The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

Rebel Without a Cause and Mean Streets
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[Spoiler alert:] What do you think that means then, when Martin Scorsese
plays the gunman at the end who shoots Johnny Boy?
Woo: [laughing] I don’t think he wanted to kill himself. But that’s very interesting.
I think Marty had portrayed himself in all of his movies. I think he’s
more like the Robert De Niro character.
I find that we have similar backgrounds. His first dream was that he
wanted to be a priest, and my first dream was that I wanted to be a minister,
a reverend.
And he was kicked out for roughhousing, and your friends told you
that you didn’t have the discipline.
Woo: Yeah, yeah. [laughing] And my friends suggested that I go into arts.
Do you know Scorsese pretty well?
Woo: I’ve met him two or three times.
What makes you think he is more like Johnny Boy?
Woo: Well, he’s a great artist. He’s like a rebel in art, to me. He changed so
many things. His movies broke the system. He made the movies like going
into a brand new world. He gives it a lot of honesty. I think he’s a man who
changed the film world quite a lot. When you’re doing something like that,
it’s really hard to make people understand you—like Robert De Niro in Mean
Streets. But not many people know deep inside his heart what he’s thinking.
One of the other similarities between you two is the use of music.
In Mean Streets, there’s a whole fight scene in a bar room set to “Be
My Baby.” It reminded me of Face/Off in which the big shootout is
set to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Did you take that cue from
Scorsese?
Woo: Not only music; I also learned so much from his editing. His editing
is so sharp and so precise—and sometimes too raw. He doesn’t play by the
rules; he just edits the scene by his own feeling. Of course, he’s very, very in
control of the whole rhythms. The way he was using music was very unique,
like the scene you mentioned. It really inspired me to use music the same
way, in Face/Off and in all my movies.