THE CATALOG OF COOL PRESENTS
Cinema's CoolFella: SCORSESE
He is the greatest. And, like Ali, the cinema champ's a poet, a "scientist" as the rastas would say. Mere greatness alone, though, wouldn't put him in these pages. Style would, and Scorsese's films are flooded with it. Wit, good looks and "outsider" attitude course through them like electrons. Sure, much of this is done in service of realism (he's called Mean Streets "anthropological"), but you also get the sense that this director's empathy with his characters goes beyond hitting the historicity nail squarely. Like he knows how sharp his 'fellas feel sporting those scissor collars, that he himself digs the kinetic beauty of their bing-ba-da-bing! raps. Pontius Pilate doesn't wear an ID bracelet in Last Temptation, but Scorsese wore cuff links to Woodstock.
Film Comment: Pop music is usually used in films, at least on one level, to cue the audience to what era it is.
Scorsese: Oh, no, no, forget that, no.
The man knows what time it is. He was scoring films to pop before anyone; not with roadsign literalism ("You Are Now Entering 1974"), but with good humor and great records. In 1968's Who's That Knocking, the Genies' 1959 doowop title track kicks in as Harvey Keitel's soul-hurt J.R. wanders an empty church, orbing all the ceramic angels & saints. "Boom boom boom, bang bang bang" shout the Genies (quick cuts: Virgin Mary statue; St. Lucy of Sicily proffering her eyeballs on a plate) / "I can't stand this awful pain" (closeup: male saint pointing to the bloodwound on his leg!). The Ronettes' heart-stopping "Be My Baby" is Keitel's wakeup call in Mean Streets, and later the Chips' vertiginous "Rubber Biscuit" his accompaniment as he reels, juiced, through pal Tony's place. Louie Prima plays inside Jake LaMotta's Miami dive in Raging Bull, and the greatest hits of Robert & Johnny and Johnnie & Joe cycle endlessly in the Terminal Bar that's Griffin Dunne's temp refuge in After Hours. Tony Bennett's"Rags To Riches" lights up the start of GoodFellas like some mega-volt votive candle, the perfect invocation of the comedy-carnage union that is the film's soul and inspiration.
Coolness busts out all over, in bits and frames... the transcendent cheesiness of Morrie the Wig Man's commercials ("And remember, Morrie's wigs are tested against hurricane winds!") in GoodFellas. (Check Morrie actor Chuck Law's saturnine sit- and walk-through in King Of Comedy, as Rupert Pupkin regales Diahnne Abbot in a Chi-fi eatery... the way "big man" loan shark Michael (Richard Romanus) is revealed as a small-time shmuck in Mean Streets; salty over collecting on the coupla K he's lent DeNiro's Johnny Boy, by mid-film he's hustling fireworks to suburban teens and getting burned in the process... that momentous first encounter between Jake and Vickie (Cathy Moriarty). Introduced by his brother (Joe Pesci), Jake stares at her, a tall, cool blond in a bathing suit, the dish of his dreams. "Nice to meet you," he manages. She waits, eyes his wheels, then speaks her first words to the man she'll marry. "Nice caaw." And how about Henry and Karen Hill's fluid glide from curb to ringside Copa seats and the top of the world (GoodFellas), a vision of high times so swingin' you can almost see Gleason and Darin rattle their ice, hoist tumblers, and snap for service. Hey, over here, two more Seven-and-Sevens! -G.S. & B.M.
After
Hours 1985 (Warner Home Vuideo)
GoodFellas
1990 (Warner Home Video)
King
Of Comedy 1983 (RCA Columbia Home Video)
Mean Streets 1973 (Warner Home Video)
Raging
Bull 1980 (MGM/UA)
Who's That Knocking 1968 (No-rent, but does show on cable)
THE KING OF NAMES
(Seen or heard in MS films)
Billy Batts
Frankie Bones
Frankie the Wop
Freddy No Nose
Jimmy Sparks
Jimmy Two Times
Joey Clams (Joey Scala)
Nickie Eyes
Sally Balls
Sally Ga-ga
TuddyBIG QUESTIONS
"You talkin' a me?" - Travis Bickle
"D'you fuck my wife?"- Jake LaMotta
"Is that cork?" - Rupert Pupkin
"A mook? What's a mook?"- Johnny Boy
"Who do you think you are, Frankie Valli or some kinda big shot?"- Karen Hill
"I amuse you?...What do you mean 'funny'? 'Funny' how? How am I funny?" - Tommy DeVito
"What am I, a shmuck on wheels?" - Morrie the Wig Man
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