Page 27 - The Hollywood Reporter (January 2020)

Who else did you have in the audience for would come in. If we were shooting at night
the first day of production, there was always
[a thought that] this may not happen. But I
also think that part of what I have as a pro-
ducer is the tenacity to keep pushing a project
forward and to never give up on it. And this
was something [Bob] wanted to do, so he was
constantly pushing this forward too. It was
an uphill battle until Netflix was born. The
fact is that Netflix didn’t exist [as a content
creator] back in 2007.
You had a script reading back in 2013 with
Scorsese, Pesci, Pacino and De Niro all there.
What was it like for you being in that room, com-
ing together for the first time?
It was before Marty was going to go off and
do Silence. I had said to Bob, “We should do
a reading of it and we should tape the read-
ing.” I actually thought at one point that, if
anything, at least we would have that read-
ing. We might not make the movie, but we’d
have a record of this reading. What was very
special at the reading is you realized that it
had a great deal of humor in it. Just listen-
ing to them, it came alive. When everybody
“The whole story reflects how we are getting older,
and that feels right.” ROBERT DE NIRO
came in, the actors were seated and Marty
was going to sit in the audience, but then he
decided that he should sit in the middle of the
group as they were reading. And it was great
to see him laughing and getting into it in the
middle of it all. There was a momentum that
picked up after that reading, and we said, “OK,
we’ve got to make this now. We can’t stop.” It
was at the reading that Pablo Helman from
Industrial Light & Magic said to Marty that
he thought he had a way to make the youth-
ification tech work. That reading was a real
turning point. It still took a long time after
that before it got made, but it finally felt like it
was on its way.
T H E H O L L Y W O O D
the reading?
We had Rick Yorn and we had various agents.
We had a couple of people who could possibly
finance the movie. [Producer] Irwin Winkler
was there. But it was also really for Marty to
hear it again — for everyone to hear it again
and decide we’re going to continue to put our
efforts into this. And the most passionate one
was really Bob in pushing and continuing to
push this forward.
Have you or anyone on the team watched the
recording since you did the reading?
I have watched bits and pieces of it. Nobody
else has seen it for a while, but you never know
where it will pop up. (Laughs.)
Do you think the movie benefited from having
this length of development?
I don’t think the movie itself changed very
much. And the script didn’t change very
much. But what did change was everyone’s
perspective. Marty talks a lot about the
perspective of time and place, and how they
now look at things as men in their 70s,
versus men in their 60s.
When Netflix did finally come on and you
had secured financing, what were you most
anticipating when it came to actually pulling
off the production?
The movie is complicated, with so many dif-
ferent decades. And it was a long shoot with
many, many locations and a lot of different
moving pieces. So producing was also about
making sure our actors and our crew could
maintain their work.
Was there an obstacle that came up in the
middle of production that made you think, “We
aren’t going to be able to pull this off”?
No. That’s where Emma [Tillinger Koskoff]
R E P O R T E R 2 3 J A N U A R Y
and throwing taxi cabs into the river, Emma
could worry about that. (Laughs.) That’s where
it’s wonderful to have good partners.
Did you have a favorite day on set or a favorite
moment from principal photography that sticks
with you?
There were so many, like seeing Bob and Joe
together for the first time. But what [sticks
out] is actually the last day of filming, which
was a reshoot of Bob in the scene at the very
end of the movie. There were certain things
that Bob felt he needed to do. The end of a
movie is always emotional — you’re saying
goodbye to a lot of people that you’ve become
family with, and you’re not going to see them
again in the same context. But this had a
particularly profound meaning for me. I tear
up just thinking about it. On this movie, it’s
Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro and all
these men that came together after having
made Mean Streets and Goodfellas and Casino,
and this was the end of that genre for them.
I found myself looking at Marty’s work in the
history of cinema, and what that particular
style of cinema meant for their journeys. Just
From left:
Robert
De Niro, Jane
Rosenthal
and Martin
Scorsese at
the Tribeca
Film Festival in
April 2019.
to be a witness to it was profound and emo-
tional and reminded me of why I wanted to
be in this business to begin with.
When was the first time that you watched the
movie with an audience?
The biggest audience we saw it with was the
New York Film Festival. But when it was
finally released, it was at the Belasco Theatre,
and I went to see it with a real New York audi-
ence. They were talking back to the screen,
they were laughing with it — that was the
most fun. And I went back several times after
that to see it with the audience. You could sit
back and enjoy it and experience it through
the audience’s eyes.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
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