Martin Scorsese hit the Cannes Film Festival this week for the premiere of his upcoming period drama-thriller “Killers of the Flower Moon”.
Out talking up the 206-minute movie prior to its screening, he sat down for a lengthy one-on-one with Mike Fleming Jr. at Deadline where several topics were discussed.
What’s most interesting are his closing remarks, where he was asked about having a fire within him that makes him want to keep going back to directing.
It’s here that the now 80-year-old “Goodfellas” and “Silence” director reveals that he feels he is running out of time to tell the stories he wants to tell:
“I wish I could take a break for eight weeks and make a film at the same time [laughs]. The whole world has opened up to me, but it’s too late. It’s too late.
I’m old. I read stuff. I see things. I want to tell stories, and there’s no more time. Kurosawa, when he got his Oscar, when George [Lucas] and Steven [Spielberg] gave it to him, he said, ‘I’m only now beginning to see the possibility of what cinema could be, and it’s too late’. He was 83. At the time, I said, ‘What does he mean?’ Now I know what he means.”
It sounds like Scorsese thinks he doesn’t have that many more films in him. Even so, filmmakers over 80 are still very much out there. Ridley Scott’s 85 and has just finished “Napoleon” whilst also about to begin work on “Gladiator 2”.
Francis Ford Coppola is 84 and has just completed his dream project “Megalopolis,” William Friedkin is 87 and recently filmed “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” and Clint Eastwood is about to helm his final film at the age of 92.
Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” will hit cinemas on October 6th ahead of an eventual streaming release on the Apple TV+ service.
