Martin Scorsese, as saintly as he is sinful

"Most of me wanted to die. Because at that point, I couldn't do my job anymore. I felt incapable of creating, the director confesses to Rebecca Miller on camera. His friend Robert De Niro approached his bedside, pressuring him he had been doing so for some time to accept a project led by the actor, which the filmmaker resisted. Scorsese recalls: He looked at me and said, What the hell do you want to do? Do you want to die like this?'"

"Mr. Scorsese, a five-part documentary series directed by Miller that premieres on Apple TV on October 17, and which brilliantly analyzes the life and work of the director of Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino, Gangs of New York, The Wolf of Wall Street and many other legendary movies. Miller, in addition to directing feature films, had worked on another documentary about a myth, in this case her father, the playwright Arthur Miller, in 2017. She called Scorsese whom she knows well for several reasons, including the fact that Miller's husband is Daniel Day-Lewis, who worked with the filmmaker on The Age of Innocence and Gangs of New York in the middle of lockdown to propose the project. So she began filming him and friends and collaborators from different eras."

In the late 1970s Martin Scorsese shared a house with musician Robbie Robertson where mountains of narcotics were present. New York, New York (1977) failed and Scorsese lost his way, suffering internal bleeding that led to hospitalization. He felt unable to work and contemplated death, and Robert De Niro urged him at his bedside to accept a project. Scorsese then decided to live and Raging Bull was made. Rebecca Miller directed a five-part documentary titled Mr. Scorsese, premiering October 17 on Apple TV. Miller began filming during lockdown and expanded the project from a film into a series after extensive editing.

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