Post by The Social Introvert on Mar 29, 2018 13:38:03 GMT
As some of you may know Scorsese has a new mafia movie coming out starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Kietel concerning the mob connections surrounding the disappearance of union leader Jimmy Hoffa.
It has been in development for around 10 years and just before filming began it was announced that CGI would be used on the main cast to make the actors look younger (most of the characters were around the ages of 40-50 when the main bulk of the story takes place). The film originally was budgeted at $100m (which is incredibly high as it is) but has since ballooned to around $140-170m and they haven't even got to the music licencing.
It got me thinking. If you would need to use expensive state-of-the-art CGI (which has no guarantee of looking convincing) wouldn't it have been a better idea to have made the film earlier, and not wait until 2019? Especially since the actors are old enough to begin with? Could Silence have not waited a few years? Or Shutter Island? Or The Wolf of Wall Street?
I made this short video discussing the release of the film and whether they have left it too late or not:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=akjZ3h6rYwQ
If you prefer to read, I wrote it up:
When some people are made aware of Martin Scorsese’s latest film The Irishman and its development, a common reaction is exasperation due to the decision to reverse the age of senior citizen actors in order to make them play characters who will be up to around 30 years younger than their actual ages. Realistically actors like Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci are far too old to be playing the characters they are playing, which is why Industrial Light and Magic have been bought in during post-production of the movie to de-age the actors for scenes set in the past. Of course they could have picked different for the roles but that would mean losing the charm of seeing all these veteran legends in the same picture playing off each other, which is why they are instead opting for CGI. So it does bring up another question – why didn’t they just make this movie years earlier, when the actors were in their prime or at least a little closer to the actual ages of the characters they’ll be playing? Ideally you’d have the movie filmed in the late 90’s, when it would be easy to make De Niro, Pacino and Pesci look both younger and older with makeup and which would also add a poetic element to the film’s release date given that this was when the gangster genre pretty much died out. It’s a legitimate question.
It is a legitimate question but that doesn’t stop it being a bit of a naïve question. First of all, the book the movie is based on I Heard You Paint Houses was published in 2003, so of course that rules out the film being made any earlier than that. So why wasn’t it made immediately after then? Well, for this we can only speculate. Who knows what went on behind the scenes? Maybe the project sat on the shelf for 10 years or maybe Scorsese was fighting tooth and nail to get it made for a decade. All I know is that in 2013 when Scorsese had the opportunity to make The Irishman or Silence he chose to make the latter because it was a personal passion project. This is the only time I know of that the movie was intentionally held back which sound crazy when you consider that Silence could be made anytime but the swiftness of The Irishman’s filming was crucial because of the age of the actors. They were moving farther and farther away from being the appropriate age for their roles and let’s be honest, they were getting closer and closer to their deaths. One actor who I’m sure would have been in the film Frank Vincent actually died close to the start of The Irishman’s filming start date. Maybe we would have seen Billy Batts and Tommy DeVito together again had Scorsese chosen The Irishman over Silence? Who knows?
Robert De Niro mentioned the project in interviews several times over the past decade or so, explaining that the film is being planned very carefully. Seemingly then a conscious decision was made to not rush the film into production. After all it would take time to perfect a script based on such an expansive novel and to find a shooting schedule to fit in so many different actors. Of course we know now that there was great difficulty also in funding the project, with Scorsese eventually having to turn to the streaming service Netflix to bring it to life. The reason for the Hollywood studios reluctance was due to the huge budget needed to de-age the actors in post-production.
Looking at it from this angle and providing the digital effects look good when the film comes out, it’s probably a blessing then that the movie wasn’t made until now, seeing as though if there’s ever a time to get special effects like this done right…it’s now. Even the revolutionary de-aging effects in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button look quite outdated now. The technology has come a long way since. Think of what a $50m studio-produced Irishman’s de-aging CGI would have looked like in 2005 vs a $170m budgeted mob flick in 2019 will look like.
I think it’s safe to say then we don’t yet know if it was a wise decision to delay the making of this film by a few years. If you as the film makers knew you were casting 60 year olds in the roles of 40 year olds back in 2007ish, surely you’d try and get the film made as quickly as possible? Or maybe because you knew the age gap was already too apparent, you were looking for other ways to make the film work, finally settling for CGI which, at the time, wasn’t yet ready.
If the digital effects look good, we’ll all be able to say it was a great decision not to produce the film until 2018, because they were able to use state of the art CGI technology and utilizes the fact that Netflix has given Scorsese an incredible amount of money to play with, and I can’t think of any film studio that would be willing to spend almost $200m on a mafia film. The film will look great, the legendary actors will all share a lot of screen time, and it will most likely be a critical success.
If the digital effects are bad however, it will have a huge impact on the film and it will give cynics the opportunity to again ask the question “why didn’t you make the film earlier?” But as suggested by this video perhaps the tools were not available to Scorsese and co. back then to make the film, and a project as ambitious as The Irishman could only have been artistically and financially produced today.
I remember when the film was first talked about years ago, sometime before the release of Shutter Island if I remember correctly. And back then I wanted the film to be released right now at this very second. But who’s to say if they chose to make it back then the film would have gotten laughed at for having 60 year olds in heavy make up trying to look like 30 year olds. Or if they went for digital deaging, who’s to say the effects wouldn’t look horribly outdated today, which they definitely would have.
Maybe then the movie being promised and then disappearing, promised and then disappearing, until finally here we are 10 years later with the film having wrapped filming, might have actually turned out to be a good thing, because it means today CGI is as good as it’s ever been AND that a new powerhouse, Netflix, has the cash needed to fund such a project.
