Martin Scorsese feels that box office obsession is "insulting" to cinema

"Cinema is devalued, demeaned, belittled from all sides" said the The Irishman director

By Emma Keates  |  October 13, 2022 | 4:37pm
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Martin Scorsese feels that box office obsession is
Martin Scorsese onstage at the this year’s New York Film Festival Photo: Arturo Holmes

Wake up, babe: new Martin Scorsese hot take just dropped. The notorious Marvel-hater strayed dangerously close to reigniting 2019's biggest and dumbest Hollywood controversy on Wednesday night by taking on the thing superhero fans love most: spending a ton of money at the box office to see movies about superheroes.

The New York, New York director took a moment to praise cinema-with-a-capital-C from the very heart of it: the stage at the New York Film Festival, which he lauded as a rare, award-free utopia where “you just have to love cinema.”

“Cinema is devalued, demeaned, belittled from all sides, not necessarily the business side but certainly the art,” he said while introducing his new David Johansen documentary, Personality Crisis: One Night Only (via IndieWire).

He continued:

Since the ’80s, there’s been a focus on numbers. It’s kind of repulsive. The cost of a movie is one thing. Understand that a film costs a certain amount, they expect to at least get the amount back, plus, again. The emphasis is now on numbers, cost, the opening weekend, how much it made in the U.S.A., how much it made in England, how much it made in Asia, how much it made in the entire world, how many viewers it got… As a filmmaker, and as a person who can’t imagine life without cinema, I always find it really insulting.

So, what is Scorsese doing with all that time he’s spending not focusing on the numbers (other than searching for a new director and star for the Hulu adaptation of The Devil In The White City that he’s producing)? Perhaps rewatching Ti West’s Pearl, which in his eyes represents a “pure, undiluted love for cinema.” Soon, we may have to add a new metric to our film… excuse us, cinema rating scale: does Martin Scorsese approve? Audiences have to know!

You can watch Scorsese’s full NYFF speech below:

 
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