Hard Road To New York

Lir Mac Cárthaigh studies the long and troubled gestation of Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. [Extract]

A Long Time Coming
Difficulty is often the artist's friend. Creativity tends to thrive under adverse conditions; safe and comfortable conditions make for safe and comfortable art. Until now, the most difficult movie Scorsese had made was The Last Temptation of Christ, but the thorny path he had to tread only increased his determination and bolstered his creativity. The result of this adversity is arguably Scorsese's finest film to date, without doubt a greater work than its 'safe' predecessor The Colour of Money. If the nine years between Scorsese finishing Kazantzakis's novel and releasing the final film helped hone Last Temptation into something truly great, what can we expect from Gangs of New York? By the time Gangs reaches American screens, twenty-five years will have passed since the project was first announced and thirty-two years since Scorsese first read Herbert Asbury's book. Asbury's The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld, published in the late 1920s, is an account of the battles between rival immigrant gangs, culminating in the Civil War draft riots of the 1860s. Scorsese initially planned to film the book in 1977, announcing this intention with a two-page ad in Variety, but the project floundered after the failure of New York, New York and the personal crises which ended in Scorsese's near death in 1978.

It is interesting to speculate how the 1977 Gangs might have turned out; would it have provided a broader canvas for the urban violence and unrest explored by Scorsese in Taxi Driver and American Boy, or become a forerunner of Cimino's financially disastrous period piece Heaven's Gate? The project lay dormant until the early nineties, when Scorsese drafted a screenplay with frequent collaborator Jay Cocks. At the time he had many other scripts in development, and Gangs gave way to another drama set in nineteenth-century New York, The Age of Innocence. Although Scorsese went on to direct a number of other films, work continued on Gangs. The movie was almost given the green light by Disney, but was then placed in turnaround, reportedly considered too violent. Miramax stepped in to provide the final financing; Harvey Weinstein himself came on board as one of the film's producers, in addition to being co-chairman of the studio, a situation he had previously enjoyed on Shakespeare In Love. Scorsese was given leave by Warner Brothers to suspend work on his Dean Martin biopic, reportedly to star Tom Hanks as Dino and Jim Carrey as Jerry Lewis, allowing him to begin Gangs of New York in earnest.

In and Out
It was announced that Leonardo DiCaprio, playing Amsterdam Vallon, would share top-billing with Scorsese stalwart Robert De Niro, as Bill 'The Butcher' Poole. De Niro, however, pulled out of the film for 'personal reasons,' leading some commentators to suggest that he was wary of working in Europe following his vice arrest in Paris. The next choice for the part was Willem Dafoe, who had memorably portrayed Scorsese's Jesus, but a delay in shooting meant that he had to opt out. Finally, Miramax approached Daniel Day-Lewis, and lobbied hard for him to take the part. Scorsese had worked with Day-Lewis before on The Age of Innocence, and Miramax had been the US distributors for My Left Foot; their collective efforts convinced the Oscar-winner to return to the screen for the first time since 1997's The Boxer. Method actor Day-Lewis practised for his part as a knife-expert by working in a London butcher's shop. The cast was filled out by unlikely, but bankable, leading lady Cameron Diaz, character actors Jim Broadbent and John C. Reilly, and Irish dependables Brendan Gleeson and Liam Neeson. According to Weinstein the three leads accepted smaller fees than normal in order to work with Scorsese.

The full text of this article is printed in Film Ireland 90