2019 has been especially busy for Martin Scorsese, but mostly for things that weren’t his films. Now, after advising people against watching his new Netflix movie, The Irishman, on their phones, the Internet has taken it upon itself to find the weirdest ways to watch the film imaginable with a "the way Scorsese intended" meme. The initial comments about the question of the best viewing experience came on Popcorn with Peter Travers. Of course, being a bit old-school, Scorsese mentioned that it was a strange question to him. Obviously, he would prefer a normal cinematic experience, but that’s not a reality for a lot of people in 2019. Still, the comments were looked at as a sort of close to the scolding he’s done about Marvel movies this year. For a lot of people, that theater experience isn’t feasible, and not just because of price, but because this a 3+ hour film. Fans of the film found ways to cut the film into more manageable chunks and that led to others calling out the guides for subverting the recommended viewing experience. For those who haven’t heard the comments, here’s what the legend said initially.
“That I never thought of. That I never thought of,” Scorsese began. “Certainly, I could say, the past 20-some odd years, I’ve made films both for television and — in terms of the screen size — for the theater. Never for a phone. I don’t know how to do it. I wish I could, I don’t know how. No, I don’t get it.”
Acknowledging “films will be made for phones” and eventually end up on mobile devices, Scorsese also said, “Well, I would suggest — if you ever want to see one of my pictures, or most films — please, please don’t look at it on a phone, please. An iPad, a big iPad, maybe.”
“One of the things about a film three-and-a-half hours, and what this Netflix venue afforded us, I wasn’t sure about … for theaters, for home-viewing, looking at it in sections, looking at the end and going back to the beginning,” he added that The Irishman is engrossing enough to pull in viewers’ attention.
“I’m not saying because, ‘Oh, I made it.’ It was an interesting narrative structure, and it got me involved each time,” Scorsese explained. “In a funny way, I think I made it to cover all the bases in terms of how you could watch this picture. Ideally, I’d like you to go to a theater, look at it on a big screen from beginning to end. And I know, it’s long — you gotta get up, you gotta go to the bathroom, that sort of thing, I get it — but also at home, I think if you can make a night of it, or an afternoon thereof, and know that you’re not gonna answer the phone or you’re not gonna get up too much, it might work.”
Check out some awesome examples of the meme below: