Martin Scorsese has admitted to a creative struggle that clearly still haunts him to this day, particularly when it comes to producer Harvey Weinstein with whom Scorsese had a legendary battle over the film.
While filming his 2002 film “Gangs of New York,” Scorsese said he felt creatively strangled by the studio system, particularly by working with producer Harvey Weinstein with whom Scorsese fought over the length and budget of the period piece.
“I realized that I couldn’t work if I had to make films that way ever again,” Scorsese told GQ in a cover story. “If that was the only way that I was able to be allowed to make films, then I’d have to stop. Because the results weren’t satisfying. It was at times extremely difficult, and I wouldn’t survive it. I’d be dead. And so I decided it was over, really.”
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Only two years later, Scorsese reunited with Weinstein on 2004’s “The Aviator” which also starred “Gangs of New York” lead actor Leonardo DiCaprio.
“And I was against that,” Scorsese said of working with Weinstein again. “There was a meeting, and I was forced into that position. I’d already been, uh, made pregnant, as they said. And there’s no way you’re getting out of it.”
He continued, “But the shoot went well, the editing went well until the last couple of weeks of editing. And they came in and did some things that I felt were extremely mean.”
I’ve always admired “Gangs of New York,” but I will admit that as I watched it, in the fall of 2002, there was a sense that something much grander, and greater, was missing from the film. Daniel Day-Lewis’ towering performance as Bill the Butcher hid the flaws very well — maybe his greatest performance, with the obvious exception of Daniel Plainview in “There Will Be Blood” (and maybe “My Left Foot”).
