This fall, Apple TV+ will release the five-part docuseries “Mr. Scorsese,” looking back on Martin Scorsese‘s legendary career.
But in a first look at the series, Scorsese looks back at a point in his career he’d probably rather forget, when Columbia Pictures pushed him to make sweeping cuts to what would become his breakthrough film, “Taxi Driver.”
In the sneak peek clip, which you can view below, Steven Spielberg talks about getting an upset phone call from Scorsese telling him that the studio wanted him to drastically cut down on the graphic violence in the film, most notably in the climatic shootout where an enraged Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) exacts bloody judgment on a pimp that sells child prostitutes.
“‘They want me to cut all the blood spurting. They want me to cut the guy who loses his hand,” Spielberg recalls Scorsese telling him.
The rumor around director circles was that Scorsese had a gun and planned to threaten the studio execs into keeping his cut. When asked by “Mr. Scorsese” director Rebecca Miller about the rumors, the filmmaker rolled his eyes.
“I wasn’t going to get it,” he said. “I was angry. I said I was going to threaten them or shoot or something. I had no idea. What I wanted to do — and not with a gun — I would go in, find out where the rough cut is, break the windows and take it away.”
Of course, that didn’t happen. Instead, Scorsese and Columbia famously agreed on a compromise that managed to get the film an R rating instead of a box office-killing X rating. Rather than cut out any of the gruesome shootout footage, the colors were desaturated to make the blood look more brown than red. Scorsese compared the result to pictures from a tabloid.
The rest is history. “Taxi Driver,” despite shocking audiences at the Cannes Film Festival, won the Palme d’Or and went on to receive four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Scorsese and De Niro went on to become one of the most famous director-actor duos in cinematic history, working on eight more films together, including Scorsese’s most recent film, “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
“Mr. Scorsese” will premiere on Apple TV+ on Oct. 17.
