Martin Scorsese discusses the so-called ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ wars: ‘You really need him to tell you that’s wrong?’

Even now, 10 years after its release, Martin Scorsese’s “Wolf of Wall Street” still inspires strong debate among those viewers who understand Scorsese’s no-holds-barred film about how Wall Street corruption and capitalism run amok can be alluring and contemptible at the same time and those who thought the movie celebrated that which it sought to condemn.

But that’s par for the course for the filmmaker, who has spent his entire career pushing audiences outside their comfort zones and asking questions of viewers that don’t have easy answers. 

“I think what Marty is tapping into here — why he’s soaking you in the world — is to tweak what is in all of us, probably. The allure of this kind of easy money and excess is probably somewhere in all of us, but, fortunately, most of us don’t respond to it,” Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese’s Oscar-winning editor, said in an interview back in 2014 around the time of the “Wolf of Wall Street” release. “I wonder if some of the people who react so strongly against the movie are uncomfortable about what they’re feeling. Also, Marty never wants to tell you what to think. That, I think, troubles some people who are not going with the movie. They’re saying, ‘Wait a minute. What am I supposed to make of this?’ Well, you’re supposed to make of this what you feel. Look at what you are seeing and you make the judgement. The film, though, is also making a judgment. I feel that strongly…. But maybe some people just resist it and don’t want to respond. He doesn’t want to tell you what to think, and so many movies these days do tell you what to think. It’s really shocking to me.”

Speaking now, with “Killers of the Flower Moon” set to arrive in theaters on Friday amid similar conversations about Scorsese’s nuanced approach to moral rot and the banality of evil, the filmmaker told Timothee Chalamet in an interview for GQ that he was surprised people took issue with “Wolf of Wall Street.”

“Somebody had pointed out and said in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ or a number of the films I’ve made, the level of corruption is so deep because the society is not rooted in morality or any kind of spirituality. That’s what human nature might be: without that guidance, or without even that dialogue between people about morality and spirituality it becomes pure corruption,” Scorsese told the young actor.

After illustrating how there is a real slippery slope between taking advantage of a protected class or minority group and, ultimately, genocide, Scorsese added, “It’s interesting how corruption just infiltrates every aspect of your life. And you could learn to live with it. Because you don’t react against it. You don’t speak up.”

In terms of “Wolf of Wall Street,” Scorsese said he was recently made aware of the so-called “War of ‘Wolf of Wall Street” that started 10 years prior inside a Paramount Pictures screening room in New York.

“There was a big screening at Paramount for the picture for the critics in New York – apparently, I was told this – and there were two camps. One camp loved the picture and the other camp was furious, saying I didn’t take a moral stand on Jordan Belfort,” Scorsese recalled, referencing the character played in the film by Leonardo DiCaprio. “And one of the critics from the other group that liked the picture said, ‘Do you really need Martin Scorsese to tell you that that’s wrong? You really need him to tell you that’s wrong?’”

When Chalamet asked if that kind of “moralistic attitude” was boring for him, Scorsese said it was “beyond boring” but suggested it was something that had been around forever and tied to the debate between religion and spirituality. 

“Religion could – taken the wrong way – become something that is restricting and becomes intolerable. Becomes judgmental,” he said. Using “Killers of the Flower Moon” as an example, Scorsese noted all the film’s perpetrators of violence were Europeans who were Protestants. “I’m not condemning Protestants. I’m just saying they had a morality. You know, when a guy like Bill Hale played by Robert De Niro, says, ‘I love these Osage people,’ and he’s killing them. But he does love them. Now, what is that?”

It’s a question Scorsese doesn’t answer in the film – and it’s likely one that will spark new debate about his methods for another decade. 

“Killers of the Flower Moon” is in theaters on Friday.

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