Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino focused on the film' obsession with film, the heroes in the director, the filming process, and the violence.
Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino are both natural storytellers, not only in their films— both of which bear a distinct directorial imprint — but also in their deep appreciation of the medium of cinema.
They come from different eras — Martin Scorsese was one of the first film school graduates of the mid-'60s, and Quentin Tarantino's rise coincided with the independent film revolution of the early '90s — and their passion and knowledge of cinema put them on an equal footing.
No genre of film escapes their clutches, whether it's a first-rate studio-released film, a second-rate film, a compelling musical or a black thriller, a literary film or an Italian Western. They have spent their whole lives enjoying this sumptuous buffet, which is reflected in their own work, in the characters they create, in the lens in which they look at the world.
Last year was a particularly compelling one for both filmmakers: Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which has garnered rave reviews from critics and audiences since its premiere in Cannes, while Martin Scorsese's The Irishman was highly anticipated as the director spent a lot of time on digital rejuvenation in post-production.
The two sat down in the DGA Quarterly and discussed topics such as directing, influence, and violence as catharsis. Here's a cut of their conversation:
Martin Scorsese: I just finished editing the last shot of The Irishman.
Quentin Tarantino: I do this a lot, and when I cut to the end, I'll say, "Let's try this" and "Let's try that." But we cut it to the end, and then that night I went home and I thought again, "I have to re-cut it all the next day." ”
Martin Scorsese: I've been like this for the last three months, and interestingly, I haven't screened this particular film much, because for the last six months I've been dealing with the special effects of the character's youthful face.
Quentin Tarantino: Yes, yes.
Martin Scorsese: So we were very nervous when we were shooting, and the ending had two shots and I put one more shot. Then, (I was thinking), "Wait, do you need this mid-shot, or do you want to use a panoramic lens?" ”
So we tried a few times, and then a few friends said, "Didn't you shoot other shots?" I said, "Yeah, maybe that shot is better." "But the problem is that doing so in turn changes the final panoramic shot."
Quentin Tarantino: I ask you a question about the movie you're working on right now, because I think you're working on the longest movie you've ever worked on, for hours, right?
Martin Scorsese: Yes.
Quentin Tarantino: So in terms of the pace of the film, how does that affect you?
Martin Scorsese: Interestingly, this time I figured out the rhythm of the script based on the script written by Steven Zaillian. It's a complicated situation because it's made by Netflix and the movie is a bit long. In other words, I'm not sure if it has to be a 2-hour 10-minute movie, or maybe I'll cut it into four hours?
Quentin Tarantino: Yes, yes.
Martin Scorsese: I'm not sure how it will end up being released, so I think of it very purely in my head, like, "If it's just a normal movie, now we can make it as long as we can, and each shot can be as long as it can be." And, because of the character, he told the story in flashbacks at the age of 81.
QUENTIN TARANTINO: Hmm.
Martin Scorsese: When you get to my age, Quentin, you're going to be a little slower, a little bit more contemplative, a little bit more meditative, it's all about thinking about the past and (the characters) perceive the past. I felt it while editing, and I said, "Let's see where it's going to take us, and when we show it to a small audience first, see if they can stand it." So we keep saying, "We should try this and that." "And the special effects problems we dealt with gave us plenty of time.
Quentin Tarantino: Yes, yes, okay.
Martin Scorsese: The film is a very quiet rhythm, but it still has violence, it has humor, it has different ways of telling. Again, the old adage: the more shots you shoot, the more things you need to learn.
Quentin Tarantino: Martin, I'm going to tell you an interesting story that I'm going through right now, and I think that raises a great question about you and the movie, so let me talk about it.
Right now, I'm writing a book. I had a character in World War II where he saw a lot of bloodshed. Now he's back home, and like in the '50s, he doesn't watch movies anymore. After going through so much, he felt that the movie was childish. In his opinion, Hollywood movies are the whole of movies. But later, he began to hear about these foreign films by Akira Kurosawa and Fellini...
Martin Scorsese: Yes, yes, yes.
