“For me, it’s time to go back to the perennial values of the church and, which Pope Francis is trying to do, help it evolve to the world of the next century.”
I’m looking forward to this.
The legendary filmmaker is delving deeper into his Catholic roots and has produced a series for the streaming service Fox Nation. Scorsese is promoting it and spoke about the project with The New York Times:
“Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints,” premiering Sunday on the Fox Nation streaming service, is hosted and narrated by the filmmaker and dramatizes the lives of eight Catholic saints.
The series is premiering in two parts, with the first four episodes rolling out weekly and featuring well-known saints, including Joan of Arc and John the Baptist, as well as more obscure ones like Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest who volunteered to die in place of another man at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The second part, scheduled to premiere in April, will include episodes about the Italian friar Francis of Assisi and Mary Magdalene, a follower of Jesus Christ, among others.
The series was created by Matti Leshem, a founder of New Mandate Films, a production company that focuses on storytelling rooted in Jewish history and culture. Scorsese is an executive producer. Kent Jones, a frequent collaborator of the filmmaker’s, wrote the scripts, which were informed by lengthy discussions on theology he had with Scorsese.
In an interview at a hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Scorsese discussed the show, his relationship to Catholicism and why he thinks faith-based entertainment needs to have depth. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
You’ve wanted to do a series on Catholic saints for decades. Why is it happening now and in this way?
The world had changed. Hollywood had changed. After making “Raging Bull” [in 1980] I decided, now was the time to draw myself into exploring the lives of the saints. We had a deal to make this series, but it wasn’t set yet. I didn’t know where and how to go about it. If a saint is something that is designated as special, for many of us as children, we thought that therefore the saints must be superhuman. But no. The whole point is that it’s human. The point is that we’re all capable of certain attributes.
What does your relationship with Catholicism look like at this stage in your life?
At times I’m a practicing Catholic. At this point my relationship with it is a dialogue that I have with certain clerics and priests. My gravitation is toward people who want to explore deeper and not just to condemn, because that’s still there. There are certain rules, true. Maybe sometimes you break them. To be draconian about it is something that I grew up with back in the early 1950s. As you lead a whole life, it’s not that black and white. I tend to to do more with people that are more open minded in terms of the church itself.
For me, it’s time to go back to the perennial values of the church and, which Pope Francis is trying to do, help it evolve to the world of the next century. What is the real sense and what is the real truth of Christianity? A lot of people have died for it over the years, and a lot of people have lived a good life because of it. There are values there. What are those values? Can we explore those values and maybe even try to live by them?
UPDATE: Scorsese had this remembrance of being an altar boy, which he shared with PEOPLE magazine:
Scorsese is the first to admit he didn’t have a knack for being an altar server, a child who assists priests during liturgical services like Catholic Mass.
“I wasn’t so great at it,” Scorsese, 82, tells PEOPLE. “It was very hard for me to be there on time for the 7:00 Mass. I would always be late. The priest had to say, ‘You can’t go on like this.’ ”
Nevertheless, he did — and remained an altar boy for a few years.
Though Scorsese was often tardy, the time he spent in the church left an indelible impression. “It’s amazing the impact of being back there while the High Mass was being celebrated,” he says.
Check out the trailer below.
