NEW YORK (AP) ā Martin Scorsese was knee-deep in preparation for āKillers of the Flower Moonā when Mara Hennessey reached out to invite him to see David Johansen. The former frontman for the trailblazing 1970s proto-punk band ā and Hennessey's husband ā was performing a new show at the CafĆ© Carlyle.
Scorsese, a longtime fan of Johansen (he had once played the Dolls to rile up his actors for a fight scene), went eagerly with a handful of others, including his frequent documentary collaborator David Tedeschi. There, they saw Johansen perform a lounge act of grit and grace.
Here was a downtown fixture relocated to one of uptownās swankiest rooms. As his pompadoured alter ego, Buster Poindexter, Johansen was performing stripped-down versions of his own songs and Dolls hits, with plenty of reflective, comic interludes. Scorsese, smitten by Johansenās performance, immediately resolved to shoot it ā the still ringing echo of a vanished New York.
āIt was just a natural feel: We have to do this,ā Scorsese explained in an interview. āWe have to capture it before it goes.ā
which debuts Friday on Showtime, is the result, mixing footage Scorsese and co-director David Tedeschi shot over two nights at the Carlyle in January 2020 with flashbacks through Johansenās wildly varied career and intimate interviews taped during the pandemic by Johansen and Hennesseyās daughter, Leah.
Like Scorseseās recent Netflix series āPretend Itās a Cityā with Fran Lebowitz, it's also a portrait of a still clarion, still vibrant New York voice in a city that now hardly resembles the one they were all forged in.
āThe environment that he came out of in the ā70s, in a way, Iām still there,ā says Scorsese, whose third feature film, āMean Streets,ā debuted the same year as the Dollsā first album. āIt has to do with New York because we live in New York. Iām not doing L.A. Iām not doing Chicago. I live in New York. And this is a part of where I came from. It turns out that itās changed, itās finished, itās gone, itās going somewhere else.ā
Time is much on the mind of Scorsese, 80, who in a month his sprawling adaptation of David Grannās bestseller about a series of murders of members of the Osage tribe in 1920s Oklahoma. The scope of the Apple release ā with a budget of $200 million and a reported runtime of nearly four hours ā makes it one of Scorseseās biggest undertakings.
āItās not four hours,ā he says. āItās lengthy. Itās an epic.ā
Adding in āThe Irishman,ā Scorseseās ambitions seem to be only growing with age. Bigger productions, he says, are what he's aiming toward now ā even if heās less accustomed to directing the movement of mass groups of people the way Steven Spielberg or Ridley Scott can.
āThey just snap their fingers and it happens. But I canāt. Maybe I could,ā says Scorsese. āSomething else happens. If the character finds himself in a story that takes a longer period of time to tell, then I feel comfortable with that. And I think thereās an audience for that. Or I should say I think thereās still an audience for that.ā
Other big projects may loom, Scorsese says.
āIf I get there,ā he says. āYou got to get there.ā
All of which makes āPersonality Crisis,ā sandwiched between two monumental masterworks, a stirringly intimate contrast.
āI was surprised by how much I liked it,ā says Johansen. āI hardly cringed.ā
The Staten Island-born Johansen, now 73, was a pivotal figure of ā70s East Village New York and the New York Dolls presaged the punk movement. Since then, he's reinvented himself as the lounge-singing Buster Poindexter, who had the 1980s hit (a song that Johansen now more or less disowns). Heās acted, too. Many will remember Johansen as the taxi-driving ghost of Christmas past in āScrooged.ā
Part of the joy of āPersonality Crisisā is that it takes Johansen ā so often associated with particular eras of rock ā out of those contexts. Here, heās simply a gravel-voiced lounge lizard supreme ā a rock ānā roll survivor with the anecdotes to go with it.
