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- What has changed most significantly for good and bad?
- What has changed?
For good or bad?
Where would you begin?
- Everything.
- How could you begin?
I mean, basically, well, you could take The Irishman,
for nine years we couldn't financing
for something that, De Niro and I hadn't made a picture
since 1995, Casino, and over the years,
we wanted to make another film
and then we never kind of met on certain subject matter,
and things changed, you know.
Life goes on and we looked around,
and were still interested in working with each other.
Long story, bottom line is that we get
to be 72, 73, 74 years old,
and he comes up with this book that Eric Roth gave him,
describes the character to me, becomes extremely passionate
and somewhat emotional about it,
dnd I said, well that might be it.
And then I read the book and I said, this is what we'll do.
That was 2009.
Got Steve Zaillian involved,
worked out the structure, worked everything out,
and really couldn't get the financing,
with him and Al and Joe, could not get the financing.
So, he went off, did his work.
I went off and did some films.
And when the time came around,
any possibility of them playing younger
was out of the question.
(laughs)
It was gone, gone.
So, we looked at each other, so I wind up,
I wanna shoot Silence, I had to go and make Silence,
and so that's when Pablo Helman mentioned
the de-aging, de-youthification,
which is something we'd heard about
but it was almost like science fiction to us.
By the time we did the test after shooting Silence,
we did a test of De Niro doing GoodFellas,
a scene in Goodfellas, and we did 'em again
and we played it back two months later
and we said, let's take the risk, let's try for it
but of course that comes with a price tag.
- Right.
- It was even more money in terms of the budget,
in terms of that.
So, ultimately, what happened was that we still after,
we still could not get the picture financed
and I got a call from Rick and said,
are you interested in Netflix?
And I said, well what's the story there?
And they explained it.
Financially, the film would be complete backing.
Willing to take the risks
with the computer generated imagery,
we call it that but it's more complicated.
And certainly the main thing for me was creative freedom.
The trade-off is that it's a streamer.
Okay.
However, I said, but it will be shown in theaters, right?
By that point, I've been at this like 47 years
or something so that point, I've had a few films,
and we mentioned this the other day,
I've had a few films play one or two weeks
in a theater and taken out.
Including, especially King of Comedy.
- Right.
Yeah, my favorite.
- It lasted a week and half, they took it out.
- [Todd] Is that true?
- Never shown again.
- [Greta] Really?
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- You did not go ahead and produce the Joker.
Your partner Emma is the producer on it.
Why did you decide not to produce?
- Personal reasons, I think, for me.
Also scheduling.
Quite honestly, Taxi Driver and King of Comedy,
and Last Temptation of Christ.
My time, those were my fights.
Taxi Driver wasn't a fight, we did it,
and then there were some consequences to be paid.
At this point in time, then we went ahead
and did King of Comedy and we were attacked for that
and the film was considered the flop of the year
and the new show Entertainment Tonight.
- [Todd] Oh god.
- On New Year's Eve, I was putting my tie on
and I look over at this TV and it said,
now the flop of the year and a curtain opened,
it was King of Comedy.
- Oh my god.
- And everything had turned, all of Hollywood had turned
against that kinda filmmaking really,
and for other reasons, too.
- Do you think in a funny way,
'cause we all romanticize sort of.
- King of Comedy.
- The sort of, the '70s and even early '80s perhaps.
In a funny way, do you think King of Comedy
would have done better 15 years later
with independent studios? - [Martin] Probably.
- Because it would've been like A24
or these companies would have known what to do with it?
- Exactly, however 1978, '79, '79, Apocalypse Now.
Right?
At UA, then Raging Bull, 1980,
ten days later Heaven's Gate opens up.
It was the end.
I'm not saying Heaven's Gate is a bad film.
I'm just saying.
- Yes, we get it.
- They finished us off, they had enough
of these crazed auteurs.
- [Greta] Yeah.
- And everybody, including the critical community,
particularly The New York Times,
one review, the film closed, one night.
- Wow.
- So that was the end of it all
and then you had other films that were being made
that were wonderful sci-fi, fantasy things
and people wanted to see those.
We go ahead and make King of Comedy,
we just made Raging Bull, so when people went to see it,
they expected De Niro as Jake La Motta again.
- [Greta] Right.
- And that changed things, you see.
- [Noah] Yeah.
- And at that point, also the studio head changed.
- Right.
- So they said, you're not doing it.
- [Todd] It's always hard, yeah.
- Yeah, gone, picture finished.
So I went and I tried to do Last Temptation of Christ,
it was 1983, I spent a whole year here
and six weeks before shooting started, it was canceled.
- Wow.
- At which point I said, I think I should leave.
(laughs)
- [Stephen] You had death threats
when you did Last Temptation.
- Yes, yes, I went through it all.
- When you say you don't through the fight,
did you mean you didn't wanna go
through that again with Joker?
Or you didn't wanna go through a fight with the studio?
- No, it's a personal issue
about the kind of picture I wanna make
at this point in my life.
I'm more comfortable with this picture,
Irishman, I'm more comfortable there.
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