"Cape Fear": Scorsese and De Niro, Together Again
On one fateful night in the early ‘70s, Martin Scorsese met Robert De Niro at a party. That casual encounter would lead to one of modern film’s most enduring collaborations. Scorsese’s girlfriend at the time, Sandra Weintraub, recalled that the two friends were notoriously private from the beginning. “What they did together, they did in private. Definitely no women allowed.”
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| De Niro and Scorsese on the set of Taxi Driver (1976) |
When Scorsese was ready to direct Mean Streets, the script he’d written in film school, he cast De Niro in the lead role. One night, after a screening of a rough cut, Scorsese, De Niro, Sandra Weintraub and a few others went out to dinner for what Weintraub assumed would be a group discussion of the film. However, as she later reported, De Niro and Scorsese disappeared into the men’s room for two and a half hours and hashed it out between themselves.
Their collaboration on Mean Streets (1973) attracted the critical acclaim and national attention that launched Scorsese’s career, and after he directed Ellen Burstyn to a Best Actress Oscar in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), he reunited with De Niro for Taxi Driver (1976), which elevated both Scorsese and De Niro to legend status. But after the critical failure of New York, New York (1977), combined with a failed marriage and drug problems, Scorsese became depressed and physically ill.
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| Scorsese and De Niro on the set of Taxi Driver (1976) |
Then Robert De Niro approached Scorsese about making a movie from the memoir of boxer Jake LaMotta. As Scorsese recalled, “I was in the hospital on Labor Day weekend in 1978, and De Niro came to visit me and he said, ‘You know, we can make this picture.’ I was in pretty bad shape, but I found myself saying, ‘Yeah.’” In fact, Scorsese has credited De Niro with saving his life by insisting that he make Raging Bull. Fortunately, Raging Bull (1980) earned Scorsese his first Academy Award nomination, which gave Scorsese the confidence make The King of Comedy (1983). Scorsese spent the rest of the ‘80s working with other actors, but he reunited with De Niro for 1990’s Goodfellas, and the energy of their reunion catapulted them forward into making Cape Fear in 1991.
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| Scorsese and De Niro on the set of Raging Bull (1980) |
Scorsese has a real respect for De Niro’s acting talents. “I always say to actors, ‘The hardest thing you can do in a movie is sit down and talk to somebody,’” said the director. “Yelling and ranting and raving, sometimes that’s very easy to do. The real communication between two people, the subtlety… I think Brando and De Niro broke through there. They made realism a virtue. Brando created that style, and De Niro moves ahead with it. They have emotional depth – they’re not just walking through a scene having their faces photographed.”
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| Scorsese and De Niro on the set of Cape Fear (1991) |
“Bob and I have known each other for a long time now, so there’s a kind of shorthand between us,” Scorsese said. “The guiding is done way, way before we get on the set. We do some rehearsals, but not that much. With Bob, it happens a lot in costuming, in trying on clothes. We just hang around. We start talking. He feels one thing, and he puts on a shirt or puts on a pair of pants. Those become our character discussions. On the set, we’ll talk in the morning in the trailer, sometimes not even about what we are going to shoot. It’s a preparation that works.”
Scorsese’s favorite editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, has had a unique opportunity to watch the two filmmakers working together throughout their careers. “When Marty and Bob work together, they don't want anybody near, because they experiment so much – they sort of think that's embarrassing,” Schoonmaker revealed. “I think just because they like that absolute freedom to say whatever they want to each together, they don't want to have to worry that somebody may overhear them and misunderstand them. You know what I mean? So I think it's just as simple as that. It's funny because listening to any of their conversations would be valuable, you can be sure. But they just prefer to have that absolute freedom, that they don't have to worry about whatever they say.”
Scorsese understands that the intimacy between himself and De Niro can alienate others, but he defends it as absolutely necessary. “The best collaborations I had in my life were with De Niro,” Scorsese said. “A lot of people don’t understand when I say, ‘Please leave the set.’ ‘What’s this? Genius at work?’ No – it’s distracting. Some of the stuff I used to do with Bob was so personal, and, for the actor, so painful, that the only way he could do it was with me, and nobody else, watching. He could make some mistakes. And very often those mistakes wouldn’t be mistakes at all. It’s the searching process. Intimacy and trust is the thing.”
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| Scorsese and De Niro on the set of Cape Fear (1991) |
Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese got back together soon after Cape Fear to make 1995’s Casino, but it would be over two decades before they would reunite for their next feature collaboration, 2019's The Irishman. Currently the two old friends are in Oklahoma shooting their next film, Killers of the Flower Moon.
Peter Biskind, “Slouching Toward Hollywood,” Premiere, 11/91
Chris Hodenfield, “You’ve Got To Love Something Enough to Kill It: The Art of Non-Compromise,” American Film, 3/89
Graham Fuller, “Martin Scorsese,” Interview, 11/91
Ian Christie & David Thompson, Scorsese on Scorsese, Faber & Faber, 2003
David Morgan, “Interview With Thelma Schoonmaker,” Millimeter, 1991
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