Quentin Tarantino: So he'll say, "Well, maybe they might be better than this Hollywood cliché." ”
Quentin Tarantino: So he found himself attracted to these things, some of which he liked, some of which he didn't like, some of which he didn't understand, but he knew he saw something.
Martin Scorsese: Hmm.
Quentin Tarantino: So now, I find myself having a great opportunity, in some cases, to re-watch, and in some cases, to see the movie I first heard about from the perspective of my character, so I enjoyed watching it, but I was also thinking, "How does this character look?" What does he think?" I always want to find a good excuse to watch more movies, so I want to ask you:
When did you start to get drawn to what you thought was something other than Hollywood movies, start to get more adventurous, and go out and watch some foreign movies you might have read?
Martin Scorsese: That's a good question, because I spent the first seven or eight years of my life in Queens, and then because of some problems with my landlord, my father had to move back to Little Italy, where he and my mother were born, and I was thrown into a place like Lionel Rogossin's "Boerre Street," you know? [Laughs]
But before that, probably due to asthma, my parents always took me to the movies, so I saw Duel in the Sun, which was the first time I saw a movie, then The Wizard of Oz, The Secret Garden, and some noir films like Fester's The Threat. Have you seen Threat?
Quentin Tarantino: I've seen it, and I love Threat.
▲ "Threat"
Martin Scorsese: And Robert Wise's Blood in the Moon Palace, william W. Bush. A. Settl's A Touch of Venus. We had a small TV, a 16-inch RCA winner, and my grandparents would come over on Friday night because the Italian community would show Italian movies and play "The Bike Thief," "Rome, the Undefended City," and "The Fire."
So when I was 5 years old, I saw my grandparents crying when they watched "Warfire", and I realized that the language in the movie was the same as the language spoken by my grandparents.
QUENTIN TARANTINO: Yes.
Martin Scorsese: The first Hollywood movie I watched was Billy Wilder's Sunset Strip.
▲Sunset Strip
Quentin Tarantino: Yes, yes. (Laughs) That's the dark spectacle of Hollywood.
Martin Scorsese: In a way, the Hollywood films of the time were censored, and the truth was transmitted in another way, in different cultures in a certain way, but that doesn't mean that these films are not more important than the European films that I've seen.
When I saw those Italian movies on that little screen, there were a few things that affected me that I never forgot, so it changed everything. Foreign movies really gave me a worldview. It made me curious about the rest of the world, except for the Italian-American Sicilian community I live in.
Quentin Tarantino: So did it somehow open the door to New York for you, expose you to other movie theaters, get out of your block, look for those places?
Martin Scorsese: More than that. There was a massive influx of foreign films into the United States, but they weren't shown in the city where I lived.
Quentin Tarantino: Oh yeah, I see.
Martin Scorsese: It was scary at the time. There's a lot of bad things about New York, and you have to go with friends. Have you ever been to 42nd Street, where all the movies were played.
Quentin Tarantino: I've never been. In fact, the first time I went to New York was on a weekend to shoot "Falling Dogs." Now I understand, as soon as I heard that there was a New York, I wanted to go to New York to see a movie. But when I was a kid, no one took me, I didn't have the money to go when I was old, so when we were casting actors, Harvey Keitel said, "I can't believe we wouldn't give New York actors a chance." ”
I said, "We can't afford it. He said: "I'll tell you, I'm going to schedule a weekend casting through the casting director, and I'll fly you and [producer] Lawrence Bender over." "So we had a weekend casting in New York. When we walked out of the airport or in the morning, we drove through New York to the hotel, I remember it was the Mayflower Hotel...
Quentin Tarantino: I really wanted, "I've wanted to go to Times Square all my life to see movies." As soon as the work was done, the first thing I had to do was go to Times Square and see what was fun. Harvey said, "Quentin, no, in a week or two, you can do that, but not tomorrow." You're too tender for New York. (Martin Scorsese was laughing from start to finish.) ）
Martin Scorsese: He's so right. In the '50s, you had to take four people with you to that kind of place. You go to them show every movie you can imagine, no, it's a regular Hollywood movie. We used to go there a lot, even though it was a very dangerous neighborhood.
