Scorsese was enjoying hollywood's warm embrace, and the once closed doors had been opened to him unreservedly. Despite the controversy over Taxi Driver, United America and MGM have bought the rights to the film from Columbia and intend to re-release it. The two companies made a lot of money with the highly controversial Midnight Cowboy and The Last Tango in Paris, respectively, proving that X-rated films have a vast market.
Scorsese read in the newspapers that Owen Winkler planned to shoot "New York, New York" set in the post-World War II boom of big swing bands. On impulse, he called his agent, Harry Uflan, and said, "Hey, can I be the director of that film?" ”
After "My Bullets Will Turn", Winkler's career did not develop greatly, but through the tireless efforts of his partner Robert Chatov, the films they produced were able to make a steady stream of films on the screen and find a way to survive in the market. Over the years, their films about the student movement, Strawberry Manifesto, and Peter Bogdanovich's Nickel Theater, have been well received, and they are currently working on a boxing film written and starred by the unremarkable actor Sylvester Stallone, Rocky.
Hearing that Scorsese and De Niro were interested in a song and dance film like New York, New York, Winkler and Chatoff were not surprised. The New Hollywood movement brought a new generation of filmmakers onto the big stage of Hollywood, and once they gained a foothold, they picked up the genre movies that the previous generation was used to making, after all, these are the things that grew up with them. Scorsese idolized John Cassavets, but he also loved Vincent Minelli's song and dance films.
In fact, "New York, New York" is not a real song and dance film, it should be attributed to the sub-genre of "stage melodrama". Michael Powell and Emerick Presberg's 1948 Red Diamond and Vincent Minnelly's 1952 The Jade Woman belong to this genre, and they were scorsese's childhood favorite films. However, the most similar to "New York, New York" is George Gu ke's 1954 film "The Birth of a Star". Scorsese even discussed the film with Gu Ke before filming began. Both films begin with a twenty-minute song and dance segment, with all the main characters appearing one by one. And they all tell the story of a genius who goes downhill and gains trust and help from a sentimental pianist.
De Niro wasn't sure if he could play saxophonist Jimmy Doyle because he hadn't trained in any music and it was a role that didn't need to change much in appearance. United States is also concerned about whether De Niro is attractive enough as a romantic male lead, and they prefer to let Barbara Streisand and her ex-boyfriend Ryan O'Neal play the male and female protagonists.
Scorsese insisted on using De Niro and gave the role of Francine Evans to Lisa Minnelly. It was a decision that excited him: For your first cabaret film, is there a more suitable heroine than the daughter of Judy Garland and Vincent Minnelly? MGM, however, doesn't think so. In their eyes, Lisa was a famous smoker, and the vices of drug use not only destroyed her body, but also led her to a drug rehab center two years ago. Although she was married to the son of Jack Harry, who played the tin man in The Wizard of Oz, her extramarital affair with Soviet exile dancer Mikhail Barishnikov is well known.
However, what finally made the company's concession was the fact that Lisa had just won the Oscar for Best Actress for "The Restaurant.". A film queen plus De Niro, the best supporting actor, such a combination is still very box office appeal. After receiving the company's approval, Scorsese rushed to Lisa and showed her "Poor Streets" so that she could have an intuitive understanding of her future collaborators.
"It must have been fun to make this film," Lisa said, "especially to be able to work with James Kahn." ”
"It's not James Kahn, it's Robert De Niro," Scorsese hastily corrected.
"De Niro—is that the guy who always wears suits?"
"No, that's Harvey Keitel. De Niro was the guy in the hat. ”
"Oh, why do they look so much alike?"
Owen Winkler already had a screenplay written by Earl Mark Rauch for New York, New York, but Scorsese insisted on rewriting it for his old partner, Mardick Martin. Martin made drastic changes to the original script, including the ending. In Rauch's version, De Niro's character abandons jazz to become a record producer specializing in rhythm and blues — the future of American pop.
Later, when "New York, New York" failed, Scorsese and Martin both blamed the blame on Rauch's script, but those who read the script thought that Rauch was an expert and praised some of the details in his script.
Meanwhile, De Niro got the most expensive saxophone United Hades bought from the market and began learning how to use it. Although he didn't have any musical potential, after the film he bought a saxophone of his own, he could play it easily, and he didn't mind performing it in front of others.
