The Sydney Morning Herald - May 2, 2001
Paul Daley was invited onto the Italian set
of Martin Scorsese's keenly anticipated labour of love, Gangs of
New York, for an exclusive sneak preview.
You are walking through Paradise Square, the centre of New York's
slum district, in the late-1850s. The old brewery, home to dozens
of Irish peasant immigrants, has been bombed. The dead and piles
of other war detritus - clothing, broken wagons, torn roofing,
pots and pans and ripped bedding -litter the cobblestone streets.
Up ahead in the middle of the street, one of this district's
greatest Irish characters, "Hellcat Maggie", lies dying,
impaled on a huge splinter of lumber. As a one-armed priest
comforts Maggie in her last moments, another explosion sounds and
a shower of rock and earth rains down. They can no longer be seen
through the mist of smoke and burning gunpowder.
Somebody yells "cut". Peter-Hugo Daly's priest and Cara
Seymour's Maggie carefully wipe the dust from their eyes while
the technicians come in to set up again before Martin Scorsese's
camera operators shoot yet another take.
Scorsese, the acclaimed director of Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The
Age of Innocence and Casino (among other movies), has wanted to
make this movie, Gangs of New York, for at least 30 years. And
already those associated with the film, which has been shot at
Rome's legendary Cinecittą studios for the past seven months at
a cost of $210 million (give or take a few), are talking Oscars
for the cast, which includes Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio,
Cameron Diaz and Liam Neeson.
They also say it's Scorsese's biggest, most ambitious movie to
date: a "character-driven historical epic" set in New
York's Irish slums at the time of the great anti-draft riots of
the American Civil War.
Based on the book of the same name by Herbert Asbury, the plot
revolves around Bill "The Butcher" Poole, played by Day-Lewis,
and DiCaprio's Amsterdam Vallon, a young Irishman set on avenging
the murder of his father, played by Neeson. Cameron Diaz plays a
fiery, red-haired pickpocket and love interest for Amsterdam.
After 128 days and many nights of shooting, the cast and crew of
Gangs (as they like to call it) are dog-tired. Many have been ill.
They are also sick of stories in the Italian press that maintain
Scorsese and DiCaprio have brawled on the set and that shooting
time and costs have blown out massively.
When the Herald was given exclusive access to the set a couple of
weeks ago, publicist, Larry Kaplan insisted: "It's lies, all
lies. They just made that all up because it's been a totally
closed set - no media has been allowed on set. Don't believe what
you read in the Italian press, let me tell you that ... It's been
long, but it's been long because it's been big."
On set, the enigmatic New York-based director is called "Mr
Scorsese". In their less guarded moments, one or two people
casually refer to the director as "Marty" - but, when
they know they're going to be quoted, all but his closest
associates invariably use the honorific. "This is a
realisation of Mr Scorsese's vision," Kaplan says. "And
most people round here, the principal actors and even the extras,
would tell you what a wonderful human being, what a wonderful man
to work for, he really is."
Well, they would, wouldn't they? If they could. So far none of
the principals has given interviews. Neither has Scorsese.
Nonetheless, Scorsese's vision, meticulous eye for detail and
insistence on shooting takes again and again until the result is
as close to perfect as possible, leave his colleagues in awe.
"You know, we'll be shooting this absolutely huge scene -
the boats are landing and Irish immigrants are getting off them
in the port while the soldiers are going up the gangplanks the
other way - there will be so much noise and so much action going
on in the frame and Mr Scorsese will focus in on one little thing
- it might be a button on one uniform - that's out of place,"
says a worker on Gangs. "Nobody else would see it, perhaps
ever. But he'll shoot it again and again to get it exactly the
way he wants it."
Kaplan describes part of the movie's opening scene where two
gangs meet each other across Paradise Square. One of the
buildings in this scene is covered in ice - an image that
Scorsese's mind has held since he first thought about making the
movie. The man given the task of making that happen is Dante
Ferretti, a native of Rome, who has worked extensively with
Scorsese in the past on films including The Age of Innocence,
Casino and Bringing Out the Dead.
The softly spoken Ferretti, an architect by trade, was given six
months to design all the sets and to configure everything non-human
on them. Besides Paradise Square and the squalor of the brewery,
this included re-creation of the facade, many interiors of
Broadway (Bill the Butcher's nightmarish underground lair) and,
perhaps most impressively, Sparrow's Pagoda - an alluringly evil,
Chinese, lantern-lit building where prostitutes hang in cages
from the ceiling. A place where strong drink, murder and plotting
can be found at any time of day, the pagoda's grisly gargoyles
and giant Buddha are critical to Scorsese's plot.
"Yes, this movie is so very big - it's New York filmed in
Roma," says Ferretti. "Now, with Martin, this is my
fifth movie. I know him very well so he trusts me a lot. With
every movie we talk for one day, two days, at the beginning, and
he tells me exactly what he wants and then he gives me a lot of
freedom. So then I make sketches, drawings and models and then I
show him everything and he says OK or not OK. Normally he says OK,
so I'm happy. Then I go and build it all."
For Gangs, Ferretti was also required to build two massive, true-to-scale
transport ships so the nautical and port scenes could be filmed
in Cinecittą's giant water tank, one of the main reasons the
Rome studio was chosen to shoot the movie. Perhaps it is fitting
that it was also used in two other epics, Ben-Hur and Cleopatra -
movies against which the entertainment media is already, nine
months ahead of its scheduled US release, measuring Gangs of New
York.
"If you compare it in size to recent movies you have to talk
about The English Patient," Kaplan says. "It's bigger
than that ... we're talking about more than 120 speaking roles."
Several thousand extras (no-one is sure of the exact number) were
also used. Costume designer Sandy Powell, who won an Academy
Award for her work on Shakespeare In Love, had not worked with
Scorsese previously. When she initially read the script she had
reservations about whether she wanted to be involved.
"It was very violent, which was, in a way, to be expected,"
she says. It was also quite overwhelming. "It was, like, men
fighting each other. It was all about men. But, then, as we got
into it and I did my own research and he [Scorsese] told me his
side of things, I got more interested. My first impression was
that it seems like a lot of men fighting and I wouldn't
particularly want to do a war film. I thought that for a moment.
But then I thought, 'It's Martin Scorsese, it's going to be huge,'
and, 'How could I say no?' "
The British-born Powell, who knew little about the period
depicted in Gangs, had a daunting research assignment. But her
task was aided considerably by Scorsese, who offered her piles of
photographs and movies. Sometimes he wanted her to look at one
particular item of clothing in another movie. "I've watched
films just to look at one collar he wanted me to see," she
says.
Shooting for the movie has just wrapped at Cinecittą. Most of
Ferretti's sets (with the possible exception of the pagoda) will
be demolished. There is already talk that thousands of Powell's
costumes will be archived to record the transformation of
Scorsese's vision to celluloid.
As post-production begins, the expectations are already massive.
But this, according to those who know Scorsese, is unlikely to
faze the director. "Other people are talking Oscars already.
You don't hear Mr Scorsese doing that," says someone working
on the film. "He is just singularly focused on transforming
this."
Gangs of New York is due for release later this year.
MARTIN SCORSESE
Born November 17, 1942
Where Queens, New York
Wives 5
Movies as director 22
Movies as assistant director 1 (Woodstock)
CV entry we're not inclined to let him forget Michael Jackson's
Bad video
Thanks to Pax !
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