They were all playing "Elusive Sea Green" by Powell and Presberg, and then the same screening was Kirk Douglas's "Ulysses." Across the street, "Bloody Battle of the Sea of Fire" and "Three Cars of Courage" are placed.
Ulysses
Martin Scorsese: Two films. One was directed by Lewis Myleston and the other was Humberstone. Both are Technicolor movies, but they actually put on a black and white version! (Quentin Tarantino laughs)
We came in and watched the two movies, there were still people fighting on the second floor balcony, all kinds of things, but we still finished watching two movies. At that time, all the copies were black and white, and "Predator" was also black and white!
Quentin Tarantino: (Laughs) I had this experience at the Metropolitan Theater in downtown Los Angeles, at the Cameo and Arcade movie theaters on Broadway. Both cinemas were screened overnight at the time. I remember it was in 1982, where I saw Ralph De Vito's The Collector of Death, Joe Pesci's first film...
Martin Scorsese: Yeah, it was because we watched the film that Joe Pesci starred in Raging Bull.
Quentin Tarantino: I heard that arcade was going to show this film, just a year or two after the release of Raging Bull, and I thought I had to go, but the only way to see it was at four in the morning. I'm not going to see the one at eight o'clock in the evening.
▲ "Angry Bull"
Martin Scorsese: The Collector of Death, robert De Niro, after watching it on CBS, said, "I saw a film on TV and the protagonist was really funny. "So we found a copy.
Quentin Tarantino: It's a good movie. When I finally saw it, "Wow, it's like a cut-down version of Poor Streets."
Martin Scorsese: You're right! (Laughs). Of course, the cinemas that now have their own copy inventory are gone, so that's another matter entirely.
Quentin Tarantino: I have a movie theater like this in Los Angeles, and we show your movies a lot.
Martin Scorsese: Oh, thanks.
Quentin Tarantino: We only put 35mm or 60mmmm. We have a copy stock of a whole wagon.
When I think of filmmakers in New York, I think of you, Martin. I think of Sidney Lumet, I think of Woody Allen, and at the same time, you're part of the New York Wave of the '60s. In the '60s, jim McBride, Shirley Clark, and Brian de Palma were like you.
I am interested in the whole concept of the New York New Wave, and you are more or less inspired by the positive spirit of the French New Wave. Give me a video camera, I put it in the car, and we'll start shooting.
Martin Scorsese: Or put it in a wheelchair, just a photographer and a wheelchair, that's your push-pull lens.
Quentin Tarantino: That's right.
Martin Scorsese: The New York thing is a bit like a product of the postwar period, and there are very few films that are still being made in New York. Of course, there is a studio system in the studio. You have everything in your studio, so why go to New York? I think what changed it was, of course, neorealism, which was shot in real locations.
Martin Scorsese: They were shooting Great New York at the time, George Cook, Double Life, all these films, they actually started bringing cameras to the streets.
▲"Double Life"
Martin Scorsese: And New York wasn't a film destination at the time. You have traffic like that, some people have work to do, they're in front of the camera, they don't want to be told anything. Hiding the camera in a different place, in the end, became the vanguard of the United States. The ones promoted by Jonas Meccas in the mid-50s, Amos Vogel, Jonas Meccas, Shirley Clarke...
Martin Scorsese: Shirley Clarke did "Cold World" on the street. But the real breakthrough is Casaveti's "Shadow".
Quentin Tarantino: Yes, he was the godfather.
▲Shadow
Martin Scorsese: When I saw Shadow, I looked at my friends and said, "Okay, there's no excuse for that." "As long as you have something you want to express, we can shoot it." They use a 16mm Eclair camera, which is smaller and lighter. That's the most important step because we see that you have the ability to do that without using a machine like the West Coast.
Quentin Tarantino: But it's interesting that the New York Wave, especially compared to the Neorealism or the French New Wave, I can say that in French New Wave cinema they all take place in the same city. Anna Carina's character in Godard's Freewheeling could meet the pianist in Truffaut's Shoot the Pianist at any time. This is definitely possible.
