Martin Scorsese defining ‘simp,’ ‘sneaky link’ and ‘ick’ on TikTok? Now that’s cinema
Martin Scorsese, acclaimed filmmaker and unexpected TikTok darling, has gone viral once again.
This time, the “Taxi Driver” director’s knowledge of internet lingo, or lack thereof, made the internet rounds Thursday. In a TikTok video, Scorsese’s daughter Francesca had her father define popular “slag” words like “tea,” “ick” and “simp.”
According to 23-year-old Francesca, her filmmaker father, 80, “lowkey slayed” his internet vocabulary test. In the nearly five-minute clip, Francesca uses the internet term in a sentence, prompting her father to guess what it means. The father-daughter duo’s voices are altered by a voice filter.
The TikTok begins with Scorsese correctly defining “tea,” which he knows doesn’t always mean the piping hot drink. “That means you’re gonna tell all you know,” he tells his daughter.
Ask Scorsese what “ick” (another term for “turnoff”) means and he’ll say it’s something “you were thoroughly repulsed by.” The quiz seems to be going well for Scorsese, until he’s met with “sneaky link.”
“Those are personal peccadilloes that you may have,” Scorsese incorrectly guesses. After Francesca says a “sneaky link” is similar to a “booty call,” the “Killers of the Flower Moon” director says, “We never saw specific people in my day.”
As the video continues, Scorsese taps into his filmmaking career to define phrases “hits different” and “slept on.” He agrees with Francesca that movies shown on 70 mm film “hits different” and revisits a negative review when Francesca says his 1983 film “The King of Comedy’ was slept on,” or underrated.
Scorsese praised “Killers of the Flower Moon” star Lily Gladstone, who “ate” her “Killers” role, but struggled to correctly guess that “simp” meant a person who is “desperate for the attention and affection of someone else,” according to CNN.
The Oscar-winning “Departed” director finished the TikTok quiz strong, accurately noting that “slaps” and “slay” are compliments.
“That means really good,” he defined “slay.”
“We slayed this video,” Francesca added.
Scorsese’s latest claim to TikTok fame comes a year after he went viral for helping his daughter troll internet fans. In November, talk about a nonexistent Scorsese film, titled “Goncharov,” surfaced on Tumblr. Devoted fans took chatter of the fake film to the next level by creating posters, artwork and trivia questions about the nonexistent project, Entertainment Weekly reported.
“Goncharov” even became the subject of a New York Times story, which Francesca shared with her father. “Did u see this?,” she texted him.
Seemingly in on the joke, Scorsese replied, “Yes. I made that film years ago.”
While no “Goncharov,” Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” is a real movie that’s set to hit theaters on Oct. 20.
The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May. L.A. Times critic Justin Chang wrote in his review that Scorsese’s latest film “is both like and unlike anything its director has ever done.”
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