Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon opened last week, and for the past few months, the American auteur has made the rounds, sharing his thoughts on the past, present, and future of cinema. Oh, and Marvel movies. Everyone wants to know what this guy thinks of Thanos and whether Ant-Man should’ve just traveled up Thanos’ butt and expanded to prevent the next spate of Marvel adventures. But hopefully moving on from ever asking Scorsese about superhero films ever again, the Associated Press, in a recent interview, brought up another evergreen topic in cinema: Quentin Tarantino’s retirement. Scorsese, who turned 82 next month, says retirement isn’t in the cards because, as Mr. Scosese confirms, he’s built different.
Obviously, there’s more to it than that. On the topic of Tarantino’s retirement, Scorsese smiled and whispered, “I don’t know, yeah.” But the AP’s interviewer finally said what we were all thinking, “You must be built differently,” to which Scorsese responded, “I am.”
While it’s fun to imagine Scorsese responding to all interview questions with “I’m built different” from here on out, the director offered a more nuanced take on his own limitations as an artist. “[Tarantino’s] a writer,” he said. “It’s a different thing. I come up with stories. I get attracted to stories through other people. All different means, different ways. And so I think it’s a different process. I respect writers, and I wish I could just be in a room and create these novels, not films, novels.”
The whole interview is very much worth watching, aside from the funny soundbite we’ve highlighted here. It’s the only place in this article that one can see Martin Scorsese rail against email (“Emails, they scare me. It says, ‘CC,’ and there’s a thousand names. Who are these people?”), discuss the beauty of Akira Kursawa’s late period, and share how he found the confidence and focus to keep making art. He also teases his upcoming Powell and Pressburger documentary and why he keeps rewatching Isle Of The Dead. Honestly, this guy is simply built different.