Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese Full Interview on The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

[Music] from our studios in new york city this is charlie rose [Music] martin scorsese and leonardo dicaprio hear their creative collaboration has been one of the most fruitful in film history in 2002 they first worked on gangs of new york since then they have partnered on the aviator the departed and shutter island they have just completed their fifth film it tells the story of the rise and fall of jordan belfort not for it made millions through financial scheming until he was brought down by the government and sent to prison here is the trailer for the

new film the wolf of wall street excuse me yeah is that your crown what yeah it's a jag yeah yeah how much money you make i don't know 72 000 last month you showed me a pay stub for 72 000 on it i quit my job right now and i work for you hey listen i i quit yeah i'm going into stocks my name is jordan belford at the tender age of 22 i headed to the only place that befit my high-minded ambitions name of the game move the money from your client's pocket into your

pocket but if you can make clients money at the same time it's advantageous to everyone correct now i started my own firm out of an abandoned autobody shop we will be targeting the wealthiest one of americans i love three things i love my country i love jesus christ and i love making people rich hello but i needed to mold them in my own image with this script i'm gonna teach each and every one of you to be the best this is the greatest company in the world i was becoming a legend aren't you married yeah

but married people can't have friends we're not i was making so much money i didn't know what to do with it twenty six thousand dollars for one dinner dad we're not poor anymore tell them about the size what are these signs they cure cancer the sides did cure cancer that's the problem they were there that's why they were expensive 22 billion the real question is this was all this legal [Music] this right here is the land of opportunity you just tried to bribe a federal officer this is america this is my home good for you

little man the show goes we don't work for you man you have my money taped your boobs technically you do work for me i'm pleased to have martin scorsese and leonardo dicaprio at this table welcome thank you for thank you so you're watching the trailer just tell me what's going through your mind as you're watching what you have spent a lot of time putting together what an insane and whatever this was really truly insane it was insane yeah i mean um we were taking on uh material that i think was uh very hard to get

financed in the first place i mean i i keep talking about it as uh you know a modern day fall of the roman empire or like a modern-day caligula but it was and the the hedonism was rampant and and it was it was a depiction of you know uh jordan's bio biography and and and how honesty was about his um you know addiction to wealth and power and greed uh during his time in wall street and all of that yeah absolutely but it was a wild shoot it really was yeah i mean i just uh

you know i only do we only finished the film about a few weeks ago yeah exactly and so seeing the trailer again i'm tired all over again just looking at it but uh no it was it was uh uh it was something that i didn't you had brought it to me you brought you brought the script to me and you had to beat out some people too i mean someone said that brad pitt was interested in other people interesting that's all the stuff that happens behind closed doors that i don't really understand but i i

went after this book it was competition and but you wanted it because it was a story that you wanted to tell because it was you know well look i mean this is a satire and it's and it's a dark comedy but uh you know so was so is dr strangelove you know or it's it's we take a you know a funny approach to this but ultimately what we're talking about is a very serious subject matter and it represents something within our very culture yeah i mean and they're winners and loses and lots of money and

people get hurt and people make money and absolutely and all of that people go to jail and absolutely that's why i didn't i never i'm sorry but i don't think i ever thought of it as a satire i just thought of a straight story i mean it is an accurate depiction accurate depiction but their own life was a satire sure but i think i think you know i think you know my feeling is is is uh not to separate yourself from it no this is it i think this is really it this is the mentality

you know and we were we were pushing it but believe me uh uh you couldn't i mean actually we just scratched the surface of uh i think the elements that were there the story could have told or whatever but what i wanted to do at that point was if we can't tell them all compress it into such a way that we would throw the audience right into the maelstrom of this kind of thinking yeah that's part of what happens if you're in there you do get caught up you almost feel like you're inside the room

where all this madness is happening you know and some things you might not have even seen before a lot of it's just uh truly unbelievable i mean i read this book and i couldn't believe that this man led this lifestyle and still survived but didn't you in fact actually talk to him during the making of the film or in some way quite quite incessantly quite incessantly so tell us who he was i mean you we know his story in the book but you just said one interesting thing he he was truthful yes to himself that's

what i think i appreciated most was that he you know to him the book i think was a cautionary tale of his time on wall street and since you know since that time he's a much different person and he's actually depicted as we depict him at the end of this movie of somebody that's going around talking about the dangers of greed and and uh trying to you know get into the business sector with with you know um some sort of moral foundation kind of tony robbins of his time exactly but uh his he was incredibly

