Fact File
Name: Martin Scorsese
Born: New York, 1942
Occupation: Film director
Lives: New York
Famous For: Some of the most critically acclaimed American films made
Why in the news: He is in on a brief visit to Dublin
Celebrity-spotters could have done worse this week than hang out around the Joycean landmarks of Dublin, where breakfasting in Bewleys or strolling by Sandycove Tower a rather unique couple of film icons could be found.
The tall, distinguished gentleman with the silvery hair was veteran film star Gregory Peck. The smaller man with bushy, dark eyebrows and a face straight out of the side-streets of Little Italy was Martin Scorsese.
And the dapper man chatting authoritatively to both of them was Senator David Norris. He was taking Scorsese on a tour of Joycean Dublin. The controversial director was anxious to acquaint himself with the geo graphical associations of the writer (Joyce not Norris) in whom he harbours a lifelong interest.
This morning Scorsese is talking films in a public interview with The Irish Times Film Correspondent, Michael Dwyer, in the Savoy Cinema on Dublin's O'Connell Street. After a showing of his Oscar-winning film, Goodfellas, he will attend a workshop with the UCD Film School. This is the main reason for his brief, first visit to Dublin.
Persuading a world-renowned film director to visit your film school is relatively easy when you count Gregory Peck as one of your founding patrons.
Step 1: twist said patron's arm and ask him to get Scorsese, a mate of his, to visit.
Step 2: send off a few short films made by your students to the director's Manhattan office.
Step 3: wait until he is on his way from America to Cannes to chair the judging panel of the film festival and simply nab him.
It may have been slightly more complicated but according to the director of UCD Film School, Leon Conway, he is "very down to earth".
"The man has no pretensions, we spoke on the phone before he came and it was not a prima donna situation," he says.
Scorsese was "won over", believes Conway, by the short five-minute films they sent.
The resulting gesture, which includes hosting a workshop on screen direction and cinematic style, is indicative of his allcon suming passion for his craft.
This from a recent appraisal by writer Robert Egbert: "Instead of describing beautiful women or old masters . . . he is describing movies. Scorsese tells you about a shot in an old film and it's like listening to Sydney Greenstreet telling Humphrey Bogart that he must have the Maltese falcon. Perhaps the reason he is the greatest director is because he has spent the most time learning from those who went before him."
It all started in the film theatres of New York. Scorsese suffered from asthma as a child and not being able to play ball spent a lot of time at the cinema. Influenced by his Italian-American Catholic upbringing he joined the New York archdiocesan seminary.
He quit after a year and enrolled in New York University - where he was awarded a BA in English and an MA in film studies - and began making short student films.
But it was in 1973 that the New York Film Festival was bowled over by an unapolo getically gritty film that portrayed life as it really was in New York. Mean Streets, starring fellow New Yorker Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel, was Scorsese's introduction to cinema's big time.
He has rarely looked back but for most of his films it is said he has looked inside himself for inspiration. The complex cultural nuances of life as an Italian-American have been a constant theme, as has the Catholic religion. Gangsters and Mafia figures also regularly feature in the films of this godfather of American cinema.
The disturbing Taxi Driver which is reported to have driven John Hinckley Jnr to try to assassinate Ronald Reagan, consolidated his position as a provocative talent. Hinckley said he was trying to get the the attention of Jodie Foster, who played a prostitute in the film.
In 1980 his black and white film based on the life story of boxer Jake LaMotta earned an Oscar for actor Robert De Niro and nominations for best film and director. His follow-up to The Hustler was The Colour of Money which landed Paul Newman his first Oscar.
The Last Temptation of Christ, Scorsese's adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis's book, caused consternation here and in fundamentalist America.
The Irish censor deliberated but eventually passed what evangelists dubbed a "blasphemous" film largely because of its erotic depiction of Mary Magdalen.
In his latest film - Kundun, about the early life of the Dalai Lama - he has returned to his fascination with the spiritual and elements of the unknown that infuses all his films.
Scorsese, who has been married four times and has two children, asked a recent interviewer: "What is a human being? Is it the darker side or the lighter side? What's going to win out ultimately in our species?"
Whatever about his more mystical side it is his technical prowess that fellow film-makers admire. "His technique is dynamic. His use of technology and his unique skill with actors and editing are what make him outstanding," says Conway.
In her book, Martin Scorsese: A Journey, biographer Mary Pat Kelly gives a nod to the director's interest in James Joyce and draws a valid comparison; in life and in work they are both, she maintains, "priests of the imagination".