Watch Martin Scorsese’s mother make pizza for David Letterman: “Robert De Niro loves it”
In November 1991, Martin Scorsese invited his mother, Catherine, a second-generation American-Italian, to make pizza live on Letterman. By that time, she’d had already starred in Martin’s 1964 film It’s Not Just You, Murray!, his 1974 documentary Italianamerican, and, most famously, in the 1990 feature film Goodfellas. Through her son’s projects, Mrs Scorsese developed a screen confidence that would’ve made her the ideal TV chef, though I doubt she would have been interested in that kind of attention. For Catherine, food was all about family.
“What’s special about this pizza?” Letterman begins, seemingly underwhelmed by something so readily available on supermarket shelves. “Well, it’s made by hand; that’s why it’s special,” comes Catherine’s reply. From the footage, it’s clear her recipe has been designed for people with limited kitchen space. There’s no dough-spinning of wood-firing here – only a hot oven, an “oiled jelly-roll pan”, and some top-grade sauce.
Scorsese filmed his mother making her revered sugo in Italianamerican. In the film, Catherine prepares an Italian American classic: spaghetti and meatballs. The key is the sauce, she explains. Adding a little bit of this rich, velvety goodness to meat keeps it soft and moist. “Not like some of the meatballs you eat sometimes,” she notes shadily. Good ingredients are, of course, an absolute necessity.
It’s hard to say whether Catherine uses homemade or pre-made dough for her base (judging from her cookbook, the latter seems more likely), but either way, she begins by layering the dough in the tin and moulding it together with her hands. Then she adds a few ladlefuls of sugo – made with onion, tomatoes, basil, pepperoni, cayenne pepper and a touch of sugar – and sprinkles a few handfuls of parmesan on the top. The end product was a big hit with Robert De Niro. “Robert De Niro loves it,” Catherine told Letterman. “He says I make the best pizza in the whole world.”
Check out the video below. The clip begins at 16:34.