The person responsible for training De Niro is George Olde, 58, who was born in Canada and shares the same experience as Jimmy Doyle in the film. Since the 1930s, he has played saxophones in big bands for the likes of Bernie Berrygan, Benny Goldman and Attie Shaw. Like Doyle, he also opened a nightclub on 52nd Street in New York called "Folk Singers."
De Niro put a lot of effort into mastering his musical skills. New York Times reporter Susan Browdy remembers walking near De Niro's apartment on a cold winter morning when she heard intermittent saxophone music. De Niro's diligence also impressed Alder. "His level of understanding is something I've never seen before," he said, "and I can't believe he's reached a professional level in such a short period of time, and I think he must have listened to the record more than seven thousand times." ”
Filming began in June 1976 for New York, New York, with an expected shooting period of eighteen weeks. The budget for $2.5 million doubled first and then doubled. Like Francis Coppola's disastrous "Sweetheart" six years later, Scorsese soon realized that traditional Hollywood cabarets relied on the traditional Hollywood studio system. Under that system, stars, filmmakers, and musicians perform their duties and are eventually assembled together in an assembly line, effective and cost-effective. And if it is a grass bench team, they are doomed to lose money. He began to consider cutting back expenses, including changing his original shooting plan at the Wodolf-Astoria Hotel in New York to the Pasadena Hotel. However, it was too late.
At first, Scorsese arranged for De Niro and Lisa to rehearse for hours a day according to the script, but soon decided that some more radical ways were needed to "recreate" the model of the song and dance film. Throwing away the script and keeping only an outline, he led the actors throughout the day to improvise, recording every minute on videotape. He then took the tape home and distilled the lines from the day's rehearsals.
Lisa wasn't used to improvising, but out of loyalty to Scorsese, she told Rolling Stone magazine that Scorsese's chosen line was "the most natural, the best, the best of the best." The 5-hour rehearsal suddenly turned into two pages in his hand, and everything was on it." There's a reason Lisa is so partial to Scorsese, and just as Hollywood has stuck with tradition, she's now the director's mistress.
Scorsese's first scene, in chronological order, was a celebration on the streets of New York on the night of Japan's surrender in World War II. The first shot is provocative: a shirt is thrown out of a hotel window and lands on a pavement littered with confetti. Soon, Jimmy Doyle appeared. Dressed in a cheesy Hawaiian shirt and smoothly combed hair, he chewed gum rhythmically and strode high toward the imposing Rainbow House ballroom, where Tommy Dosser was leading the band listlessly playing Glen Miller's "Pennsylvania 6-5000." Because of the needs of the plot, this paragraph lasts for 12 minutes.
The next 20 minutes were mostly improvisational, and Doyle greeted the sluggish-looking Dorsey, who could tell he had worked here. He hugged the soldiers, kissed the women, and kept chattering in his mouth. Only Francine Evans rejected this intimacy of his.
Both Ingmar Bergman and Bernardo Bertolucci came to see the scene, and the most honored guest was Vincent Minnelly, who had been invited by MGM's public relations department. Looking at the crew sweating under the lights, Minnelly said, "You know, it's a common thing for cabaret films. When I was filming "Meet in St. Louis," there was a scene where we had to turn off a couple of lights..."
Scorsese remembers every scene in that movie: Judy Garland and Tom Drake running around the room after the party, turning out all the gas lights...
"It took you three days to set the scene," Minnelly said, "but it only took four minutes to shoot." ”
Looking around at the huge set, Scorsese knew it would take him far more than four minutes. In the end, he filmed for a few weeks, and when the first version was cut, the scene was actually an hour long. Some of the special guests who act as extras are intolerable. Producer Dawn Steele, Scorsese's girlfriend when she first arrived in Hollywood, was wearing a heavy, long evening dress and thick makeup in her 40s, but after a long day of non-stop shooting, she took off her costume and slipped away.
The consumption is so huge. Costume designer Theodorka van Lenkel said, "To this day people are still telling horror stories about the horrors behind the scenes of New York, New York. We were woken up at 7 a.m. and usually waited until dark to take the first shot. The crew works like farmers... No one answered them. Meanwhile, Marty and Lisa are locked up in her makeup cart, supposedly studying the script. ”
The extravagance continues until the climax of the film, "The Reunion Ending"— a 12-minute song and dance scene that illustrates that Francine got her first film role.
