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Martin Scorsese Calls ‘The Departed’ Oscar Win ‘Inadvertent’: It Was a ‘Total Surprise’

Samantha Bergeson
·3 min read

Martin Scorsese was shocked his would-be swan song to big-budget studio filmmaking “The Departed” won him the Oscar for Best Director.

In a new interview with The New Yorker, the “Killers of the Flower Moon” auteur said “The Departed” was partly wrought out of having to fight “through” the studio system.

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“I had made ‘The Departed’ as a sign-off,” Scorsese said of the 2006 crime movie. “I was leaving and just going to make some small films, I don’t know. And it just happened that ‘The Departed’ clicked. And it was a very difficult one to make, for many different reasons. That’s a whole other story. But we fought our way out of it — through it, I should say. Through it, out of it. And, when I finally threw it up on the screen, people liked it.”

He continued, “I don’t mean I didn’t think that it was good or bad. I just felt we had accomplished something. I didn’t know it was going to be that way. I had no idea.”

Scorsese was hesitant to even return to filmmaking in the first place after the “very, very ugly” distribution issues with “The Aviator.” However, the script for “The Departed” spoke to Scorsese.

“I found the script of ‘The Departed’ and I liked the idea and I said, ‘Let’s just make this in the streets and let’s do something,'” he said. “I was able to make ‘Departed’ pretty much the way I wanted to. But it was a knockdown, drag-out fight all the way from Day One to the end. So by that point I realized, if that’s the way you’re going to make a film, there’s no sense anymore. So it was going to be independent films and it was going to be going into ‘Silence’ and that sort of thing.”

As for taking home the Academy Award, Scorsese added, “Winning the award was — don’t forget, it was thirty-seven years before an Oscar for Best Director, let alone Best Picture, which was a total surprise to me. But it’s a different Academy from when I was starting. But, for me, that award was, it was inadvertent.”

Earlier this year, Scorsese told GQ that while he “always liked being nominated” for an Oscar, he opted to “just mind my own business” without seeking award recognition.

“I always liked being nominated at the Academy, even though knowing, especially the fact that they didn’t nominate us for ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘Raging Bull,’ when I didn’t get the Oscar, I understood that that wasn’t my lot in life,” Scorsese said. “But I always said this: Just be quiet and make the movies. You can’t make a movie for an award. Sure, I would’ve liked it, but like, so what? I mean, I had to go on and make pictures.”

Scorsese noted that prior to winning the Academy Award, Warner Bros. wanted “The Departed” to spur a franchise.

“It wasn’t about a moral issue of a person living or dying,” Scorsese said of the film’s shootout ending. “And then the studio guys walked out and they were very sad, because they just didn’t want that movie. They wanted the franchise. Which means: I can’t work here anymore.”

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