You talkin' to me ? - Martin Scorsese

Gangs of New York - Martin Scorsese - Interview

INGRID SISCHY: What attracted you to the story told in your new film. Gangs of New York?

MARTIN SCORSESE: At around the age of seven or eight I became aware of an older history to the Manhattan neighborhood I grew up in, Little Italy, as well as the surrounding areas of the Lower East Side and downtown all the way to Wall Street and what is now TriBeCa. Though my neighborhood was then an Italian-American area, there were indications to a young person that it hadn't always been. The nearby cathedral was the old St. Patrick's, and the nuns at the St. Patrick's elementary school, which I was going to, were from Ireland. As I grew up, I began to hear stories of old New York. My father told me stories from the 1920s and teens, but he knew others from way back beyond that. As I got older I started to do research on the church--I did term papers in high school about it, that sort of thing--and I began to understand about the conflicts between the Irish immigrants and the nativists [groups, political and otherwise, who were against immigration, like] the Know-Nothings. And looking at American history, I became fascinated by New York history, especially the period before the Civil War. Very little was available to younger people about that time in the 1950s and '60s.

IS: What is the precise time frame in which your film takes place?

MS: There's a prologue in 1846, but the majority of the film takes place from 1862 to 1863.

IS: So we're in New York during the Civil War.

MS: Yeah, at the turning point of the war. By the end of the film the main characters play out their conflict against the backdrop of the whole city erupting in what we now call the Draft Riots. That was in the summer of 1863.

IS: The Draft Riots took place in response to the fact that if you were rich enough you could buy your way out of being inducted by the Union army, right?

MS: Yes. By slipping the army 300 dollars or paying for a substitute. In effect, the immigrants were getting off boats, becoming citizens, and suddenly going into the army.

IS: So within all this brew there were the gang wars of lower Manhattan? And thus your film.

MS: Yes. The gang wars were politically motivated. The nativists didn't want immigration, they wanted, as they say, "America for Americans"--which were the English and Dutch stock, the Protestants. These people had fought for the country and wanted to keep it their own. The Irish immigration [which was primarily Catholic] was the first real test of what America would become, before the Statue of Liberty, the huddled masses. ... I don't think the founding fathers had in mind, really, that there would be such an influx of immigration from all over the world, which would become the complexion of America. In any event, [the 1860s] was a period where other cultures and other religions [than the nativists'] were resisted. That's the backdrop of the movie. Also, New York State was part of the Union, but not many people agreed with the Union and Lincoln, so the conflict between North and South was played out in New York in many different ways--riots, economic problems. Against this turmoil of what the country is supp osed to be, or what the country will become after the Civil War, whichever side wins, we set in motion a traditional tribal story of a young boy [Amsterdam Vallon, played by Leonardo DiCaprio] avenging his father's death [at the hands of Bill the Butcher, played by Daniel Day-Lewis].

IS: It is impossible to listen to you talk about tribalism and this movie and not think about the contemporary parallels to world history and New York history of the past year or so. Not that life then and now is the same, but-

MS:--Yes, exactly. That's the point. The more I worked on the film the more I realized that the situation we are in now, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, puts the world in a dangerous place. Really, with the collapse of any great power in history, societies are reduced to a kind of tribalism. For example, to a certain extent, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire caused World War I.

The film plays out all the struggles and hardships and suffering and tribalism of a particular period in the 19th century. Ultimately the city as we know it is created, but that doesn't mean it stays that way. Cities rise and fall, but they rise up again. Very often we find that such struggling and violence are futile. People want to live with their individual rights. Everybody has the right to be free, and one person shouldn't infringe upon another person's freedom--that's what the struggle in the movie is about.

IS: Considering what's going on in the world, the idea you just raised. "People want to live," would seem to be a largely Western belief, wouldn't it? Interestingly, you were making this movie against the contemporary backdrop of culture wars that are making heroes out of suicide bombers--people who don't want to live.

MS: They're dying for a cause. And [during the Civil War] the North and South were fighting for causes. The nativists and the Irish were fighting for the right to live and the right to live together, but they were dying for it, too. If people believe in something strongly enough they're going to die for it, and that's a major problem in the world today. In the film--as in today's world--religion is used in a militant way.

IS: What would you say is the difference between then and now?

MS: It seems that the concept of America being open to immigrants, different cultures, different races, different religions, is now somewhat accepted. That does not mean that every immigrant group that now comes to America--usually playing itself out in New York--doesn't have its conflicts to overcome to become part of the system. The first generation usually struggles just to make ends meet, but the second generation finds itself going to school and taking advantage of the system. That's what makes this country so great, what makes this experiment in democracy so interesting. It's never finished; it's always in the works.

IS: You're a lifetime New Yorker. but you made much of Gangs of New York in Rome--what was that like?

MS: One of the main reasons the film hadn't been made over the years is the amount of money it would've cost to build these sets in America. Dante Ferretti [a production designer who often collaborates with Scorsese] was able to work out a deal with Cinecitta [Studios, on Rome's outskirts], and the craftsmanship and artistry of the Italians are so renowned that we felt totally comfortable.

IS: Did Dante design the weapons used throughout the film, too?

MS: Along with Dennis Parrish, our prop consultant. We had pictures of old weapons, and a number of people improvised ideas, and we would make them up on the spot.

IS: Are they all historically accurate?

MS: Some were invented. In gladiator fights, for example, there were four or five different styles to fight with, according to the gladiator's proficiency with a certain weapon. So we figured if you were in a tribal society living in caves below the city, you would make your own.

IS: We wanted to highlight some of these weapons--many of them homemade--in our piece on the movie. Somehow they symbolize something about history, and the impulse to violence when survival is the issue. What are the alternatives, one wants to ask? And, of course, understanding history is one way to change it, which is, I guess, why you're so interested in history. Your film sounds as if it takes all these issues on.

MS: Ultimately this tribal story plays out in microcosm what's being played out in the macrocosm: the war and the formation of the country. The 20th century was arguably the most violent in human history, but the most violent century in American history was the 19th. Poor people, political parties, and gangs would demonstrate, and there was violence constantly. Constantly. They stood on their soapboxes and screamed and yelled and had confrontations and fights. People were fighting not only in New York--though it was the hottest--but also in urban centers like Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. When the Draft Riots started, everyone thought it was just your average riot, but it immediately turned into a race riot, and it lasted four days and nights, which the end of our film is played out against.