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"Your job is to get your audience to care about your obsessions."
--Martin Scorsese
(17 November 1942 - )
--Legendary Film Director, Producer, Screenwriter and Hollywood Icon
From growing up with asthma, Martin couldn't play sports or do many of the activities other children did. His parents and his older brother would take him to the movies to keep him occupied. Martin deeply loved movies because of this. When he graduated high school in 1960, he initially wanted to be a priest. However, after failing the first year of seminary, he enrolled in NYU's Washington Square College and earned his B.A. in English. Then his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1968...
Martin Scorsese would eventually become a Legendary Film Director and Hollywood Icon. In 1967, Scorsese made his first feature-length film, "I Call First" later retitled "Who's That Knocking at My Door." Film Critic Roger Ebert described it "as a great moment in American movies." He also worked as the assistant director to John Cassavetes who became Martin's close friend and mentor. Cassavetes encouraged Scorsese to make the films that he wanted to make versus someone else's projects.
He credits Robert De Niro for saving his life -he persuaded Martin to fight his cocaine addiction, culminating in a terrifying episode of internal bleeding. De Niro asked Martin if he wanted to live or die. De Niro proposed, "If you want to live, then let's make this picture" -referring to Raging Bull. Scorsese's career spans over five decades. He has directed over 25 feature length films and 16 documentaries, including: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy and Goodfellas -which are often cited amongst the greatest films ever made.
Scorsese's films have won numerous awards nationally and worldwide. In 1991, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 1997, he received the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award. Scorsese was awarded the French Legion of Honour, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, a Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or, a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, a Grammy and an Academy Award among others. As of 2021, five of Scorsese's film have been selected by the Library of Congress for preservation for being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."
In 2007, Time Magazine listed Scorsese among the 100 Most Influential People in the World. Martin Scorsese is considered amongst the most influential film directors and producers of all-time.
Learn more about this Legend (below).
Martin Scorsese: A Retrospective (Hardcover) by Tom Shone
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