Jesse Plemons names his favourite Martin Scorsese film
With Martin Scorsese‘s upcoming Killers of the Flower Moon premiering at this year’s Cannes, with a wide release slated for October, we can’t help but think back on the director’s vast filmography. Beginning in 1967 with Who’s That Knocking At My Door, the highly acclaimed director has contributed to cinema in every decade since, with his last entry being 2019’s The Irishman.
With such a rich and extensive list of work, covering topics ranging from the New York mob to Edo-era Japan, it’s no mean feat to try and pick a favourite Scorsese film without suddenly questioning your choice and faltering to another. I’m firmly in the Taxi Driver camp, for instance, but then again… how can I neglect the epic mafioso saga that is Goodfellas? It seems, however, that actor and Scorsese fan-come-collaborator Jesse Plemons has reached a verdict.
Plemons was probably introduced to most audiences through his role as Todd in Breaking Bad before earning well-deserved praise for his work on The Master, FX’s Fargo, Black Mass and more. His first performance for Scorsese was in the director’s last picture, The Irishman, as Chuckie O’Brien, associate to Al Pacino’s Jimmy Hoffa. Reuniting once again for the upcoming Killers of the Flower Moon, Plemons will be playing ‘Tom White’, about whom we know little save that he was an officer who played a significant role in solving the infamous Osage murder case on which the film is based.
Back in 2019, whilst promoting Netflix’s The Irishman, Plemons was able to whittle down his top six Scorsese films to an ultimate favourite. “If I had to pick one,” Plemons explains, “the movie I always go back to is The King of Comedy.” The Robert De Niro led-comedy, which features the actor as a mentally-troubled aspiring comic who hassles a late-night host played by Jerry Lewis, performed poorly upon release but has since become regarded as one of the actor and director’s finest works.
Explaining what it is about the movie that resonates with him, Plemons continues, “Just because it sort of stands alone, and it’s such an interesting part for De Niro and really, really funny… it’s just such a strange movie.” The film is regarded as influential too; Todd Howard cited it as a major aesthetic and tonal reference for his DC villain origins movie, Joker (2019), and De Niro himself acknowledged a “spiritual” connection between his characters in both films.
You can see Plemons, along with De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone, in Scorsese’s upcoming Killers of the Flower Moon in cinemas in October this year.
