The expensive failure that haunted Martin Scorsese: “It was ultimately tragic for me”
Even though he’s undoubtedly one of cinema’s greatest-ever directors with multiple masterpieces to his name, a new Martin Scorsese project is far from a guarantee of commercial success.
While several of Hollywood’s most prominent auteurs, including Christopher Nolan, James Cameron, and Steven Spielberg, can virtually guarantee a tidy sum at the box office based entirely on the fact their names are plastered all over the marketing, Scorsese has never been in the same boat.
That’s not a bad thing because if the filmmaker had spent his career chasing profitability, audiences would have never gotten the likes of Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, or Raging Bull, none of which were designed with the intention of shifting as many tickets as possible to the cinemagoing public.
In fact, Scorsese isn’t even among the 30 highest-grossing directors of all time. The Russo brothers, Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich, and Zack Snyder are, though, which indicates that helming big-earning films is hardly a barometer of quality. Still, that doesn’t make it any less painful when certain productions land with a dull thud, and there was one that hit Scorsese particularly hard.
It wasn’t even a feature either, but HBO’s expensive period drama Vinyl. Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger convinced Scorsese that the 1970-set exploration of New York’s ever-changing musical scene was something worth getting involved in, and he was credited as a co-creator, executive producer, and the director and co-writer of the pilot episode.
Unfortunately, Vinyl didn’t catch on. Midway through the initial eight-episode run, HBO confirmed that a second season was happening. However, two months after the final instalment aired in April 2016, the decision was reversed, and it was announced that the plug had been pulled. Scorsese was deeply invested in the show and admitted he would have done things differently if he had the time.
“It was ultimately tragic for me because we tried for one year,” he said, per The Hollywood Reporter. “I did the pilot. We tried for one year with HBO, but we couldn’t get the creative elements together. It was something that I realised, in order to make it right, I think I would have had to direct every episode and be there for the three to four years.”
Obviously, that would require a massive commitment, especially from a veteran auteur who’d been synonymous with cinema for so long. Vinyl‘s solitary season set HBO back a princely $100 million for eight hours of television, and the viewership wasn’t strong enough to justify a similar investment for a sophomore run.
Would it have survived had Scorsese directed every episode? Probably, because he’s Martin Scorsese. That said, the silver screen has always been his first love, and it’s hard to imagine a world where he’d turn his back on the theatrical experience to dedicate years of his life to episodic storytelling.
