The two classic movies Martin Scorsese turned down
By 1982, Martin Scorsese was one of America’s most revered directors. Having spent the previous decade releasing films like Mean Streets, the Palme d’Or-winning Taxi Driver, and The Last Waltz, the director looked set to continue on his winning streak. Raging Bull was a winner but then came 1982’s The King of Comedy, a half-baked satirical crime drama about a delusional stand-up comedian who believes he is the celebrity host of the imaginary talk show.
It bombed at the box office, turned the tide on the view of the director as a pure auteur and set Scorsese on a new path, leading to the director turning down an array of unlikely films we’d loved to have seen him take the helm on.
Shortly after releasing his 2019 picture, The Irishman, Scorsese sat down with Deadline to reflect on his career and working relationship with Robert De Niro. During the sprawling interview, the director explained that he was sent countless scripts following the box-office failure of The King Of Comedy. The film was a noticeable departure in style and left many audience members fumbling for the exit. Today, of course, it’s regarded as something of a classic.
Scorsese would later attempt to explain the root cause of its initial failure, something he put down to the changing nature of the film industry at that time. “This was not a film that was dealing with the worlds of Raging Bull or Taxi Driver or Mean Streets,” he said. “It was totally different. You put that out in 1983, look at the other films that were there at that time. We were out of step, and we’re out of time. We’re in the wrong time.” Unsure of how to proceed, Scorsese considered playing the game and “working in a studio situation where everything had to be discussed and figured out”.
During this time, he started receiving “a lot” of screenplays from different writers, many of which he rejected out of hand. Two of the films he named specifically were Peter Weir’s 1985 thriller Witness and the 1984 action-comedy Beverly Hills Cop, starring Eddie Murphy. “I was getting many scripts,” he told Deadline. “Witness, Beverly Hills Cop – there were a lot. But I didn’t want to make those. Then you choose your course. It’s a harder course.”
In the end, Scorsese got back on track with 1988’s The Last Temptation of Christ, “which then led to New York Stories and, ultimately, Goodfellas.” To get there, however, Scorsese had to find the right path, something that took courage and determination and clarity of vision.
