The Irishman. Image supplied by Netflix
Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman is coming very soon to both a cinema and a Netflix near you. We were lucky enough to attend a press conference for the films to hear some of the legendary cast and crew discuss the journey of getting The Irishman to your screens. In attendance were Martin Scorsese, actors Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, and producers Jane Rosenthal and Emma Tillinger Koskoff and moderator Francine Stock.
In some ways we look at this line-up and ask ‘why did it take so long’? Give us a little bit of context as to how The Irishman came together.
Martin Scorsese: It goes back to some work that Bob [De Niro] and I have been involved in for 20-odd years. We were trying to get another project going based on our tenure in Hollywood so to speak in the 70’s and 80’s. Then that developed into something else, that developed into something else, and we never quite settled on the project. The last time we really worked together was back in 1995 with ‘Casino’. From that point on we would always check with each other what we were doing, whether I could fit into his plans and vice versa. Ultimately, we did get involved in ‘The Winter of Frankie Machine ‘ as a project, but we weren’t too enthusiastic about that, but we knew we had to do something. Around 2007 we decided to try and work it out, but couldn’t settle on something, and ‘Frankie’ we thought could have possibilities. I was really looking for something to do with Bob that would enrich where we had gone in the 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s. To just replicate something we had already done at the beginning of our careers wouldn’t be enriching in anyway. Bob was about to direct ‘The Good Shepherd’, and Eric Roth was writing that and knew we were looking to do Frankie Machine, which is about a hitman who has retired. Eric then gave Bob the book ‘I Heard You Paint Houses’ by Charles Brandt for research.
Robert De Niro: Yeah, Eric had just read it and got me onto it. I had always wanted to read it just as research, and after I read it I got together with Marty and told him ‘you gotta look at this, I think this is going to be what you want to do.’
Jane Rosenthal: It got to a point where Bob and Marty were ready to commit to making ‘Frankie Machine’, it was going to be financed by Paramount and Brad Grey. We were all on a call together, and Brad was going to give us the greenlight. In the middle of this conversation, Bob said, ‘well, there’s this other book that we’re thinking about, maybe we could combine these two movies?’ So, Brad turned around and said, ‘oh, you want to take a ‘go’ movie and turn it into a development project?’ Everybody just kinda went ‘ya-huh’, and that was 2007. From there we brought Steve Zallian on to work on the script, we optioned ‘I Heard You Paint Houses’, ‘Frankie Machine’ went away, and then Steve delivered his script in 2009.
Scorsese: The point is we were trying to find something we felt right with. It is hard to know what to define ‘right’ with, it’s kinda ambiguous. We wanted something we felt comfortable with, but it wasn’t something we could really articulate. Then once Bob described this character of Frank Sheeran to me, I felt that he had a good sense of it. It was then that I began to think that this was something we should really try to explore and see what we could come up with that would ultimately be of value to us as creative partners working together, as well as getting Al and Joe Pesci involved and the rest of the cast. We took a chance, Steve put together a wonderful script, but it still took a number of years.
De Niro: The script was terrific, as Marty says, but then it was a matter of getting everybody’s schedules to line up. I remember Marty was shooting ‘Hugo’ which was when we started discussing availability, as Marty knew he wanted to do ‘Silence’, so I just wanted to make sure that he was okay with us to just let it out there that we were working together again when talking in interviews. Usually I’m very superstitious about that, because once you start talking about it, it usually doesn’t happen. But I thought, maybe in this case, because we had no backers, and mentioning that Al and Joe were onboard to try and get some interest, even getting everyone together to do a reading to stir that interest.
Rosenthal: We got together, all the cast, in January 2012 right before we went to go into prep for ‘Silence’, and we taped a table reading. I personally believed at that point that that would be all we would have of ‘The Irishman’. We found it difficult to get financing, but when everyone heard that table reading, there was a new energy about it. Then Marty and Emma went off to do ‘Silence’, so we had another delay, but a good one.
Image supplied by Netflix
Al Pacino. Jimmy Hoffa. What was your initial reaction to the idea of playing Jimmy?