candid and and honest with me about what he went through and a lot of times he would we would talk about sections in the book and say not only was it that bad i was 10 times worse and i'm going to tell you why and and i really appreciated that honesty because i think you know from marty's perspective he wanted to have a little bit of distance from that subject but i needed to speak to him uh constantly just to get you know the nuances and the detail of of of of what these scenes were

like what this lifestyle was like and what story were you telling just so i want to nail it down with you too and then i think what what i would when i found my way in the material because when i first read it i i felt that um i had i had in a sense visited this before in other ways and so um but i began to realize that that um it is about it is about uh in a sense you could say touch upon good fellas or casino or pictures like that and as in

a way here though there's there's a veneer of respectability yeah and um and what i was i was fascinated then by the possibility of a person who has that um has the uh um the uh talent of persuasion and and what's the problem a superb salesman can sell anything and where when that occurs and when he's able to move or he or she is able to move ahead that way um uh is and if there is no restraint yeah what do we do what if we were no sensors i mean there's no sense what we

do in a case like that i mean we're in our own way do we give in to our weaknesses um it's not only just him it's it's the confidence intervention the kind of moral yeah well that's what i was thinking i mean i'm more myself above that i mean i've had my own problems i've had my own problems in my life so so the thing is uh in terms of uh the confidence man the confidence man takes your confidence you confide in him yeah you trust you give him your trust and then he betrays you

and the confidence man is always charming it could be in it could be in uh business it could be an art it could be in love yeah you have said that that the speeches were some of the hardest stuff because that's where you saw the art of salesmanship you saw how much he believed almost or did what he was saying and it was almost messianic and you know well you know i had been thinking about the i mean terry winter wrote this incredible screenplay really catered for marty and myself and i'd been thinking about these

speeches for for almost six years and and and uh you know mechanically breaking them down but it wasn't really until i was on that stage where it kind of took on a life of its own i kind of felt closer to what jordan must have felt during that time period where he almost created a cult for himself and and and being consumed by that adoration and and and the power of you know being able to provide great amounts of wealth to this mass of people that were worshiping him and when i got on that stage

it it kind of took on this incredible life of its own and i kind of felt like i was bono or some rock star even though i knew even though i knew that these these you know actors were paid to clap every single time i was shouting at them you get this incessant need to you know you know push them forward and it almost became like this you know braveheart speech or or cry for battle except i was persuading them to go out there and you know essentially screw as many people over as possible do

not hang up the phone until you've got the sale all right you know um what's the magic here between the two of you this is i said the fifth film i mean do you achieve something with an actor so that it's it's unspoken it's you know the potential of him you know i i think i i think what's happened is that we go picture by picture and and i don't know it in terms of uh i think it really really clicked on um i got to know each other on gangs in new york but it

really clicked on aviator i think in that i saw that um you know not only the range is there but range i mean you can ask keep asking and you keep getting that's what i mean by the range and it can go further um um and so uh the main thing for me was that is that uh you know we have similar sensibilities of similar tastes and interests what does that mean um how does it play itself out attracting certain characters yeah not necessarily afraid to take certain risks you know with characters dealing with moral

issues as well yes right and wrongs yeah right and wrong and temptation in between and yeah where the line is crossing the line oh that's everything you know flies planes and can't open door we can't touch a doorknob that's fascinating yes um and then we go with howard hughes yeah and then we get into the departed and the sense of um uh all these elements that came into that that story would bill my hand script of the uh the sense of his own guilt as a character couldn't even sit still in a place and look

over his shoulder somebody's gonna come in behind him again and get him for whatever he's done in his life and sure enough he is the informer you know um but um that and um the shutter island where we where we even that was one of the hardest i think because um you can't pin the character down at all because he's many different people yeah and you don't even know the stories the stories may not exist ultimately by the end of by the end of the picture and so we found i was a labyrinth going through

that but it took a while for me to come around to this one um and and again that's not necessarily coming around to this to this story the story wolf of wall street because what happens is that it isn't like we're going to make another film together right away it's the the atmosphere the the uh the tone of it has to be we have to agree upon that we have to be in the same in the same uh the same city so to speak in a way and you get that by conversations about movies yeah

