The classic movie Martin Scorsese was rejected for: “Thankfully, I didn’t get it”
The 1970s was a transformative decade for American cinema, with the ‘New Hollywood’ movement serving as the springboard for a staggering number of future legends to make their first major waves as directors, with Martin Scorsese merely one of the many.
Among his peers were Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Mike Nichols, Sydney Pollack, William Friedkin, Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, Michael Cimino and countless more, with the common denominator being that every single one of them helmed at least one movie justifiably discussed as being among the greatest ever made.
That was the decade Scorsese unleashed Mean Streets upon the world, directed Ellen Burstyn to an Academy Award for ‘Best Actress’ in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, cemented his formidable partnership with Robert De Niro on Taxi Driver and New York, New York, emerging from a crowded pack to be designated one of the new generation’s leading lights.
One thing Scorsese has largely avoided throughout his career is becoming a hired gun, with the filmmaker having the clout to develop his own projects from the ground up. Even when he does take the studio paycheque and run, the results being movies like The Color of Money and Cape Fear speak volumes about his incredible talent and mastery of the craft.
The director took the reins on at least two stone-cold classics during the ’70s, but it could have easily been one more. The project was originally being circled by another icon, Sam Peckinpah, but when he dropped out, Paramount was on the hunt for somebody else to take the reins on a biographical crime drama starring one of the best actors in the business.
Among the many names that crossed executives’ desks was Scorsese’s, and in hindsight, he would have been an excellent fit for telling the story of an idealistic New York City police officer who remains one of the few with clean hands in a precinct full of dirty cops. He wouldn’t work with Al Pacino until 2019’s The Irishman, but it could have happened more than 30 years previously if he’d ended up directing Serpico.
To clarify, though, Scorsese explained to the British Film Institute that while he wasn’t actively seeking the gig, he was on a shortlist. “No, they were considering me,” he explained. “Thankfully, I didn’t get it. It’s a Sidney Lumet thing, and he handled it beautifully. There were a lot of meetings that I was considered for but found that I couldn’t fit in.”
Serpico ticked many of the boxes associated with Scorsese’s finest work in that it traded in themes of loyalty, honour, and corruption, and it’s not difficult to imagine him doing an incredible job with the picture. Not that it was a disappointment in any way, but the mind does wonder how it would have turned out with Marty calling the shots.
