Martin Scorsese‘s movies have made over $2 billion at the worldwide box office, but you won’t hear him bragging about that the next time he’s hanging out at the pool.
While speaking at the New York Film Festival, where his documentary about the New York Dolls singer David Johansen premiered on Wednesday, the Oscar-winning director discussed Hollywood’s “repulsive” obsession with how much movies make.
“Since the ’80s, there’s been a focus on numbers. It’s kind of repulsive,” he said. “The cost of a movie is one thing. Understand that a film costs a certain amount, they expect to at least get the amount back, plus, again. The emphasis is now on numbers, cost, the opening weekend, how much it made in the U.S.A., how much it made in England, how much it made in Asia, how much it made in the entire world, how many viewers it got.”
As a filmmaker, Scorsese continued, he finds this financial fixation “really insulting. I’ve always known that such considerations have no place at the New York Film Festival, and here’s the key also with this: There are no awards here. You don’t have to compete. You just have to love cinema here.” Marty has one word for the Marvel Cinematic Universe-obsessed box office prognosticators out there: silence.
(Via Indiewire)