that you want to conversations and you know saying well the problem with the film like this is that you can't there's no sense especially my age going into a situation with a a group of people who are going to let's say you know a studio situation where they they're going to say well there's maybe too much drug taking or there's too much sex okay at this point there's no sense of me making the film because then i would just be constantly distracted by um the levels of uh of um restrictions yeah and constantly you simply

can you get to the phone you get to the door well no it's not like being there's no sense in it because there's only so many that's right breaths you can see exactly right that's exactly right so why do it so here he pointed out we got you were involved with the red granite which um yeah which made it very very possible for us to make the a movie that you could do what you need yeah we need it to have the freedom to expect it yeah yeah and right on a large canvas exactly it

all worked at all it all goes through the way it did mean streets and everything else it goes right through the mpaa and everything else we went we towed the line and this is the film we were able to make and we feel comfortable with it but um it's very hard you know because you have to deliver certain things the way the hollywood marketplace is now there's certain kinds of blockbuster pictures that they have to sell i'm not i don't believe i'm i'm made for that you know they need a certain kind of a certain

kind of product which is theirs which is fine it's just i can't i can't do it i would try but you don't need to do it now but within that context somebody will say well hey most movies are a mile and a half and here you have a three hour movie do you simply say this is what i need to tell the story that i was born to tell with this story um not a minute less not a minute more no i try i tried to cut it as much as possible and this is where

we would this is where we when that when the dust settled yeah this is where we were at thom and i uh the thalamus goodmaker is my editor since raging bull since uh 1980. and both of us we moved um vietnamese equipment into my house yes and uh just worked there day and night and worked the day and night for a year on the picture i really tried to get it as tight as possible but then to take the risks to of of um creating this uh whirlwind of a picture and then slowing suddenly scenes

it would take long dialogue scenes that would stop the the you think it'd stop the flow but because of what they're discussing for example oh you know they have a they have an event at the beginning of the film where they they pick up little people and toss them against targets yes now in order to do that in an office you must have a meeting now you know if you're sitting at a meeting you're going to be discussing or what about safety what about this imagine what could come out of those meetings so so to

put yourself in that mindset yeah you know and play it long enough to make you actually start thinking about the realities in this case he's also the narrator yes yeah was that a choice you had to make i think that was there that was it was in the screenplay yeah that was there yeah and did you give him a lot of room for improvisation in this or do you always do that with him because you know what he can do yes but i think in case of shutter island it was different and certainly aviator but

uh here yeah i think i mean there's something in this movie yeah i'm going to think about the scene when you're going back out to the car i mean you crawling around not knowing where the hell you are no i mean that was that was what was interesting about this film i think more than other films that we've done because a lot of films we've done i think have been not not beholden to a specific plot structure but certain things needed to happen to result in a very specific ending and and this was a lot

more free form it was kind of like organized chaos we knew we weren't taking on classic american literature here we're ultimately you know the the uh the character became the plot and i think more so than any of the other um uh films we've done there was a lot to discover in the in this in this movie there was a lot to discover about the very nature of what we were trying to do and it really didn't come alive until we were on set and we said that's what i was going to ask i mean

if someone became once you were there doing it you saw the possibilities of doing more i mean it was just about everyone taking on this hedonistic attitude and and and uh giving into every temptation possible and every every actor sort of had that you know air about them on set and and so it allowed for all these insane possibilities every single day i mean everyone would kind of push push the envelope but what was interesting more than anything and i think in this part it's the most fun set you've ever been on yes it was

but it was it was hard to get through in the morning sometimes because i knew i didn't know what was going to happen no but but the truth is i mean we improvised a lot of this beforehand but then when we got on set and working with the other actors it became it spiraled into a multitude of of different directions and it was it was very freeing in a lot of ways it really wasn't you know there's certain things that happened i mean you know uh if he says he crawls across the floor uh the

ground to get to his car and open the door and get in the car well the door opens up i didn't realize that i didn't really yes i didn't realize that until we got them they told me last week i forgot now what did we do it was up to him use your feet i didn't know how it was going to get that torque i didn't know either he said should i use my foot it looks like jacques or jerry lewis so what's the magic between the two of you and what does he bring when

