The Irishman (2019) (1 Viewer)

[Malcolm R]

Some of it seems to be ego. He thinks his reputation should entitle him to some special consideration to make any film he wants, regardless of the costs, because he believes he makes hands-on-hips, nose-in-the-air "Cinema!"

He doesn't seem to have any appreciation of the financial realities that have to be absorbed by others who have to watch the bottom line. They have to keep the studio healthy financially to preserve the jobs of thousands of people.

They are unlikely to simply say "oh, well, it was a financial flop so now we have to lay off a thousand people. And we'll have to cancel a couple other films and all the subcontracts attached to them. But at least we got to make a Scorsese picture. That makes it all worth it."

 

[Josh Steinberg]

On the point of wasting money, the Pacino casting rubs me the wrong way a little bit. It doesn’t seem to come up in the discussion as much as the DeNiro casting. It’s not a comment on the quality of his performance in the film. It’s just that there isn’t a single solitary scene in the film with Pacino where he isn’t a special effect, because they cast a 79 year old actor to play a character that ranges from an age in the 40s to about age 60. I can kinda get behind the idea that they wanted DeNiro and Pesci to play their roles through the years, and that some of the timing would match up with their actual ages. But that’s not the case with Pacino. By adding him to the cast, never mind what his rate is, you’re automatically increasing the special effects budget by tens of millions of dollars. Why not instead cast a well regarded actor of an appropriate age and save the production a fortune? Or use conventional makeup on Pacino since you don’t really need to show that character’s specific age, just that he’s not the same age when we first meet him vs when we last see him?

I’d be curious to know what portion of the film’s budget went to effects. Because it looks like a $40 or $50 million physical production with an extra $100 million in de-aging effects and I’m not sure that’s responsible budgeting in any era.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

If he believed in the project so much, he was free to open his wallet and self-finance the film. This gets me when filmmakers, most of whom could finance their own projects, get upset when they can't get someone else to give them wheelbarrows of money to play around with. If you're not willing to risk your own money, why should anyone else?

Well, I do not think this is true. Scorsese, I am sure, is doing well in life but I sincerely doubt well enough to self finance a $100 million or more motion picture. In fact outside of perhaps guys like Spielberg, Lucas, or Cameron I don't think anybody could do that. I mean Coppola did it and it ruined him. He came back but it is not really the way films get made, not big films like these.

To be fair here, I don't see it as anything unusual or the filmmakers making unreasonable demands. It is the same as any other investment opportunity. You look at what is involved, what the potential is for profit in it, and make a choice. Paramount passed.

I don't think what Scorsese, and I am certainly not saying this, is upset about is they won't hand over the cash to him...it is that he sees film as art and he feels that the industry as it is now operating, does not. They see it as product. It is a balance of business and creative people, or was, but at the top levels it is now all business.

I believe, and I am not speaking for him, that Scorsese is concerned that the financing has dried up completely from whatever is left of the large motion picture companies for making original pictures. Meaning basically any film that is not a remake, reboot, sequel, franchise, or whatever kind of reinvention of "product" they have already made money on.

There just is virtually no interest in making these films from the major companies. They literally have over 300 sequels or remakes right now in some form of development or production. They have no money or time to give a picture like The Irishman.

So, for this kind of thing you do have to go searching elsewhere to find your financing. That's really how most if not all of these type of pictures work right now. You have to have people go out and look for people that might want to make a picture with a Scorsese or Coen Brothers or whomever.

The studios will give the money to superhero and action films because those are the films grossing potentially a billion dollars or more because they play well worldwide. A small American crime drama is not going to make that amount. Simple business decision.
I'm sure Scorsese would have had no problem striking a distribution deal with a major studio. They just did not want to risk that much money on production.

Yes, I agree. I really don't think the issue is at all though the kind of picture he was going to make. Paramount was interested in doing a picture with Scorsese and De Niro. The issue was when they saw the budget to make it would be upwards of $140 million because they wanted to do the CGI.

At that point they literally take the financial history of Scorsese films, calculate the most money his pictures have grossed, look at what gangster films tend to make and said "No, this won't work." that is the business side.

Plus I'm sure looking at who he wanted to have in it, great actors to people like us, but against box office numbers...these are a bunch of old guys that no longer can carry on their name a 100 million dollar movie.

