Marty on!
With 'Shine a Light' just out and 'Ashecliffe' filming around Boston, Martin Scorsese is in command
Martin Scorsese is at a point in his career when he has it all: respect, an Oscar, mainstream fame, the ability to do whatever he wants. This week, what he wants to do is show you his new Rolling Stones concert film, then get back to making another Boston movie.
It all comes back to the image. Start the director talking about "Shine a Light" - it opened in theaters Friday - and he waxes eloquently on how the early Stones hits beamed sonic movies right into the young Scorsese's head. (Already he was cutting to the beat.) Ask him about what it was like to capture the last rock legends still standing as a unit, filmed in two nights in the fall of 2006 at New York's Beacon Theatre, and you'll hear gory, fascinating details of the all-star camera logistics.
And float a query about the new movie Scorsese's shooting in Boston - "Ashecliffe," based on Dennis Lehane's "Shutter Island" - and you get a wonderful mental picture of Leonar do DiCaprio going to film school with Professor Marty, watching the 1947 film noir classic "Out of the Past" in a private screening at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. (Can we audit?)
The Oscar-winning filmmaker doesn't give an interview, in other words. He rambles brilliantly and darts back to the point, each side-alley a welcome discursion into his own film history and the endless cinematic archive in his memory. Here, Scorsese takes a break from screening dailies for the new film to sit down for a chat about "Shine a Light" and other matters. What follows is the most compact version we could fit in the newspaper. (A longer version can be found online at boston.com/movies).
Q. Mick Jagger joked at the Berlin Film Festival premiere that "Shine a Light" is the first Martin Scorsese movie that doesn't have "Gimme Shelter" in it. So why have the Stones and their songs been so integral to your movies over the years?
A. I think it goes back to when I first heard them. I never really saw them onstage until maybe 1969 or '70, but because of the music itself, I didn't need to see them onstage. I had created in my head images and scenes and camera movements and energy that came from the sound. It was the sound of those records, particularly the London imports. The sound of the Stones was like a block of images. There are some camera moves in "Goodfellas," the ones that are more energized in [Henry Hill's] last day as a wiseguy when he's wrecked on cocaine, where suddenly the car swerves around the corner, and I heard "Monkey Man" - I'm a monkaaaaaaay.
Q. So when you heard their songs for the first time, you were creating scenes in your head?
A. Absolutely. Don't forget, a lot of this wound up in "Mean Streets." A lot I'd been saving up that came from the Rolling Stones and others. Dylan, "Please Mr. Postman," certainly the Phil Spector sound, "Be My Baby." And The Band, for example. But The Band's music didn't necessarily relate to the world I was making. "The Weight" was something I lived with, it made you feel creative, but it didn't necessarily flow directly into "Mean Streets" like "Jumpin' Jack Flash" did. The Stones seemed to fit literally into that autobiographical period the film is about. Even though the film was made in 1973, it really took place in the early '60s. I was stuck between my neighborhood, where the Italian-Americans were living, and six blocks away in Washington Square Park at NYU. Two different worlds, and I'm flipping back and forth.
Q. How many cameras did you have on "Shine a Light"? It seems like a huge undertaking.
A. We had about 16, 17 cameras. The trick was to get your position and if Mick went out of the camera this way, you'd pan and another camera would pick him up. [Emmanuel] Lubezki was on a wide-angle one. I don't know if you know him, he shot "Y Tu Mamá Tambien" and "Children of Men." I had the greatest camera operators. Ellen Kuras was backing up Bob Richardson.
Q. It's almost like you assembled an all-star rock band of cinematographers yourself. Was there anyone who couldn't make it?
A. There were some who were shooting, but even then Andrew Lesnie came in, he was shooting "I Am Legend," I think. He came in on the second night.
Q. How many cameramen did you have running around with handhelds?
A. Al Maysles [who shot the 1970 Stones documentary "Gimme Shelter"].
Q. That was it?
A. Yeah.
Q. Well, he would know how to do it.
A. Exactly. We shot everything we could.
Q. And where were you?
A. During the performance I was at a console in the back of the center aisle. I had 18 screens in front of me. I could see what was going on on the stage, and I could talk to certain cameramen, particularly the crane with Mitch Amundsen. I had certain crane shots I had worked out with certain songs. Christina Aguilera comes out this way for "Live With Me," she just walks out very boldly in front of the stage, and we tracked out at that point. For "She Was Hot," we pull back.
