2020-01-23 The Hollywood Reporter

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 23 JANUARY 2020 AWARDS 1

From left:

Robert

De Niro, Jane

Rosenthal

and Martin

Scorsese at

the Tribeca

Film Festival in

April 2019.

would come in. If we were shooting at night

and throwing taxi cabs into the river, Emma

could worry about that. (Laughs.) T hat ’s where

it’s wonderful to have good partners.

Did you have a favorite day on set or a favorite

moment from principal photography that sticks

with you?

There were so many, like seeing Bob and Joe

together for the first time. But what [sticks

out] is actually the last day of filming, which

was a reshoot of Bob in the scene at the very

end of the movie. There were certain things

that Bob felt he needed to do. The end of a

movie is always emotional — you’re saying

goodbye to a lot of people that you’ve become

family with, and you’re not going to see them

again in the same context. But this had a

particularly profound meaning for me. I tear

up just thinking about it. On this movie, it’s

Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro and all

these men that came together after having

made Mean Streets and Goodfellas and Casino,

and this was the end of that genre for them.

I found myself looking at Marty’s work in the

history of cinema, and what that particular

style of cinema meant for their journeys. Just

Who else did you have in the audience for

the reading?

We had Rick Yorn and we had various agents.

We had a couple of people who could possibly

finance the movie. [Producer] Irwin Winkler

was there. But it was also really for Marty to

hear it again — for everyone to hear it again

and decide we’re going to continue to put our

efforts into this. And the most passionate one

was really Bob in pushing and continuing to

push this forward.

Have you or anyone on the team watched the

recording since you did the reading?

I have watched bits and pieces of it. Nobody

else has seen it for a while, but you never know

where it will pop up. (Laughs.)

Do you think the movie benefited from having

this length of development?

I don’t think the movie itself changed very

much. And the script didn’t change very

much. But what did change was everyone’s

perspective. Marty talks a lot about the

perspective of time and place, and how they

now look at things as men in their 70s,

versus men in their 60s.

the first day of production, there was always
[a thought that] this may not happen. But I
also think that part of what I have as a pro-
ducer is the tenacity to keep pushing a project
forward and to never give up on it. And this
was something [Bob] wanted to do, so he was
constantly pushing this forward too. It was
an uphill battle until Netflix was born. The
fact is that Netflix didn’t exist [as a content
creator] back in 2007.

You had a script reading back in 2013 with
Scorsese, Pesci, Pacino and De Niro all there.
What was it like for you being in that room, com-
ing together for the first time?
It was before Marty was going to go off and
do Silence. I had said to Bob, “We should do
a reading of it and we should tape the read-
ing.” I actually thought at one point that, if
anything, at least we would have that read-
ing. We might not make the movie, but we’d
have a record of this reading. What was very
special at the reading is you realized that it
had a great deal of humor in it. Just listen-
ing to them, it came alive. When everybody

When Netflix did finally come on and you

had secured financing, what were you most

anticipating when it came to actually pulling

off the production?

The movie is complicated, with so many dif-

ferent decades. And it was a long shoot with

many, many locations and a lot of different

moving pieces. So producing was also about

making sure our actors and our crew could

maintain their work.

Was there an obstacle that came up in the

middle of production that made you think, “We

aren’t going to be able to pull this off”?

No. That’s where Emma [Tillinger Koskoff]

“The whole story reflects how we are getting older,

and that feels right.” ROBERT DE NIRO

came in, the actors were seated and Marty
was going to sit in the audience, but then he
decided that he should sit in the middle of the
group as they were reading. And it was great
to see him laughing and getting into it in the
middle of it all. There was a momentum that
picked up after that reading, and we said, “OK,
we’ve got to make this now. We can’t stop.” It
was at the reading that Pablo Helman from
Industrial Light & Magic said to Marty that
he thought he had a way to make the youth-
ification tech work. That reading was a real
turning point. It still took a long time after
that before it got made, but it finally felt like it
was on its way.

to be a witness to it was profound and emo-

tional and reminded me of why I wanted to

be in this business to begin with.

When was the first time that you watched the

movie with an audience?

The biggest audience we saw it with was the

New York Film Festival. But when it was

finally released, it was at the Belasco Theatre,

and I went to see it with a real New York audi-

ence. They were talking back to the screen,

they were laughing with it — that was the

most fun. And I went back several times after

that to see it with the audience. You could sit

back and enjoy it and experience it through

the audience’s eyes.

Interview edited for length and clarity.