Martin Scorsese Talks Everything Movies on DINNER FOR FIVE

Back in the day (mostly) before he was a big time director, Jon Favreau hosted a show on IFC called Dinner for Five. It was a pretty simple concept: Favreau and four guests — a mix of actors, writers, directors, and comedians — would eat dinner and shoot the bull, and then they would cut the best bits into a 30 minute episode. It was great. The casual atmosphere made everyone more candid and relaxed than they might be on a traditional talk show, plus they might be drunk. Dinner for Five is how I know that Frank Darabont lived above Tom Cruise’s garage to write Mission Impossible 3, and he loved it. (Darabont wrote the first draft. He's not credited, but in the same episode he talks about how much he hates the WGA's rules for writing credits.) Also, in the Season 2 premiere a Daredevil era Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner appear on the show and she is just so clearly in love with him it is amazing. (Watch her threaten to kick Kevin Smith's ass for making fun of him at the 16:10 mark here.)

This special episode is nothing like that. There is no restaurant, food, or booze, and there is an audience. This is really more like a less pretentious Inside the Actor’s Studio. This is just Jon Favreau on a stage with Martin Scorsese. And while Favreau is the host and he guides the conversation, he (smartly) just lets Scorsese talk. About everything. About story vs. plot, about using songs instead of score, about technical aspects of his films. And he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of film and can list and describe specific scenes that influenced his work. If you didn’t already think that Martin Scorsese was frighteningly intelligent about movies, you will after you watch this interview. I’m not going to give you a summary of the various topics. You should just watch the whole thing, and you can, right here.

Thanks to Indiewire