Legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese says its “hard work” making films at 80 and you have to be “burning to say” something.
Speaking to Sky News at the London Film Festival screening of his new film Killers of the Flower Moon, when asked if he didn’t like to sit still, the director said: “The point is it’s very hard work and you have to really want to do it.”
Much to the horror of film fans the Raging Bull director has, in recent interviews, spoken about the possibility of only making a couple more films, “possibly only one” more.
He told Sky News: “To be on a movie set or on a location, to be involved in the production you have to want to do it, it has to be something that you’re burning to say.”
His latest film – a sombre western of sorts – sees him collaborating, once again, with Leonardo DiCaprio to tell the true story of a series of killings overlooked in Oklahoma in the 1920s and 1930s, where indigenous native Americans were murdered during a brutal land grab for the oil under their settlements.
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The filmmaker said it was “disappointing” that the US actors’ strikes prevented any of his cast from joining him on the red carpet to promote the film.
As SAG Union members fight for greater protection over how studios use AI, and at a time when cinemas are still suffering with audiences yet to return to pre-COVID levels, Scorsese spoke of his hopes for the future of film.
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“My hopes are with the new technology, with younger people seeing it a new way, that cinema will evolve into a new form,” he added.
“That’s up to the younger people.”
Killers of the Flower Moon is released on 20 October.