Legendary director, Martin Scorsese, joins Zane Lowe in studio on Apple Music 1 to discuss his acclaimed new film, Killers Of The Flower Moon. Scorsese tells Apple Music about the impact that movies had on him growing up, his love of music and how he’s approached the use of music in his films, and his storied career. He also shares details on the making of Killers Of The Flower Moon and what moved him to share the story on the big screen. Video below courtesy of Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1.
On the influence of iconic concert film The Last Waltz, working with Robbie Robertson, and blurring the line between docs and features: "it was an event, not just a music event. It was a cultural event. But here, when you say you're doing a film on the band, or you have Muddy Waters standing there, you have Joni playing Coyote. Stay on her. It's in between the lines. Watch what they do with their eyes and their mouths and how they move their heads, how they get into a line. Don't cut away to the guitarist. Don't cut away to the keyboard right away, the way you see. Just hold as much as you can. As much as you can. And so with 16 millimetre, we thought of that, but something happened. I got to know Robbie a bit… The two of us together were crazy, that maybe separately we were crazy in a different way…I can't really speak for him that much, but together, we really weren't crazy, meaning to say. So I had come up with the idea, "Let's do it in 35 millimeter," and that hadn't been done. That hadn't been done before, that kind of concert. Now, there was the Sanders Brothers, I believe they did the Elvis film. This is Elvis, I think, in 35 in Vegas, but it was quite controlled. This… would be different. However, the one advantage we had was that we knew who was going to be on stage where and where they're going to be standing and if they're going to be moving around. It's not a group where they were dancing around on stage. The band didn't do that. There wasn't always one lead singer. One song, you have four voices, that's interesting, the same character, by the way. We somehow…Jonathan, they got the money together and UA backed us, Eric Plescow, Mike Medavoy. They had done New York, New York, finishing Apocalypse Now, the beginnings of Heaven's Gate and Raging Bull. They already gave a green light to Raging Bull. So this was a little later, Raging Bull was later, but that was the studio that was allowing these sorts of things."
On Robbie Robertson getting mad at him for liking punk rock: "He just got mad at me when I liked the punk movement. We were living together in my house, a small house up in Mulholland Drive, and he would just come in sometimes, "Just lower it, lower it. It's too loud." I said, "No, but it's The Clash." He goes, "I don't care." He said, "I don't care. They have no musicianship, none. They can't play the guitar. They can't play the drums." I said, "Doesn't matter." He did concede with Elvis Costello, though. He conceded. When I showed the album, we went into the old Tower Records, myself and Jay Cox, who was a movie critic, but he was beginning to write rock criticism with Time Magazine. We looked and we saw all this English punk music, and we looked around and he said, "Grab that one, The Jam. Grab that one, The Clash. That's got to be something," and then we saw this Elvis Costello. He said, "Take this one because with that name, he better be good."