you want to you work with somebody and you can work with almost anybody you want to and and you come back to a man you've worked with four times before this well look i mean i went into this uh venture and aggressively trying to find something uh to work with marty on with gangs of new york and i found that screenplay and uh you know ever since i got my first film it was really you know my father who pointed out you know this great cinematic relationship with with de niro and scorsese and started showing

me these films and you know when you when you feel that impact at a very at a very early age it makes quite an impression on you and so you know once i got the opportunity in essence to you know finance pictures with my name he was really the first guy that i you know aggressively went after to to to collaborate on something with and since then you know needless to say the man knows more about cinema as an art form than anyone i've heard that i've ever met in my life and so every movie

has been this this incredible incredible education for me really and i've learned a lot more about you know um what it is to be an actor and almost these kind of mantras i mean i you know it's not this conscious thing that he does with me he's not sitting me down and saying look kid this is how you do it for both of us is it's a discovery uh process and it's a con it's a constant conversation collaboration absolutely and and and in this film you know uh i keep saying this over and over but

my uh he said one thing to me and that was look you know we were very skeptical about putting these people up on film and the likability of guys that have been you know in a sense uh destroyed the american economy or at least that mentality uh with these characters and he said look as long as you portray people as authentically as you possibly can and you don't try to sugarcoat their their intentions um and you give an accurate portrayal of their very nature audiences will go along with you on that and that kind of

clicked with me for the entire filmmaking process and i kind of realized you know that's in a lot of ways the way every film should be done you know you know did you have to go ahead and i was just going to say it i was hoping that one of the one of the reasons i resisted at first i didn't wanted to make any apologies for um the way they behaved in a sense or try to be what's not apologies but uh to uh to even create a kind of um i don't know just want

to capture the authenticity yeah capture authenticity but put you put you in the mindset and to see to see um maybe add more out of frustration of the situation and the way things are now than anything else and said well just go ahead and behave that you never had a moment you said i've got to find a way to make him likeable no not at all what you had to do is make in fact we resisted that as much as there were people saying a lot of pressure for us to uh do uh certain things

uh you know i said um i think it's it would just be imposing it on there i said you know he is likable in the sense that the confidence man is likable you see this is when jordan meets a sexy woman named naomi a couple more times that scene yeah you should see what happens right after yeah i always hope i'm glad you i'm glad you give me if you give me more tape more film i'll show more of it that was actually one of the hardest scenes to cut yeah actually we were cutting that

to the last minute hard there was something about the looks or the uh the glances how many times about the jet skis all of that take that out and the edge the if you do too much the edge that you had with blair would have been lost and it was just one of them went to cut to his wife went to cut to hillary clinton this is the thing about filmmaking that people don't even think about right but all of a sudden it just didn't happen that way i know it happened because it was a

record you know who knew what what the possibilities were but no a lot of you know uh marty's obviously brilliant on set but the process that he has with thelma is pretty miraculous i mean they they they're they're old school you know they they sit there and it's one-on-one and they and they cut this film frame by frame and it's it's it's like a sculpture for them they don't they're not rushed in their process and that it's this constant dialogue between it the two of them they've been collaborating for such a long period of time

and that's where so much of i mean it's a cliche but so much of the the magic happens and in his filmmaking in fact you've said that's where you're the happiest yes yeah we had the best time thumb and i yeah in that way and uh because you know you've got a lot of great performances and you can decide how you use them how you bring them in the music how the music plays yes exactly i work out the music and so but the thing is of course the uh it's if we're even if we're

in trouble we know with the trouble is there we have it there are ways to go there are people to call we'll work out things work it out together without a thousand people around us and the clock ticking away take a good performance and make it into a great performance in the editing room i think you can i think you can i think it's in the eyes you're here to say he can well they're all good marvel margot roby is meant to be oh yes she's uh you know she she plays uh she plays naomi

and uh this uh everybody in the picture just came up to a certain level that uh yeah and jonah hill jonah hill yes the great jonah the great jonah hill a great person and a great i mean he was really uh in a lot of ways uh essential to the tempo of this movie i think that uh he came in with the right attitude you know right off the bat he said i am i know who these people are i've seen this world i've seen people consumed by wealth and greed and and and i i

can depict this character better than anyone so i immediately uh you know told marty about it and they had this incredible meeting and and right away he was he was he was he won our audition yeah for he read the scene he wanted to audition yeah but i didn't pay attention to audition it's just him yeah yeah he's very good yeah yeah and he's an incredible improvisational actor and you sat in fact probably the best probably the best improvisational act i've ever worked with i mean it's uh it's amazing when you can you know have

