Martin Scorsese’s dark side revealed in explosive profile
RadarOnline.com can reveal Martin Scorsese’s darkest struggles – from drug addiction and violent rages to a near-fatal overdose – thanks to a searing new revelation story that the director admits forced him to confront the “good and evil” within himself.
The five-part Apple TV series, Mr. Scorsesedirected by Rebecca Miller, charts the turbulent life and career of the 82-year-old filmmaker, from his tough upbringing in New York’s Little Italy to his rise to become one of Hollywood’s most respected directors.
Featuring interviews with Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Francesca Scorsese, as well as stars like Cate Blanchett, Jodie Foster and Sharon Stone, the series exposes the chaos, addiction and guilt that shaped his greatest films – and fueled his inner torment.
Central to this is the lifelong struggle of Catholic Scorsese between faith and sin. ‘Who are we? What are we, I should say, as human beings?’ he says in the opening of the series. “Are we intrinsically good or bad? … this is the struggle. And I struggle with it all the time.”
Raised in a devout Catholic family and one day planning to become a priest, Scorsese’s fascination with sin and redemption would later become the Mean streets, Taxi driver And The last temptation of Christ.
But as his fame increased, his own temptations nearly destroyed him.
“The problem is that you enjoy sin!” he admits in the documentary. “That’s the problem I’ve always had! I enjoy it. When I was bad, I enjoyed it a lot.”
By the late 1970s, his cocaine use increased. During the chaotic production of New York, New York in 1977, Scorsese describes being consumed by excess.
“We were trying to find something, find the muse, I guess. The joke is always, ‘It makes me work better,'” he says. “Meanwhile you’re dead!”
The collapse came in 1978, when he was rushed to hospital after an accident near fatal overdose his body turned black and blue due to massive internal bleeding.
“A very, very big part of me wanted to die,” he recalls. “I didn’t know how to do the work anymore. I didn’t know how to create anymore.”
A friend of the director said: “That overdose was the turning point. He was physically devastated, emotionally empty. Everyone around him thought he wouldn’t make it. But that moment forced him to start over.”
De Niro, who visited him in the hospital, pitched the idea that thus emerged Furious bull while Scorsese was recovering from his near-fatal coke habit. Scenes in the film show him bleary-eyed and partying to the hilt with high-as-a-kite Robbie Robertson, the late guitarist of The Band.
Furious bull marked Scorsese’s creative rebirth – a film of destruction, guilt and redemption that mirrored his own.
Anger was another demon. Scorsese admits that he often “lost the ball” when battling studio executives Taxi driver‘s violent content.
“They’re going to destroy the movie anyway, you know? So let me destroy it,” he says of his anger at Columbia Pictures’ demand to withdraw the film because of its extreme language and violence. Years later, he was still prone to explosions.
Isabella Rossellini, his third wife, remembers that “he could tear down a room” because of his outbursts of violence – one of which she filmed to show him how shocking they were.
The actress also hints that Scorsese suffers from a Napoleon-style “little man syndrome” as he has a “small body.”
Scorsese now credits therapy with saving his life.
“If it hadn’t been for the doctor – five days a week, phone calls on weekends, vigorous, steady work to straighten my head – I would be dead,” he says. “The anger will still be there, but keep the screaming in the back of your mind.”
Even his religious-themed films caused controversy. The last temptation of Christ was banned in several countries after protests over the depiction of Jesus.
Reflecting on the response, Scorsese says it’s worth portraying violence or profanity on screen “if it’s truthful violence,” adding, “We are all capable of such actions if forced to do so.”
Now, after decades of unrest, the director’s tone is one of weary peace. “People die in life and come back,” he says at the end of the series.
“You died,” a medicine man once said to him, “but now you live again.”