Francine plays the theater usher in this play-within-a-play, watching the movie day after day, dreaming of becoming a movie star. As the spotlight shone on her face, she sang:
"The happy ending, as if it were close at hand
It's only for stars
But there are no stars tonight
It was staged only for me."
An investor happens to be in a movie theater, and she feels like she's going to make her dream come true, only to find that everything is her imagination. She was desperate — until real investors came up to her.
Scorsese built a huge set for the play, which could hold the audience of the entire theater and the choir girls who sang and danced. He persuaded Broadway star Larry Kate to play the role of an investor, who had successfully played Tony in West End Story, which was also his first role on the screen. The emcee of the scene is played by Minnelly's father-in-law Jack Harry.
The 12-minute scene took several weeks to shoot, during which the director of the next set kept coming to see the hilarity. In August, it has been 9 weeks since the start-up, and the film should be more than halfway complete. Scorsese offered to shoot for another 14 weeks. The postponement was partly due to the time he had to cut in a documentary that chronicled the farewell performances of Bob Dylan's former band, whose leader, Robbie Robson, was Scorsese's friend and confidant. He was still working on the film when he edited New York, New York, which was now titled The Last Waltz.
Despite the delay, Scorsese insisted on delivering on his previous promise to show the crew and friends a 40-minute "New York, New York." He and editor Owen Reiner fought day and night to get out of the opening scene celebrating The Victory of World War II, the reunion ending, and several other more stylized passages in more traditional song and dance films, including a night scene in which Doyle stood on an elevator overlooking sailors and his girlfriend dancing slowly under streetlights imitating Kim Kelly.
Among the celebrities invited to observe, Vincent Minnelli and George Gu ke applauded fiercely. Some shed tears. At the ensuing party, they flocked to Scorsese, who had blackened his eyes. "After this screaming night," the Rolling Stones reporter wrote, "Scorsese was worshipped by the faithful like a bishop." ”
Yet all these people's words of praise are of no avail. They are friends after all. The public is not as kind as it is.
The studio used in New York, New York has produced many classic cabarets from MGM's history, including Vincent Minnelly's 1951 "An American in Paris." Lisa Minnie took advantage of her mother's powder room, which was filled with ornate chandeliers, red roses more than a flower room, walls plastered with congratulatory messages, portraits, posters, empty wine bottles and half-eaten packages — all exuding the vibe of a classic Hollywood star.
"New York, New York" filming interval
De Niro, by contrast, enjoys the ascetic treatment, next door to Greta Garbo's former powder room. One visitor described his room as "neatly organized and empty, with all you can see is an alarm clock, a tape recorder, a few rock music records and a radio that is broadcasting news." All the posters and photographs on the walls had been removed, and De Niro didn't want any of the images to affect the person he had in mind— boxer Jack Ramota. He spends hours a day waving his fist in the mirror.
The shadows of old Hollywood are everywhere. Sidney Guilanov, who grooms Lisa's hair, was also her mother's hair stylist. When Barry Premuse needed a costume suitable for professional musicians of the '40s, the costumer helped him find a costume worn by John Gilgood, and the set clerk and teleprompter told an anecdotes from their work for The Evil Touch and Jewel Ridge. What is even more surprising is that the habits left over from the Garland era are still preserved, and the drugs used to refresh or help sleep, especially cocaine, are everywhere.
As a small favor for De Niro, Scorsese arranged a small role for Diane Albert in a jazz club play to chant "Honeysuckle Rose". Other friends and friends' wives were also assigned roles. The hoarse George Olde played the band's lead singer, Frankie Hatty, even impressed Scorsese. Sadly, editor Owen Reiner died of a heart attack on Christmas Day 1976, and almost at the same time, Bernard Herman died.
In January, Diane gave birth to Raphael. De Niro bought a new home in Brentwood, a Los Angeles suburb, with a swimming pool, guest rooms, steam baths and a large garden with views of the city and the ocean. In the case of the lease of the Bell Aviation Hotel, Diane's cat cost De Niro $10,000, including compensation for the landlord's torn curtains and furniture with paw prints.
De Niro rarely attends social events in Los Angeles, much to Theaurida' frustration, and she yearns for life in New York. When they had to go out, De Niro also managed to slip away from Diane or find an opportunity to call. For a moment he was so tired that he had to curl up under the table in his Beverly Hills hotel room to fall asleep.
