Conclusion: ‘Of course, there’s less time …’

Abstract

Bringing Out the Dead was released in October 1999. It received mixed reviews and was not a box-office success, taking just $16.6 million domestically. The last film to be directed by Martin Scorsese during the twentieth century, Bringing Out the Dead has besides been regarded as concluding a particular phase of his work, both by critics and by Scorsese himself, who has described it as marking ‘the end of something that was very special’ (Schickel 2011: 223). The fictional features Scorsese has directed in the new millennium have, in turn, demonstrated a recourse to a larger-budgeted, star-dominated and, in terms of much of his preceding oeuvre, comparatively plot-driven filmmaking. Significant accordingly are two interrelated collaborations Scorsese entered into: with producer Graham King’s Initial Entertainment Group (IEG), which co-financed/co-produced Gangs of New York (Scorsese, 2002), The Aviator (Scorsese, 2004) and The Departed (Scorsese 2006); and with actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who starred in all three films. Working with DiCaprio was suggested to Scorsese by Michael Ovitz, of whose Artists Management Group (AMG) DiCaprio was a client,² and his bankability was, at least initially, an appreciable factor in his casting, which, in the case of Gangs of New York, enabled the film’s funding. The shift within Scorsese’s feature output has for Vincent LoBrutto seen him becoming a’professional film director more than personal filmmaker’ (2008: 373).