'Raging Bull': Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, & Leonardo DiCaprio On The Legacy & Legend Of The Boxing Classic [Tribeca Report]

Unlike some of the other anniversary reunions at this year’s Tribeca Festival, which had to go virtual out of an abundance of (almost) post-pandemic safety, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro couldn’t attend their Sunday night “Raging Bull” screening because they were out of town – in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, shooting their adaptation of David Grann’s book “Killers of the Flower Moon.” But Scorsese also wasn’t going to settle for some glitchy Zoom recording, so on Saturday night, in front of a small audience in Bartlesville, he and De Niro recorded a sleek, crisply shot, well-edited hour-long chat to precede the film, with a very special moderator: “Killers” co-star Leonardo DiCaprio.

The host began by reminding the audience that though “Raging Bull” won Oscars for Best Actor and Best Editing, “it surprisingly did not win for Best Picture, which subsequently led to my father telling me at a very young age – I remember this distinctly – ‘The year “Raging Bull” did not win Best Picture was the year I stopped caring about the opinion of the Academy Awards.’”

And with that, they were off and running, discussing not only the genesis and making of “Bull,” but the origins of the actor and director’s long-lasting relationship. “Marty and I knew each other as kids, in different areas of Little Italy,” De Niro recalled. “We didn’t hang out together, but we knew each other; we had a mutual friend who’d hang out with each crew, ours and Marty’s. So I was aware of him and him going to NYU through our mutual friend, directing a play… and then years went by, and I saw ‘Who’s That Knocking at My Door’ [Scorsese’s first feature], and I said, that was great! So I talked to Jay, who was a friend, Jay Cocks, and of course Brian [DePalma] and Verna Bloom, Jay’s wife, and we had dinner, I guess, one night in person.”

“I think it was Christmas, at Jay and Verna’s apartment on 82nd Street,” Scorsese interjected.

“And we got to know each other, talked, I said your movie was terrific and great and blah blah, and that’s what we sort of started getting to know each other again.”

When they worked together for the first time, on the “Who’s That Knocking” pseudo-sequel “Mean Streets,” Scorsese could tell right away that this was a worthwhile collaboration. “The connection with Bob was different because something happened with ideas, with his suggestions,” he explained. “I found that I liked his suggestions. You know, I didn’t have any acting background, I didn’t go to any acting schools, I didn’t go to any directing schools – I mean NYU was not that way, at that time, the way it is now… So somehow, I stumbled through learning more about acting from working with him over the years. And a lot of the key element is really trusting.”

De Niro concurred. “Marty is, and he is up to yesterday, very easy about stuff. He listens, lets you do what you want, and if it’s wrong, he suggests – or not even wrong, it’s just another way of doing it. How about this, how about that, it’s all very easy. And I’ve always said this: it’s not just with me, it’s with everybody he works with. But with me, our experience has been special, that we’ve been able to go all these years and come up with stuff – sometimes I come up with something, sometimes Marty has.”

“Raging Bull” was one of the somethings that De Niro came up with. He discovered Jake LaMotta’s autobiography “Raging Bull” (co-written with Joseph Carter and Peter Savage) in the mid-1970s, and as he recalled, “It wasn’t great literature, but there was something about it, it had a lot of heart. And so I told Marty I was shooting ‘1900’ in Italy. I was on the phone saying, ‘Marty just read this book, it’s interesting, there’s something there, it’s the idea of maybe this guy falls apart, and he gains all this weight, he falls apart in that sense, and there’s something physically about the whole… it’s so graphic. Maybe there’s a way we can; I could take time to gain this weight, see what that’s like, see how far we can go with that. I’ll try it, you know! I’m still young enough to do it.’”

But his director was, at the time, unmoved. “I wasn’t affected by the book at all, because my life has been… not like against sports, but by having had severe asthma when I was told I couldn’t run, I couldn’t do this, I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t laugh – because if you laugh you get a spasm, and then you get an attack, and you turn blue, and your parents get crazy, and you can’t breathe.” And besides, they were about to make “Taxi Driver,” and they went right from that to “New York, New York,” and then De Niro went off to do “The Deer Hunter” and Scorsese was doing “The Last Waltz” while he was cutting “New York, New York,” and also (and he did not mention this Sunday, but this is not unknown) he was snorting quite a lot of cocaine.

“I had reached a very low point in my life and sort of collapsed,” Scorsese said. “And then, I remember I was in the hospital; this was 1978. And one of the things I was having problems with was, I didn’t think I could be inspired again to make a movie. And then so [De Niro] came to visit me in the hospital and said, ‘Come on, get out of here. This, this is the picture you should make, et cetera.’

“So I was lost. I had just collapsed, and so I had to start all over again. It was kind of a rebirth, in a way.”

With DiCaprio’s encouragement, the pair shared many of the best-known stories about the film’s production: De Niro’s months of training to box, with LaMotta and his trainers; the re-discovery of Joe Pesci, who had given up on acting and gone to run a restaurant in the Bronx; the decision to shoot in black and white; the production’s four-month pause, taken so De Niro could gain the weight to play the older LaMotta, taking what DiCaprio called a “gastronomical tour” through Europe.

Scorsese also spoke candidly about the film’s initial commercial failure. “Historically, there were other things that were happening, and that was the end of the ‘70s occurring, and the end of auteur cinema, you know. And we were at the same studio – United Artists, which really doesn’t exist anymore – and at the same time as we were finishing ‘Raging Bull,’ Michael Cimino was doing ‘Heaven’s Gate.’ That went way over schedule and budget. And a lot of the attention went there, that became a very devastating situation. In fact, ‘Raging Bull’ opened November 19th, I think it was, New York and L.A., two prints. That’s it. Two theaters. And we opened, I think, ten days after ‘Heaven’s Gate.’ And ‘Heaven’s Gate’ closed in one night. And it was the most expensive movie, and the soul of the studio went down, and our way of making movies went down. That was it. And part of that had to do with, you know, well they’re self-indulgent, and like, yes, I could understand, but, you know, we were supported. I was supported in ‘New York, New York’ by United Artists, on ‘Last Waltz,’ and on ‘Raging Bull.’”

With their hour winding down, DiCaprio asked one more, big question: if they knew they were making an all-timer back in 1980, and how they feel about its place in film history now. “Well, I feel great,” De Niro grinned, a moment of levity greeted with thunderous applause. “I always felt and Marty and I, and I know we spoke about it,” he continued, “we didn’t know how well it would do or anything, but we knew it would be a special movie. No matter what, it would be special – it just could not not be, because of everything we put into it. Maybe nobody would even see it, you don’t know, but you felt that.”

“I knew that it wasn’t even good or bad; it was just… it was experienced. We did it,” Scorsese said. “For me, it was a culmination, in a way, of everything I desired to do. And I made it as if it was pretty much the end of my life. It’s over. Suicide. Suicide film. I didn’t care what happened to it. I didn’t care if I made another movie. I mean, I guess I would have a year later, whatever, but… And in a way, it wiped me out, meaning that whole style of filmmaking, like I had to start all over again. I have to learn again, you know. But every day on the shoot was like, ‘This is the last one. And we’re going for it.’”

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