a certain uh thought process for what you think a scene is going to be and then somebody comes in and tears everything apart in front of you and you have to ride with it you have to react to it in real time and all of a sudden it becomes something entirely different and and that was the kind of that was the freedom of the attitude that we had while making this movie that would stimulate you to do things that you hadn't even imagined doing absolutely yes absolutely okay in fact a couple of times oh sorry

no go ahead no a couple of times remember a couple of times where you and pj and a number of the guys had to actually try to stop him this is where donnie the character that jonah hill plays tells jordan he wants to work for him here it is exactly that's what tell me what that is the timing issue is it literally when you hear hey paulie how are things we went back and forth on that one yes yeah that's that's the problem and also when to jump it in other words to try to break

the form to get the impression that the picture is in a conventional narrative form in terms of editing but then to push and break um the continuity and not not uh i don't mean continuity in terms of uh just mismatches i mean massive mismatches they don't matter because the the rhythm of the story should go with the rhythm of the way they're thinking and so the images should go the same way and we just kept cutting ripping things apart really so a lot of that dust stuff doesn't match at all okay i want to introduce

one more character this is your father played by rob reiner your father max is it really interesting this here's a scene between jordan and his father stop as we were watching this scene i mean you had you had a lot of different kinds of things to work with yeah i mean you know if you want to stretch yourself and broaden yourself and think of all the things you've done including the full film from him before this you know i would think this is like this is a huge menu yes well like i said there was

an incredible freedom in this process and you know once you set up the characters whose one and only concern is their own indulgence the script was set up that way it's almost like this um this uh drug-infused ride that we go on that where people are are incredibly motivated by greed and we don't really see the wake of their destruction we didn't need to do very consciously we didn't cut away to the to the ramifications of their actions we didn't cut away to the people on the other end of the line to see how they

were affecting you know the guy that just lost his mortgage it was this hypnotic you know voyage forward constantly consuming everything within within your path and when you when you set up that kind of attitude on set you know it's it's every actor's sort of dream you know you don't you have no moral compass and you have nobody to answer to except yourself so it freed all of us up really i think there really is no moral landscape there anymore yeah in a sense and uh uh if you do have any moral crimes just take

a few drugs and get something i mean there's a drug thing the quaaludes is just i mean yes that quaalude sequence it almost became a film within the film yeah it did yeah it really did with the yeah it was through the i think it was a lot a lot to the pre-production process where we were combining different scenes and adding tension to it and adding tension to it you know bringing in the sort of popeye cartoon yeah what would happen i couldn't believe that when i saw that yeah terry and you and me and

all of a sudden popeye's on the couch the kid is there the kid is watching cartoons fantastic it's natural progression no but then also the fact that donnie you know the fact that he apologizes to me with some of the most powerful quaaludes on the marketplace because he messed up a money deal and and then that then you follow these two guys as he simultaneously finds out that the fbi is you know bugging his home and then donnie's on the phone with the swiss bankers he's got to get back simultaneously you know um they they

fight with each other i don't want to i don't want to ruin the whole thing but originally you make it more interesting rather than ruining it i mean there's also the moment when he's wearing a wire and he has to tell him yeah i mean and that's sort of who he is yeah i can't not tell you yeah to incriminate yourself well i think that um you know i think jordan at that time was uh very very morally twisted obviously but that was one of the key moments in the script between those two characters where

he he can't quite you know he can't quite rat on his friend he's got to let him know what he's doing and ultimately the the landscape of where they were at is so corrupt in its own right that it envelops him and all the characters that's around them so that's an interesting moment in the movie too and and who who was it that played his his wife who naomi margot robbie you know robbie australian actress uh she just really came in we auditioned a lot of a lot of girls it's amazing it's really good yes

excellent actress and uh she she i just hadn't seen him that's why i didn't know she's amazing something about australian actors too i mean i got to work in the great gatsby and they just work three times harder than everybody else they're this isolated little island they know about american movies they worked their ass off and she came in and just she knocked it out she really did oh boy did you give her much direction or yeah she didn't need much no she didn't need much i mean we could see it right away in the

