Mel Brooks names the worst movie Martin Scorsese ever made: “All his films are better than that”
Even the greatest directors of all time have their off days, but because he’s one of the greatest directors of all time, Martin Scorsese’s lesser movies are still markedly better than anything many of his contemporaries could hope to accomplish from behind the camera.
It’s his own fault for setting the bar so high, really. When you’re the mastermind behind Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, Goodfellas, and Casino, anything that doesn’t reach the same rarefied stratosphere can still be very, very good without being remotely close to his best work.
Are Gangs of New York, The Color of Money, Cape Fear, and The Aviator, to name but four, great and widely acclaimed pictures? Of course they are. Are they top-tier Scorsese? It’s a matter of personal preference, but when pitted directly against the titles mentioned above, arguably not.
A middle-of-the-road feature from the bushy-browed maestro is still vastly superior to anything Michael Bay could ever hope to achieve, but Mel Brooks knows exactly which one he’d rank at the bottom of the pile. Even though he’s never made anything worse than half-decent, the EGOT-winning legend still thought that Scorsese received his flowers for the weakest film imaginable.
In a conversation with The AV Club, The Producers and Blazing Saddles creator and all-around comedy legend theorised that the only reason he won two consecutive ‘Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series’ Emmys for his guest role on the sitcom Mad About You was because “I’m Mel Brooks.”
“I don’t know why I won Emmys for them,” he admitted. “I have no idea.” He thought it was more of a lifetime achievement award than a recognition of his on-camera prowess, which he subsequently compared to Scorsese finally being awarded the Academy Award for ‘Best Director’ at the sixth time of asking when The Departed landed him the big one at long last.
“The Aviator was better,” Brooks quipped. “I mean, he’s made so many. All his films were better than that. Every one he did. Mean Streets was better than The Departed.” When Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Francis Ford Coppola were not at all randomly selected to read out the winner of the directorial gong at the 79th edition of the Oscars, everybody knew there was only going to be one outcome.
Scorsese had previously walked away empty-handed after being shortlisted for Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, and The Aviator, in what was his eighth nomination in total. It ended one of the longest-running and most egregious oversights in Oscars history, but it remains the only time he’s ever won, with another eight nods failing to add a second trophy to the collection.
Admittedly, Brooks’ comments on The Departed were made before The Wolf of Wall Street, Silence, The Irishman, and Killers of the Flower Moon were released, so he might have changed his tune since then. Still, there’s at least a 20% the Oscar-winning crime epic remains his least favourite Scorsese flick.
