Apple to Explore the Legacy of Martin Scorsese in New Docuseries
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Apple is putting legendary director Martin Scorsese in front of the camera for a change, thanks to an upcoming five-part documentary series that will provide an in-depth portrait of his 60-year legacy.
Award-winning filmmaker Rebecca Miller, known for 2002’s Personal Velocity: Three Portraits and 2023’s She Came To Me, has been given the honor and tremendous responsibility of chronicling Scorsese’s life and work for the new docuseries, which is titled simply Mr. Scorsese.
I am so grateful to have been given the artistic freedom and access to create a cinematic portrait of one of our greatest living artists, Martin Scorsese. His work and life are so vast and so compelling that the piece evolved from one to five parts over a five-year period; crafting this documentary alongside my longtime collaborators has been one of the defining experiences of my life as a filmmaker.
Rebecca Miller
The series will look at Scorsese “through the lens of his work,” from his first 1967 feature film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door through to 2023’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which was produced for Apple TV+. However, those two bookend a much more illustrious body of work, starting with 1974’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, which won lead Ellen Burstyn an Oscar for Best Actress, followed by two nominations at the 1977 Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Actor (for Robert De Niro) in Taxi Driver.
De Niro would later go on to win the Oscar for Best Actor for 1980’s Raging Bull, which also won an Academy Award for Best Editing and gave Scorsese his second nomination for Best Picture and his first for Best Director. Paul Newman also took away the Oscar for Best Actor in 1987 for The Color of Money, Scorsese’s tenth film, which received nominations for Best Supporting Actress (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), Best Screenplay, and Best Art Direction.
Sadly, while Martin Scorsese received several more nominations for The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Goodfellas (1990), Gangs of New York (2002), and The Aviator (2004), it wasn’t until 2007 that he received his first Oscar win, when The Departed scored him Academy Awards for both Best Picture and Best Director.
Those turned out to be the filmmaker’s sole Academy Awards. However, he still went on to produce Oscar-nominated hits such as Hugo, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Irishman, and Killers of the Flower Moon, two of which also included Best Actor nominations for Leonardo DiCaprio and Best Actress for Lily Gladstone, plus numerous other nominations and even a few wins in different categories.
For example, while Scorsese was shut out for Best Director for Hugo, it still swept the floor with five more Oscars: Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects. 2004’s The Aviator also had five wins: Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction, and Best Supporting Actress for Cate Blanchett.
Mr. Scorsese will take an even deeper dive, featuring “extensive conversations with the filmmaker himself and never-before-seen interviews with friends, family and creative collaborators,” including Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, who have a long history with Scorsese and most recently worked together on Apple’s Killers of the Flower Moon, plus many more, including Daniel Day-Lewis, Mick Jagger, Robbie Robertson, Sharon Stone, Jodie Foster, and fellow filmmaker Steven Spielberg.
In addition to the cavalcade of stars sharing their experiences with Mr. Scorsese, Miller has been given “exclusive, unrestricted access to Scorsese’s private archives,” gaining insight into some of his colorful life experiences and his early artistic work on his New York University student films, starting with his six-minute short, The Big Shave and his first feature-length work produced while still attending NYU, Who’s That Knocking at My Door.
This documentary explores the themes that have fascinated Scorsese and informed his work, including the place of good and evil in the fundamental nature of humankind.
Apple
Apple hasn’t announced a release date for Mr. Scorsese, but it will join an upcoming and as-yet-untitled Fleetwood Mac documentary, plus several other recent high-profile projects, including STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie, Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me, and STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces.
