Martin Scorsese: I don’t make films for mobile phone screens

Martin Scorsese has some advice for those considering watching his film The Irishman: don’t watch it on your mobile phone.

Director Martin Scorcese. Picture: David Shankbone

Days after his 3½-hour gangster epic The Irishman arrived on streaming service Netflix, Martin Scorsese has offered a few instructions to people considering watching it.

“I would suggest, if you ever want to see one of my pictures, or most films, please, please don’t look at it on a phone,” he said. “Please.”

The possibility that someone might attempt to view his films on the finger-smudged screen of their iPhone was an idea the director, 77, could not contemplate. “In the past 20 years I have made films for television, in terms of screen size, and for theatre,” he told Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers.

“Never for a phone. I wish I could. I don’t know how.”

The Irishman, starring Robert De Niro as a mob hitman alongside Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, launched on the streaming service last week after a brief release in a small number of independent cinemas.

Jesse Plemons, Ray Romano, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in a scene from The Irishman.

Netflix covered the film’s eye-watering $US159m ($233m) budget but has minimal interest in box-office ticket sales. Instead, it hopes to lure film fans into taking out, and retaining, Netflix subscriptions.

In the interview, Scorsese said he had made peace with the fact some people might not watch The Irishman in the hushed and sanctified space of a cinema. But he still wanted them to see it on a reasonably large screen: “A big iPad, maybe.”

Scorsese, whose previous films include Taxi Driver and The Wolf of Wall Street, said he had been forced to grapple with the idea of people watching his films on personal devices after he struggled to find a Hollywood studio that would fund The Irishman.

“They were saying at this time, who really wants to see this kind of thing?” he said. “Netflix stepped up and it was a trade-off. We have three or four weeks in the theatre, then it stays in the theatre and in the meantime gets streamed.”

Netflix allows subscribers to watch content on a range of dev­ices but has said that 70 per cent of viewing still takes place on televisions, rather than phones, tablets or PCs. Mobile viewing is predicted to grow as 5G internet improves connectivity. Quibi, a smartphone-only streaming service dubbed “Netflix for mobiles”, is due to launch next year.

For those planning to watch The Irishman, Scorsese has very specific advice. “Ideally, I’d like you to go to a theatre, look at it on a big screen from beginning to end,” he said. “And I know, it’s long — you gotta get up, you gotta go to the bathroom, that sort of thing, I get it.”

If you were not planning to leave your sofa, however, he asked that you try to abide by some of the same etiquette. “I think if you can make a night of it, or an afternoon thereof, and know that you’re not gonna answer the phone or you’re not gonna get up too much, it might work,” he said.

The Times