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.
TB: 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?
MS: I think it goes back to when I first heard them. When anybody asks me that question, I always point to the fact that I never really saw them onstage until maybe 1969 or '70. And even then, my seats were so high up that I could barely see them. They had become an arena act already. I saw them later in L.A., around "Exile on Main Street," and again it was a big venue, but you felt them that time. I think the closest I saw them was the Academy of Music on 14th Street, New York, which no longer exists, but I think that was the mid-70s, late 70s. 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. Not just the vocals -- it's the instrumentations, the vocal, the lyrics, the tone, the attitude, the mix. Where a guitar lick comes in and you realize that's Keith Richards doing that. But even later, "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" -- which we use in "Casino," with Mick Taylor's guitar solo and the sax solo -- is an extraordinary piece of music, I think.
Somehow music played a great role, and still does, in how I see images and how I imagine scenes. Even if they're scenes that never wind up in a film, they create a mood and a tone -- the fantasy of it. I think it goes back to stringed instruments. I'm partial to stringed instruments. My brother played guitar, my father used to play it. And it goes back to the 78 records that my father had and I still have. A number of those records were Django Reinhardt and the Hot Club of France. When I was 4 years old, three years old, they were playing those records -- that's all we had. So somehow the pictures in my mind, whether they were abstract pictures like with "Fantasia," I do remember as a child trying to imagine where that sound was coming from. And images took over: there were swirling images of movement, color, and action in a way. And that has to do with Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli and the rest of the group.
So from that point on, my ear was tuned to string instruments -- whether it's a Bach cello, a Vivaldi violin, a Beethoven violin concerto, my ears go right to it. And it generates a kind of energy for me. And quite honestly, the Stones music stood up over the years. The thing about it was the soundmonka that came out of those speakers. The sound from those records, particularly the London imports. It has to do with the vocal, it has to do with instrumentation, and it has to do with the nature of blues-based music.
TB: Was that your way into the blues?
MS: Yes. Well, prior to that there was Leadbelly in the early 50s. We heard certain blues songs, but they were hard to come by. The world I was in was rather different, but the guitar was very, very important. Classical guitar, Segovia, but also simple guitar boogie -- Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, a famous guitarist invented this guitar boogie in the late 40s, we had a 78 of it. And that has stayed in my head, and that's definitely blues but it's also boogie-woogie.
TB: That hasn't popped up in one of your films.
MS: Not yet. But it will. But primarily the sound of the Stones was like a block of images. It wasn't just the voice -- I can't describe it. 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, I heard "Monkey Man" -- I'm a Monkaaaaaaay". I don't know what's making that sound! I don't have to know what's making that sound, I hear the sound. So then when I saw the performance, it's something else.
TB: So when you heard these songs for the first time, were you creating scenes in your head?
MS: Absolutely. Don't forget, a lot of this wound up in "Mean Streets". Camera moves. A lot I'd been saving up that came from the Roling 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, and the nature of their music and what the music says, didn't necessarily relate to the world I was making. "The Weight," for example, 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. But it was there, it was there. The Stones seemed to fit literally, particularly in that autobiographical period, the period the film is made 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. There's lots of doo-wop in "Mean Streets," and that came out of that world. There's Italian folk music, Neopolitan songs which are different from Sicilian folk music, but everyone's living together and listening to different kids of music.
At the same time I was listening to Bob Dylan, but the first Bob Dylan I heard was late, was "Like A Rolling Stone." And then I went back and heard the acoustic. Where NYU had the little motion picture department was literally half a block away from Gerde's Folk City, And I would walk by and see Dylan's name. I went there from 1960 to 1965, literally in that building. But we were making movies.
TB: How many cameras did you have on "Shine a Light." It seems like a huge undertaking.
MS: We had about 16, 17 cameras. People hear that and say, that's an enormous amount, but: If you've got five major positions, once you find out those positions, depending on where Jagger would tend to go, where Keith would tend to go, and Ronnie -- you knew Charlie was behind the drums, okay -- the back-up singers, the horn section, that sort of thing, there'd be at least three covering where Mick was, another three on Keith, another two on Ronnie --
TB: These are handheld, or on cranes?