Al Pacino: I have known Bobby and Marty for a very long time. So, when Bob first came to me with the opportunity to work with them, it was very important to me. For years, me and Marty nearly worked together, and of course me and Bob have known each other since we were very young, so anything they would’ve come to me with would’ve felt like a good thing.
Scorsese: The first meeting we had with you about this Al was in a hotel in LA. It feels so long ago. After that first discussion he [Al Pacino] just turned to us and asked ‘is this actually going to happen?’ It was so complicated with schedules and of course no real enthusiasm over financing, it made it a nice dream, but we were concerned that the reading would be the first and only time we’d see it or hear it. We knew that going in, somehow we persevered.
Pacino: That reading was really very good. Bob had arranged it so that the right people were there to listen to it, they seemed very excited.
Scorsese: Yes they did seem very excited. They still didn’t give us the money. [Laughs]. It was great for word of mouth. We had everyone there, a lot of the final cast were there. It was really a very enjoyable reading.
Pacino: You could definitely feel it in the room, there was a live wire there, it had life to it. I always thought it would eventually happen.
De Niro: I’d get calls from Al from time to time just asking ‘is it going to happen?’ I’d say don’t worry, hold on, we’re working on it.
This is obviously a Netflix production, and there seems to be a good collaboration between streaming services and the film industry. But of course, there are some naysayers. Do you think we’re coming to a point where we’re going to have to redefine what is cinema?
Scorsese: Why’s everyone looking at me? [Laughs] I think we’re redefining it in such a way that I think is not so much an evolution of cinema as it is a revolution, as big as the introduction of sound. It’s the revolution of cinema itself. The new technology is bringing in things that were previously unimaginable. Not only is it something extraordinary and good for narrative films and stories, but it also opens up the original conception of what a film is. The way to watch a film has changed so radically, we have to say that there’s a certain kind of film that’s made here, there’s VR films there, holograms and so on. There’s all sorts of things that could be coming that we don’t even know. One thing that should always be protected, and something that I think will always be there is a communal experience, and I think that’s best in a theatre. Now, homes are being theatres too, but it’s a major change. One has to keep an open mind. There’s no doubt that seeing a film with an audience is really important. There is a problem though that you have to make the film, and we had run out of room, there was no room for us to make the picture. There was the financial issue too, with the amount of CGI, which is an experiment and it opens it all up. It’s an evolution of makeup. You accept certain norms with makeup, accept the illusion so to speak. Taking that and having the backing of a company that says ‘you’ll have no interference, you can make the filmas you want but the trade-off is that it streams with theatrical distribution’, I just figured that’s the chance you take on this particular project. What streaming means and how that’s going to re-define a new form of cinema, I don’t know. I thought for awhile that long form TV was cinema, but it’s simply not. It’s a different viewing experience, it’s episodic, so what has to be protected is the singular experience of witnessing a picture ideally with an audience. But there’s room for so many other ways. There will be crossovers completely. How to determine the value of a theme park film, like Marvel pictures, where theatres become amusement parks, that’s a different experience, it’s not cinema it’s something else, whether you go for that or not. We shouldn’t be invaded by it, and that’s a big issue. We need theatre owners to step up and show more narrative films in a traditional sense.
Rosenthal: One point to add, it will be in theatres, even when it comes out on platforms. So audiences now have the choice whether to watch it at home or go out to a theatre and have a community experience. The audience has the choice in how they want to view something and they’re not mutually exclusive.
Related: The Irishman soundtrack is now streamable online
Sergio Leone’s ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ feels very akin to this, would you say there’s some reference points to it at all, beyond them both starring De Niro and being very long, maybe even more so than your previous gangster pictures?
Scorsese: Well, I guess the similarities are it’s very long and Bob is in it [Laughs]. I wasn’t aiming to do Sergio, I couldn’t do that, no way. I just intuitively made the movie. I always said to Bob that I knew how to approach it and just followed that. In terms of how it relates to my other movies? Well, back in 1973 we were 20-something years old, and now we’re much older, and so we hope that the vantage point of time has evolved and deepened our understanding of life really. I hope that’s conveyed in the story and the characters, and even the way that the story is put together, and that would be some sort of advancement, instead of just replicating what we have done in the past.
What was it like looking at yourselves younger for the first time in the movie?
