it was strange. How did you feel about that criticism at the time?

You know, Marty had been through terrible criticism all his life, the studios didn’t understand him. Taxi Driver, that film almost never got released. He fought, and fought, and fought. He’s been misunderstood for a very long time and it’s been so painful for him.

I can’t tell you the stories of great directors that he admired who insulted him and and said ‘You don’t have it. Why don’t you give it up?’ He told me a story recently of a man who looked at a movie and said, ‘I don’t see anything there, really.’ We’re talking about one of the greatest directors who ever lived…

What was the film, if you don’t mind me asking?

[Schoonmaker waves her hand and laughs] Fortunately, there were some people who believed in him. Cassavetes, do you know Cassavetes?

Oh, I love Cassavetes.

Cassavetes was so important to Marty. Marty, first of all, learned from him tremendously. When he finally met him, when he first went to Hollywood, Cassavetes gave him jobs. He saw Marty’s first film that he made for Roger Corman, Boxcar Bertha, which is actually quite a good film. He said to Marty, ‘Come with me. I want to take you to lunch. You just spend a year of your life making a piece of sh!t, don’t you ever do that again. You don’t let Hollywood co-opt you. You’re here to make movies about your existence.’ And Marty made Mean Streets.

If he didn’t have people like that, his life in Hollywood might have been different. He could have been co-opted, maybe. And that great artist’s telling him, ‘Don’t do that.’ And then, later, when we made Raging Bull, Cassavetes used to come at midnight – because we would work late at night – and bring big plates of spaghetti, with Ben Gazzarra, they would come in, and he would talk to Marty about his next film.

Then he would say, ‘I want to see this, I want to see this movie’ And Marty would say, ‘Oh God, I don’t want to show it to you yet, it’s not ready.’ Finally, he sent me show it to him, and Cassavetes came out and he said, ‘This is a masterpiece’ and he hugged me. He said, ‘I’m hugging you because I feel like I know you, you helped him edit this movie.’

And I said ‘Well, you’re the person who saved him, you’re the person who said he had to remain an artist.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, who asked him to be so good?’ Isn’t that wonderful? Because, in spite of the fact that he had saved him, there is always the jealousy. There’s always the artistic jealousy – ‘I wish I had made that.’ Oh, I love that story – he was so important to Marty.

You’ve said the first time you watched Raging Bull with Marty, you turned to each other and you couldn’t believe you’d made it.

We said, ‘Who made that movie?’ [laughs]

It felt like it was burned into the screen.

It was!

So can you talk a little bit about what led to that amazing moment, the day-to-day process of editing that movie, piece by piece?

Well, he and I always look at the film the first time by ourselves, always. We never show it to anybody else. Then the second time we do. But when we looked at that, first of all, the power of it was…I mean, you don’t usually get that power right away in a movie, usually you have to create it.

But what we saw was that Paul Schrader had given us a wonderful script, but he kept cutting to flash-forwards of Jake LaMotta, commenting on what we just saw. Marty and I said right away, ‘We don’t need that. Take it all out and just have him fat at the end.’ And that worked like crazy. So that’s the kind of thing that goes on when we first see our film. But that one was ‘Oh my.’ And this one too, The Irishman, it’s the same thing, when we looked at it… Wow. Some you have to work and work and work to get that power but, boy, I’m telling you, the first time we saw Raging Bull… Even the projectionist. You know, they’re very tired and cynical, and the guy opened the portal to the projection booth, and he said ‘That’s some movie.’



Hosted by Joanna Lumley, the BAFTA ceremony will be broadcast on BBC One and BBC One HD at 21.00 on Sunday 10th February.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/scorseses-netflix-movie-irishman-not-goodfellas-says-thelma-schoonmaker-200309938.html
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This might just do nobody any good.
Marty’s called it his tribute to Fellini so make whatever assumptions on what that means for the film’s style and structure that you want.



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Depends on how you define a "Scorsese movie", I guess - I think I'll take a Fellini homage over another Departed or Wolf of Wall Street.



I wouldn't, since I found both wildly entertaining. But in this case, given the subject matter, I meant "more or less what you picture in your head when you hear Scorsese is making another mob movie."



Yeah, this goes back to that stuff I said in the Nolan thread (I think it was) about valuing doing a particular thing well over and over more as time goes on, relative to the "branching out" and doing something new. I don't think "predictable" is bad when the thing you're predicting is "this person who's really good at X is probably going to keep doing X." Mastery is just as valuable as surprise.

I'll still watch it, and I'm still excited by the prospect of these Netflix launches getting better, though.



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I suppose they are equally valuable, though given his lengthy history with this particular sub-genre I understand his need to mix up his approach a little.



Holden posted a tremendous interview with editor Thelma Schoonmaker. Thanks! Reading this gets me very excited for The Irishman.

I like that Scorsese is still insatiable. He's still hungry and creative, and he's still learning, as any master filmmaker/editor should, because let's face it - the editor really does make the movie what it is. Schoonmaker is such a beast behind the board. I'd love to be a fly on the wall for some of those sessions.



To update this thread for historical purposes The Irishman was nominated for ten Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (x2) Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, and Best Visual Effects. It won none (with the double nomination for Supporting Actor without a tie it could have only maxed out at nine). It does not set the record for most nominations without a win. That is shared by The Color Purple and The Turning Point, both of which received eleven nominations without a win at the 1986 and 1978 ceremonies.

