With The Departed and World Trade Center, respectively, directors Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone have recaptured some momentum after some bumpy years in the Hollywood system, and they plan to use their newfound leverage to embark on more commercially risky fare. (Separately, thank the Gods.) In Rome this week for The Departed's premiere in Italy, Scorsese confessed some fatigue with working on big productions that come with certain creative limitations. For his next feature, Scorsese plans to work outside the system to finally direct Silence, his long-planned adaptation of Shusaku Endo's great novel about Portuguese missionaries in early 17th century Japan, a period in which Christians were subject to horrific persecution.
As for Stone, he's embarking on yet another 9/11 movie, only this time it won't be so politically neutered. Based in part on the book Jawbreaker, the film will follow the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the failed hunt for Osama Bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountain range. Stone claims that he's not interested in "polemic," but it seems only natural that politics will come into play along with the usual Native American/acid trip imagery that inevitably squeezes its way into his work.