Top 60 Scorsese Quotes

I think Woody Allen calls it ‘anxiety of influence.’ When you’re in your formative years and you watch a movie that makes you want to make movies… For Wes Anderson, it’s Truffaut. I’m sure for P.T. Anderson it was Scorsese and Jonathan Demme.

If you’re an actor from New York, and you’re Italian-American, you grow up hoping Marty Scorsese knows your name at some point before you die.

Ooh, I’d love to be in a movie with Meryl Streep or Martin Scorsese. There are so many different things I want to do, maybe like a possessed child or an evil something… I don’t know!

To get to work with my idol, Martin Scorsese, has just been lovely – the highlight of my career.

Snoop Scorsese, that’s my director name.

I love ‘Goodfellas’ because it’s a great movie – it’s funny and there is action at perfect points. I just think Martin Scorsese makes everyone look really cool.

If I hadn’t met Scorsese, I would never have become a filmmaker. He has taught me everything I know about editing and has given me the best job in the world.

As you can imagine, between Michael Powell and Martin Scorsese, I’ve had quite a rich life!

In Goodfellas they have this one scene where the camera goes down some steps and walks through a kitchen into a restaurant and the critics were all over this as evidence of the genius of Scorsese and Scorsese is a genius.

If I’m going to produce something, it’s going to be with somebody I think is special. Once I go beyond a handful of directors, like Scorsese, there are very few I want to work with.

I’m very lucky. Most of my friends wait long times for jobs and also don’t get the chance to work on 20 films, like I have, with someone like Scorsese. I love working for him. I just would never – I can’t imagine working for anybody else.

When I was filming ‘The Outsiders,’ my idea of success was getting the next Martin Scorsese movie.

Martin Scorsese, everything he does, I’ve got to see. And Jack Nicholson, I’ve got to see what he does.

‘Straight Outta Compton’ is my first biopic, my first period piece, and I got a chance to kind of get out there like some of my idols, you know, like Scorsese, Spielberg, Spike Lee, the guys who came before me. You know, I’m feeling good about it.

It is tricky because I do wear a lot of vintage on the red carpet, and usually when I’m getting ready, I’ll say, ‘We need to make sure that I don’t look like I’m in a Scorsese film today.’ Sometimes I do something a little bit more modern with my hair. You have to mix it up.

When Scorsese or Coppola cast celebrities in their work, it goes without question.

My favorite Tyler Perry movie? Ugh, how can you decide? For me, it’s basically like: Kurosawa, Tyler Perry, Martin Scorsese, in that order.

Sometimes a producer and an artist get together and they make magic like Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson. As far as my own music career – you could liken my chemistry with Timbaland to Marty Scorsese and Robert De Niro.

When I was nominated for an Oscar and seated next to Martin Scorsese, there was nothing in my mind that made me think, ‘Hey, in three years maybe I’ll make another remake of ‘Punisher.”

My heroes were people like Jim Jarmusch. Scorsese was my god. Spike Lee was exciting, doing exactly what we thought we were going to do: personal movies based in, and about, New York. My heroes were all participating in an economic model that was collapsing as I was finishing film school.

As a younger actor, I had delusions. I would dream of Scorsese and De Niro; I would meet people, and it would be like this, and it would change moviemaking in France, and Paris would become the center of the world.

I’m a De Niro fan. I went eleven years without seeing a movie; the last one before that, February 1980, was De Niro and Scorsese in ‘Raging Bull,’ and when I went back, it was ‘Cape Fear,’ with De Niro and Scorsese. I picked up right where I left off at.

Scorsese would talk to me about this movie ‘The Heiress’ with Olivia de Havilland. We were talking about this scene in it, and suddenly we were rolling. It was very intentional, and I didn’t realize – because we talk old movies all the time.

I got really into Martin Scorsese as a teenager, so then it was kind of the whole reason I wanted to be an actor. Just like tons of young actors, I think, get freaked out by the Scorsese/DeNiro movies. I loved all his movies in the ’90s, too. Then I got a part in ‘The Aviator’ and couldn’t believe it.

