Page 2
Jack Nicholson’s Sex Scene: “As for the graphic sex and nudity and profanity that's in the picture, it's got a lot in it, there's no doubt," admitted Scorsese. "What you see in the film is the result of a lot of work during filming and getting the process previewed. We previewed the film three times, and ultimately I decided what is implied, what's implicit is better than explicit in the bedroom scene - or wherever they are at that point.
We came up with the device of, because we had been shooting around the cocaine, of painting the ceiling. The ceiling is blue with stars on it, which reminded me of the Pope's ceiling in Avignon, during that period, I think, in the 16th century [when] for 130 years the Pope had moved from the Vatican to Avignon. The Pope's ceiling had stars on it. It was really interesting. You can't see it in the film, but it's there. So finally all these things came together. You know, in the first cuts, it was more explicit but we pulled it down.
Since my early films like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Mean Streets or whatever, they’re subject naturally to discussion and how far you can go in a film and how far you can't. But ultimately the implied is better. The hallucinatory effect of the scene is what I wanted. The opera, the slow motion of Jack's face…all of these elements come together. We decided the reality is better. We did it more explicit in the porno theater. We used a phallus in the porno theatre and Frank C looks like he's come from three or four days and nights of whatever he was doing and now he was going to go talk to him about business. He's out of his mind. He's creepy and his whole life is dependant on him - on Matt's character. So is Leo's, and the man is losing his mind. He doesn't care if he's caught. He's got all the drugs in the world. He's got all the women in the world. He's got all the money in the world. He doesn't need it. He's protected by the FBI. He doesn't care. We thought it would be better to use the phallus in the porno theatre. We had the choice, Jack and I were talking about it and he said, ‘You know I have it with me.’ I said, ‘Of course. You want to take it with you and use it in the porno scene? It's up to you.’ I said, ‘You want to try to take it?’ He said, ‘You want me to try to take it in the porno theatre?’ I said, ‘All right, let me see it. Let me see what you want to do with it in the porno theatre.’ I'm more interested in when he says, ‘You want some coke?’, there it is. I'm more interested in where it is.”
Working Out the Score for The Departed: “I worked out with Howard Shore that in a way all the characters are sort of entwined in a web, almost as if they tried to get away from each other. They're tied together almost like in a dance of death in a way, or like a tango. And so we came up with this idea of a tango, a very dangerous and lethal tango which ultimately does everyone in in the story, and the idea of different themes of fate and the sense of the music and the sense of how the tango sounds - I wanted to play on guitars. I love guitars. I think of great guitar scores like the wonderful film by Irving Lerner called Murder by Contract with Vince Edwards. [It] has a great guitar score. Of course the famous zither score in The Third Man. Howard and I had sort of worked it out - acoustic guitars and electric guitars, different strings, steel guitars, all sorts of different things.”
A Moral or Just Ending: Asked how The Departed reflects on American morality, Scorsese said, “I think that's a good question. What I immediately related to in the material of Bill Monahan’s script is it's like a picture. I don't know what it is…it's like an obsessive behavioral pattern on my part to be dealing with this material, but this is a little different this film. As we were making it I'm realizing that we're in a moral Ground Zero in a way. Almost none of the characters really, maybe Billy [DiCaprio’s character], maybe the doctor [played by Vera Farmiga], she feels a certain way about morality, but she makes mistakes. She learns about herself; she's duplicitous too, in a way.
It's a world where morality no longer exists. Costello knows this. I think he's almost above it. He knows that God doesn't exist anymore in the world that they're in. It’s the old story: in order to know you have a problem first you have to know you have a problem. You really do, and this is my own take. Bill, I'm sure, has his own. But I felt kind of despair that's reflected in the story in the characters, and how they all interact with each other. [Spoiler deleted regarding the ending scenes]. I think for me it just is a sadness and a sense of despair since we've been in this situation since September 11th. Somehow this all came together and that's what kept me going in depicting this world sort of like a moral Ground Zero.”
