Yahoo Finance Martin Scorsese didn't care if he made another movie after 'Raging Bull': 'It wiped me out'
Martin Scorsese left it all in the ring making "Raging Bull."
The filmmaking legend sat down with Robert De Niro for a virtual panel at Sunday's Tribeca Festival to discuss their 1980 boxing classic, which was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won two (including best editing and actor, for De Niro).
The movie, which ranks No. 24 on the American Film Institute's 100 greatest American movies of all time list, tells the true story of former boxing champ Jake LaMotta. It co-stars Cathy Moriarty and Joe Pesci as Jake's wife and brother, respectively.
"This is a true cinematic masterpiece that's going to live on for centuries," said Leonardo DiCaprio, another longtime Scorsese collaborator, who moderated Sunday's Q&A. "Thank you for making it and inspiring so many actors and filmmakers for generations, including myself. (A) Do you realize how great a film and performance this is? And (b) how does that feel having done that together?"
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"Well, I feel great," De Niro said, earning laughs. "The one thing that I always felt is that we didn't know how well it'd do but we knew it'd be a special movie. No matter what, it would be special ... because everything we put into it."
De Niro, 77, first read LaMotta's 1970 memoir while filming "The Godfather Part II," and was intrigued by the boxer's fall from grace. After losing his middleweight championship title to Sugar Ray Robinson in 1951, LaMotta moved his family to Miami, where he ran a nightclub and performed as a stand-up comic and singer. De Niro gained 60 pounds to play LaMotta in his later years, when he got divorced and spent time in prison for enabling the prostitution of a teenage girl.
"The book, for some reason, it wasn't great literature, but something about it, it had a lot of heart," De Niro said. "So I told Marty, 'Read the book, there's something there. He loses (his title) and gains all the weight and he falls apart in that sense. There's something physically that's so graphic. Maybe I could take the time to gain this weight, see how far we can go with that.' "
Scorsese, 78, who first collaborated with De Niro on 1973's "Mean Streets," said that initially, he "wasn't affected by the book at all." Having never played sports as a child due to severe asthma, he also found boxing to be "extremely boring." But after being hospitalized for a drug overdose in 1978, "my whole world changed as to the kinds of films I wanted to make."
"I was lost, in a way. I just collapsed," Scorsese said of that period following 1976's "Taxi Driver," which he calls a "very low point in my life." In that sense, he could somewhat relate to LaMotta as a character and his struggles, and agreed to make the movie.
"I made it as if it was pretty much the end of my life: It's over. Suicide film," Scorsese said. "I didn't care if I made another movie. I guess I would a year later (1982's 'The King of Comedy'), but in a way, it wiped me out. And I mean, that whole style of filmmaking. I had to start all over again, I had to learn again. Every day on the shoot was like, 'This is the last one. Go for it.' "
The film is by no means a flattering portrayal of LaMotta, who is depicted as short-tempered, paranoid and abusive. But De Niro says the former boxer, who died in 2017, was supportive of the project and visited the set frequently.
"At the end of the day, Jake was happy the movie was being made," De Niro said. "This is Marty and I's interpretation (of his life). At one point, you have to go off and make it your own. He was very appreciative, happy, and whether some things are accurate or not, it's what we put into that story."
"Raging Bull" screened outdoors at New York's Battery Park to a packed crowd on the last night of the Tribeca Festival, which offered in-person and outdoor events. De Niro had his leg propped up throughout the panel, after injuring himself at his on-location home in Oklahoma, where he is shooting "Killers of the Flower Moon" with Scorsese and DiCaprio.
"Killers" marks De Niro and Scorsese's 10th film together, having last collaborated on 2019's "The Irishman."
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Raging Bull': Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro talk boxing movie
