The test screening that pissed off Martin Scorsese: “It was an angry reaction”
Test screenings are a vital part of the cinematic ecosystem. These advanced previews of upcoming movies or TV shows are key in ascertaining what works about a project and, perhaps more importantly, what doesn’t. That being said, a good screen test isn’t always indicative of a successful film, or vice versa. One person who found this out the hard way is Martin Scorsese
The legendary director doesn’t exactly make the kind of movies that studios are going to go crazy for. His reliance on drugs and violence to tell his stories is usually seen as a giant red flag by anybody wearing a suit, even though his track record more than speaks for itself. Take Goodfellas, for example. The initial screening of Scorsese’s 1990 masterpiece is widely considered to have been a calamity. 40 people walked out and it very nearly killed the picture stone dead.
As Scorsese told Entertainment Weekly, his initial response to this outcome wasn’t very positive. “It was an angry reaction,” he said. “It became very difficult. It was a constant battle until a few weeks before release … [the film] terrified Warner Bros executives at the time. You show it in front of a big audience to see what works or maybe what’s confusing. Just see what [the audience] can tolerate or not.”
This unpleasant experience left a mark on the maestro’s opinion of the entire test screening process. “[A preview screening version] doesn’t mean it was ‘my cut.’ I’m in the process of making the film,” he explained. “I screen it for some people, they go ‘maybe you don’t need that,’ and maybe I do things, or maybe not. Test screenings, for a while, were very helpful. I don’t know if it is anymore, at least for me. The world has changed in that way, too.”
One scene that particularly aggravated the test audience was the one in which Billy Batts (Frank Vincent) is brutally beaten and killed by Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci). Scorsese recalled how, after the first two incidents of DeVito stabbing Batts in the trunk of his car, audience members started filing out of the cinema. “I asked [editor Thelma Schoonmaker], ‘How many more we got left?’ he said, pondering how many more knife attacks were coming in the scene. “She says: ‘Seven.’ So okay. We didn’t need them leaving this soon, okay? We see the knife, we get it.”
It wasn’t all doom and gloom for the icon, not on a personal level anyway. “The thing everybody liked was the scene with my mother,” he revealed. Catherine Scorsese, an actor who had appeared in a number of her son’s previous pictures, was cast as the mother of Tommy DeVito. Their dinner scene was almost entirely improvised and, thanks to the positive reception of the test audience, was kept in the final cut. “That’s why I thank those screenings,” Scorsese reflected.
Of course, Goodfellas went on to defy all expectations set by its disastrous debut. It was nominated for five Oscars, including ‘Best Picture’, and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. Its impact can be felt across culture, not just in gangster movies, and it is one of the crown jewels in Scorsese’s impressive movie empire.
