How Martin Scorsese recovered from his most devastating setback: “The trick is to survive”
You don’t make over 50 films without going through a few hardships along the way, something that many New Hollywood directors battled with while trying to breathe new life into the film industry.
Whether it be the struggles that Steven Spielberg encountered during the production of Jaws, with the project being nicknamed ‘Flaws’ by those who worked on it, or the obstacles that obstructed the path to greatness for the likes of Hal Ashby and Francis Ford Coppola, many directors brushed up against the rigid processes of industry when trying to realise their visions.
However, while many of them were met with challenges, perhaps none were as unlucky as Martin Scorsese, with the director experiencing constant friction during each project at the beginning of his career. It could be the infamous post-production period for Taxi Driver, in which Scorsese threatened to shoot the studio executives who cut the movie without his consent, or the disastrous reviews for New York, New York, which nearly derailed his entire career.
Scorsese has spoken at length about how these perceived failures and setbacks affected his personal life and mental health, especially considering how much of himself he channelled into each project, but there was one that almost tore him apart after the project was scrapped by the studio after months of hard work, requiring an enormous amount of strength and resilience to finally bring the film into the world.
The Last Temptation of Christ is perhaps the most controversial film under Scorsese’s belt, with the announcement of the project being met with backlash and uproar as religious groups rallied against the production for its alleged blasphemy.
After being in production for several months, with the story being adapted from the original novel written by Nikos Kazantzakis, Paramount scrapped the project after continuous threats and outrage from the public, with the future of the project looking a little murky after some cinemas even refused to screen it.
As a result, Paramount dropped out of the project, with Scorsese describing how he pulled through one of the most fraught creative processes of his career. “The trick is to survive. The trick was to survive after The Last Temptation of Christ was cancelled by Paramount in 1983. That was four weeks before shooting was to have started. We had everything ready. It was devastating. My idea then was to pull back and not to become hysterical and try to kill people. The idea was to not break things, and to try to be calm, and to think, ‘All right… be really calm.’”
While some directors might flip out and cause a temper tantrum, Scorsese explained how this reaction would not have been beneficial to the project and in some ways, brought some much-needed clarity, saying, “And I was very calm, very calm. Because in a funny way, I was almost relieved, because the picture was becoming too big. We may have been on the road to ruining the picture by making it one hundred days of shooting. It may have been a little too much”.
