“FIRE ME, SHOOT ME, KILL ME.”
It was late 2005, and Martin Scorsese had just decided to go rogue. His new film, The Departed, had wrapped after a lengthy, arduous shoot, and Scorsese was being hounded by Warner Bros. executives to unveil a cut. So the filmmaker and his editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, sat down in their private screening room, part of his office complex high up in the Directors Guild building on New York’s 57th Street, to find out where they were at. The Boston-set crime drama unspooled in full. Then Scorsese turned to Schoonmaker and told her they were starting the whole thing from scratch.
“For six weeks, there were literally people out there knocking on doors,” the director recalls now. “We wouldn’t answer it. They were really mad at us. They really were angry. I said, ‘Fire me, shoot me, kill me — we’re gonna wrestle this thing to the ground.’”
Fourteen years on, Scorsese has welcomed to Sikelia Productions, the place that was previously a siege-ground, for a lengthy sit-down chat. His HQ is, as one might expect, a hushed haven and a serene shrine to cinema. Sir Christopher Frayling’s new book on has just been couriered over, ready to join the many other dense tomes filling the shelves (yes, Scorsese owns ). Antique Sicilian puppet knights dangle from hooks. And many, many immaculately framed film posters line the walls. But it’s perhaps telling that the two on the wall directly behind his desk — and — are both tales
