Martin Scorsese Explains There's No Time to Direct All the Films He Wants to Make Before He Dies
Martin Scorsese has had quite an incredible filmmaking career, and he has no desire to slow down. There are so many films that Scorsese wants to make, and he is aware that he won’t get to all of them before he passes away.
During an interview with Deadline, the filmmaker was asked if he still has the drive to keep making movies after his next film Killers of the Flower Moon, and he offered his sad perspective on the matter:
"Got to. Got to. Yeah. I wish I could take a break for eight weeks and make a film at the same time [laughs]. The whole world has opened up to me, but it's too late. It's too late."
"I'm old. I read stuff. I see things. I want to tell stories, and there's no more time. Kurosawa, when he got his Oscar, when George [Lucas] and Steven [Spielberg] gave it to him, he said, ‘I'm only now beginning to see the possibility of what cinema could be, and it's too late.’ He was 83. At the time, I said, ‘What does he mean?’ Now I know what he means."
It’s kind of morbid to think about, but now I can’t help but wonder how many of these stories Scorsese will get to tell before he dies. But, I do love that he is going to be doing what he loves as long as he possibly can.
As for his next film, Killers of the Flower Moon, the movie is based on the book of the same name by journalist David Grann. The story “tracks the investigation of serial murders that plagued the Osage Nation during the 1920s after oil was discovered on their land. The murders prompted the newly-formed FBI to investigate.” Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone star as married couple Ernest and Mollie Burkhart. The cast also includes Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, and Brendan Fraser.
Here’s a description of the story: “At the end of the nineteenth century, the Osage Indians were driven onto a presumed worthless expanse of land in northeastern Oklahoma. But their territory turned out to be atop one of the largest oil deposits in the United States; to obtain that oil, prospectors were required to pay the tribe for leases and royalties. By the 1920s, the members of Osage Nation had become the wealthiest people per capita in the world. And then the Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances.”
The movie will be released in select theaters on Friday, October 6th. It will subsequently be expanded into a wide release on Friday, October 20th.