Martin Scorsese: Exactly. yes.
Quentin Tarantino: On the other hand, the New York Wave stuck to their neighborhoods and showed us a very multifaceted New York. You can't imagine that the characters in Cold World would bump into the characters in Who's Knocking On My Door (Martin Scorsese' Or Who's Knocking On My Door) or the Greenwich hippies in Brian de Palma's Handsome Deserter. They don't exist in the same frame.
▲ "Who's Knocking on My Door"
Martin Scorsese: Yeah, it's impossible, those are different countries. We will never go to 110th Street. I don't know what they're doing there, and I don't care. It's a different world.
In 1960, I went to Washington Square College, which is today's New York University, and I turned six blocks to the left from where I lived to another planet. It also balances my creations. In Poor Streets, in a way, they are both outside the world and inside.
Quentin Tarantino: I was recently watching Who's Knocking on My Door. One thing that strikes me as odd is that I know you're a fan of John Ford's Searcher, so you have a big scene (on the Staten Island ferry) where the character played by Harvey Keitel is talking about Searcher...
▲The Searcher
Martin Scorsese: I have to do that.
Quentin Tarantino: This is my favorite scene in the whole movie. In fact, in the New York Wave, your movies are the latest. It looks a bit like a French New Wave movie.
Martin Scorsese: Yeah, black and white... But yes, you're actually right. There is no doubt that the influence of the French New Wave is present, as well as Bertolucci. "Eve of the Revolution" broke everything like an atomic bomb. And Pasolini, for me, The Beggar is the best of them. I like the way they pierce the film.
Martin Scorsese: It feels great when you look at film editing every frame, you can cut directly on the edge of each frame of film, keep two frames and cut out another frame. That's what they did, so we followed the lessons and followed the experiments.
That's what my teacher, Haig Manoogian, said when we were making these short films at New York University and had editing problems. We'd say, "But Truffa says that when he edits a movie, he changes it another way." My professor said, "That's nonsense, he wouldn't do that." "Yes, but we shot this shot.
He said, "Listen, the point is that you might shoot a shot for some reason, and then when you're in the middle of editing, something goes wrong..." It's like the big black stone in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. You touch the boulder and you take a shot that has nothing to do with the scene...
▲2001: A Space Odyssey
Martin Scorsese: And it works in another place, and it has other meanings. He said, "You have to understand the value of the lens itself. "The lens itself has its own life, which you can see in small shots at 16 or 35 frames, and that doesn't really matter.
Quentin Tarantino: It's funny that you say that because actually one of the things that my editors and I love to do the most is when we cheat and nobody finds out, but it's obvious.
Martin Scorsese: That's all too obvious. There's a scene in Confinement Island where a woman is in a mental hospital and the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio interrogates her at the table, she's a very nice woman, and she's talking about how she killed her husband with an axe.
She has an over-the-shoulder shot — much like Hitchcock's style. She took a sip of water from the cup and then put it down. The camera then cuts back to Leonardo. In this over-the-shoulder shot, she seems to pick up the cup and then put it down again. But in fact, she did not have a cup in her hand at all.
▲ "Forbidden Island"
QUENTIN TARANTINO: Hmm. [Laughs]
Martin Scorsese: Well, she's rehearsing. But I said, "Let's do it." "You think there's a cup there. Thus, the whole story is: what is real, what is not real, what is imaginary.
Quentin Tarantino: Oh, great.
Martin Scorsese: That's right. Lens it has its own life. Shots that you thought would never be cut together can. And the shots that you thought would be beautiful when cut together were a disaster.
Quentin Tarantino: I was almost done with the promotion of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and I had the question, "What's the most difficult scenario for you?" "I guess my real answer to that question is usually, if I'm ready for a big scene to shoot, today is Tuesday and we start on Wednesday.
Half of the reason I made this movie was to shoot the scene, and I've seen it in my own mind. Now, if I'm not doing as well as I thought, at least I'm the only one who knows I'm failing.