Q. Although, according to the film, you don't have a set list.
A. The problem was you don't want to impose anything on them but I do have to know what the first two or three songs will be. That became a running gag in the film, although I did play it up. Part of my work is a stream-of-consciousness complaining, and in the complaining I work it out. Or the people around me work it out for me! [laughs] So here, I wanted to take it to the point of absurdity, because it is absurd. When you make movies - it doesn't have to be the Rolling Stones, I can be making "Raging Bull," I can be making "The Departed" - there are certain things you're not going to know, but those are the things you want. As I say that now, I have a chill in me because I feel like I'm on a tightrope and I'm going to fall. And you feel that way all the time when you're shooting. Every moment of the day. So the only way to remain kind of sane is to see the humor in it [laughs]. And occasionally you do fall off.
Q. How was this production different from "The Last Waltz"?
A. Well, it's two different kinds of music, really. In effect, The Band stopped performing in 1976, so it's a body of work, and we were lucky enough to get them on stage at that point. It didn't start as a film, it started as an experiment, just to capture the event. But the issue there was that the performers were in stationary positions usually. ["Shine a Light"] is a different kind of performance and a very different kind of music, I think. How should I put it? "The Last Waltz" had the word "last" in it. In a way it's an elegy. It's also a celebration of the time. Neil Young comes out, Joni Mitchell, you've got Muddy Waters in there. Bob Dylan comes out at the end. It's a whole celebration of the music they had all created up to that point in time.
Q. And 1976, of course, was when everything changed.
A. Yeah, but we didn't know that. We sensed it.
Q. Was there a governing idea for "Shine a Light"?
A. Yes: Who are [the Rolling Stones] and what are they about? And the answer is their music. Simply their music. People in the future will be able to listen to their music and know nothing about their lives. I don't necessarily have to know their personal history or how they related to their times. Their lyrics speak to me. It's interesting: Do you need to know what their place is in history to appreciate what they do - what a filmmaker does, what a writer does, what a painter does, a choreographer?
Q. One of the ironies is that you're trying to capture them in the moment, but the movie's also about longevity.
A. That's exactly it. And I think it's a kind of defiance, too.
Q. Let's talk about the film you're shooting here now, "Ashecliffe." Does it stick close to its source, Dennis Lehane's "Shutter Island"?
A. Very close. It has its roots in what could be termed early film noir but then it switches to New England gothic. And then it switches again. From "Laura" to "Out of the Past" to "Crossfire," which I've shown the actors in 35mm. Actually, "Out of the Past" we saw last week at the Brookline theater, at the Coolidge. It was amazing to see it on a big screen. It just blew the actors away, DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, who'd never seen it before.
Q. The film's set in 1954. How does directing a period piece in Boston differ from making a modern-day film?
A. Well, technically, it's contained. When we shot "The Departed" here, it was the first contemporary film I'd done in 20 years. So I just looked around and saw what people were wearing in the street and I went with that. It gave me a certain sense of freedom to be able to pan the camera and move where I wanted to, because it was as is. This is very different. Men wear hats. We're shooting in Medfield, in the old hospital there. It's literally our own world, and it's completely self-contained. It's like a back lot.
Q. Are you interested in getting to the heart of what makes Boston special, in terms of history, culture, geography? Or are you just focusing on a story?
A. I'm really focusing on the story, but there's no doubt that when [screenwriter] Bill Monahan set "The Departed" here, he brought with it a history of the city and the nature of, from what I can tell - what I learned as I was shooting the film - the sociology and anthropology of the city. The different ethnic groups, the way they are, how everyone relates to each other, the university. I don't really know the geography of the city yet.
Q. I grew up here and I still can't find my way around.
A. Thank you! I mean, downtown New York is bad, but this is crazy. The historic area is beautiful, though. That's what made us realize in "The Departed" that the rooftop at the end should be one of the old restored buildings rather than going to a modern building. We got up to the top of probably the highest building in Boston and looked around and saw . . . sky. And of course at the end of the original "Infernal Affairs" [on which "The Departed" is based], you see the hills of Hong Kong all around you. We see nothing here. Nothing! So, all right, let's go retro. Let's go to the old Boston.
Q. You shot that down in East Boston?
A.Yep. The seagulls were all over the place, all over the track. There were certain seagulls I really fell in love with. But that was interesting because these poor guys are playing out this tragedy on top of this roof, and there's 300, 400 years of history and them fighting this undeclared war where no one knows where they stand.
Q. In a New York movie, everyone puts all the demons out on the table. Here's it's about covering them up.
A. This is what I began to discover. Just being in the streets and meeting with people. And of course it fed into "The Departed" beautifully. Nobody's saying where they stand [laughs].
Q. Does that play a part in the new one?
A. Definitely. You don't know who anybody is at a certain point.
