{"id":67682,"date":"2025-10-11T09:50:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T09:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/67682\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T09:50:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T09:50:08","slug":"daniels-heart-is-in-ireland-so-we-go-as-much-as-possible-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/67682\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Daniel\u2019s heart is in Ireland, so we go as much as possible\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York Film Festival was the only sane place for Rebecca Miller<\/a> to premiere her superb five-part documentary on the life and work of Martin Scorsese<\/a>. Mr Scorsese \u2013 coming your way on Apple TV+ \u2013 throbs to the city\u2019s beats throughout. Miller gathers together the director\u2019s old chums from Little Italy. Clips from Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and Goodfellas illustrate New York\u2019s pungent flavours and varied colours.<\/p>\n

As it worked out, this year\u2019s festival turned out to be a family affair. A few days before we speak, Miller strode the red carpet for the world premiere of Anemone, a rugged drama directed by Ronan Day-Lewis<\/a>, her son, and starring Daniel Day-Lewis<\/a>, her husband of 29 years. That feels like pressure. Ronan is making his feature debut. Daniel is returning to acting after a seven-year hiatus.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was lovely,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was such an amazing coincidence that my premiere for this is in the same section of the festival as them. It\u2019s wonderful. I feel very, very proud.\u201d<\/p>\n

I noticed that, at the premiere, the older Day-Lewis, whose father, the poet Cecil Day-Lewis<\/a>, was born in Laois, wore a brooch in the shape of a harp on his lapel. The family has, of course, spent much of the past 30 years in and about Co Wicklow. They have discreetly become an institution.<\/p>\n

How much time to they spend there?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really depends,\u201d she says. \u201cEvery year is different. Sometimes many months. Sometimes it\u2019s fewer. It really depends on work and kids and who\u2019s doing what. But Daniel\u2019s heart is in Ireland, so we have to go as much as possible. And I love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller is, no doubt, well used to being asked about famous family members. She grew up as the daughter of Arthur Miller<\/a>, the legendary US playwright, and the brilliant photographer Inge Morath. In 2017 she directed a documentary about her dad, called Arthur Miller: Writer, for HBO that revealed a gift for balancing recollection with dispassionate analysis.<\/p>\n

Come to think of it, her current trip to New York counts as a personal homecoming. She is, on her father\u2019s side, one of three successive generations born in the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really grew up in the countryside,\u201d she clarifies. \u201cI was littler in the 1960s. In the 1970s I remember the Chelsea Hotel a little bit, which is where we hung out.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Martin Scorsese: \u2018One has to take chances. At this age, what else can I do?\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Golly. The storied Manhattan establishment that played home to Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith, Janis Joplin and the rest of that crew.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a crazy place. But I\u2019m kind of jealous of my friends who really grew up in New York and got to really see it in the 1970s. Because I feel like I didn\u2019t. So it\u2019s a little bit exotic to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few years ago Miller told me that, as a kid, she thought she would end up as a nurse or a flight attendant. But the creative genes eventually showed through. She is a hard person to pin down. She had a decent career as an actor, playing in a stage production of The Cherry Orchard for Peter Brook and in films such as Mike Nichols\u2019s Regarding Henry and Alan J Pakula\u2019s Consenting Adults.<\/p>\n

But it is as writer and film director that she found her niche. Angela, a family drama, won strong reviews in 1995. Personal Velocity, an anthology drama with Kyra Sedgwick and Parker Posey, took the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival in 2002. Acclaimed pictures such as Maggie\u2019s Plan and She Came to Me followed.<\/p>\n

The mere mention of a five-hour documentary on Scorsese, structured around a wide-ranging interview, has sent cineastes into a frenzy. There is, after all, no better man for talking about the art of film. But Mr Scorsese turns out to be even better than expected. Miller has corralled all the important players \u2013 Robert De Niro<\/a>, Brian De Palma<\/a>, Jodie Foster<\/a>, Steven Spielberg<\/a> \u2013 and cut them into a free-flowing montage that, at times, emulates the rock\u2019n\u2019roll energy of the film\u2019s subject. <\/p>\n

\"AnAn archival photograph of Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese featured in Mr Scorsese <\/p>\n

The cracking end of the first part, echoing a famous scene in Mean Streets, make tremendous use of The Rolling Stones\u2019 Jumpin\u2019 Jack Flash. <\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t consciously doing that,\u201d she says of the comparison with Scorsese\u2019s style. \u201cOnce you have certain music it infects the rhythms of things. And then it was so important to me that we get the Stones. And I\u2019m so grateful that we were able to have that music in the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

Licensing such tracks can be very expensive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, yes, but they made it possible for us to have them, which we couldn\u2019t have done otherwise. I think that, overall, I would say that Marty\u2019s essence was absorbed by the film in some unconscious way.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of this was me learning how to create episodes that were almost like little films of their own. They end on an up note \u2013 so you want to go to the next one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ArchiveArchive photograph of Martin Scorsese on the set of Gangs of New York featured in Mr Scorsese <\/p>\n

I imagine she already knew Scorsese well. Daniel Day-Lewis first acted for him as far back as The Age of Innocence, in 1993. He received an Oscar nomination for the director\u2019s epic Gangs of New York, a decade later. And Scorsese surely doesn\u2019t need much encouragement to start talking.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say we had a social relationship,\u201d Miller says. \u201cBut we did have a moment when Daniel made Gangs of New York where I was a little bit more present. And I was about to make Personal Velocity, which had a lot of voiceover in it. I asked his advice. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he gave me films to watch with voiceover in them. He gives film-makers wonderful advice. The next couple of films he gave me notes. That was our relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"RebeccaRebecca Miller and Daniel Day-Lewis at the 63rd New York Film Festival on October 4th. Photograph: Dimitrios Kambouris\/Getty Images for FLC <\/p>\n