Pacino: Well considering everything is crazy, it was crazy.
Do you think the new technology opens up a new world of performance?
Pacino: I personally don’t think it does yet. This is a technique that is early on and being formed. Like Marty says, it’s a form of makeup. It could change things, but as an actor, you’re just playing a role that you’re already more than likely suited for. It doesn’t matter what you look like. I was shown the film without any effects and I just went with it. The film is delivered in such a way that the story is the only thing that’s lifting me up, I didn’t really think about it. I was just accepting these people, these people that actually existed. So maybe the fact that these guys were real had something to do with my reaction to it. This whole thing is innovative of course, but at the end you’re telling a story, and that’s what I’m more concerned about. And I don’t think I was the only one who felt that way. It’s great that we have this potential and that it’s exercised in the film and it’s stating what it’s stating. Back in the day you’d have an actor that we all knew and loved, who was put in a grey wig and you’d just accept that he was now playing older, and you just went with the story.
De Niro: I always joke that my career will be extended another 30 years. It’s a whole interesting thing, where it will evolve as far as copyrights and likeness is involved, and you already see that happening with the use of actors from years ago in commercials and what have you. I’m just happy we’re at the beginning stages of it being explored and God knows where it will go. What excited me about it was that Pablo Helman [visual effects supervisor] wanted to make it state-of-the-art , the best it could be to date, and it fitted the movie’s ambition.
Pacino: A big part of it is also how you move. These little things are important, it’s all well and good looking pretty, but then you go to stand up and creak a bit when you’re supposed to playing a 39 year-old!
Related: The Irishman review
What was the biggest challenge faced with this movie?
Scorsese: Well, making the movie was making the movie. It’s always cutting through all the issues on how you perceive the story, the sweep of the story, what’s essential and making those editing choices right there both on set and before you even get there. And then there’s the complexity of the technology too. Staying on point, what is essential to the story and eliminating everything that’s not essential to the characters, eliminating everything that’s not important is hard. This was a 188 day shoot, and then there’s the editing. So, it’s wrangling the picture whenever it threatens to get out of control, and using Frank’s character as the anchor. I like planning and fighting my way through the whole process until we get to the best end result that we can.
De Niro: With certain things with Marty, I would come in to narrate pieces in order to give information and help the narrative along and provide bits of information that I had found out about Frank.
Scorsese: Yeah, you even went into audio tracks of Frank’s actual voice of telling stories. Every now and then you’d tell me something and we’d try to figure out a way to find production time to shoot it, well ask Emma if she can find the time for us to shoot it.
Emma Tillinger Koskoff: And say yes. [Laughs]. You wanna make sure everyone has the time to create, to have the environment that feels safe and quiet. It’s a challenge, but we had phenomenal partners with Netflix who allowed us to carve out that time and space.
Why do you think we’re constantly pulled back to stories that talk about pain and trauma. There’s a lot on a macro level and also a personal individual level of pain in this film.
De Niro: This is really a simple story, about a guy caught between two very powerful people, one of whom disappeared and we still don’t know what happened to him really. So there’s a grand story at the centre of it, historical if you will, but also quite simple.
Scorsese: And of course there are major historical figures in the background, JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King. Nobody knows what truly happened with a lot of these people. I always say, would it really make any difference now if we knew the how, what, why and where. The dark forces that take over are always present, and these guys in the film are always in the middle of it. They look at a TV and there’s missiles off the coast of Cuba, and that’s your afternoon lunch. It was important to hold onto the simplicity at the essence of the story, like Bob says, because everything else that’s going on around it is so complicated.
This film feels a lot about reflection, do you people ever take stock and reflect? Do you think that you’re at a better place now to understand the texture of this narrative?
Scorsese: I don’t think we ever got together and said ‘let’s make a movie and reflect.’ It’s intuitive really.
De Niro: It’s a movie that evolved. Could it have been done earlier? Yes. But the story came to us at a certain point, that took so many years to evolve, it took time to get the rights to the story so all that took time. We’re just happy that we got to make it. I would’ve shot with Marty for another five or six months on this.
The Irishman will be released in selected cinemas on 8 November, before arriving on Netflix from 27 November.
