{"id":16958,"date":"2023-05-22T20:45:43","date_gmt":"2023-05-23T00:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=16958"},"modified":"2023-05-22T20:45:43","modified_gmt":"2023-05-23T00:45:43","slug":"martin-scorsese-reveals-why-he-didnt-direct-schindlers-list-im-not-jewish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=16958","title":{"rendered":"Martin Scorsese Reveals Why He Didn&#8217;t Direct &#8216;Schindler&#8217;s List&#8217;: &#8220;I&#8217;m not Jewish&#8221;&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>After thirty-some years, Martin Scorsese is telling the world why he turned down the possibility of directing <em><strong>Schindler\u2019s List<\/strong><\/em>, the acclaimed Holocaust-themed film that was ultimately done by Steven Spielberg.<br \/><br \/>In a recent interview with <em>Deadline<\/em>, Scorsese said that his decision to turn the project over to Spielberg was prompted after the response to his 1988 film <em><strong>The Last Temptation of Christ<\/strong><\/em>, a controversial portrayal of Jesus that did not meet the approval of some Christians.<br \/><br \/>Scorsese said,\u00a0 \u201cI did [<strong><em>Last Temptation&#8230;<\/em><\/strong>] a certain way, and <em><strong>Schindler\u2019s List<\/strong> <\/em>was scuttled by its reception. I did the best I could. I went around the world. Any arguments, I took \u2019em on. I may have been wrong, but I\u2019m not sure you can be wrong with dogma. But we could argue it.\u201d <br \/><br \/>Scorsese was ultimately concerned that his being a Christian would impact the reception of <em><strong>Schindler\u2019s List<\/strong> <\/em>if he directed it. \u201cI knew there were Jewish people upset that the writer of <em>The Diary of Anne Frank<\/em> was gentile,\u201d he said.<br \/><br \/>As he continued, \u201cI used the phrase at the time, \u2018I\u2019m not Jewish.\u2019\u2026I wasn\u2019t being altruistic, but it just made sense to me that [Spielberg] was the person who really should go through this. I was concerned that I wouldn\u2019t be able to do justice to the situation.&#8221;<br \/><br \/>After being nominated thirteen times, including for<strong> Last Temptation\u2026<\/strong> Scorsese finally won an Oscar for best director in 2007, for <em><strong>The Departed<\/strong><\/em>. In his <em>Deadline<\/em> interview, he also reminisced about how Francis Ford Coppola had recommended him to Paramount in the 1970s to direct <em><strong>The Godfather Part II<\/strong><\/em>, noting that \u201cI don\u2019t think I could have made a film on that level at that time in my life, and who I was at that time \u2026 Now, I would\u2019ve made something interesting, but [Coppola]\u2019s maturity was already there. I still had this kind of edgy thing, the wild kid running around.\u201d<br \/><br \/>The 80-year-old Scorsese still has some of that \u201cwild kid\u201d running around. His most recent project, <em><strong>Killers of the Flower Moon<\/strong> <\/em>is set for release in October by Paramount, and will stream on Apple TV+. An adaptation of David Grann\u2019s 2017 book <em>Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI<\/em>, the film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, and Jesse Plemons.<\/p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/author\/edward-moran\/\">Check out more of Edward&#8217;s articles.<\/a><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After thirty-some years, Martin Scorsese is telling the world why he turned down the possibility of directing Schindler\u2019s List, the acclaimed Holocaust-themed film that was ultimately done by Steven Spielberg. In a recent interview with Deadline, Scorsese said that his decision to turn the project over to Spielberg was prompted after the response to his&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[15910,5246,243,11982,7494,482,15909],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Martin Scorsese Reveals Why He Didn&#039;t Direct &#039;Schindler&#039;s List&#039;: &quot;I&#039;m not Jewish&quot;&quot; | Cinema Daily US<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=16958\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Martin Scorsese Reveals Why He Didn&#039;t Direct &#039;Schindler&#039;s List&#039;: &quot;I&#039;m not Jewish&quot;&quot; | Cinema Daily US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"After thirty-some years, Martin Scorsese is telling the world why he turned down the possibility of directing Schindler\u2019s List, the acclaimed Holocaust-themed film that was ultimately done by Steven Spielberg. 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More recently he contributed film reviews to hosokinema.com and Movie Sleuth. His writings have appeared in publications as diverse as the Times Literary Supplement, Publishers Weekly, the Paris Review, and the Massachusetts Review. Moran also edited a memoir by Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Christine Choy. He served as literary advisor to her film Hyam Plutzik: American Poet, which was the keynote film in the American Perspectives series at the 2007 Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin.\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.cinemadailyus.com\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?author=3\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Martin Scorsese Reveals Why He Didn't Direct 'Schindler's List': \"I'm not Jewish\"\" | Cinema Daily US","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=16958","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Martin Scorsese Reveals Why He Didn't Direct 'Schindler's List': \"I'm not Jewish\"\" | Cinema Daily US","og_description":"After thirty-some years, Martin Scorsese is telling the world why he turned down the possibility of directing Schindler\u2019s List, the acclaimed Holocaust-themed film that was ultimately done by Steven Spielberg. 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