Martin Scorsese: Exactly. That's right.
Quentin Tarantino: It's kind of like I'm testing my talents. Am I going to get mad at this? Am I not as good as I thought? Just before those days, those shots, were always the ones I was most anxious about because I wanted to shoot them better, and I'm at the foot of the mountain right now, and I look up.
I knew that once I started climbing, I would be fine. But I have to start climbing, you have to overcome the process first...
Martin Scorsese: (Laughs) It's real, it's totally anxiety, nightmares, everything. Going to the set in the morning, it's all about arguing, complaining, and then it's still about getting started.
Quentin Tarantino: In those mornings, I was the most annoying. I would say to people, "Don't bother me. ”
Martin Scorsese: "Don't come near me. "(Laughs) I stepped out of the trailer and I was nice to everyone. I got into the trailer, my producer, my assistant, and they all understood me. Then the director of photography came and they understood me. I often complain about traffic, or I have a problem with my teeth, or I don't know what it is. "This ghost place can't work anymore," you know.
Martin Scorsese: But anyway, it's an incredible thing that I talk about a lot, which is the process of putting the concepts in the mind into practice, and through all these devices, through the lens, through the equipment, how do we realize the ideas in our heads? Too short.
Once you start to concretize them, we may lose part of the feelings in our minds about what we want to express. It's very tricky.
Quentin Tarantino: It's an interesting double-edged sword, I think, that's why we get anxious, because on the one hand, we already have this perfect movie in our heads, but we don't want it. We want to create something better than that because we don't have those actors in our heads.
Martin Scorsese: Exactly.
Quentin Tarantino: You have to keep editing with the music, this, that, and the exclamation of the audience. It must have vitality and a heartbeat.
Martin Scorsese: That's right.
Quentin Tarantino: But I still want the audience to be amazed.
Martin Scorsese: Yeah, I know. That's the tension. It was incredibly tense. People will say, "Well, if you hate it." "But it's not because I hate it.
QUENTIN TARANTINO: Yeah, it's not nasty.
Martin Scorsese: That's what we're doing.
Quentin Tarantino: It's actually the most exhilarating thing of my life, but that doesn't mean I don't have fear.
Martin Scorsese: Oh, God. But you know, you've done your best: with the director of photography, with your actors, with the weather, with your feelings, with that location, with that shooting program. Unless, you know, some people go back to reshoots.
Quentin Tarantino: Yeah, it seems like cheating to me. You have to try to get what you want to do for a given amount of time, when everyone is present, even if it drags on for a few days...
Martin Scorsese: Yes, it's like a professional boxing match.
Quentin Tarantino: Anyone can do unlimited things...
Martin Scorsese: Yeah, it's a professional boxing match. You have some rounds, you have to get in there, you have to move on, that's it. I mean, in Infernal Affairs, I did it for four more days. But what I did there, we made a lot of changes in the middle of the filming.
I've been working with Bill Monahan and all the people who rewrite the script. Things got so complicated that my staff asked me at one point, "Where do you want to put the new scene that just appeared?" I said, "Put it in the middle with the other stuff."
(Laughs) I'll think about it later. Sure enough, at the end of the day, when Selma and I were sorting through the footage, we were like controlling six wild horses. Finally, we put all of this together and we realize, "Well, we need this, we don't need that." ”
Quentin Tarantino: Yeah, absolutely makes sense. Still, I have to think that when it comes to the kind of frighteningly big scenes I've described, I can imagine that you might feel that way too, leading to the big action climax of Taxi Driver.
▲ "Taxi Driver"
Martin Scorsese: It's every day in Taxi Driver. It was supposed to be a 40 day shoot and we shot it for 45 days and they were very, very angry with us - very angry and kept calling. It was a nightmare. I must say that the kind of energy you see in the picture — I designed the whole gunfight scene very carefully — there was this anger during the filming.
Martin Scorsese: It makes us pay a lot, but it's like fighting a war. It's all about fighting. It's as if everything you do is to get the shots you want, for the way you want it. We just want to buy time.