It all really depends on if the special effects being used to reverse the actors’ ages, such a controversial decision within the film communities, will be up to scratch. And for that, we’ll have to see when the movie is released in late 2019.
It has been in development for around 10 years and just before filming began it was announced that CGI would be used on the main cast to make the actors look younger (most of the characters were around the ages of 40-50 when the main bulk of the story takes place). The film originally was budgeted at $100m (which is incredibly high as it is) but has since ballooned to around $140-170m and they haven't even got to the music licencing.
It got me thinking. If you would need to use expensive state-of-the-art CGI (which has no guarantee of looking convincing) wouldn't it have been a better idea to have made the film earlier, and not wait until 2019? Especially since the actors are old enough to begin with? Could Silence have not waited a few years? Or Shutter Island? Or The Wolf of Wall Street?
I made this short video discussing the release of the film and whether they have left it too late or not:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=akjZ3h6rYwQ
If you prefer to read, I wrote it up:
When some people are made aware of Martin Scorsese’s latest film The Irishman and its development, a common reaction is exasperation due to the decision to reverse the age of senior citizen actors in order to make them play characters who will be up to around 30 years younger than their actual ages. Realistically actors like Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci are far too old to be playing the characters they are playing, which is why Industrial Light and Magic have been bought in during post-production of the movie to de-age the actors for scenes set in the past. Of course they could have picked different for the roles but that would mean losing the charm of seeing all these veteran legends in the same picture playing off each other, which is why they are instead opting for CGI. So it does bring up another question – why didn’t they just make this movie years earlier, when the actors were in their prime or at least a little closer to the actual ages of the characters they’ll be playing? Ideally you’d have the movie filmed in the late 90’s, when it would be easy to make De Niro, Pacino and Pesci look both younger and older with makeup and which would also add a poetic element to the film’s release date given that this was when the gangster genre pretty much died out. It’s a legitimate question.
It is a legitimate question but that doesn’t stop it being a bit of a naïve question. First of all, the book the movie is based on I Heard You Paint Houses was published in 2003, so of course that rules out the film being made any earlier than that. So why wasn’t it made immediately after then? Well, for this we can only speculate. Who knows what went on behind the scenes? Maybe the project sat on the shelf for 10 years or maybe Scorsese was fighting tooth and nail to get it made for a decade. All I know is that in 2013 when Scorsese had the opportunity to make The Irishman or Silence he chose to make the latter because it was a personal passion project. This is the only time I know of that the movie was intentionally held back which sound crazy when you consider that Silence could be made anytime but the swiftness of The Irishman’s filming was crucial because of the age of the actors. They were moving farther and farther away from being the appropriate age for their roles and let’s be honest, they were getting closer and closer to their deaths. One actor who I’m sure would have been in the film Frank Vincent actually died close to the start of The Irishman’s filming start date. Maybe we would have seen Billy Batts and Tommy DeVito together again had Scorsese chosen The Irishman over Silence? Who knows?
Robert De Niro mentioned the project in interviews several times over the past decade or so, explaining that the film is being planned very carefully. Seemingly then a conscious decision was made to not rush the film into production. After all it would take time to perfect a script based on such an expansive novel and to find a shooting schedule to fit in so many different actors. Of course we know now that there was great difficulty also in funding the project, with Scorsese eventually having to turn to the streaming service Netflix to bring it to life. The reason for the Hollywood studios reluctance was due to the huge budget needed to de-age the actors in post-production.
Looking at it from this angle and providing the digital effects look good when the film comes out, it’s probably a blessing then that the movie wasn’t made until now, seeing as though if there’s ever a time to get special effects like this done right…it’s now. Even the revolutionary de-aging effects in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button look quite outdated now. The technology has come a long way since. Think of what a $50m studio-produced Irishman’s de-aging CGI would have looked like in 2005 vs a $170m budgeted mob flick in 2019 will look like.
I think it’s safe to say then we don’t yet know if it was a wise decision to delay the making of this film by a few years. If you as the film makers knew you were casting 60 year olds in the roles of 40 year olds back in 2007ish, surely you’d try and get the film made as quickly as possible? Or maybe because you knew the age gap was already too apparent, you were looking for other ways to make the film work, finally settling for CGI which, at the time, wasn’t yet ready.
If the digital effects look good, we’ll all be able to say it was a great decision not to produce the film until 2018, because they were able to use state of the art CGI technology and utilizes the fact that Netflix has given Scorsese an incredible amount of money to play with, and I can’t think of any film studio that would be willing to spend almost $200m on a mafia film. The film will look great, the legendary actors will all share a lot of screen time, and it will most likely be a critical success.
If the digital effects are bad however, it will have a huge impact on the film and it will give cynics the opportunity to again ask the question “why didn’t you make the film earlier?” But as suggested by this video perhaps the tools were not available to Scorsese and co. back then to make the film, and a project as ambitious as The Irishman could only have been artistically and financially produced today.
I remember when the film was first talked about years ago, sometime before the release of Shutter Island if I remember correctly. And back then I wanted the film to be released right now at this very second. But who’s to say if they chose to make it back then the film would have gotten laughed at for having 60 year olds in heavy make up trying to look like 30 year olds. Or if they went for digital deaging, who’s to say the effects wouldn’t look horribly outdated today, which they definitely would have.
Maybe then the movie being promised and then disappearing, promised and then disappearing, until finally here we are 10 years later with the film having wrapped filming, might have actually turned out to be a good thing, because it means today CGI is as good as it’s ever been AND that a new powerhouse, Netflix, has the cash needed to fund such a project.
It all really depends on if the special effects being used to reverse the actors’ ages, such a controversial decision within the film communities, will be up to scratch. And for that, we’ll have to see when the movie is released in late 2019.
