Scorsese recorded and edited this rambling monologue of actor Steven Prince, aided and abetted by his associates, talking about drugs, shooting a man, and similar heartwarming subjects.
There's a story from FINAL CUT, the book about the HEAVEN'S GATE debacle. There's one point where the executives are meeting with Scorsese and DeNiro about making RAGING BULL. One of the suits says "I don't think people will want to see a movie about a cockroach." DeNiro got upset, and apparently rewrote the script. Yet to me, it remains a story about a cockroach, someone living on the edge, the dregs of society, putting them under the microscope dispassionately. I see this in many of Scorsese's movies, from BOXVAR BERTHA, a movie about hoboes, to HUGO, a movie about a boy who literally lives in the walls of a train station, to SILENCE, about outlawed Christians trying to keep their faith alive in Pre-Meiji Japan to.... well, choose your own example.
Scorsese offers us a portrait of the actor as a cockroach.
There's a story from FINAL CUT, the book about the HEAVEN'S GATE debacle. There's one point where the executives are meeting with Scorsese and DeNiro about making RAGING BULL. One of the suits says "I don't think people will want to see a movie about a cockroach." DeNiro got upset, and apparently rewrote the script. Yet to me, it remains a story about a cockroach, someone living on the edge, the dregs of society, putting them under the microscope dispassionately. I see this in many of Scorsese's movies, from BOXVAR BERTHA, a movie about hoboes, to HUGO, a movie about a boy who literally lives in the walls of a train station, to SILENCE, about outlawed Christians trying to keep their faith alive in Pre-Meiji Japan to.... well, choose your own example.
Scorsese offers us a portrait of the actor as a cockroach.