audition yeah she came in what did you see that she had she was the character you imagine uh she was the character or she was able to handle him just by a look yes i remember the first eyes that was the second one yeah that was it when he came to her house and especially especially we did the in the audition scene we did the scene where she uh where she wakes them up rather you know yeah right rudely with the glass of water yeah right and um she stood up to him no matter what

he said i thought that was interesting too i mean the tension there in terms of the way she stood up to you yeah absolutely yeah i mean she was not a pushover no no no no she knows me and that was necessary i assumed yes yes yeah oh absolutely yeah but it was also necessary for him to deny as much as possible i mean you could forget things like that that were going on it slips your mind dominatrix oh yeah i saw that part yeah did he like that that's what my first thought when i

saw that scene was oh yeah this is jordan jordan must have liked it yeah he liked all of it and he liked all of it he didn't even remember for a while but no my attitude with all of this which is why it wasn't embarrassing and a lot of stuff is embarrassing i played it like a you know kind of like he was a roman emperor and he was indulging in every possible thing that he could yeah yeah i mean short of you know maidens feeding us grapes there's everything you know the modern day context

in this movie now what do you have to do to make sure you have ratings problems well um i was able to uh as i said i've had a long time with the ratings board since 73 but here um they they just really asked us to tone down as uh what we could of the accumulation of the uh sexual uh images in other words the sum total of it yeah so in certain areas and so we went in and but by the way in our rough cuts yeah and when we were screening it for our

friends and uh friends of friends of friends very often um you know you're cutting the picture you're trimming it the first cup was four hours and five minutes so you know where is it tomorrow that's too much and that came up a lot it came up a lot so it was not just mpaa it was it was a lot of people my friends who might trust saying you know we get it here maybe we can want to move on listen to them in terms of yeah in certain places then we say which i can't give

up that shot yeah i can't give up well try this one no i don't want to go with that one what is the hardest thing for you to give up uh i think we're okay i think we're okay i don't feel i don't feel bad about any of it i think the the the um the plane the there was a big party a little bit we trimmed on that yeah but that was enough i think it was fine i couldn't i hadn't devised a shot for it anyway if i had devised a very clear shot

for it i'd say that's one thing instead i took the shot and made it uh in the hotel room afterwards which was a overhead tracking shot of the debris that's where the shot is but in the plane it's showing what they're doing so in order to tighten and everything else i had no problem in other words this is the director's cuff that's basically it there's some frames here and there that's not all you [Music] and thank god for that yeah so when you were when you're going through all of this and and making this movie

um what was the hardest thing for you well i think the hardest part was the drugs all the time all the time was was just the pre-production process in a lot of ways i think that you know you know constantly reaffirming to ourselves the type of movie that we wanted to do the fact that we wanted to take a lot of chances and really questioning you know what an audience how an audience would react to all of this stuff we had to kind of reaffirm that within one another there was a lot of different you

know sequences where um the character could have gone another direction but we we kind of said to ourselves look you know um i mean there was one in particular where it starts to get very dark towards the end of the movie and and and and and jordan does some pretty horrific things to his wife and you know i remember um you know somebody bringing up the subject of whether the audience would still be with our lead at that point and whether we'd betray an audience and and marty and i kind of looked at each other

and said look we're going to portray this guy the way he depicted himself because he thought authenticity would make him more appealing to you into that place and i just didn't we just didn't feel it to be more we had to be a little more truthful to uh to what we felt also about how we felt you know maybe you feel about yourself or you feel about your own self and then you feel about yourself in situations like that or [Music] and how you behaved in the past and uh who you you judge over it

sitting here talking to you i get to get the impression that you guys think you made the movie you wanted to make i feel that yeah yeah definitely absolutely and that's very rare exactly that's my second point it's it's incredibly rare to truly get to make the movie especially on this scale because when you're making an almost an american epic about greed and and indulgence and uh you know hedonism like this you you really have to cater to a studio in a lot of ways you have to cater to the audience and this we we

had financiers and collaborators that said look not only do we want you to uh put this material up on screen but we want you to push the envelope with it you know you know be free artistically to go to places that you never imagined and so you know that was one of the big motivators with me with to try to get him to do this because i knew that there was there was there weren't that many directors that would really take the time to explore that within the characters i mean it's i i keep uh

