Can I just say one thing? Thank God for asthma!” howls Spike Lee, early on in Apple TV’s Mr Scorsese. Exploring in propulsive detail the life and work of cinematic giant Martin Scorsese, the new five-part series devotes much of its first episode to the filmmaker’s New York upbringing – including his struggle with severe asthma as a young child. The condition forced a young Scorsese to stay home and people-watch through the glass panes of his window, while his parents took him to the cinema – and its perpetual supply of more easily breathable air – as often as possible. Or as one talking head puts it: “Marty’s life depended on going to the movies. That’s where he could breathe.”
Over the past half-century, there have been precious few filmmakers who merit the same effusion as the man widely referred to as “Marty”. From early classics Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980), to his sensational late-career run of films such as Silence (2016) and Killers of the Flower Moon(2023), Scorsese, now 82, has proved himself to be cinema’s ultimate long-distance runner, an artist of almost unparalleled longevity. “I didn’t even really understand how daunting it was when I started, to be honest,” says Rebecca Miller, the director of Mr Scorsese. She had initially envisioned the documentary as a two-hour film. “Within a year, I was like, ‘I cannot do this’,” she recalls. “It would have been a disservice to him and his truly Shakespearean output. There’s a level of creation… so many masterpieces on such a level and over such a long time, and spanning so much of the history of this country.”