āItās not a rock doc,ā says Hennessey. āTo me, itās a portrait of an artist.ā
Almost since the beginning, Scorsese has toggled between narrative features and documentaries, though he and Tedeschi donāt love the term ādocumentary.ā (āWeād rather have fun,ā says Tedeschi.) Each are simply films, Scorsese says, with different rhythms, choreographies and grammar. And they inform each other, a back-and-forth alchemy that began with 1974ās āItalian American,ā a dialogue with his parents released in between āMean Streetsā and āAlice Doesnāt Live Here Anymore.ā
āThese films that David and I do free me to think differently about the narrative films Iām making. The narrative films Iām making are becoming more like novels. These are not quite,ā says Scorsese. āSometimes you get locked in by whatās around you and the way things are supposed to be done. āItalian American,ā I just hold the camera on my mother and my father speaking and it was interesting. It changed everything for me.ā
āThe Last Waltz,ā Scorseseās seminal film with The Band, he says shaped āRaging Bull.ā , Scorsese connects with 2016ās āSilenceā ā both in their way about the performance of a spiritual act.
āPersonality Crisisā likewise influenced āKillers of the Flower Moon.ā Several songs Scorsese heard while listening to Johansenās wide-ranging satellite radio show āMansion of Funā made it into the movie, including Mamie Smithās āCrazy Blues.ā Charlie Musselwhite plays harmonica alongside Johansen in āPersonality Crisisā; he also, by coincidence, is an actor in āKillers of the Flower Moon.ā
āThey just seem to come together,ā says Scorsese of his nonfiction and fiction films.
The same could be said for Johansen and Scorsese. They've known each other for decades. Johansen remembers seeing āMean Streetsā when it came out, not knowing anything about the director.
āIt was so fundamentally good,ā he says, shaking his head. Johansen, though, initially wasn't thrilled about the idea of a documentary.
āPeople always ask me, āWould you be in this documentary? Itās about punk.ā I would just say nope,ā Johansen says. āBecause when I see myself in that situation, I feel like, āWho is this idiot and where did he come from?āā
But making a film with Scorsese ā whose long line of rock ānā roll chronicles includes āGeorge Harrison: Living in the Material Worldā and the Rolling Stones concert film āShine a Lightā ā was an easier call.
āI like him for a lot of reasons but one of the reasons I like him is because he, like myself, finds music so inspiring,ā says Johansen.
Johansen and Hennessey first thought about turning the Carlyle concert into an off-Broadway show, but Scorsese said it should be filmed.
āMarty said, āAsk my wife. I fall asleep in the theater,āā recalls Johansen.
Scorsese and Tedeschi shot his performances unsure of what shape it would take. Over the pandemic, it morphed into a film, and perhaps the clearest and most unfiltered recording of Johansen yet. (A soundtrack is forthcoming.)
āI used to think about my voice like: āWhatās it gonna sound like? Whatās it going to be when I do this song?ā And Iād get myself into a knot about it," says Johansen. "At some point in my life, I decided: āJust sing the f----ing song. With whatever you got.ā To me, I go on stage and whatever mood Iām in, I just claw my way out of it, essentially.ā
Scorsese, too, has been trying to persevere without compromise in a sometimes unhospitable environment for cinema. Along with his extensive efforts to preserve and restore old films with the and attempts to bring classic films to new audiences with , Scorsese has often publicly spoken against the predominance of blockbusters in today's moviegoing.
āI did a film ('The Irishman') with Netflix. That was a great experience. The same with Apple ā even more so because weāre going theatrical,ā he says of the film to open in theaters Oct. 20. āThe experience watching at home is OK. Itās OK. But itās not what it should be.ā
He worries that a generation will grow up with the idea that a theatrical movie is a blockbuster, and everything else is āalternative cinema.ā
āWho said movies were going to be made like they were in the first 75, 80 years? Because they were made for theaters," says Scorsese. "That may not be the case anymore. Itās a new world.ā
But Scorsese is still holding out hope. He'd like to see streaming companies build theaters.
āMaybe these new companies might say: Letās invest in the future of the new generations for creativity,ā Scorsese says. āBecause a young person actually going to see a film in the theater, that person, who knows, five or 10 years later could be a wonderful novelist, painter, musician, composer, filmmaker, whatever. You donāt know where that inspiration is going to land when you throw it out there. But itās got to be out there.ā
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Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
