The movie Robert De Niro postponed ‘Raging Bull’ to make: “I would not have wanted to have jeopardised that”
They say that time waits for nobody, but at least Martin Scorsese was more than happy to hang around. The director waited for his most celebrated creative collaborator to finish their other commitments before he re-teamed with Robert De Niro for one of the greatest movies ever made.
The dynamic duo had already made cinematic magic with Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and New York, New York, but Raging Bull — the inspiring and brutal movie about boxer Jake LaMotta — was pivotal to their relationship in more ways than one. For one thing, Scorsese was in dire straits and contemplating abandoning filmmaking altogether, but it was De Niro who persevered and convinced him that LaMotta’s story was one worth telling.
The actor had wanted to make the film since he first read LaMotta’s autobiography on the set of The Godfather Part II, but cameras didn’t start rolling on Raging Bull until 1979. It could have happened long before then, but De Niro had his sights set on another project that would go on to enjoy huge levels of critical, commercial, and awards season success.
As he explained via GQ, even though the boxing biopic was coming together, it wasn’t coming together quickly enough. De Niro was being courted by Michael Cimino to star in The Deer Hunter, and he knew he couldn’t hang around waiting for Scorsese to inform him when he’d be ready to start rolling, especially when the green light on Raging Bull would require him to gain 60 pounds to embody LaMotta in the latter stages of the story.
“I had convinced Marty to make Raging Bull and had already begun training with Jake LaMotta, but knowing we were some way off having a script in place and all the various elements, I asked Marty if we could hold off a little so that I could work with Mike on The Deer Hunter,” the actor said, with his opposite number happy to hit the pause button.
“This was fine because Marty, I think, was working with Liza Minnelli on a play and also on The Last Waltz, so I cleared it with him. ‘Are we OK if I film The Deer Hunter?’,” he asked. “We had been working hard on Raging Bull, and I would not wanted to have jeopardised that.”
The Deer Hunter started principal photography in June 1977, would hit cinemas in the United States in February 1979, and would win ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ at the Academy Awards that April, with De Niro shortlisted in the ‘Best Actor’ race for his tour-de-force performance as Mike Vronsky.
By the time the film had been released, he was already deep in training for Raging Bull, and the star was on set just five months after his most recent credit’s release. Scorsese acquiescing to his request worked wonders for both The Deer Hunter and Raging Bull, given the leading man’s immense contributions to their shared status as two of the greatest movies of their era, with the latter seeing De Niro going one better than he did previously by taking home the Oscar for ‘Best Actor’.
