Scorsese's New Sinatra Movie and the Director's Artistic Ambitions in Biopics

When Martin Scorsese announced that he'll be making a biopic on Frank Sinatra as his next major movie project, he seemed to be saying that he's still interested in making one biopic fans of the director have been waiting years for: A biopic on the life of George Gershwin. But then the life of Gershwin doesn't really fit the vibe of Scorsese on first glance, which is perhaps why it's been delayed for 30 years in favor of "Raging Bull", "Kundun" and "The Aviator." The life of Sinatra is almost identical to many of the elements we think of first in a Scorsese film that perhaps automatically paints this project as a safe Scorsese vehicle. But nobody said making a film about Sinatra was easy. There's only been one made so far, and it was with input from the real Sinatra himself and done within the safer confines of television.

In 1992, it was Sinatra's daughter, Tina, who helped produce a two-part miniseries on CBS that traced Sinatra's life from birth on up to his 70's comeback. Even at two parts, though, it seemed to cut out things when you consider Sinatra's life was the equivalent to three lifetimes. Trying to encapsulate Sinatra's life and what it meant to America in one feature film is really one of the biggest challenges a filmmaker can muster and one that nobody attempted when the Chairman of the Board was still alive.

Certainly the two-part TV miniseries was well-done enough. It successfully re-created the highlights and a few lowlights of Sinatra's career with an excellent portrayal (and likeness) by the once ubiquitous character actor Philip Casnoff. Yet we're still waiting for one that digs much deeper where certain ignored dark corners of Sinatra's life have yet to be explored. As Scorsese did with "The Aviator", rumors are rampant that he'll set Sinatra's life in a particular time frame rather than being a sweeping telling of his life from beginning to end. And with the Sinatra family reportedly being aboard this project with its focus being on the singer's relationship with the mob, this may be the first brutally honest biopic Scorsese has done since "Raging Bull."

With such an unprecedented bar set with the usually stale biopic genre, we see an opportunity here for Scorsese to continue that roll in the future and get that Gershwin biopic done (with Sean Penn preferably playing Gershwin)--as well as make more biopics on great Americans before the director gets too old. Out of the few he's already done, he's proven that he can take the biopic to an artistic level most directors have never been able to accomplish. Based on all the biographical films that were made before Scorsese took on the genre, I'm sure numerous movie buffs wish all past biopics could be scrapped in favor of Scorsese remaking them.

When biopics became a cottage industry through the old Hollywood studio system starting in the 1930's, many barely fell under the biopic moniker based on how much fiction and Hollywood hokum permeated most to all of them. Other than perhaps "Bonnie and Clyde", "Patton" or "Lenny" in the late 60's and early 70's, Scorsese's "Raging Bull" was one of the first real unflinching biopics ever made up to that time. The brutal honesty of Jake LaMotta's life brought something new to a genre previously bathed in so much watered-down and fictional tripe.

Despite Scorsese's higher bar of truth set for the biopic already 30 years ago, many directors still go back to the old contrived Hollywood structure for life stories of great world citizens. Because Scorsese could end up becoming the only director who understands how to put together an excellent biopic that's believable and compelling, he may have to start consolidating the lives of other people he's wanted to film into fewer movie projects.
_____

One thing you'll see mentioned in the press next to Scorsese's Sinatra film is one of his other long abandoned film biopics covering the life of Dean Martin that was once thought to star Tom Hanks as the legendary crooner. Rumors are that Scorsese will incorporate an equally deep portrait of Martin in the Sinatra movie. Since both were literal blood brothers (well, via shedding blood as a sign of close friendship), the intertwining of the two would create a fascinating portrait of two Italian-Americans who helped shape popular music and general entertainment up until the Rock era and even beyond.

Doing such a thing would also help Scorsese bring more of his biopic visions into larger one-shot canvases rather than having a long film itinerary he couldn't possibly finish in his lifetime. Should he decide to do that for his long-delayed biopic on the life of George Gershwin, we could ultimately see another masterpiece by Scorsese about New York City in the 1920's where many of the towering figures in the arts were living and thriving. Having Scorsese take that on with shorter--yet meaningful--glimpses of Gershwin would put the role of NYC's artistes during its bustling years into a broader perspective without necessarily being fragmentary.

Gershwin's entire life on its own may not necessarily translate into an interesting Scorsese-like three-hour movie, despite anything being an improvement over the 90% fiction seen in the previous biopic done on his life, 1945's "Rhapsody in Blue." One thing we've learned about Scorsese's moviemaking style, though, is that he's just as adept at utilizing a large cast effectively as much as the late Robert Altman could. And because Scorsese is able to make each character in his large ensembles stand alone as fully-dimensional people, having broader biopics incorporating numerous historical figures may be his best calling card.

Since Scorsese seems to be our best historian when it comes to biopics, he may just have one more masterpiece out there on the horizon that will give us the fullest vision ever done on some of our greatest Americans or non-Americans. "Sinatra" may be the one since the people Frank Sinatra knew make up a who's who of nearly everyone Scorsese would want to explore on film...

Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/movies/15arts-SCORSESETODI_BRF.html?_r=1&ref=arts