So, I'm guessing if he had DiCaprio and Pitt and name whomever is a hot younger actor, that may have pushed the risk factor a bit more toward doing it. But a bunch of senior citizens...no chance. And really I don't say that to insult anybody, I love these actors.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

So let me ask this question: are we more or less in agreement that given the realities of today’s box office, that it would have been extremely unlikely that The Irishman would have grossed the $500 million or so it would have needed to make, in about three or four weeks, to break even based on theatrical release accounting?

We are in total agreement on that.

If we do agree on that, do we still believe that a studio should have financed the film for theatrical release?

It's about compromise. I don't think this is something that would surprise Scorsese. I believe the mistake made here was the insistence on doing the CGI. Now, I don't mean mistake really that it was horrible and they should not have done it. Essentially, the filmmakers here looked at the CGI as "make-up" that allowed the actors to play various ages. In the past this was just done with make-up but obviously in reality at the ages these actors are at they could not accomplish this simply with make-up...hence the CGI. When I say it was a mistake, I mean I have now seen the movie twice and I honestly feel they could have made the film and it would have been just as good if they used younger actors to portray the characters at younger ages. In some cases the CGI to me, De Niro as a young soldier for example, made absolutely no sense and provided no benefit.

So, honestly...I would have dropped the CGI. Had they done this, it may have been a Paramount picture. If this film had been made by Scorsese back in the 1980s or 1990s they would have just used younger actors. I don't see why they could not have done that here...except for one thing...De Niro wanted to play his character at all of the ages. Scorsese backed De Niro. They were developing this film as a team. My assumption here was they must have really liked those CGI tests.

I said in a previous post about the film I don't think this decision was worth it. Sticking to their guns on this pushed this to Netflix. So, the reason it is on Netflix I put entirely on the filmmakers. They do own that.

That’s the piece of this conversation I don’t understand. There’s all this talk that it should have been a conventional theatrical release without much acknowledgment that the film’s prohibitive cost would have made it a money losing proposition.

Two different things here really and the responsibility for each part rests with different people. There has never been an argument, at least from me, on the decision making process on whether to finance. On if it should have had a theatrical release, I have never altered my feeling on that either. I absolutely felt it should be released to theaters. That is on Netflix and they did put it in theaters but in their business model...they want some exclusivity for their service...which I also can't blame them for in the same way I don't blame Paramount for passing when Scorsese and De Niro said "No, we want to do the entire CGI thing."

On if the film will lose money, this is my take...I don't think that Scorsese and De Niro should think about that as they assemble their film. I think that talk should come into play when they sit down with whomever is going to finance it. They lay out what they are going to do, costs are explored, the people financing make a decision. Standard business. If they don't like how the deal looks, they pass. Or you begin the talks to compromise. If I were the person financing the picture my simple question would have been "Why can't we shoot this with younger actors, how much better will it make the picture to have Bob de-aged using CGI while adding all of the additional expense?"

And I don't believe the answer that De Niro thought the story worked better with the same actors playing all different ages was a good enough reason. So, if you are asking me, I would have passed on that too and I would have asked to use younger actors.

But in some of these articles, it’s almost as if he’s being spun as a victim, and I don’t get why that’s a fair look at the situation.

I don't think he is a victim, he and De Niro made their choice. The cool thing for us as fans is we got to see the picture. In most cases something like this would just end up not getting made. Netflix provided an avenue that in the past may not have been there.

I’m just so sick and tired of everyone else being the bad guy here.

I am certainly not trying to make out someone as a bad guy. I guess what I would say about me is I would ask you to understand that to me guys like Scorsese are a gift and their films have great value and do represent the "art" of filmmaking in ways that a lot of what the big companies make now does not.

I apologize for being more into directors and original films but that's what I grew up with, that's what made me fall in love with pictures. So, for somebody like me it's a sad time because the large companies no longer have much if any interest in that and no longer value these things.

I understand the business decisions. I understand they want franchises and they want to take a risk on pouring money into a film that may make a billion dollars. How can you blame them for wanting to make money?

It's just that when I watch those films, I can tell they are films made to make money...not to be something that might blow my mind as art because if it did that, it probably would not appeal to enough people to make loads of cash.

 

[TravisR]

Well, I do not think this is true. Scorsese, I am sure, is doing well in life but I sincerely doubt well enough to self finance a $100 million or more motion picture. In fact outside of perhaps guys like Spielberg, Lucas, or Cameron I don't think anybody could do that.

And even Lucas only gambled that kind of money on his Star Wars movies which were sure things.

