Details Emerge About Scorsese and De Niro’s Potential Opus “The Irishman”

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Details Emerge About Scorsese and De Niro’s Potential Opus “The Irishman”

By our guest blogger, Tim Strain

It’s kind of old news at this point, but it’s important: Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro are definitely working together again. There’s your headline--if you don’t want to read about the details, you don’t like movies.

The pair, last seen trying to figure out how to top “Mean Streets,” “Taxi Driver,” “Goodfellas,” “Raging Bull,” “Cape Fear” and “Casino,” have been developing a new gangster movie for years. The project is way off in the distance at this point, as Scorsese has “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” “Sinatra” and “Silence,” as well as a slew of documentaries, on his plate for the next five years or so. De Niro isn’t really doing anything he can’t excuse himself from (“Meet the Little Focker,” etc.)

The story is based on the book “I Heard You Paint Houses,” described by De Niro as “a very simple, terrific story about [mobster Frank Sheeran], who supposedly killed [Jimmy] Hoffa and Joe Gallo and so on.”

De Niro revealed previously unknown details in an interview with MTV:

"We have a more ambitious idea, hopefully, to make it a two-part type of film or two films," he continued. "It's an idea that came about from Eric Roth to combine these movies using the footage from 'Paint Houses' to do another kind of a [film that is] reminiscent of a kind of '8 1/2,' 'La Dolce Vita,' [a] certain kind of biographical, semi-biographical type of Hollywood movie — a director and the actor — based on things Marty and I have experienced and kind of overlapping them."

Fellini’s impact on the pair is obvious. Their first collaboration (“Mean Streets,” back in ’72) is perhaps the most personal film the pair ever made--it's an honest tale about growing up in Italian heritage. The idea of fusing reality and fiction to an even greater extent (such as in “8 1/2”) has to be exciting to any movie fan.

Each isn’t getting any younger (Scorsese is 67, De Niro 66), and this has the feel of “that last great one,” the film the pair wants to make. Or maybe that’s just me. Whatever it ends up being, it will be a collaboration by the greatest co-workers in movie history.