Scorsese going back to badfellas
After losing the directing Oscar for a fifth time, Martin Scorsese is working on his next movie, The Departed, which brings him back to the world of violent wiseguys that earned him so much acclaim.
Even Scorsese says winning an Oscar after a 30-plus-year career “would be very nice,” but his allure ó and clout ó in Hollywood remains undimmed.
“If he gets an Oscar, it’ll do more for the Oscar than it will do for him,” says friend David Ehrenstein, author of 1992’s The Scorsese Picture. “He’s just too far out, and too far in, and too edgy. Ultimately, people recognize his achievements, but they take a while to settle in.”
Even rivals praise him.
“I was a little bit disappointed when they started building a competition between Marty and myself,” Clint Eastwood said after winning best director and picture for Million Dollar Baby. “I have the greatest respect for him, for the films he’s done over the years, and right up through The Aviator.”
For all the talk about whether Scorsese deserved it this time, or for Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver or his other pictures, Departed screenwriter William Monahan says Oscar can be arbitrary.
“I just saw a 25th-anniversary screening of Raging Bull,” Monahan says. “Without malice, I don’t see any 25th-anniversary screenings of Ordinary People,” the movie that trumped Scorsese for director and picture in 1981.
“The academy sometimes seems to vote on ‘best director of the kind of film we prefer,’ ” Monahan says.
Departed reunites Scorsese with Aviator’s Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays a police officer going undercover as a gangster. Matt Damon plays a gangster trying to infiltrate the police force, and Jack Nicholson is a Boston crime lord
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