Martin Scorsese’s latest film, “Shutter Island”, starring Leonardo DiCaprio was the number one movie at the box office this weekend, taking in more than $40 million dollars. This film marks the fourth time the actor and director have worked together. Their previous works were “Gangs of New York”, “The Departed” and “The Aviator”. “The Aviator” and “The Departed” each garnered multiple nominations during Oscar season with “The Departed” ultimately winning the award for best picture and vest director for Scorsese.
“Shutter Island,” based on the novel of the same name, is set in a hospital for the mentally and criminally insane.
Scorsese and DiCaprio appeared on “Nightline” and talked about making the film, fame and what its like to work with each other.
“I didn’t know anything about the story,” Scorsese said when commenting about the “Shutter Island” story. “I started reading it [the script] at about 10:30 at night and I needed to go to bed… I found I could not put the script down and was constantly surprised by the different levels of the story.”
“Having worked with Leo on ‘Gangs of New York,’ ‘The Aviator’ and ‘The Departed,’ I thought immediately that he should do this,” Scorsese said on casting DiCaprio for the role of Daniels. “We have a way of working together now and I had faith and trust in him as an artist to achieve the many psychological and emotional states that Teddy has to reach, and to transform throughout. Have I seen him do this before? Not to this level, I think. As he gets older, he goes deeper and deeper.”
The challenges faced when shooting the movie helped the cast and crew better understand the conditions some of the patients in such a hospital might experience.
“If there wasn’t a crane dropping water on you then it was guys with fire hoses or a giant fan blowing air into your face,” DiCaprio said. “But the result was that it ended up feeling very real to us.
When asked about their working relationship and what it’s like to work with Scorsese, DiCaprio tells “Nightline”, “… Look, for me it’s very simple, I’m getting to work with a master filmmaker and I am inspired by working with him. And more so than all that, he kind of has this infectious appreciation for cinema as an art form … and when you’re around someone that loves movies that much and has such a commitment to making good movies, you get on that roller coaster too, and everyone enjoys that process — it’s infectious”.
There is speculation that the two may join forces again to work on a biopic of the late Frank Sinatra, but all either would only say that he’s [Scorsese] working on it.
“It could be, it very well could be”, the director said about a possible Sinatra film. “We just had some meetings on it in Los Angeles and we’re going to the next step and see what we can do, you know. It’s a matter of timing too..”
When asked if it matters whether or not people will like the movie or not, DiCaprio comments, “The only one thing I’ve learned in my career … the only thing you know is that you have no control of what people think, you only can go in there with the best intentions, give everything you possibly can, try your best to make the best possible movie you can. Then it’s kind of like giving birth, you give it out to the world and it will either become a juvenile delinquent or the next president of the United States.”
(pictured: Mark Ruffalo and Leonardo DiCaprio in “Shutter Island.”)
