Posts Tagged ‘Scorsese’

Conversations with Scorsese by Richard Schickel

January 21st, 2013

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“I loved it. It offers all the pleasures of eavesdropping on a riveting and wonderfully entertaining private conversation.” –Ron Howard

Now in paperback, and with a new afterword: the history and process of moviemaking in general, and of Martin Scorsese’s brilliant and varied films in particular, through the words and wit of the master director.

With Richard Schickel as the canny and intelligent guide, these conversations take us deep into Scorsese’s life and work. He reveals which films are most autobiographical, and what he was trying to explore and accomplish in other films. He explains his personal style and describes many of the rewarding artistic and personal relationships of his career, including collaborations with Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Jack Nicholson, and Leonardo DiCaprio. An invaluable illumination and appreciation of one of our most admired film directors.

Praise for Conversations with Scorsese

“Conversations-with-directors books can go one of two ways: Either the directors want to analyze their work, or they don’t. Those who do either obscure the films with trivial esoterica or—as is the case with Martin Scorsese, in Richard Schickel’s Conversations with Scorsese—illuminate their choices with a pragmatic instinct verging on the intimate, as though they were discussing not shots and lenses but their own biography.”—Sam Wasson, LA Weekly

“Putting [Martin Scorsese and Richard Schickel] together is a perfect pairing for an epic discourse about the movies . . . Conversations with Scorsese is likely to stand as the definitive source for Scorsese’s views because he is so engaged—and because Schickel knows just the questions to ask . . . Schickel makes no secret that he is a fan and a friend. Still, he challenges the director, presses a point and states outright whether a particular film works for him. He also manages to keep Scorsese on topic without missing an opportunity to explore an interesting tangent. And there are plenty of tangents—just what you would expect in a spirited back-and-forth between two cinephiles at the top of their game.”–Douglass K. Daniel, Associated Press

Richard Schickel is a film critic, documentary filmmaker, and movie historian who has written more than thirty-five books, including Clint Eastwood: A Biography, Intimate Strangers, and The Disney Version. His thirty documentaries include Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin, Woody Allen: A Life in Film, and Shooting War, about combat cameramen in World War II. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was awarded the British Film Institute Book Prize, the Maurice Bessy Prize for film criticism, and the William K. Everson Award for his work in film history.