MS: No, these are on dollies. 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. The same with Keith: he moves as he does, just goes where he wants to go. Once we got those camera positions, two things: I wanted the cameras moving all the time, tracking back and forth and zooming in and out, which could be a problem physically with the performers and the people in the audience, so we've got to work that out. Then we back those cameras up, because of the focus issue. In other words, the camera are stacked right on top of each other, one behind the other, so those cameras were getting similar angles, but if we went out of focus here, they might get in focus there. It's back-up.
[Emmanuel] Lubezki was on a wide-angle one. I don't know if you know him, he shot "Y Tu Mama Tambien" and "Children of Men." I had the greatest camera operators. Ellen Kurys was backing up Bob Richardson.
TB: It's almost like you assembled an all-star rock band of DPs yourself. Was there anyone who couldn't do it?
MS: 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.
TB: And how many cameramen did you have running around loose?
MS: Al Maysles. [who shot the 1970 Stones documentary "Gimme Shelter"]
TB: That was it?
MS: Yeah.
TB: Well, he would know how to do it.
MS: Exactly. We shot everything we could.
TB: And where were you?
MS: During the performance I was at a console in the back of the center aisle. And 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. Christine Aguilera comes out this way for "Live With Me," she just walks out very boldly right in front of the stage, and we tracked out at that point. For "She Was Hot," we pull back.
TB: Although, according to the film, you don't have a set list.
MS: The problem was you don't want to impose anything on them but I need to get them in the frame and I need to get them in a certain way. 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.
TB: But when you've got 16 cameras, you're kind of covered.
MS: You're kind of covered, but not entirely. You'd be surprised. Some of those cameras were in positions which were very difficult -- we had some wonderful cameramen, John Toll, who were in really difficult positions. I figured they know how to shoot so well, so if anybody can get us a good composition at a certain point it would be them. Very top of the line people back there. I told the producer, Steve Bing, where you should spend your money, basically, is on your DPs.
It's funny, but the serious aspect was the fact that we're shooting 35mm film, we're not shooting digital video, which means that we have film running out of the magazines. And if I want the first three songs, some of those cameras are going to go. So we had to figure out some way of staggering the cameras. But if you don't know what the first or the third song is, you don't know how long they are. It's mathematics. Somehow Bob Richardson worked it out with [assistant director Joe Reidy], but the logistics were maddening.
TB: How was this production different from "The Last Waltz"?
MS: Well, it's two different kids of music, really, although the blues is a major facet of The Band's music. In effect, the Band stopped performing in 1976, so it's a body of work, and we were lucky enough to get them on the stage at that point. It didn't start as a film, it started as an experiment, just to capture the event. We decided to go with videotape, then 16mm, and at some point we went, "Why don't we try 35mm?" Which hadn't been done before. That kind of film hadn't been done. And I was able to have fairly good camera positions with 8 or 9 cameras, wonderful DPs -- Michael Chapman being in the Bob Richardson role at that point, lighting and designing the whole thing. 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.
TB: 1976, of course, was when everything changed.
MS: Yeah, but we didn't know that. We sensed it. We hoped not; we hoped there'd be more evolution. But that film developed. Once we saw the rushes, we saw the power of the image and realized it was a feature. Also, one thing happened: some of our cameras did go down and we didn't get certain songs. And one of the songs was "The Weight." So I decided why not shoot it in the studio? I designed the shots very carefully for that, which became a template for the boxing scenes in "Raging Bull" -- shooting one take, no multiple cameras. That took about five nights to shoot. And we edited that in and then a few months later Robbie and I are hanging around talking and he says "Don't you think we should do some interviews too?" Because there wasn't that much footage of the Band band members. Whereas the Rolling Stones are the most documented band in history.
TB: It seems like you take a light hand with the archival footage in "Shine a Light."
MS: We had to. David Tedeschi, the editor, looked at over 400 hours of archival footage over two months. At a certain point in time, the question [the Stones get asked becomes] the same question: Why do you keep performing? This goes from the '70s on, and it becomes absurd. The answer is look at the performance. If you like this kind of music and you like the Stones, look at this performance. That's why they perform.
TB: Was there a governing idea for the film?
MS: Yes: Who are they 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 the personal history or 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?
TB: One of the ironies is that you're trying to capture them in the moment, but the movie's also about longevity.
MS: That's exactly it. And I think it's a kind of defiance, too.
TB: Does that have personal resonance for you?