With this pair Scorsese has now directed 24 Oscar-nominated performances, the five winners in bold: Best Actress, Ellen Burstyn (Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore), Best Supporting Actress, Diane Ladd (Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore), Best Actor, Robert DeNiro (Taxi Driver), Best Supporting Actress, Jodie Foster (Taxi Driver), Best Actor, Robert DeNiro (Raging Bull), Best Supporting Actor, Joe Pesci (Raging Bull), Best Supporting Actress, Cathy Moriarty (Raging Bull), Best Actor, Paul Newman (The Color of Money), Best Supporting Actress, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (The Color of Money), Best Supporting Actor, Joe Pesci (GoodFellas), Best Supporting Actress, Lorraine Bracco (GoodFellas), Best Actor, Robert DeNiro (Cape Fear), Best Supporting Actress, Juliette Lewis (Cape Fear), Best Supporting Actress, Winona Ryder (The Age of Innocence), Best Actress, Sharon Stone (Casino), Best Actor, Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York), Best Actor, Leonardo DeCaprio (The Aviator), Best Supporting Actor, Alan Alda (The Aviator), Best Supporting Actress, Cate Blanchett (The Aviator), Best Supporting Actor, Mark Whalberg (The Departed), Best Actor, Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street), Best Supporting Actor, Jonah Hill (The Wolf of Wall Street), Best Supporting Actor, Al Pacino (The Irishman), and Best Supporting Actor, Joe Pesci (The Irishman).

Scorsese himself now has nine Best Director nominations: Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, GoodFellas, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Hugo, The Wolf of Wall Street, and The Irishman. It is the ninth Scorsese film nominated for Best Picture: Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, GoodFellas, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Hugo, The Wolf of Wall Street, and The Irishman.


His next project, Killers of the Flower Moon, will likely increase those numbers.



An excerpt from a recent interview reveals Marty considers his next film to be a Western.

Killers of the Flower Moon Will Be Martin Scorsese’s First Western
Jordan Raup, February 18, 2020
The Film Stage



As the uninformed dimwits of Twitter argue that Martin Scorsese ever only makes one kind of movie and expose themselves as only ever seeing a small portion of the director’s vast body of work, his next film will offer further evidence of his great range. In his 50-plus year career the director has paid homage to a number of westerns, from Rio Bravo to The Great Train Robbery to Shane to The Searchers, but he has yet to make one himself. He’s now he’s going to make his first entry into the genre with Killers of the Flower Moon.

“We think it’s a western,” he tells Cahiers du Cinéma. “It happened in 1921-1922 in Oklahoma. They are certainly cowboys, but they have cars and also horses. The film is mainly about the Osage, an Indian tribe that was given horrible territory, which they loved because they said to themselves that Whites would never be interested in it. Then we discovered oil there and, for about ten years, the Osage became the richest people in the world, per capita. Then, as with the Yukon and the Colorado mining regions, the vultures disembark, the White man, the European arrives, and all was lost. There the underworld had such control over everything that you were more likely to go to jail for killing a dog than for killing an Indian.”

Firming up the main cast he adds, “Leonardo DiCaprio will play the main role, Bob (De Niro) will return to play William Hale, “King of the Osage Hills,” the man responsible for most of the murders. The rest will be Native American actors. It’s so interesting to think about the mentality that leads us to this. The history of civilization goes back to Mesopotamia. The Hittites are invaded by another people, they disappear, and later it is said that they have been assimilated or, rather, absorbed. It is fascinating to see this mentality which is reproduced in other cultures, through two world wars. And which is therefore timeless, I think. Finally, this is the film that we are going to try to make.”

While Scorsese did once call the concept of Gangs of New York “a western set on Mars,” Flower Moon certainly looks to be embracing more established ideas of the genre. Based on the stellar book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, (the author behind The Lost City of Z), Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, The Good Shepherd) has penned the script. Production is set to begin next month on location in Oklahoma, marking the largest production in the state’s history, with cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, editor Thelma Schoonmaker, and production designer Dante Ferretti reteaming with the director. With this production timeline, Paramount Pictures could release it by late next year.



And in media news The Criterion Collection has just announced their May 2020 release slate which includes a collection they are calling Scorsese Shorts. It includes Italianamerican, American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince, The Big Shave, What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?, and It’s Not Just You, Murray!.

Happy happy, joy joy!

This compilation of five early short films by Martin Scorsese offers a fascinating window onto his artistic development. Spanning the years from Scorsese’s time at NYU in the mid-1960s to the late ’70s, when he was emerging as one of the era’s most electrifying talents, Scorsese Shorts centers on the intimate home movie Italianamerican—a loving snapshot of the director’s parents—and American Boy, a freewheeling portrait of a larger-than-life raconteur. Also included are The Big Shave, a daringly visceral response to America’s involvement in Vietnam, and the bracing student films What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? and It’s Not Just You, Murray! Touching on many of Scorsese’s key themes—Italian American identity, family, his beloved New York City—these are hilarious, candid, and illuminating works from the preeminent American filmmaker of our time.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
I think Scorsese has good movies too, however, do you think that sometimes he over edits his movies? It seems that a lot of his movies since Goodfellas and after, he has maybe a tendency to overcut a little, or more than what is needed. Like this scene here for example:



I feel that before Goodfellas, his editing was perhaps better, unless it's just me?



Maybe sometimes, but I imagine most of it's deliberate. In this case he's got a fast-paced criminal thriller, and he has to stick a briefing into it without losing momentum. Quick cuts and camera movement, particularly coupled with fast-paced dialogue, are a way to get this scene into the movie without it standing in stark contrast to the more exciting stuff.