Martin Scorsese: But it has a crazy energy. Because of this, we are like commandos.
Quentin Tarantino: It makes sense, especially the cathartic action scenes, which have an opera style and even a Japanese style in a way.
Martin Scorsese: Yes, yes.
Quentin Tarantino: But also more realistic than anything I see in a normal movie theater. The ending must be cathartic, bringing all these elements together. The man had been in his apartment and then suddenly ended up like fuel finally with a bomb.
Martin Scorsese: Oh yes. Here's the thing, Paul Schrader's writing process was very personal. I got the impression that he wanted to make the film more Japanese and stylized. He said he wished there was more blood on the wall.
I said, "I'm not Ichikawa Kun, and this movie isn't Akira Kurosawa's Tsubaki Sanjuro." "I've seen these movies, I love these movies, but every time I try to do that, it turns out to be a different kind of result. Because in my hometown, Quentin, when I see violence or the threat of violence, it's very real.
▲Sanjuro Tsubaki
Martin Scorsese: Very serious, and with consequences. Whether it's a slap or a look, or even a loud bang, you could die the next minute. I just did it the way I imagined... It's as if it's going to happen for real.
Quentin Tarantino: I remember hearing you say that you were a little upset and the audience felt a kind of emotional catharsis, but to me, it seemed to be emotional catharsis in the first place.
Martin Scorsese: I didn't know that. I thought it was just a project that we all wanted to make because we all had these feelings. Disconnected from society, angry. Of course we don't cross the line like the protagonist Travis, but we can understand that emotion.
QUENTIN TARANTINO: Yeah, yeah, so you didn't think at the time how much of an impact this movie would have.
Martin Scorsese: I thought no one was going to see this movie.
Quentin Tarantino: So my question is, in Taxi Driver, I'm pretty sure why this movie was made (at Columbia) because it's very similar to Raptors...
▲ "Raptor Freak"
Martin Scorsese: Michael Phillips and Julia Phillips, who just won the Academy Award, they were really promoting the film and working with people at Columbia, when it was David Bergerman, and they succeeded. But [the producers] didn't want to shoot, and they made it very clear every minute.
Quentin Tarantino: Oh, really. [Laughs]
Martin Scorsese: Every day. Especially when I showed them the finished film, they were angry and got X-rated ratings. I had a meeting with Julia and the top brass of Columbia University, and they looked at me, and I walked in, ready to take notes. They said, "Either cut the movie to R or we cut it." ”
Quentin Tarantino: Oh my God!
Martin Scorsese: I don't have any power, I can't do anything about it. I hit a boulder and only Julia and Michael supported me. All these meetings, interviews, and tug-of-war with grading agencies.
That gunfight scene, I don't know how else to shoot. I knew it was a created image, but I didn't know what effect it would have, so I ended up cutting two versions. That kind of violent catharsis is real. When I saw Sunset Yellow Sand, I felt it.
▲Sunset Yellow Sand
Quentin Tarantino: Well, that's a fun thing. For example, at the end of Taxi Driver, I felt a sense of catharsis.
Martin Scorsese: The character (taxi driver), 80% or 90% is De Niro himself.
QUENTIN TARANTINO: Absolutely.
Martin Scorsese: The expression on his face and the look in his eyes.
Quentin Tarantino: It's interesting because here's the thing, you, De Niro and Schrader, you've chosen to see the world through Travis's perspective. De Niro entered Travis's perspective, a first-person study. You see the world through his eyes. So, if he's a racist, you're looking at the world from a racist perspective.
Martin Scorsese: Yes, that's right.
Quentin Tarantino: However, despite this, I was on Travis's side when he was alone against the pimps. I mean, if we don't support him at all, then there's no need to make a prostitute underage.
Martin Scorsese: You're right, it was Schrader writing in the script, when she was an adult, and Harvey improvised some of those lines.
Quentin Tarantino: I love that movie, and I especially like that shot. Usually, if you're talented enough, you'll create something unexpectedly good.