you know referencing this one uh line in goodfellas but you know that's out of the the experimentation with the actors getting to play even if it's not intricate to the structure of the plot it's you're capturing something about the very essence of who they are which ultimately shapes the course of what the movie is you know he's he's interested in character studies he's interested in what the actors do to capture the essence of who these people are what's the line in good fellows uh you know one of my kind what am i here to amuse

you i i kept asking him about that and he said look that was what wasn't even in the script the guys just got around and they started talking but to me that signifies everything that the movie's about well they're they're at a table they're friends but there's a danger there that if you cross a line with me the lifestyle the essence of the lifestyle is in one second it can change you're dead exactly yeah and that actually is a joe pesci thing actually happened to him and um so he said how about this i said

what do you mean no i think it's something that he he's experiencing in his life you crossed me yeah yeah oh they were talking everything was fine all of a sudden uh it changed yeah and when it changed you had to think fast yeah you know good phone is one of your favorite films oh for sure yeah i think of his films yeah i mean the one that really moved me the most was uh was taxi driver i think i remember watching it at 15 years old and and being transfixed with travis pickle because i

was i was um locked into this character and i felt such incredible empathy towards i understood him i understood his loneliness and then he deceived me you know and at the point he deceived me i said what who is this guy that i'm watching who is this person and and i i was identifying with with him and i was with him on this whole journey and all of a sudden this is not the person that i thought he was and and and to me it's just really the greatest um independent filmmakers it really is schroeder's

uh extraordinary pulse rating portrayed a script i think you had something to do with it nobody paul paul went through a lot on that one he he did a beautiful delivered this just it was amazing and de palma gave me the script brian obama is that right he said you got to read this thing but you were going around hollywood with that script enhancing this is the movie that i want to do get away from me i haven't made mean streets yet right yeah get away kid and then suddenly the mean streets of this world

but demeanor on you you're different no one's gonna make that picture that was so annoying didn't didn't bobby deniro suggest you should take a look at him way back when this boy's life and um then i saw i always tell the story because i saw i saw i i hadn't seen in the theater um gilbert grape and it was on television but i thought it was a documentary at first because the acting was so i hadn't really i hadn't recognized anyone i didn't know you in it and and then i sat and watched the entire

picture and we were amazed you know are are you now able to use able to make the move as you want to make in other words are you at this place which is a good place to be i mean it's hard to find ones that you want to make i assume or maybe there are a lot of them i'm trying i mean really the i have a production company but it was really set up uh selfishly defined material outside of the studio system stuff that i found a little bit different outside the box that that

could be shaped from the very beginning and catered to be something that i wanted to do as an actor because a lot of times once it goes to the system it turns it could be a great premise but it can turn into something entirely different so you know it i even in my career i think that films like aviator or films like blood diamond that i did are almost impossible to get financed no matter who's a part of it and it and it really takes you know we we always talk about the 70s the age

of the director the edge of the blockbuster but i've even seen it in the last the last 10 years the the business changes and thank god for i think outside sources of people that have run into you know uh into wealth that are fans of movies and say look i think there's a marketplace for something else there's a marketplace for an epic of this nature that doesn't check all the boxes of you know explosions and uh you know uh fighting in robots or whatever you know we can you can make a movie like this we're

gonna we're gonna we're gamblers we're gonna take a risk on this type of film and thank god that there's you know uh people out there that fill that gap because a lot of the films that we're seeing now i think that are are are different are are coming from these outside sources which raises the question of television you know taking house of cards yes exactly you know breaking bad i mean terry winter who wrote this script um that's how we met and uh and we came up with the hbo series boardwalk empire from this from

this experience right yeah and so uh but it's fascinating to me because what we had wanted to try i think in the in the 70s too was to uh uh it was going that way pictures were getting longer berlucci had made no vicente at five and a half hours you know i mean the films are getting long the idea of exploring um character and story and atmosphere to the almost like novels in a way that can go on for but sopranos went on for 60 hours you see um and so this is something that may

be um maybe the place for uh the development of the new cinema really i mean it put the news in the old cinema just was what it was and it's gone that's it so we just move on and we take advantage of what is new the new technology the new marketplace if the new marketplace makes uh films like you know uh that are bigger blockbusters some of them are very good fine there's a place for that but it's important for the young people to know that there's other kinds of cinema um um and there has

