The boxing ring actually gets physically bigger the worse Jake’s mental state becomes. Joey wasn’t impressed and sued the producers.ħ. Jake didn’t mention his brother Joey in the book, but the screenwriters decided they needed some sibling rivalry to help drive along the story.
When you see De Niro rapidly close the distance on Sugar Ray for example, the short two-step footwork is identical to LaMotta’s.Ħ. LaMotta sparred with De Niro for hundreds of rounds to get him fight ready and it paid off. De Niro was so determined to come across as a professional boxer he actually took part in three (or four, depending on who you ask) boxing matches in Brooklyn, winning two of them on points.ĥ.
“Was I really that bad?” Jake asked her after seeing the film. Robert De Niro worked with Jake LaMotta during filming, but to get the other side of the story, original screenwriter Mardik Martin (who had met Scorsese at New York University and worked with him on Mean Streets) spent some time interviewing Jake’s wife, Vikki LaMotta. And unlike the Rocky movies, which relied on lots of camera angles, the Raging Bull scenes were shot with one camera, giving the audience the impression that they are right there in the ring.ģ. As some kind of comparison, Stallone’s Rocky, made a few years earlier, cost $960k to make, and made $225m.Ģ. It cost $18m to make, and took $23m at the box office. Despite all the Academy Award nominations, the subject matter and big names involved, Raging Bull wasn’t a hit. And as the movie is 40 years old, we’ve gone for 40 facts. But enough of the heavy stuff, let’s get into the trivia. His book, Raging Bull, My Story appeared in 1970 and 10 years later Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese brought his turbulent character to life on the big screen. In real life Jake LaMotta was a violent man, both inside and outside the ring, who beat his wives and fought his boxing opponents close and dangerous. Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull makes for far less wholesome entertainment, a cold look at the American dream that entwines the brutality of boxing with organised crime, domestic violence and the dangers of family loyalty.
Now considered to be one of the greatest films ever made, its initial lack of success was largely down to Sylvester Stallone’s two Rocky films (1976, 1979) that had set the blueprint for big brash American boxing movies: hero comes from nothing, wins small, loses big, wins even bigger. Incredibly, when Raging Bull hit the big screen 40 years ago this weekend, it was met with a collective shrug and a bit of a “meh”.
0 kommentar(er)