What’s the hardest thing about making a show like ‘Vinyl’ or ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ is they are expecting movie-level cinematic quality in every way – from the performances to the visuals and the shots – especially on a show where you are doing Scorsese style.

I love working with Scorsese. He’s not only a brilliant director and is great working with actors, but he’s also a walking human film encyclopedia. It’s fun to talk about movies with him.

Scorsese and De Niro taught me to bring out the natural side of myself. And they taught me to think of myself as the average guy. Sometimes the average guy belongs in a role more than your matinee idol-type of person. We have to have people we can relate to.

Working with Ridley is working with one of the great filmmakers and one of the great raconteurs. You know, it’s like, a dinner with Ridley Scott or a dinner with Martin Scorsese? You just want to cut your arm off to get those.

‘Taxi Driver’ is a movie that changed my life and made me a serious actor. Scorsese and De Niro. I give credit for anything that I’ve ever done as an actor.

I did ‘Gangs of New York’ with Martin Scorsese, and they used to call me ‘Little Joe Pesci’ on the set.

I would wish for any one of my colleagues to have the experience of working with Martin Scorsese once in their lifetime.

When we were cutting ‘Raging Bull,’ Martin Scorsese was watching ‘The Films of Hoffmann’ on a 16-mm print over and over and over again.

I would love to share the screen with Meryl Streep, wouldn’t we all? I would love to work with Spielberg and Scorsese; that would be lovely. I’m also a huge fan of Johnny Depp and the way he creates his characters, so that would be fun. I mean, any of the greats, really.

In terms of directors, great actors make directors – Gary Oldman was great to work with, for me; Tim Roth, too. You work with Scorsese and Spielberg and they were wonderful directors, but for me, working with actor/directors is special.

Well into the ’40s, it wasn’t uncommon for big-budget Hollywood movies to contain little or no underscoring, and many of today’s directors, following the lead of Martin Scorsese in ‘GoodFellas,’ accompany their films with pop records, not original music.

Sit down at your computer or open your nearest mobile device and Google these words: ‘Directed by.’ What’s the first predictive text that comes up? Martin Scorsese? Quentin Tarantino? Ingmar Bergman? Chances are the first name Google suggested was Robert B. Weide. That’s me. Sort of.

I can’t help but have my sights set on Scorsese, Cohen Brothers and Spike Jones.

Movies I liked growing up were like Francis Ford Coppolla movies and Scorsese movies.

Martin Scorsese was being given an honorary doctorate, and one of the tutors asked if there was a student film he particularly liked. He mentioned our film. There was a dinner after the final show just for the tutors, but I was smuggled in to meet Scorsese over dessert.

Scorsese is very nice. He’s small; he’s energetic.

I think the obvious answer is I was raised in New York City, so growing up, not only myself but my family, like my father, we would watch a lot of Scorsese films.

I mean, Scorsese’s a genius, and that’s one way of shooting.

I knew I wanted to become an actor when I was 7 years old. My dad was working with Alfred Hitchcock, my mom was working with Martin Scorsese – and it was the great summer of my childhood.

You’re only as good as your body of work, and everybody has issues, whether it’s Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese. I’m not comparing myself to those guys, but you learn more from the misses than the hits.

I turned down a film that was offered to me in the very early ’80s, a Scorsese film. That probably wasn’t a good career move.

A lot of comedies in the 1980s and 1990s had all these colors and were so brightly lit. But John Landis had this dark style, like a Scorsese film.

In the the late seventies and early eighties, I played background roles in thirty movies… Woody Allen movies, Scorsese films, you name it. Whatever was being shot in New York, I was doing stand-in and background work because I wanted to be close to the camera; I wanted to see what was going on.

The studios are nervous on every movie. It never ends, because Marty’s movies are so unusual. He doesn’t repeat himself, so they don’t know what to expect. We have to fight hard to keep them from being ruined. Film students can’t believe that when I tell them, because they think, ‘Well, it’s Martin Scorsese.’

I find it hard to understand why Scorsese has never called. You know, given the natural menace I bring to the screen.

I’d love to work with Tarantino, Scorsese, Sofia Coppola – all of them! I love thrillers and action movies. I love good horror films. I watched them so much when I was younger that I find it impossible to get scared.