The opening episodes, going among Scorsese\u2019s boyhood friends from lower Manhattan, are particularly charming. One remarkable moment sees Miller discovering on camera that Salvatore Uricola, the character who largely inspired Johnny Boy, Robert De Niro\u2019s character in Mean Streets, is still aloft and willing to speak.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was talking to his brother, Robert Uricola, and I never thought that we could meet Salvatore. I never thought it,\u201d she says. \u201cI was given to believe that he was just unreachable. I said: \u2018I\u2019m so sorry we can\u2019t talk to your brother.\u2019 And then he just called him and it was great. Neither he nor I were prepared at all. So what do I do? Ha ha! It was really like one of those moments where the film gods were with us that day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Salvatore, now an older gentleman, proves every bit as charismatic as fans of Mean Streets might have hoped.<\/p>\n

Mr Scorsese has space to cover all aspects of the career. We see the young man, briefly a trainee for the priesthood, retreat into air-conditioned cinemas as his asthma takes hold. <\/p>\n

We see him enter another world when he travels a few short blocks to study film at New York University. We hear a lot from the women in his life: ex-partners such as a delightful Isabella Rossellini, colleagues such as the editor Thelma Schoonmaker<\/a> and the always articulate Foster.<\/p>\n

\"ArchiveArchive photograph of Martin Scorsese editing film at Technicolor in Los Angeles <\/p>\n

This gets at an oddly persistent and misguided criticism. People still accuse Scorsese of being a man\u2019s man. Yet few male directors of his generation have collaborated so frequently with women. Who else has directed so many to acting nominations at the Oscars (with wins for Ellen Burstyn and Cate Blanchett)?<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it has to do with the fact that, at a certain point, he became branded \u2018the gangster director\u2019,\u201d Miller says. \u201cBecause he made these great gangster movies \u2013 one of which, by the way, contains one of the great cinematic performances by a woman of all time, which is in Casino.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller moves on from that Sharon Stone performance to note others in The Age of Innocence, Alice Doesn\u2019t Live Here Anymore and the recent Killers of the Flower Moon. We might also mention his indomitable late mother in Goodfellas and The King of Comedy. Catherine Scorsese, seen here in amusing archive footage, remains an enormous presence.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis mother was a very powerful, dynamic, hilarious figure who he adored,\u201d Miller says. \u201cYou just need to look at how many women he works with to see that he has immense respect and love for women. But, inevitably, there is that stamp of the great triumvirate \u2013 Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Casino. And then also The Irishman. So that became \u2018who he is as a film-maker\u2019. But he\u2019s made so many films beyond that.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Martin Scorsese: \u2018Crime is glamorous at first if you\u2019re young and stupid\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

In the later episodes we get the sense that, despite being the most respected US director of his generation, Scorsese still feels he doesn\u2019t quite fit in among the Hollywood elite. Too awkward. Too angular. Too New York. Nicholas Pileggi, writer of Goodfellas, recalls a senior member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences urging him to mind his language at the Oscars. They really thought these New York interlopers were the wise guys they depicted on screen. Does Scorsese still feel like an outsider?<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, definitely,\u201d Miller says, remembering his asthma. \u201cThere is a sense of that baked in from the beginning. He couldn\u2019t go outside and play, and he was looking down through the window at the street. He had friends, of course. But he\u2019s also a little bit isolated by his own talent, his own interests, which are so different from the kids around him. Yet he\u2019s very drawn to them. But there\u2019s a sort of separateness in each phase of his life.\u201d<\/p>\n

She remembers a quote from Paul Schrader<\/a>, writer of Taxi Driver, about the disturbed protagonist of that film.<\/p>\n

\u201cTravis Bickle looks in through a window, where Betsy is, \u2018like a wolf watching campfires in the distance\u2019 \u2013 that lonesome isolation,\u201d she says. \u201cMarty talked about really having identified with that. I thought that was interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Scorsese premiered to deserved hollers in New York. Now the nights are drawing in. There is rain on the wind. Is this a time to retreat triumphantly to Wicklow?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re both very busy trying to get these things out, but it\u2019ll be great to get back,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

They have raised two children since setting up home in Annamoe: Ronan, the film-maker, and Cashel Day-Lewis, a musician. I imagine some Irishness must have rubbed off on them.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefinitely. They have deep connections to it,\u201d Miller says. \u201cCashel, the youngest, just spent a year playing trad fiddle in Ireland and also bartending at the Cobblestone pub. So he is very steeped in Irish culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cobblestone in Smithfield, Dublin 7?<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah!\u201d<\/p>\n

Now there\u2019s an experience he wouldn\u2019t have got growing up in southern California.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll be back. I don\u2019t know exactly when, but, definitely, soon, soon, soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Scorsese streams on Apple TV+ from Friday, October 17th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York Film Festival was the only sane place for Rebecca Miller to premiere her superb five-part documentary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[8932,458,146,3495,85,46,7643,1886,38084,30499,48849,40491],"class_list":{"0":"post-67682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-apple-tv","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-for-you","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-martin-scorsese","15":"tag-new-york","16":"tag-rebecca-miller","17":"tag-robert-de-niro","18":"tag-sharon-stone","19":"tag-thelma-schoonmaker"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}