Wes Anderson explains what makes Martin Scorsese “so great”
Wes Anderson has recently shared his love for the filmmakers that emerged from the New Hollywood period, particularly Martin Scorsese.
In a recent interview with Indie Wire, the filmmaker applauded the fact that many revered directors from the 1960s and 1970s are still making popular and successful movies today.
“People are sort of obligated to compete with themselves, and everything they do is compared to their earlier work,” he explained. “There’s a certain view that people do their best work as movie directors in their 30s or 40s and 50s, not really their 60s or 70s. They don’t say that about conductors. But with this group, there has been a lot of especially good work from them in their 70s.”
Talking about the Taxi Driver director, Anderson explained, “Martin Scorsese is over 80 and he’s got a big movie coming out. I haven’t seen Killers of the Flower Moon, and I wouldn’t say that Wolf of Wall Street has the kind of blast of originality and inspiration that gives us Goodfellas, but it used all these kind of tools and techniques that he sort of invented.”
Elucidating on Scorsese’s genius, Anderson said, “He was working with actors in a way he hadn’t in years, in an improvisational way that he’s so great at it. He made this great, huge movie that’s endlessly entertaining.”
Anderson also praised filmmakers like Paul Schrader and Francis Ford Coppola, emphasising the former’s “set of later movies that are sort of Bressonian, where he’s taken a sort of focus and taken back something for himself.”
Anderson’s new movie, Asteroid City, will hit theatres later this month. The highly-anticipated film, featuring an ensemble cast including Tom Hanks, Jason Schwartzman, Maya Hawke and Tilda Swinton, has been heralded as one of the director’s finest.
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