The X-rated scene cut from Martin Scorsese’s ‘Raging Bull’
There are several worthy claims to the throne of Martin Scorsese’s greatest-ever film, and his 1980 biographical boxing drama Raging Bull is undoubtedly one of the leading contenders. It sees Robert De Niro give one of his best on-screen performances as the violent middleweight boxing champion Jake LaMotta.
The film, also starring Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty, was written by Paul Schrader and adapted for the screen from LaMotta’s 1970 memoir Raging Bull: My Story. LaMotta was one of the most prominent middleweight fighters of the 1940s, and while his inner anger meant that he was a beast in the ring, it also meant that he was violent towards his family, whom he lost in the process of becoming champion.
There were so many outstanding and often torturing moments comprising Raging Bull, but there were some that didn’t make the final cut, including an X-rated one that saw LaMotta attempt to masturbate in his prison cell. The scene was removed from the film because, even though Schrader thought it was important, both Scorsese and De Niro disagreed.
“I wrote a monologue about Jake at the bottom, in his cell, in solitary,” Schrader once explained. “He’s trying to masturbate, and in order to get himself aroused, he conjures up the memories of girlfriends and wives, and sure enough, at the point where he’s aroused, the memory turns to crap, and he realises what a shit he was. He has to give up that particular fantasy, move onto the next one and start all over again.”
Schrader explained that this was meant to happen three times before LaMotta becomes so annoyed that he takes his aggression out on his hands – which he thinks throughout the film are too small – by punching the wall repeatedly. Scorsese had also discussed the prospective scene and admitted it didn’t quite fit what both he and De Niro were going for in their portrayal of LaMotta.
Scorsese had to ask Schrader to convince De Niro on the scene, and if an agreement didn’t work out, then he would step in and figure it out himself. Schrader felt that it was “a cool scene” and that a three-page monologue was an “actor’s treat”, but still, De Niro was not convinced by the writer’s intentions.
De Niro stated: “I don’t know where Paul got that, but that had nothing to do with anything that Marty or I remember about Jake or what we were trying to do.” In the end, the scene was cut in favour of the “I’m not an animal” sequence in which LaMotta cries in his cell. Still, the changing of the script caused a few problems.
Schrader remembers “exploding” at De Niro at a meeting and throwing the script at him. An argument was had, and eventually Schrader returned, “worked some more”, and the production continued. He noted that “Jake did it his way, I did it my way,” and then it was time for Scorsese to do it his own way, too, with his own vision of the story he wanted to tell.