He would often invite old friends, mostly from New York, including Scorsese, Peter Boyle, Brian de Palma, Barry Primus, and their wives. "The party that Robert De Niro presided over had neither center nor focus," Susan Browdy wrote, "all night he listened to the guests talking, nodding and smiling, and occasionally saying in his hoarse voice, 'Hey, buddy, hey, dude, hey, too much.'" He's a bystander and likes to hang out among a lot of people. ”
It has been discovered that his detachment actually has other hidden feelings. Cathy MacGuinness, who plays Alan Frannie in New York, New York, has speculated, "I think he's hiding some of the ideas he thinks are too outlandish." I mean, he used silence to protect himself. There were some things he couldn't show because he was afraid he would go out of line. Maybe it's an extremely egoistic attitude, maybe it's not. ”
On March 19, 1977, the Academy Awards ceremony was held. Despite being nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (De Niro), Best Supporting Actress (Judy Foster), and Best Original Music (Bernard Herman), Taxi Driver ultimately went nowhere. "Rocky" was the biggest winner of the night, and the rest of the awards were divided between "Presidential Team" and "Glorious Road". De Niro was the most vocal winner, but he lost to a dead man: Peter Finch of "TV Storm" died of a heart attack on the eve of the awards ceremony, which made every sympathetic judge vote for him.
Peter Finch in "Tv Storm"
If there's anything that can make De Niro and Scorsese less vulnerable, it's that they're working with Chattoff and Winkler, who made Rocky, who won three awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Editing, making them Hollywood's hottest producers. And for Scorsese, at least he's currently working on a new film, and what's the point of losing an Oscar?
After filming the Victory Day of World War II, New York, Scorsese simply tossed both Rauch and Martin's scripts aside. The rest of the scenes were filmed entirely improvised.
This decision brought a new atmosphere, and everyone had the right to make up new words and even create whole scenes. George Olde claims that 95 percent of De Niro's lines are his inventions — an obvious exaggeration, but he does provide dialogue with real musicians.
Lisa Minnelli recalled, "It was like a magic disease on the set, and everyone was around a little tape recorder and said, 'Say so!'" So let's say it! It was unbelievable. In retrospect, I can't remember how many lines have survived, but the excitement of the crowd will never be forgotten. It's the only film I can remember the whole thing that went through. ”
Fearing that someone would question whether he was doing so professionally, Scorsese had to step up and say, "The script for this movie wasn't written on a tape recorder." Everything is structured. We just put the structure into the tape recorder. ”
However, in July 1977, Julia Cameron Scorsese was at a party in New York for Andy Warhol. Warhol remembered julia's apparently drinking too much that day, wearing blue high heels and swollen toes. "Julia told me how they were doing on set," Warhol wrote in his diary, "and they arranged for the actors to rehearse, record them on a tape recorder, and then Julia picked out the parts that Scorsese was happy with, and then let the actors do it when they were filming." She said they were constantly changing the plot while filming. ”
For some passages, improvisation is effective — such as Doyle applying for a job at the club owner played by Dick Miller, and just as he thinks he's out of the way, Lisa begins singing "You bring me a whole new kind of love", encouraging him to regain his spirits. Unfortunately, Doyle was also missing a change, and almost always got Francine's help when he was in distress, which was the result of a lack of clueless scripts.
Under pressure, De Niro and Seces became closer partners than ever before. Other actors complained that no one could get close to the director. "Bobby cuddled marty on set," one actor said, "and Marty gave Bobby whatever he wanted." And what Bobby wants is to be constantly in the spotlight, to keep talking about the role he plays. ”
Since playing Doyle did not have the opportunity to show his talent for showing anger, De Niro used his efforts on humor. When a train did not carry him away from the snow-covered station, he tried to block the train, only to be slowly pushed off the platform. To drag Francine into the snow to propose to her, he smashed the glass of the security door and lay down in the back of the taxi, letting the car drive over his head. "When you encounter this kind of behavior," Scorsese said, "you can't say, 'No, I'm sorry, dispel that thought.'" So we shot this scene, we used subjective footage, and we cut out the picture of Bobby putting his head under the wheel because we were focused on the effect of the funny, you know, the funny is the drama. ”
However, although this technique is actually a variation of the Hollywood genre film model. Watching De Niro and Lisa rolling around in the taxi, one of the staff members at the scene still muttered incomprehensibly: "Is this a tribute to Hollywood song and dance films?" ”