The actor Martin Scorsese always wanted to work with: “We went off on a whirlwind”
How does an actor bring their own touch to a script that’s already perfect? Their job is to bring words on the page to life, but when the script carries the depth and emotion of a finely crafted novel, it can be challenging to add anything personal—especially when the dialogue does so much of the heavy lifting. While some of Martin Scorsese’s greatest films thrive on their compelling stories, he has always made sure to work with the best actors to elevate them even further.
And going back to the beginning of his career, Scorsese was never messing around for a second. There were always going to be limits on what he could get away with on the screen, but as soon as Robert De Niro hit the screen in Raging Bull or Taxi Driver, he was absolutely electric, bringing every one of his characters to life. Despite the fact that Goodfellas took every trope from gangster movies and perfected it, Scorsese knew there was a way to take things further.
By the time he began work on The Departed, the film icon had found a way to twist the gangster scenario ever so slightly. We had already seen what it was like when looking at the lifestyle through the eyes of an informant, but since every member of this crime syndicate was acting as an informant for each other, it seemed like the Wild West watching the film. If there was one dictator in the film, though, it was Costello.
Compared to the other crime bosses in the film, Jack Nicholson’s take on the character is one of the most sinister turns he’d ever taken on. He had a reputation for taking on roles that weren’t exactly the most moral person, but whereas you could laugh at his take on The Joker in Batman and feel bad at watching him tear apart his family in The Shining, this was Nicholson having absolutely no redeeming qualities, as if he knew that someone’s fate could be decided with only one wrong look.
While there was a lot of character on the page, Scorsese let Nicholson play around with the script a bit more than usual. There had been thousands of scenes in mob movies that show the protagonist signing on for a job that they might not be able to refuse, but Nicholson knew the best way to act out the scene was to have someone look like they were one step away from being absolutely insane.
When reminiscing on the film, Scorsese remembered Nicholson’s suggestions for the interview scene, saying, “I always wanted to work with Jack Nicholson. The basic line was ‘What can you do for me?’ I’d seen that scene many times. [Nicholson] called me and said, ‘What if when we’re at lunch on the table in a little plastic bag is a severed human hand?’ And you’d never mention it. Never even discuss it. We went off on a whirlwind that Costello would be losing control and, in a sense, losing his mind, really.”
But that kind of suggestion can only come from someone who had been ingrained in the film world like Nicholson had. He had seen it all when it came to showing the audience something grotesque, so when it came time to play a mob boss, he knew enough to realise that the severed hand may as well have meant as much to him as passing the butter in the middle of a restaurant.
And it’s that kind of intuition that drew Scorsese to working with people who are experts in their craft. He had enough foresight to know what would make a movie great, but he felt it would be better to keep the script more elastic when working among his fellow cinema legends.
