First collaborating in the mid-1970s, Martin Scorsese and Robbie Robertson’s personal and creative friendship spanned five decades — culminating with the musician’s score for Killers Of The Flower Moon. The filmmaker tells Screen International about their life and work together.
Martin Scorsese met the musician Robbie Robertson in 1976 during a tumultuous time in both of their lives, personally and professionally: the filmmaker was coming off New York, New York and Robertson was dissolving The Band. Their work on The Last Waltz concert documentary was the start of a lifelong collaboration, which ended last year with Robertson’s death.
Screen International: Was your decision to make Killers Of The Flower Moon informed in any way by your relationship with Robbie and his music — as the son of a woman who was Mohawk and Cayuga, he spent time on the First Nations of the Grand River reserve in his childhood and in 1994 formed a First Nations band?
Martin Scorsese: My decision to make a picture that dealt with Native American history goes back to experiences I had in the ’70s, my encounters with a few individuals and a visit I made to Pine Ridge. Robbie and I discussed everything over the years, and in some way his own desire to reconnect with his own heritage stayed with me. But that was his experience. On the other hand, when it came time to think about the music for the picture, I never thought of anyone else.
How did he influence the film, both beyond and including the score?
Robbie has been involved with the majority of my pictures. In many cases, he suggested music. In certain cases, he composed pieces to give me something for the background of certain scenes. When we started to work on actual scores, it took us a while before we figured out a way that suited both of us. By the time we got to Killers, we had a common language. I would describe what I wanted and he would deliver it and go beyond it — he would surprise me. The themes he gave me wound up being integral to the momentum of the action, the movement of the entire film. They were more than just background. They were cinematic elements.
Although you’ve said he didn’t talk about his illness, was there a sense of legacy to your work with him on Killers?
Only after the fact, I think.
Robbie takes different credits on your films, from producing to scoring to advising. This can lead to confusion about his work with you — can you explain how your work together ranged from film to film?
In many cases he would make suggestions for pictures that I wanted to score with pre-existing music. But it was more than that. I would tell him what I was looking for and he would give me a real response. It was more than: “Try this.” It was: “Listen to this.”
In certain cases, he would record something that I might need for a certain scene — for the church social in Raging Bull, for instance. Sometimes he would contribute a song: ‘Between Trains’ for The King Of Comedy. He co-wrote the song ‘It’s In The Way That You Use It’ with Eric Clapton for The Color Of Money.
He did his first proper score on that picture, and it was very funny because he recorded about 30 minutes of music with Gil Evans and Willie Dixon and others, finished it and he thought that was that. He didn’t know about spotting a picture, identifying places where scoring was needed. He just thought it was a matter of recording one piece and handing it over and I would break it up and use it any way I wanted. So, we worked that out.
On Shutter Island, I wanted modern concert music, and he went deep into that, gave me an incredible array of pieces to draw from and combine. On Silence, he had recordings of cicadas made, from all over Japan and other parts of the world at different times of year, and he took those sounds, slowed them down, and created something that really did give me something remarkable: the sound of silence.
Aside from working together on specific music for specific films, what did you have in common, professionally, and in life, that furthered your art together?
What we had in common was that we became friends and shared a house together when we were creating The Last Waltz and, at the same time, when we were both a little adrift — for him, it was the end of The Band; for me, it was the aftermath of New York, New York. He gave me a musical education; I gave him an education in cinema. Or, maybe a better way of putting it, we helped open each other’s minds. And, we were both people driven to go further and deeper, Robbie with music, me with films.
How did The Last Waltz come about? You lived together for two years — you must have struck up something immediate and forceful.
Jonathan Taplin, the producer of Mean Streets, was the one who came to me and asked if I was interested in shooting The Band’s farewell concert. This was in September 1976. The concert was in November 1976. And I wasn’t finished cutting New York, New York. To say yes? Madness. So I said yes. It started as just a “documentary”. We would shoot on video. But then I thought it had to be 16mm. And then… how about 35mm? Which hadn’t been done. And how about planning and plotting it out as a real film? In which all the musicians could come alive as characters? The level of madness was absolutely staggering. And that was what made it so exciting and worth doing. And yes, along the way, Robbie and I hit it off and become close collaborators and close friends. One in the same, actually — the friendship and the collaboration.
A shared theme to your work and his work is heritage. The Band’s music was grassroots when you first encountered each other, and even here, in Killers, you’re both staring down America’s history and moral inheritance. You work tirelessly on restoration and the defence of cinema, much as he did with music. Why is that so important?
These days, there are so many people coming from all directions who seem to think that somehow you can dismiss history, that you can just speak and act as if history didn’t exist. And I think this is just a fantasy. History doesn’t go away. You can’t just pretend it’s not there — for many, many reasons, and in every area, whether it’s politics or art. In this country [the US], we seem to be afraid of reining in business. And in the world of cinema and music, there are now a lot of people involved who have no real appreciation of the art forms, who act as if everything but the art is important, that art is just icing on the cake. But as [novelist] Flannery O’Connor put it, the history of the civilisations won’t be told by statistics but by literature. And by music and by dance and theatre and painting and cinema. So, of course we have to revisit the past, to keep looking at it with fresh eyes. And we have to preserve the artworks of the past. Without them, the world would be a lot bleaker.
For those who only ever saw glimpses of Robbie offstage, what words would you use to describe him as a friend and a collaborator?
Quiet. Sphinx-like. Didn’t miss a thing. Wily. A great teller of stories and tales. Wise. A great, great artist. A lifelong friend.
Interview by Fionnuala Halligan
Robertson & Scorsese on film
Born in Toronto in 1943, Robbie Robertson played guitar for Bob Dylan, and formed The Band in 1968. His professional collaboration with Martin Scorsese began in 1976 with the filming of concert film The Last Waltz, released in 1978. Robertson suggested or composed music for a number of Scorsese’s films, beginning in 1980 with Raging Bull, and was credited as composer for The Color Of Money (1986), The Irishman (2019) and current Apple Original Films awards contender Killers Of The Flower Moon, for which he is Oscar shortlisted and Bafta longlisted. Robertson worked as music consultant, music supervisor or executive music producer on Scorsese’s Casino (1995), Gangs Of New York (2002), Shutter Island (2010), The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013) and Silence (2016). He died in August 2023 of prostate cancer.
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