Michael Dwyer: The first time I met you was at a party in LA about seven years ago and I was trying to persuade you to come to the Dublin Film Festival at that stage so I said come to Ireland, that's where they invented catholic guilt so you took me up on that idea?
Martin Scorsese: Yeah, absolutely, I'm glad I'm finally here. It takes me a little bit of time because I don't travel that well so if I have three things to do I try and put them together in one or two trips. I'm supposed to be doing these movies and things.
Dwyer: You're going to Cannes now?
Scorsese: Over many years they have been asking me to be President of the jury in Cannes and this year the schedule seems to have worked out and I'll be going there in a day or so and I guess I have to look at all the films. There are only 22 in competition so it's not too bad.
Dwyer: And the screenings start there at 8.30 in the morning.
Scorsese: No I'm not going to the 8.30 screenings. (Laughter) I think I'm going to start at eleven o'clock and go all the way through the day.
Dwyer: So how has your experience of Dublin been before we get down to talk about your work?
Scorsese: I've had a great time here, I had a Joycean tour yesterday.
Dwyer: With David Norris?
Scorsese: With David Norris yes. It was great I had just finished re-reading Ulysses last week. When I was a teenager I read Portrait Of An Artist and it became my favourite book for a long time, I didn't understand a lot of it but I sensed something about it and then I read some readers guides. I like very much the way he deals with the religious aspects, I think that's where I connected immediately. Then I tried to read Ulysses when I was 21 and couldn't get through it, then I tried again and I finally finished it last week. (Laughter)
Dwyer: One of the questions here refers to that, so if I could get it now. Would you ever consider making a movie of Ulysses?
Scorsese: No, no. Personally I think it is very visual, I think it is extraordinarily visual. There was a film made of it, Joseph Strich made a film of it a while back, in the late sixties I think, but it is difficult to translate. It's remarkable visually in many instances. It's interesting how you start a scene, you know you write a script and it says, we see the auditorium and all these people are filming in it, so that means that I am the camera and it's a wide shot. To a certain extent that seems to me to be all right, that's what's called, in a sense, an establishing shot, then you cut in tighter to where we are, whether it's on our backs or on our faces.
But with James Joyce he'll start, maybe, on the corner of this table and the camera may creep around or something, and we'll see the foot of the cameraman and then it will pan over and then we see the audience, you know, he wrote like that and you're trying to figure out, you know, where the hell is he? What is he writing about? Let me get this straight, it's in a street. Okay the words sound right, I know that and then it's remarkable because it reveals itself, the images of the street and the people and the bars. All of this stuff is so remarkable and the sounds too are fantastic.
Dwyer: Did you know that James Joyce was the manager of Ireland's first full time cinema?
Scorsese: No, no I didn't.
Dwyer: Yes it was the Volta which opened in 1909, so there's another connection. (Laughter.)
Scorsese: Well it's an interesting thing because it has a lot to do with Catholicism as far as I am concerned. You know I was saying last night, I was taught in elementary and high schools mainly by Irish priests and nuns so there's a part of me which finds coming to Ireland very familiar.
Continue to Part 2
Back to articles
Return to main page