Quentin Tarantino: Sometimes, if I'm in a cool movie bookstore, I like to take a critical essay about a director who I haven't seen much. Then I started reading books about them, which would lead me to the work of another filmmaker.
So when we were shooting Shameless Bastards in France, I spent a weekend in Paris, and there was a great movie bookstore on the Champollion street in Paris, where all the little movie theaters were, and I hadn't seen much of Joseph von Sternberg's films.
▲ "Shameless Bastard"
So I picked up a book about him, and I loved it so much, and I bought another book, and finally I bought his autobiography, which was ridiculously written, and I didn't believe the text in it at all, but it was funny.
Martin Scorsese: (laughs) I know, I know.
Quentin Tarantino: Literally a word of disbelief. Later I started watching some of his films and I was actually inspired by his art direction.
Quentin Tarantino: So I started, and now I learn from Joseph von Sternborough to do that a few times in every film. In Shameless Bastards, Joseph von Stern-esque lenses were specially designed. The push-pull shot follows the protagonist through the entire scene, all the candlelight, cups, clocks, lights.
Martin Scorsese: I like to push and pull the camera to follow the movements of the characters. I remember Godard's "Do Whatever You Want" and the man said "I want a Judy Garland record", and then the heroine walked through the record store, found the record, and then the camera followed her back. It has an objectivity, and it should be said that the state of their soul, in a way, does not want to get too close.
▲ "Do Whatever You Want"
Martin Scorsese: There's one thing that I've tried to capture in a lot of movies and still haven't worked out, but that's okay, it's already interesting to try.
There's a scene in Hitchcock's The Thief where the female protagonist prepares to shoot her horse, she runs with a pistol, the camera follows her hand, and then follows her shoulder. The camera is moving all the time, and when she moves with her hand, the ground is tilted. I've tried this in almost every film, but it all ended up like a push-pull shot, which obviously Hitchcock didn't shoot that way.
▲ "The Thief"
Martin Scorsese: Hitchcock's shots are floating, but I just can't do it anyway, but it's a lot of fun to try to do.
Quentin Tarantino: I've had this experience, while shooting the last three films. In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood I think I finally did it. What I wanted to do wasn't even from the movie itself, but the trailer for Sam Peckinpa's Billy The Kid, with Chris Christopherson shooting at 24 frames per second, James Cobain in hiding, and then a gunfight, and then the camera cut to the shot character, in slow motion.
Then the camera cuts back to Chris Christopherson, 24 frames, bang, bang, bang. Then the camera cuts to him falling to the ground, 120 frames.
Martin Scorsese: Wow.
Quentin Tarantino: I tried this method. I tried it in Django Rescued, but it didn't work out. I tried it in The Eight Wicked Men and succeeded in a shootout, but it wasn't what I thought.
▲ "Eight Wicked Men"
Martin Scorsese: (laughs)
Quentin Tarantino: But when Brad Pitt beat Manson in that scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I finally made it. The shot of him hitting someone is 24 frames, and the shot of the person being hit is 120 frames.
Martin Scorsese: That's great, so that the sand is noticeable — ah, great.
Martin Scorsese: I always think of photographing those dusts.
QUENTIN TARANTINO: And the blood on the face.
Martin Scorsese: That's great. I always wanted to do it, but I couldn't. The little Mexican boy in Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, when he learns that his brother has been hanged...
▲"Once Upon a Time in the West"
Quentin Tarantino: Oh yes, yes.
Martin Scorsese: His brother was supposed to be standing on his shoulder, and when he was hit by a bullet, he fell to his knees in slow motion. I tried.
Quentin Tarantino: Can't shoot it.
Martin Scorsese: In The Last Temptation of Christ, I tried it too, and it didn't work out. We were in Morocco, Harvey and I were together, and we couldn't always shoot it, I don't know if it was related to sand and dust.
▲ "The Last Temptation of Christ"
Quentin Tarantino: Yes, you have to use very light sand, that kind of Spanish sand, Almeria sand.
Martin Scorsese: Spain? Oh my god, that's so funny.