Martin Scorsese has revealed why he doesn’t catch public screenings of his own films.
In a Variety interview published online on Friday, the iconic director detailed his concerns with the moviegoing experience, including people who “talk and move around a lot” at cinemas.
“I’m short and there’s always a big person in front of me,” Scorsese said. “It’s the same with Broadway — I can’t go to theatre. There’s someone in front of me, and I can’t see the stage or hear the show.”
The director added that he “really” enjoys seeing films in Imax as he gets older.
“You go in, you can sit up in the back and you’re sort of looking up,” he said. “Regular screenings, I have found the audiences becoming a bit more raucous than they used to be. But maybe it’s always like in the ’50s when we used to yell back at the screen.”
Still, he said that it’s “very important to me to support films while they’re on the big screen”.
“I just wait a while,” he added.
Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon picked up 10 Oscar nominations this year, and the film is returning to US cinemas this weekend ahead of the Academy Awards ceremony in March.
When asked about critics who say the nearly three-and-a-half-hour film is too long, Scorsese told Variety that “many people seem to go with it”.
“Some people say, ‘I want to see it again,’” he told the outlet. “Not every film is for every person. Not every novel is for every reader, not every painting, etc.”
He added: “This one felt right [at this length], and I felt that while I was watching it. I felt inside of it.”