NEW YORK -- No one is more New York native than Martin Scorsese. You want mean streets? They were his early childhood playgrounds.
October 3, 2006 (Press Release) --
NEW YORK -- No one is more New York native than Martin Scorsese. You want mean streets? They were his early childhood playgrounds.
Scorsese's father was born in 1913 on Elizabeth Street in the tenements of lower Manhattan. "Both my grandmothers didn't go to a hospital. They had midwives," says one of the most celebrated filmmakers of all time.
He dubs his father's life as being the Italian Sicilian immigrant who was just trying to get bread on the table.
"My grandfather worked for Con Edison digging ditches and that sort of thing before he finally got his own grocery store," Scorsese says. "He tried to live a decent life and to be a decent working-class family."
Scorsese's grandfather understood that there were organized crime elements around him.
"It affected everybody's lives in my family," he says. "There was no doubt about it. But they didn't know how to get out. They weren't educated. They had to live with this element.
"I guess this is part of the mythology of New York. It was part of the mythology I heard at the dinner table."
Of course, it's part of the mythology of Martin Scorsese's famed filmography, which now includes a bloody cops-and-mobsters saga called "The Departed," which opens Friday.
The film, which stars Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg, is set in Boston, not New York.
"It doesn't matter whether it's Boston, Chicago, New York, Miami, Rio or anywhere. It filters down to survival level on the streets -- and this is the world that I know the best," he says. "You're talking about a society within a society within a society. And you have people at war within those societies. There's a war being played out in the streets with guys who are doomed from the beginning."
Source: http://www.yahoo.com
Scorsese's father was born in 1913 on Elizabeth Street in the tenements of lower Manhattan. "Both my grandmothers didn't go to a hospital. They had midwives," says one of the most celebrated filmmakers of all time.
He dubs his father's life as being the Italian Sicilian immigrant who was just trying to get bread on the table.
"My grandfather worked for Con Edison digging ditches and that sort of thing before he finally got his own grocery store," Scorsese says. "He tried to live a decent life and to be a decent working-class family."
Scorsese's grandfather understood that there were organized crime elements around him.
"It affected everybody's lives in my family," he says. "There was no doubt about it. But they didn't know how to get out. They weren't educated. They had to live with this element.
"I guess this is part of the mythology of New York. It was part of the mythology I heard at the dinner table."
Of course, it's part of the mythology of Martin Scorsese's famed filmography, which now includes a bloody cops-and-mobsters saga called "The Departed," which opens Friday.
The film, which stars Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg, is set in Boston, not New York.
"It doesn't matter whether it's Boston, Chicago, New York, Miami, Rio or anywhere. It filters down to survival level on the streets -- and this is the world that I know the best," he says. "You're talking about a society within a society within a society. And you have people at war within those societies. There's a war being played out in the streets with guys who are doomed from the beginning."
Source: http://www.yahoo.com
Email
Print
SPAM
LEAVE A COMMENT
