They say we always tend to think that the neighbor’s grass is greener than ours. A simplicity that however helps us try to understand the fascination that musicians have on people in the cinema (and vice versa!). It is published in the United States Insomniaa book by the late Robbie Robertson about that time in the 1970s when he lived with Martin Scorsese in his house on Mulholland Drive. At night it functioned as a film club, with films chosen by Martin; it was also a Afterwith plenty of stimulants and music played by Robertson.
We warn those who tend towards scandal: these are the adventures of, in short, two singles in the mood to party. Martin had a bad time with Liza Minnelli, a relationship that began during the filming of New York, New York. Robbie behaved like a womanizer in the female flourishing of Hollywood: Jennifer O’Neill, Tuesday Weld, Geneviève Bujold and Carole Bouquet passed through that little house (it is appreciated that he recognizes that Sophia Loren rejected his advances).
What did they see in each other? Scorsese, in poor health, considered Robertson a mythical figure: the rocker who survived the clubs with the brutal Ronnie Hawkins before ascending to the A-list with Bob Dylan and the Band. For Robbie, culturally self-taught, the world of cinema was the promised paradise: from buying second-hand screenplays in specialized bookstores to direct relationships with New Hollywood filmmakers and their foreign friends (Pontecorvo, Leone, Wenders), as well as stars like Robert de Niro, Warren Beatty or Harvey Keitel.
The interactions were not always happy. Francis Ford Coppola insists on cooking the pasta and entrusts Robbie with the task of supervising the cooking. It’s an hour of surveillance but the musician has an inevitable rendezvous with his camel and, when he returns, the sauce has gone bad, to Coppola’s indignation. Don’t trust a rock star with such a simple task, especially if he lives in a house where there is usually a chef.
For Robbie, this was a glorious career opportunity. Scorsese hires him as music supervisor for eleven of his films and allows him to step out of the shadow of The Band (whose ending, immortalized in The Last WaltzNow we know he was anything but cute.) Colleagues noted Scorsese’s favoritism towards the guitarist, generating resentment that would become even more poisonous when Robertson, taking advantage of his weaknesses, purchased the recording and publishing rights; He also didn’t like that Robbie started bragging about his quarter blood mohawkwhich implies that in The Band it was limited.
Solo, the Canadian Robertson has released half a dozen dense albums, the first of which facilitated the entry of producer Daniel Lanois, another of his compatriots, into that nebulous genre called American. Expensive albums that did not register great sales, despite the unconditional support of the director, who even directed the clip Somewhere along the crazy river. A large part of his earnings came from those film jobs, as a composer or selector of other people’s music. Robbie explains how the second task worked: he set up a large space playlistwhat he called “Marty’s jukebox,” to choose from. And pranks were allowed, as in The Wolf of Wall Streetwhere Howlin’ Wolf’s voice improbably sounded. Do they take it?