to be we have to fight for the space to make those pictures whether it's uh uh whether it's like uh you know uh the anderson films uh or uh colin brothers or alexander payne um paul thomas and paul thompson and and uh the cohen brothers and alexander payne there's gotta be places where they should be supported yeah you know that was the thing in the 70s they were supported i don't feel that way now i think it's a struggle for i may be speaking at a turn for them i don't know but i do feel

there's a struggle for even the the the most moderate budget picture to be made and if you don't get it made or if you do get it made and people don't see it because there's always that problem of the distribution to getting to see it there are pictures you don't see anymore they go straight to video you know of course now ultimately uh pictures will be shown you know um through the satellites there's all kinds of platforms all kinds of platforms which is great but it's now this period uh lucas was talking george lucas was

talking about it the period of like 10 years it's going to be of a dark zone in a way we're not going to know exactly where things are going to land in terms of how these things will be presented 10 years from now but at the same time i mean and thinking about the technology because you still are in love with film and nuts he did this yes right yeah yeah we showed you but you shot nothing for me for dailies or anything oh no no we we did the dailies video but but digital i

did shoot digital at night yeah because i'm not we can't light the streets anymore yeah i can't it so you combine film and digital yes yes yeah um to sit here his enthusiasm is so great isn't it absolutely you know i mean after all the films and all the awards and all the achievements it's like you're talking to someone who's 21 years old yeah you know and has all these skills and all this love of the craft absolutely films and he gives you a great appreciation for film as an art form you know and and

sometimes that that's undermined i think i think people to me it's the great modern art form as well but you know not to speak for him but i keep thinking of you know the stories he tells uh as a young man watching movies incessantly over and over with his with his father and the impression that he must have had of what has been achieved in cinema's history and and i think that if there's anything we share i share that too i i share a great appreciation for what's been done before me and it's almost like

this um you know the this it's it's reaching for the clouds you're trying to constantly achieve something that great within your lifetime and you know you have to keep questioning yourself did i do that and i don't think that's a thirst that's ever truly quenched you know you you keep pushing yourself forward and and wanting to achieve something as great as as as a great for you as as came before you could you stand on the shoulders of giants as they say and you have a responsibility you know to to carry the tradition and not

interrupt the process that's one of the things with our relationship too that he he'll bring to me um oh you know i uh did you this incredible film by this guy named tarkovsky yeah oh yes which one's solaris oh yes yes hilarious oh okay so let's take this do you remember the scene with the cars at night or the cars that traveled into the mesmerizing sequence yes so his father would show him this stuff see and um so we have another for example on this film he turned me onto the mills brothers is that right

yes now i have to explain i knew about the milk brothers marty the mills brothers from the spots to the flipping you know so i'm saying yeah then you listen to louis jordan and ella fitzgerald of course did you you used to show actors and invite them in and just have them watch a lot of films as part of your both friendship and as part of what you wanted to infuse with each of them yes yes and on this one i don't think we did much i don't think we didn't send you so you ought

to watch this or this or this no we don't already watch most of them yeah we didn't need to it sweet smell of success really is the key you know sidney falco right uh is like is like the jordan belford character you know yeah uh but um you didn't really need to board this yeah yeah absolutely at his suggestion or i'd seen it before beforehand no but i think this film yeah this one was different in its approach films like aviator specifically i mean we watched uh film after film sometimes just to get the the

specific tone of one sequence but uh you know this film was i think a little bit uh different more radical and like i keep saying it was this real discovery process to see what would happen you know if if we put ourselves in that environment and and you know gave the actors the freedom to do what they wanted it was very experimental in that in that way yeah and for example well it's almost like uh you know his character is is um you know bringing me into dante's inferno he's the messenger that is bringing me

into the depths of hell you know and and you know matthew came up came up to us and said i have an idea for this scene and he brilliantly came up with this sort of rewritten monologue that um was so outrageous marty immediately said yes do that but then this sort of chess thumping thing that he did that became the almost mantra of greed you pointed out to me so he's doing something yeah that in between takes and i think it's a vocal exercise i said so listen to it so i listen i said do

you think he should do i said why not let's try it and then he went with it he started adding uh inadvertently sort of like hesitant bird calls but then he continued and he made it almost like this uh 80s uh rap at the end of of of wall street and then we kind of took that theme and we were doing my sort of final speech to the troops and that became the mantra of greed you know what i mean yeah but it was that fun it was the mantra yeah it became this uh but

that that like i said that was what it was like on set it was it was a very free app