Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro
Encyclopedia
Film director Martin Scorsese
and actor Robert De Niro
frequently collaborated throughout their careers, making a total of eight films together since 1973. Most of the pair's films were of the crime
genre; many of which have since been considered among the greatest films of all time.
, with fellow student, actor Harvey Keitel
. The film was intended to be the first of Scorsese's semi-autobiographical 'J.R. Trilogy', which also would have included his later film, Mean Streets
. Scorsese had impressed many with the film and made friends with Francis Ford Coppola
, Brian De Palma
, George Lucas
, Steven Spielberg
, and Robert Zemeckis
, known as the influential "movie brats" of the 1970s. It was De Palma who introduced Scorsese to the young actor Robert De Niro.
De Niro had known De Palma for several years previously, and his first film role in collaboration with De Palma materialized in 1963 at the age of 20, when he appeared in The Wedding Party
. However, the film was not released until 1969. The two reunited for the 1968 film Greetings
, which was De Niro's official film debut.
while Scorsese had been working as an editor on the movie Woodstock
. The same year, Scorsese and De Niro collaborated for the first time on the gangster film Mean Streets
. Scorsese had been taught that entertaining films can be shot with little money by Roger Corman
, who had helped prepare Scorsese for the difficulties of making Mean Streets.
The film, about a small-time gangster living in Little Italy
, was a success and in 1997 was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
", spoken by De Niro's character Travis, has become one of the most famous lines in film history.
Martin Scorsese makes a credited cameo in this film, as a passenger of Bickle's who plans to kill his wife.
and Fred Ebb
as well as standards, to Scorsese's home town of New York City
, and starred De Niro and Liza Minnelli
as a pair of musicians and lovers. During filming, the married Scorsese became romantically involved with Minnelli and began heavily using cocaine
and other hard narcotics. At the time Andy Warhol
wrote in his diary that Minnelli and Scorsese showed up at the door of a famous fashion designer demanding: "Give me every drug you've got".
Made after Taxi Driver, the film was a box-office failure. Its budget was $14 million, a large figure at the time, but it grossed only $13 million at the box-office and its disappointing reception and his breakup with Minnelli drove Scorsese into depression and further into drug abuse.
The film has been considered one of the greatest films of all time, and was chosen as the best sports film ever by the AFI
.
, by resorting to stalking his idol, a late night talk show host who craves his own privacy. The film won a BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay, and was nominated for four other BAFTAs, including Best Direction for Scorsese and Best Actor for De Niro.
The film was generally praised by critics but did not perform well in the United States. Scorsese suggested the film "...maybe wasn't so well received because it gave off an aurora of something that people didn't want to look at or know."
, which also starred Ray Liotta
and Joe Pesci
. The film followed Henry Hill (Liotta) and his friends work their way up through the mob hierarchy. Goodfellas was incredibly successful and won five BAFTAs. It was beaten in most categories at the Oscars by Dances With Wolves
, but achieved universal acclaim with critics and is considered one of the greatest films of all time.
In 2005, the classic film was named the greatest film of all time by British film magazine Total Film
.
sees De Niro star as a convicted rapist, released from prison after serving a 14 year sentence, who stalks the family of the defense lawyer who represented him but deliberately suppressed evidence that would have acquitted him. It is a remake of the 1962 film of the same name
. The film received generally favorable reviews and was nominated for two Oscars and two BAFTAs. Steven Spielberg
was an executive producer.
. The film revolved around greed, deception, money, power, and murder that occur between two mobster best friends and a trophy wife
over a gambling empire. The film received favorable reviews, Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune
saying "You can't praise highly enough the contributions of the ensemble – De Niro and Pesci especially – but it's Scorsese's triumph." Sharon Stone
received an Oscar nomination for her role but neither De Niro nor Scorsese were nominated.
and Joe Pesci
, based on a book called I Heard You Paint Houses. At the 2010 Berlin Film Festival, the two hinted at a possible sequel to Taxi Driver.
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
and actor Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...
frequently collaborated throughout their careers, making a total of eight films together since 1973. Most of the pair's films were of the crime
Crime
Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
genre; many of which have since been considered among the greatest films of all time.
Relationship
In 1967, Scorsese made his first feature-length film, the black and white I Call First, which was later retitled Who's That Knocking at My DoorWho's That Knocking at My Door
Who's That Knocking at My Door, originally titled I Call First, is a 1967 drama film, which marks Martin Scorsese's debut as a director. Exploring themes of Catholic guilt similar to those in his later film Mean Streets, the story follows Italian-American J.R. as he struggles to accept the secret...
, with fellow student, actor Harvey Keitel
Harvey Keitel
Harvey Keitel is an American actor. Some of his most notable starring roles were in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Ridley Scott's The Duellists and Thelma and Louise, Ettore Scola's That Night in Varennes, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Jane Campion's The...
