When Martin Scorsese wanted Malcolm McDowell to star in his “western in outer space”
There are countless ‘what-ifs’ when it comes to casting famous movies. What if Clint Eastwood had played John McClane in Die Hard instead of Bruce Willis? What if Sylvester Stallone had played Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop instead of Eddie Murphy? And speaking of Eastwood, what on Earth would the world have looked like if Frank Sinatra had played Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry?
The history of cinema is littered with failed casting choices, but one of the strangest is also one of the least well-known. Martin Scorsese is the kind of director that every actor wants to work with. He has been a legend since he was in his 30s, which means he’s been mythologised and celebrated for approximately five decades.
He’s worked with the best actors in the business and is even responsible for some of their careers. Robert De Niro probably wouldn’t be as respected as he is today if he hadn’t starred in a slate of Scorsese’s best films early in his career. Leonardo DiCaprio almost certainly wouldn’t be considered a serious dramatic actor if Scorsese hadn’t helped him escape his ageing heartthrob status with movies like The Aviator and The Wolf of Wall Street.
Over the years, Scorsese has helped shape some of the greatest performers in cinema history and has been able to cast just about anyone he wanted to. But early in his career, he had someone in mind for a film that wouldn’t come to fruition for decades, and when it finally did, that casting choice just didn’t make sense anymore.
The director started working on the idea for Gangs of New York way back in 1970 when he was visiting a friend and picked up their copy of Herbert Asbury’s 1928 book, on which the film was eventually based. It focuses on the heyday of gangs in 19th-century New York before the Mafia took hold in the 1920s, and Scorsese was instantly hooked. He called up his friend, screenwriter Jay Cocks, and said that he wanted to get going on a script.
At the time, the director had only made one feature film, 1967’s Who’s That Knocking at My Door, and was still three years away from Mean Streets. His vision for Gangs of New York was hopelessly of its time. In an interview with The Guardian in 2003, when the film finally came out, Cocks said that Scorsese was working on a version of the story that he was thinking of as “a western in outer space,” and he had a very clear idea about who he wanted to play the lead role.
He was thinking about Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, which was released in 1971 and starred Malcolm McDowell. Scorsese planned to write the main character in Gangs of New York for McDowell and intended to frame the story with Bruce Springsteen quotes.
Not surprisingly, by the time the film finally got off the ground in the early 2000s, it had become an entirely different animal, featuring much more period authenticity. Although it retained an eye-watering amount of violence, it didn’t come close to the graphic savagery of Kubrick’s infamous film off the back of the equally, if not more, violent book.
