Martin Marcantonio Luciano Scorsese ( in English and luˈtʃaːno skoɾˈseːze in Italian; born November 17, 1942) is an American Academy Award-winning film director, writer, and producer. Also affectionately known as "Marty", he is the founder of the World Cinema Foundation and a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema and has won awards from the Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Directors Guild of America. Scorsese is president of the Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation and the prevention of the decaying of motion picture film stock.
Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, machismo, and the violence endemic in American society. Scorsese is widely considered to be one of the most significant and influential American filmmakers of his era. He earned an MFA in film directing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
After serious deliberations about entering the priesthood - he entered a seminary in 1956 - Martin Scorsese opted to channel his passions into film. He graduated from NYU as a film major in 1964. Catching the eye of producer Roger Corman with his 1960s student films (including co-editing Woodstock (1970)), Scorsese directed the gritty exploiter Boxcar Bertha (1972). Mean Streets (1973) followed in 1973 and provided the benchmarks for the Scorsese style: New York settings, loners struggling with inner demons, pointed-shoes rock-meets-opera soundtracks and unrelenting cathartic violence. "Mean Streets" also featured Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel, two actors who would help shape that style. After Scorsese directed Ellen Burstyn to a Best Actress Oscar in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), the trio was reunited for the dark journey of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976). The film achieved additional notoriety five years after its release when Bickle's (De Niro) concern for a teenaged hooker played by Jodie Foster inspired John Hinckley's assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan (I) in 1981. After New York, New York (1977) (which one critic described as a wife-abuse musical) and Last Waltz, The (1978), Scorsese released Raging Bull (1980). The biography of middleweight fighter Jake LaMotta earned two Oscars (Actor - DeNiro, Editing - Thelma Schoonmaker) and was later selected as the best film of the decade by U.S. critic gods Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Scorsese then explored fans as pariah ( King of Comedy, The (1983)), dark-comic dreams ( After Hours (1985)), and revisited pool shark Eddie Felson from Hustler, The (1961) ( Color of Money, The (1986) with Paul Newman (I)). Scorsese outraged some religious groups by attempting to portray a human son of God in Last Temptation of Christ, The (1988) before returning to more familiar territory with the Mafia in Goodfellas (1990). He followed with two films which were remakes, Cape Fear (1991) and Age of Innocence, The (1993). Besides directing and co-writing, Scorsese has also acted. It's interesting to note he played the gunman at the finale of Mean Streets (1973) and the cab passenger planning to kill his wife in Taxi Driver (1976). He also had a role in _Yume (1990)_.