 

[Sam Posten]

Good read:
https://airmail.news/issues/2019-12-28/who-really-killed-jimmy-hoffa

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Good read:
https://airmail.news/issues/2019-12-28/who-really-killed-jimmy-hoffa

I recall when I was a kid hearing that story about Hoffa ending up in sausages in Michigan. Honestly, I hated that story because it was so gruesome and it haunted me. Every time somebody made that joke about how you never want to see how the sausage is made I thought of Hoffa and people eating him.

Personally, and not just because I dislike that story, I don't think that's what happened. I have heard guys that worked on the case talk about it and they have a very solid idea of how it happened and what happened to the body. Basically, how Hoffa dies in the movie is how they believe he died. They picked him up at the Red Fox and drove him only a couple of miles away to a local mobsters house for the meeting. As soon as he walked in they shot and killed him. They immediately wrapped the body and put it in a car and drove it to one or two places. They either took it right to a local mob run garbage company (one theory says there was a garbage truck near the house where he was killed and he was dumped into the garbage truck seconds after his death), or to a local funeral parlor where the body was cremated and the remains thrown in a trash bag which was then dumped at the same garbage company. My belief is it was this latter method because it was so easy and clean.

This makes sense because as the guys that worked on the case said it would have all happened so quickly that Hoffa would disappear without a trace and that's how these guys operate. Speed would have been a key factor in the body disposal so it seems highly unlikely that anybody would take the time to do things like chop him up, feed the body parts through a meat grinder, or take the body or even parts of it from Detroit to New Jersey to dump him into a construction project. It's pretty clear that with a person as high profile as Jimmy Hoffa you would not want to be taking time or the risk of transporting his body any distance or doing something as ridiculous as cutting him up and making sausage with him.

They had access to everything within a few miles and could have been done with the job and home in time for dinner without breaking a sweat.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

I've been reading some of the Best of 2019 lists and this picture is coming up number 1 on a lot of those lists. I think it is a really good film and sure probably better than most films they turned out this year but I probably would not choose it as my 1.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I need to see The Irishman again, because I’m not sure that I trust my first reaction, which was one of being underwhelmed with a side of “been there, done that.” The only reason I’m willing to give it a second chance is because of who made it; if it had been a mob picture directed by a first-timer or an unrenowned genre hand, I’d probably find it easier to trust my judgment.

It probably wouldn’t make my top list for the year, and would certainly not be at the very top of it.

 

[Tino]

I’m not sure it’ll crack my top 10. And I liked it.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

In the end I found it somewhat ironic that Scorsese was criticizing Marvel for using the same bag of tricks over and over, when I found that to be descriptive of The Irishman as well.

(I don’t have a problem with the same bag of tricks when it’s a good bag of them.)

 

[Robert Crawford]

Give the old dude a break. Hopefully, one day you'll be that old and will be a cantankerous old man too in a ever changing world.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I was born that old

 

[TravisR]

I've been reading some of the Best of 2019 lists and this picture is coming up number 1 on a lot of those lists. I think it is a really good film and sure probably better than most films they turned out this year but I probably would not choose it as my 1.

It'd hit my top 10 but probably not my top 5. By no means is that a criticism because this is a heckuva movie.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Give the old dude a break. Hopefully, one day you'll be that old and will be a cantankerous old man too in a ever changing world.

This picture is certainly a film for old dudes, made by and featuring old dudes, and told from an old dude's perspective.

Your interest in old dudes and their regrets may play a large part in how you feel about this one.

Yes, it works through all of it's old dude-ness by using a tale about the death of Jimmy Hoffa but overall it weighs in more on the passage of time, decisions we make as the world changes around us, and how we live with those choices in the end. Really Scorsese's most contemplative gangster film.

 

[Sam Favate]

I don’t have a link handy, but there’s a great interview with Marty in today’s New York Times, in which he talks about The Irishman and more.

EDIT: Here's the link.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/...on=click&module=Editors Picks&pgtype=Homepage

 

[Josh Steinberg]

There was also a pretty good critical appraisal of the film in the Times defending the CGI de-aging and Scorsese’s choices in general while noting the many similarities between The Irishman and Avengers Endgame.

 

[SamT]

 

[JimmyO]

Very very cool.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Totally shut out during the Golden Globes. My takeaway was there there was a clear bias against any streaming films in favor of theatrical releases. Almost every major award went to a film that was exclusively theatrical release first and foremost. And... I'm okay with that. It's their club.