. The film was intended to be the first of Scorsese's semi-autobiographical 'J.R. Trilogy', which also would have included his later film, Mean Streets
Mean Streets
Mean Streets is a 1973 drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Scorsese and Mardik Martin. The film stars Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro. It was released by Warner Bros. on October 2, 1973...
. Scorsese had impressed many with the film and made friends with Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
, Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma
Brian Russell De Palma is an American film director and writer. In a career spanning over 40 years, he is probably best known for his suspense and crime thriller films, including such box office successes as the horror film Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission:...
, George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
, Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
, and Robert Zemeckis
Robert Zemeckis
Robert Lee Zemeckis is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Zemeckis first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of the comedic time-travel Back to the Future film series, as well as the Academy Award-winning live-action/animation epic Who Framed Roger Rabbit ,...
, known as the influential "movie brats" of the 1970s. It was De Palma who introduced Scorsese to the young actor Robert De Niro.
De Niro had known De Palma for several years previously, and his first film role in collaboration with De Palma materialized in 1963 at the age of 20, when he appeared in The Wedding Party
The Wedding Party (film)
The Wedding Party is a 1969 American film farce.Its simple plot focuses on a soon-to-be groom and his interactions with various relatives of his fiancée and members of the wedding party prior to the ceremony on the family's estate on Shelter Island....
. However, the film was not released until 1969. The two reunited for the 1968 film Greetings
Greetings (film)
Greetings is a 1968 film directed by Brian De Palma. The film, which featured a young Robert De Niro in his first major role, is a satirical film about men avoiding the Vietnam War draft....
, which was De Niro's official film debut.
Mean Streets
In 1973, De Niro had been praised for his role in Bang the Drum SlowlyBang the Drum Slowly
Bang the Drum Slowly is a novel by Mark Harris, a sequel to The Southpaw . It was first published in 1956, and was later made into a 1956 U.S...
while Scorsese had been working as an editor on the movie Woodstock
Woodstock (film)
Woodstock is a 1970 American documentary on the Woodstock Festival that took place in August 1969 at Bethel in New York. Entertainment Weekly called this film the benchmark of concert movies and one of the most entertaining documentaries ever made...
. The same year, Scorsese and De Niro collaborated for the first time on the gangster film Mean Streets
Mean Streets
Mean Streets is a 1973 drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Scorsese and Mardik Martin. The film stars Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro. It was released by Warner Bros. on October 2, 1973...
. Scorsese had been taught that entertaining films can be shot with little money by Roger Corman
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
, who had helped prepare Scorsese for the difficulties of making Mean Streets.
The film, about a small-time gangster living in Little Italy
Little Italy
Little Italy is a general name for an ethnic enclave populated primarily by Italians or people of Italian ancestry, usually in an urban neighborhood.-Canada:*Little Italy, Edmonton, in Alberta*Little Italy, Montreal, in Quebec...
, was a success and in 1997 was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Taxi Driver
Hugely popular, the film caused controversy but still had a huge cultural impact. The line "You talkin' to me?You talkin' to me?
"You talkin' to me?" is a catchphrase delivered by Travis Bickle, a character played by Robert De Niro in the 1976 movie Taxi Driver. The quotation and the scene it was featured in have become a pop culture icon. In 2005, it was chosen as #10 on the American Film Institute list, AFI's 100 Years.....
", spoken by De Niro's character Travis, has become one of the most famous lines in film history.
Martin Scorsese makes a credited cameo in this film, as a passenger of Bickle's who plans to kill his wife.
New York, New York
In 1977, De Niro starred in Scorsese's New York, New York, a musical-drama film. It was a musical tribute, featuring new songs by John KanderJohn Kander
John Harold Kander is the American composer of a number of musicals as part of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.-Life and career:Kander was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Bernice and Harold S. Kander...
and Fred Ebb
Fred Ebb
Fred Ebb was an American musical theatre lyricist who had many successful collaborations with composer John Kander. The Kander and Ebb team frequently wrote for such performers as Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera....
as well as standards, to Scorsese's home town of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and starred De Niro and Liza Minnelli
Liza Minnelli
Liza May Minnelli is an American actress and singer. She is the daughter of singer and actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli....
as a pair of musicians and lovers. During filming, the married Scorsese became romantically involved with Minnelli and began heavily using cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
and other hard narcotics. At the time Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
wrote in his diary that Minnelli and Scorsese showed up at the door of a famous fashion designer demanding: "Give me every drug you've got".
Made after Taxi Driver, the film was a box-office failure. Its budget was $14 million, a large figure at the time, but it grossed only $13 million at the box-office and its disappointing reception and his breakup with Minnelli drove Scorsese into depression and further into drug abuse.
