Martin Scorsese (Shine A Light) Interview
Your Bob Dylan documentary was a huge critical success. Did you think about doing a something similar with the Stones?
Well, to make a history of the Stones, that would mean making a very different film. And quite honestly, what I wanted to see was the performance. In the long run I’d rather see what it is that makes them so special, even now. You’re allowed to age gracefully as a blues musician, a jazz musician or an opera singer, but there’s this age thing that comes into play with rock ‘n roll. But you’re seeing so many of the greatest rock stars and singers aging gracefully, and moving on to new levels of maturity and a power. So that’s what I wanted to see and capture. I was also interested in the nature of the shape changer, like Dylan, and in the performer who can create something in an audience that is so overwhelming that it swarms and overtakes the senses – the ecstasy of performance. It’s a primal condition in a way. A primal reaction.
What’s harder, making a feature film or trying to capture the Stones live?
They’re 2 different things, 2 different types of narrative. With The Stones, once we got our two machines working together – the The Stones’ machine and the movie machine – and all the cameras ready with Bob Richardson’s lighting, once we got all that together, it was great. I can’t describe the adrenaline rush during the actual two hours of the concert. The first song started, and then it seemed like it was over in less than a minute. I was seeing 18 images in front of me. I’d zero in on one camera and talk to a cameraman to be careful to move in here or there. It was a pleasure – absolutely terrifying, but a great pleasure.
The Stones come across in your film as such a powerful force…
True. “A force of nature…“ A friend of mine said, “It’s your most upbeat film,” and that was very nice to hear. I think it’s a film about doing what you do until it’s over, and it’s only over when it’s over, at the very, very end. . You know, going back to making a longer documentary, that’s very tempting. But I realised that what I was really compelled to do was cover their performance. I’ve seen them on stage often over the years because Mick and I have been working on a project together on the music business, a feature film, and this is something I’ve always had in mind, consciously or unconsciously.
When did you first see the Stones?
I think it was1970, so it must have been the tour that Robert Frank was shooting. For me it was all about what I’d heard before then. Not just music I’d heard in the 60s, like the Stones, but music from the 30s, 40s and 50s. It was all fed into my machine, which was filmmaking, and I keep going back to the well…music is where a lot of my Ideas about movies and moviemaking were formed - camera movements, energy, sometimes a kind of impatient energy which maybe goes too fast and from which I have to pull back, and it all comes from listening to that music. There’s also Dylan but I only started listening to Dylan when he did “Like A Rolling Stone,” after he’d gone electric. I had to go back later to discover the pre-electric Dylan. There’s The Band, of course, there’s Van Morrison who is still performing so brilliantly, there’s Neil Young, there are The Beatles. And the Stones, always the Stones.
Can you explain your obsession with the Rolling Stones?
I think it stays with me because it’s blues-based and I like the blues. My brother played guitar a little bit and my father played a stringed instrument - I never actually heard him play but he told me he did, and there’s some footage of him with a mandolin. So I like string instruments. Django Reinhardt was the first music I remember hearing from the 78’s I had. The Stones, of course, came much later, and they were something else. They had an edge to them that you didn’t hear in other rock ‘n’ roll, and the lyrics are tough and irreverent. At times, their songs remind me of the lyrics and attitude of Kurt Weil and Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. The neighbourhood I grew up in was very much like the world of Threepenny Opera.
Their music, especially in the 60s, was very much a part of the counter culture.
Yes, but also observant of the whole culture. Look at “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadows” or “Mother’s Little Helper,” which is about middle class mothers taking pills, or “Shattered,” which is as sharp as a razor, about New York City in the 70s. But for me, it’s about the fact that The Stones’ music really spoke to me. I related to the lyrics of “Tell Me” or “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” because I knew a lot of people like that, who were like Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Some of them aren’t around anymore. I liked the bravado of it, the defiance. The provocation and the defiance – I like that. It stirs things up.
Are you still working on the feature film project with Mick?
Yes. It’s a feature film and it’s being written at this time. .
Does it focus on a band?
No, it’s about the music business - ruthless and tough.
Which music do you listen to at home now?
It’s changed a little with a child in the house. My daughter is eight years old, and it’s a little difficult to play certain kinds of music, although I’m compiling music for her. Now I’m in the process of moving and creating a room where I’ll be able to listen to some more music. But generally it’s the older stuff. It’s Eric Clapton, and it’s The Band, Dylan…and the Stones. I just go back and forth. And then there’s classical - I’ve been listening to a lot of Baroque music. And I like Bach in the morning.
Shine A Light will be available to buy on DVD and Blu-Ray from 3rd November 2008.