MS: I guess, maybe. I didn't think of it that way, but people have brought it to my attention. Maybe it's my own impulse: I have to get them on film at some point in time.
TB: Is this something you've been wanting to do for a while?
MS: Oh, since I first heard them. I was sort of naïve about this. For me, the Rolling Stones are a really great group, but in performing, they're working. Like a machine. It's like a living organism. So if they're working, that means Keith is moving toward Ronnie, Mick is moving toward Charlie -- they're talking to each other. And I got fascinated by that, by how any musical group can do that. By the way, there's no overdubbing. So if there are mistakes, that's it, that's the shot.
TB: Is Mick more of an actor or a director?
MS: I think he's both, really. As a director, he's internal, as far as my experience with him. In the title sequence of "Shine a Light," you can see he's kind of directing the rehearsal. Whether they argue, who knows? I'm still an outsider. But it appears from the outside that he controls or tries to work out the rehearsals. But then I saw him playing an acoustic number and he says "I don't remember the song," and Keith says "You wrote the damn thing!" "Oh yeah, I did, didn't I?" I saw it happen!
TB: So Mick may be sort of the central ganglia of what happens onstage.
MS: I think so, yeah. And like anything else, one night is better than another night, whether they're working together or not working together.
TB: Did you get a sense of which night was better?
MS: The second night. The whole picture's the second night. They started the show with "Jumpin' Jack Flash," and it was as if they had started with the encore.
TB: But there is a sense of build in the movie.
MS: Yes. but you see, Mick designed the nature of the concert -- which song would go where, whether it would be bluesy, whether it would be country, whether it would be a cover like "Just My Imagination" -- and then he had to work with practical issues, because he had a DVD coming out with other music on it, he couldn't have certain songs because of legal issues.
TB: It's almost like he's a painter.
MS: A painter. Of sound. And of working the audience. That's the thing. If the audience isn't there, any performer will feel it. I think the audience the second night sort of helped.
TB: I noticed the front of the audience was packed with beautiful young women.
MS: Whatever they need.
TB: Let's talk about the film you're shooting here now, "Ashecliffe." Does it stick close to its source, Dennis Lehane's "Shutter Island"?
MS: Very close, yes… 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 35 millimeter. 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.
TB: It's set in the 1950s?
MS: Early 1954, during the cold war paranoia. I was about 8 or 9, 10 years old, so I remember the mood of the country very well, particularly the Red scare and the fear of being bombed, the air raids in schools, that sort of thing. And particularly the films and television shows I saw, coming from a working class family. We saw mainly anti-Communist stuff. "I Led Three Lives," or "Time Limit," directed by Karl Malden. The actors are wonderful in that one and it's really beautifully directed. It's very simple but it really shows the fear of that time, the fear of brainwashing, which leads directly to "The Manchurian Candidate," which ultimately was the one. And a few months after that came out Kennedy was killed. It puts the cap on the whole period in a way.
TB: How's doing a period piece in Boston different from doing a modern-day film?
MS: 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. It does take place on an island, like Peddock's island, an island outside in the harbor here, which is just abandoned buildings and a wharf. We've taken a ferry out a few times, might shoot something out there. In a sense it's an island like that. Dennis Lehane based it as if it was on Long Island [in Boston Harbor]. It's isolated. 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 backlot.
TB: Was there a pleasure in "The Departed" in coming to a new city and finding fresh locations?
MS: Absolutely, fresh locations and also a sense of the history of the city with that story. With the underground of the city, in a way.
TB: Have you run out of New York stories?
MS: Not at all! But it is kind of fortuitous that both pictures take place here.
TB: Are you interested in getting to the heart of what makes this city special, in terms of history, culture, geography? Or are you just focusing on a story?
MS: I'm really focusing on the story, but there's no doubt that when Bill Monahan set "The Departed" here, he really 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.
TB: I grew up here and I still can't find my way around.
MS: Thank you! I mean, downtown New York is bad, but this is crazy. The historic area is beautiful. 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," you look around and 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.
TB: You shot that down in East Boston?
MS: 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 class war, and them fighting this undeclared war where no one knows where they stand.
TB: A New York movie, everyone's putting all the demons out on the table. Here's it's about covering them up.
MS: This is what I began to discover on Departed. 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)
TB: Does that play a part in the new one?
MS: Definitely. You don't know who anybody is at a certain point. 