Raging Bull
In 1980, Scorsese made Raging Bull, a film starring De Niro as an emotionally self-destructive boxer, the film following his journey through life, as the violence and temper that leads him to the top in the ring destroys his life outside it. De Niro won an Oscar for his role and Scorsese was nominated as best director, as well as the film collected six other Oscar nominations.The film has been considered one of the greatest films of all time, and was chosen as the best sports film ever by the AFI
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
.
The King of Comedy
In 1982 Scorsese and De Niro made their first film to feature several comedic elements, while still being connected with the crime genre. The film follows aspiring comic Rupert Pupkin (De Niro), who wants to achieve success in showbizShow business
Show business, sometimes shortened to show biz, is a vernacular term for all aspects of entertainment. The word applies to all aspects of the entertainment industry from the business side to the creative element ....
, by resorting to stalking his idol, a late night talk show host who craves his own privacy. The film won a BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay, and was nominated for four other BAFTAs, including Best Direction for Scorsese and Best Actor for De Niro.
The film was generally praised by critics but did not perform well in the United States. Scorsese suggested the film "...maybe wasn't so well received because it gave off an aurora of something that people didn't want to look at or know."
Goodfellas
De Niro and Scorsese did not pair up again for eight years, when in 1990 they made GoodfellasGoodfellas
Goodfellas is a 1990 American crime film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is a film adaptation of the 1986 non-fiction book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese...
, which also starred Ray Liotta
Ray Liotta
[File:Ray Liotta is an American actor, best known for his portrayal of Henry Hill in the crime-drama Goodfellas, directed by Martin Scorsese and his role as Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams...
and Joe Pesci
Joe Pesci
Joseph Frank "Joe" Pesci is an American actor, comedian, and musician.He is known for playing a variety of different roles, from violent mobsters to comedic leads to quirky sidekicks...
. The film followed Henry Hill (Liotta) and his friends work their way up through the mob hierarchy. Goodfellas was incredibly successful and won five BAFTAs. It was beaten in most categories at the Oscars by Dances With Wolves
Dances with Wolves
Dances with Wolves is a 1990 epic western film directed by and starring Kevin Costner. It is a film adaptation of the 1988 book of the same name by Michael Blake and tells the story of a Union Army Lieutenant who travels to the American frontier to find a military post, and his dealings with a...
, but achieved universal acclaim with critics and is considered one of the greatest films of all time.
In 2005, the classic film was named the greatest film of all time by British film magazine Total Film
Total Film
Total Film is a British film magazine published 13 times a year by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched in 1997 and offers film, DVD and Blu-ray news, reviews and features...
.
Cape Fear
1991's Cape FearCape Fear (1991 film)
Cape Fear is a 1991 thriller film directed by Martin Scorsese and a remake of the 1962 film of the same name. It stars Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange and Juliette Lewis and features cameos from Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Martin Balsam, who all appeared in the 1962 original film...
sees De Niro star as a convicted rapist, released from prison after serving a 14 year sentence, who stalks the family of the defense lawyer who represented him but deliberately suppressed evidence that would have acquitted him. It is a remake of the 1962 film of the same name
Cape Fear (1962 film)
Cape Fear is a 1962 film starring Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Polly Bergen. It was adapted by James R. Webb from the novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald. It was directed by J. Lee Thompson, and released on April 12, 1962...
. The film received generally favorable reviews and was nominated for two Oscars and two BAFTAs. Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
was an executive producer.
Casino
1995 saw De Niro and Scorsese re-unite with Pesci after 1990's Goodfellas for CasinoCasino (film)
Casino is a 1995 crime drama film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Nicholas Pileggi, who also co-wrote the screenplay for the film with Scorsese...
. The film revolved around greed, deception, money, power, and murder that occur between two mobster best friends and a trophy wife
Trophy wife
Trophy wife is an expression used to describe a wife, usually young and attractive, who is regarded as a status symbol for the husband, who is often older and affluent.-History:The term's etymological origins are disputed...
over a gambling empire. The film received favorable reviews, Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
saying "You can't praise highly enough the contributions of the ensemble – De Niro and Pesci especially – but it's Scorsese's triumph." Sharon Stone
Sharon Stone
Sharon Vonne Stone is an American actress, film producer, and former fashion model. She achieved international recognition for her role in the erotic thriller Basic Instinct...
received an Oscar nomination for her role but neither De Niro nor Scorsese were nominated.
Future
It is expected that the pair will re-unite for a film called "The Irishman", which may include Al PacinoAl Pacino
Alfredo James "Al" Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface, Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in Dick Tracy and Carlito Brigante in Carlito's Way, though he has also appeared...
and Joe Pesci
Joe Pesci
Joseph Frank "Joe" Pesci is an American actor, comedian, and musician.He is known for playing a variety of different roles, from violent mobsters to comedic leads to quirky sidekicks...
, based on a book called I Heard You Paint Houses. At the 2010 Berlin Film Festival, the two hinted at a possible sequel to Taxi Driver.