Credit: Far Out / Netflix

Martin Scorsese urges young filmmakers to save the industry from “content providers”

Sun 8 October 2023 13:31, UK

Killers of the Flower Moon director Martin Scorsese has urged young filmmakers to “reinvent” modern cinema and make serious films instead of being “content providers”.

The veteran auteur discussed the state of cinema during a Screen Talk on October 7th with fellow filmmaker Edgar Wright. The event was part of the BFI’s ongoing London Film Festival. Elsewhere in the career-spanning conversation, Scorsese discussed his 1974 hit Mean Streets and his upcoming western crime drama, Killers of the Flower Moon, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.

When asked to give his opinion on the current condition of the movie industry, Scorsese said filmmakers and audiences have to decide which direction it will take. “I didn’t want to be the last line of defence,” Scorsese joked. “I honestly think it’s thrown back now on all of you. I really mean this – I don’t know where cinema is going to go. Why does it have to be the same as it was for the past 90-100 years? It doesn’t. Do we prefer cinema from the last 90-100 years? I do, but I’m old.”

The Mean Streets director said that young people “are going to see the world around them in a different way” in the not-too-distant future, and this, taken in tandem with new technology, will “reinvent” the landscape of cinema.

“What does one shot mean now? I don’t know any more,” Scorsese continued. “I don’t think it means anything…. It’s really up to everybody. You’re all in the process of a period of reinventing it. It’s quite an extraordinary time and a lot of it is due to technology.”

“That’s the freedom you have now,” he said. “So much freedom, I think you have to rethink what you want to say and how you want to say it”. Scorsese then claimed that although he is “afraid” movie franchises will “take over theatres”, he sincerely hopes there will still be room for what he deems “serious” projects in the future.

“Ideally, what I hope is that – I hesitate to use the word – ‘serious’ films could still be made with this new technology and this new world we’re a part of,” the director posited. “So that can be enjoyed by an audience of this size on the big screen. That’s the key.”

Edgar Wright contended that Scorsese simply wants filmmakers to be just that, not “content providers”. In response, the American director outlined the difference between the two. “Content is something you eat and throw away,” Scorsese said. “Content is like candy.”

He explained: “I like having the TV on all the time when I was growing up. That’s the way it was…. just have it on and have the sound down, that’s content. It’s almost like radio before television. The radio is on all the time, there’s a voice going on in the background. Or when people keep the TV on to hear a voice. That’s all that is. But if you want to have an experience that can enrich your life, it’s different.”

This is not the first time Scorsese has discussed modern cinema. At the end of September, he said, “the industry is over” during a conversation with GQ: “Well, the industry is over,” he added. “In other words, the industry that I was part of, we’re talking almost, what, 50 years ago? It’s like saying to somebody in 1970 who made silent films, ‘What do you think’s happened?'”

Killers of the Flower Moon comes to cinemas on October 20th.