USA film industry: Martin Scorsese, Richard Edlund

Introduction
-The American entertainment industry is famous for its movies all over the world. With
entertainment hubs like Los Angeles Hollywood with the most movies filmed there.
-It is also famous for its directors such Martin Scorsese.

Martin Scorsese
-Martin Scorsese was born in 1942 in New York, which would later return as a motif in many
of his movies.
-He was a boy of poor health so instead of going outside he often went to the cinema and
developed a passion for movies and cinematography.
-He went on to study to become a priest but was dismissed after a year and studied at NYU
(New York University) where he would earn a masters degree in film directing.
-He soon made his first feature length film titled Who’s That Knocking At My Door, featuring
one of his old classmates.
-In the 1970’s he directed his first crime drama named Mean Streets. This marks the start of
his collaboration with Robert DeNiro as well as the starting point of his iconic directorial
techniques.
-He continued working on movies like Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Raging Bull and the Wolf of
Wall Street, which were successful. But in between these movies he directed ones like the
King of Comedy, which were considered a failure at the time and drove him into a deep
depression and a cocaine addiction. Raging Bull was the movie to get him back on track with
Robert DeNiro helping him battle his addiction.
-He also directed the movie titled The Last Temptation of CHrist which was a religious
themed piece very personal to him. The public wasn’t a fan of it. Because it depicted Jesus
in a way that seemed contradictory with the morality of Jesus in the Bible to many Catholics,
it caused tremendous outrage.
-It was banned in some countries and in ones that aired the movie, suffered the
consequences. In France a movie theater was set on fire by an upset viewer in Paris.

Little outro
-Martin Scorsese’s career had its ups and downs but he still continues his work in
cinematography today and has fans across the world, like David for example.
-He’s also received many awards like an Academy Award, 4 BAFTA Awards, an Emmy
Award and a Golden Globe Award.

Green Screen
-An additional fun fact is that green screen technology was also invented in America, by
Richard Edlund, an American visual effects artist and inventor. He’s famous for his work in
the Star Wars movies.