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| Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese | In May 2007, Amanda Palmer attended Martin Scorsese's Masterclass at the Cannes Film Festival. Joining her and hundreds of others was Pulp Ficton director Quentin Tarrantino – they had all come to hear one of the most influential directors of the past 40 years talk about his life in filmmaking. They were not disappointed.
The director of Taxi Driver and Goodfellas told them how he fell in love with cinema as a child; about the filmmakers who influenced his storytelling, and revealed how he met his life-long friends and actors Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel.
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| Martin Scorsese's Casino | This edition of The Fabulous Picture Show is a half hour special dedicated to Scorsese's masterclass.
The New York-born Italian-American directed the grittiest and the most realistic movies of his time. The street-smart naturalism and the brutality in his films come from his memories of his childhood in Little Italy, a harsh neighbourhood in New York where Scorsese observed in real live the themes that he would return to again and again in his films.
When Scorsese was diagnosed with asthma at the age of three he had to spend much of his time at home, and had no choice but to watch films on TV. He has often stated that television provided him with the best film education and that the movies he watched influenced his storytelling in the way he portrayed real people, and represented true to life stories.
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| Martin Scorsese accepts his long awaited Oscar for Best Director for The Departed [AFP] |
Scorsese attracted critical attention with his debut feature film, Who's that Knocking on My Door, which began as a graduate student project at New York University. With Mean Streets, he started making movies about what he knows best – New York City. Taxi Driver won him the Palm D'or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, but it was not until The Departed – his 44th film – that he eventually won his long awaited Oscar for best director.
Watch part one of this episode of The Fabulous Picture Show on Youtube
Watch part two of this episode of The Fabulous Picture Show on Youtube
This episode of The Fabulous Picture Show was broadcast from Saturday 29th December 2007.
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