Martin Scorsese: A Journey - Hardcover

Kelly, Mary Pat

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0938410792 ISBN 13: 9780938410799

Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Pr, 1991

Synopsis

Traces Scorsese's life from his days as an altar boy through his ascension to a preeminent position in the filmmaking world

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Kelly's second book on the acclaimed director has the same patchwork quality as her Martin Scorsese: The First Decade (1980- -not reviewed). Billed as an ``oral history,'' it's really a compendium of quotations from Scorsese and his friends, family, and collaborators. Still, despite the limitations of the genre, Kelly manages to elicit some valuable production history and interpretive comments from her many interviewees, who range from Scorsese's ever- loquacious parents to the usually tight-lipped Robert De Niro, with whom Scorsese has created some of the greatest films of our time, from Mean Streets and Taxi Driver through Raging Bull and Goodfellas. Many of the actors who have worked with Scorsese celebrate here his remarkable directorial style, as do the technicians who marvel at his mastery of the form and his meticulous preparation. Others testify to his absolute devotion to the movies, a fervor matched by the religious intensity in many of his films. Kelly, who studied to become a nun, no doubt overworks the priestliness of Scorsese's vocation in her own prose interludes, much as she spends too much time detailing her personal encounters with the director. (Photos by her husband include two of her and Scorsese.) And the platitudes here by studio execs (Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner) are particularly worthless, as are the testimonial-dinner remarks that pass for forewords by Scorsese's director friends Steven Spielberg and Michael Powell. Vague references to personal problems in Scorsese's life remind us how little these interviews tell us about the man. That's exactly the sort of identity crisis this book suffers from--it aspires to critical seriousness but delivers mostly starlust. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

This collage of interview transcripts provides an unrivaled behind-the-scenes peek at each of the famed director's movies. Organized chronologically by film, it consists mainly of clubby chitchat by Robert DeNiro, Paul Newman, Willem Dafoe, Joe Pesci, Roseanna Arquette, Harvey Keitel, Hollywood execs, scriptwriters, the director himself, his parents and many others. Talking about her role in New York, New York , Liza Minelli declares, "I got my entire performance by looking at Marty's eyes." Readers seeking deeper insight into the forces that drove the shaper of Raging Bull , Taxi Driver and The Last Temptation of Christ will find this a frustrating pastiche, notwithstanding journalist/filmmaker Kelly's biographical profile discussing Scorsese's search for transcendence or his own comments on his Catholic upbringing and artistic aims. A sneak preview is given of Cape Fear , a remake of a 1962 film starring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum, both of whom appear in new roles in Scorsese's update. Photos.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Pr
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0938410792
• ISBN 13: 9780938410799
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 318