Author and filmmaker Rebecca Miller has delivered one of the streaming events of the year with her five-part, five-years-in-the-making Apple TV+ series on Martin Scorsese - fast-moving, frequently funny, and full of stuff that you never knew, no matter how many times you've seen the movies. In Mr Scorsese, old friends and A-listers mingle as the iconic director, who loves the camera in more ways than one, takes us from his New York childhood up to the present day. Block off an afternoon or evening, because you may well be doing all five episodes straight.
Here, long-time Wicklow resident Miller reflects on turning an "amazing" personal experience into one for viewers around the world.
Harry Guerin: Great job. Do you think it was always at the back of your mind to make Mr Scorsese, only you didn't realise it? I know you've said that the light bulb came on after you made the documentary on your father, Arthur Miller: Writer, but do you think the Scorsese project might have been at the back of your mind all along?
Rebecca Miller: Well, if it was, it was very unconscious! But I'm a very unconscious person, so anything is possible! I think I'm planning stuff - and very often I have no idea that I'm planning it!
Did Martin Scorsese say yes straight away, or was there an afternoon of 'give me a while to think about it'?
When I first asked his doc[umentary] producer, he told her to say to me to write a letter. So, I wrote a letter. And then, after that, I got a meeting. And then, by the end of that meeting, it became clear that he was planning on doing this without actually saying. It was like, 'Well, we could do this, or we could do that.' It was like, 'Are we making this?!' So yeah, but it was a process.
Among the fascinating things in the series is how youthful he seems at 82 when he's talking. Did that really come across to you in that first meeting with him?
Oh, absolutely! The first time I met him, actually, was on the set of Gangs of New York (starring Rebecca Miller's husband, Daniel Day-Lewis). I didn't have really a social relationship with Marty; I had a film relationship. He would watch my films sometimes to give me notes and because he had given me ideas for Personal Velocity (Rebecca Miller's 2002 film) initially. But when I first met him, I couldn't believe how youthful he was on set - and also open to his own insecurity of whether he could shoot it right! I mean, the guy is like a much younger man; he really is. Just his appreciation of life - it's the secret to his youth, I think. One of them, anyway!
Mr Scorsese began life as a film. Did it go from being a film to a series when he talked for four hours about his life up to the age of 10?
Well, it was really when we started to cut it all together. We were cutting and interviewing at the same time. It was over a long period of time. But when we were starting to cut the early part of his life, which we could do because we had the first interviews and we had the archival, it was like we couldn't squish it into 15 minutes. We just couldn't. At first, when I thought it was a feature, I thought, 'Ok, Mean Streets is going to be on, like, minute 20 or whatever.' And then you realise, 'Wait a minute. No, it doesn't make any sense. Like, his whole life makes no sense if you do this.'
And, of course, we had already sold the film to Apple as a feature, so it took a little bit of convincing! Luckily, they were very open to it. But I've never had an experience like that where the whole thing shifted so dramatically.
While I was watching the series, I wondered how you kept so many plates in the air and kept track of all of this stuff. The amount of content in each episode is bonkers. How long did it take to edit?
The whole process was five years, including all the interviews, and editing was about maybe two and a half to three years. It was a lot of editing. I mean, you can't imagine! And also, I kept feeling like I was losing my mind! 'Is this here or is it there?' But luckily, we had lists up on our board, so we had a lot of lists. The structure was always shifting. I have this wonderful editor (David Bartner) whose mind is like a steel trap. He would be like, 'Ok, where is the thing about Sharon Stone saying this?', and we'd always find it, but it was crazy.
One of the main things that was the challenge was actually transitions, thought transitions, because there's a lot of subject matter transitions. We don't want the viewer to feel like they're getting whiplash, but they are kind of being guided with music and these 'bridges' - that was really a challenge.
What was the biggest surprise for you with Martin Scorsese?
The biggest surprise was, I guess, his honesty. I didn't know what to expect, but I knew this was a man who had been infinitely interviewed, infinitely discussed. I had hoped that we would do something different than anybody else, and I think he really wanted to give me something different. In that sense, I feel like we made the series together, even though he didn't see it until it was done.
And there were times, even, when he said things and I knew that he said them - and I knew they would be in the film (series). It's hard to describe. When he said, like, 'Artistry involves cruelty' - he knew that would be in the movie! And there were other moments that were just so candid, and I think he just allowed himself to drop in and exist and remember and be and just, like, tell me. It was an amazing experience. For me, it was like an experience of sort of radical listening, I would call it.
What's the one question you haven't been asked about Mr Scorsese that you wish people would ask?
Hmmm... Well, I don't know what the question would be, but there was a time where I wanted there to be almost like a personal essay quality to it (the series) without putting myself all over it. But there were things I wanted to say. Like, for example, the way that Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro's Mean Streets character) is reflected in many of the films - that that's a character and who also was a real person. He was then metabolised and first turned into Sally Gaga in Who's That Knocking at My Door (Martin Scorsese's feature debut) and then Johnny Boy (in Mean Streets). But then you see him again and again and these reflections. Or the woman, the elusive female - that's another thing.
So, I was really interested in mirroring and reflections and repetitions throughout the work, but I didn't want to hit it with a hammer. I just wanted it to lightly go through, but there is a kind of essay quality to some of that, where I'm trying to convey ideas but through this kind of entertaining way.
That really comes across. Make another series on someone.
I want to, I want to - I just have to figure out who it is!
Mr Scorsese is streaming now on Apple TV+.
