← DISGRACELAND
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- [00:05]
Jake Brennan
Double Elvis. You know, every holiday season, I'm hit with this feeling of, oh, man, what am I gonna wear to this event that I have to go to? I'm just going to see my relatives. I don't want to get dressed up, but I haven't seen them in forever. I want to look nice. What am I gonna wear? I don't like the stress of this, but I've got it figured out. I've got a solution. Quince. Quince makes incredible sweaters. Last year when I started working with Quince, I got hooked up with a Mongolian cashmere crew neck sweater, which anytime the the temperature dips below 70 degrees, I'm putting this thing on. Now they have these polo sweaters that are also Mongolian cashmere. Fantastic. And when I say sweater, I don't mean like a big bulky Christmas sweater. I mean it's light, it's kind of fitted, it looks great, it's casual, but it also dresses you up. They've also got these cashmere fisherman quarter zip sweaters as well. These are fantastic. This is just like, I don't know, imagine you're hanging out with Anthony Bourdain or something down in Martha's Vineyard and you know, you're eating oysters. It's kind of chilly, but it's not too, too chilly. You're wearing this quince Mongolian cashmere fisherman quarter zip sweater and you can wear it to the holiday party as well. It's going to look fantastic this season with those cold mornings, those holiday plans. This is when you want your wardrobe to be simple and easy. You want to look good, though. You want to look sharp, you want to feel good. Quince makes clothes that I actually want to wear out. And the bonus quince makes great gifts as well. I can talk about the Mongolian cashmere sweaters until I'm blue in the face, but they're denim nails. The fit and everyday comfort that you're going to be looking for at a fraction of what you'd be expecting to pay. Quality quince has you guys covered for gifting. That goes beyond clothing as well. Okay, you can get home items, bath, kitchen, travel. I mentioned before the great Napa leather duffel bag that I got from my wife from Quint, but that I ended up appropriating for myself. Just awesome stuff. You can't go wrong at Quints. Give and get. Timeless holiday staples that last this season with quints. Go to quince.com Disgraceland for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Canada. Q-U-I-N-C-E.com Disgraceland free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Disgraceland.
- [02:30]
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- [02:58]
Jake Brennan
This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a Thanksgiving story. But it's also a story about rock and roll. About living fast and trying to die young. About cocaine and suicide, about leaving blood on the cutting room floor. It's about purpose and gratitude in serving Thanksgiving dinner to 5,000 rock and roll fans and about one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all time, the band, captured on film by one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Martin Scorsese. This is also a story about the Last Waltz, a movie that obviously features great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop for my melotron called Matilda's hustle MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Tonight's the Night Gonna Be All Right by Rod Stewart. And why would I play you that specific slice of Rod the Bod cheese Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on Thanksgiving Day 1976. And that was the day that the band staged their farewell concert at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, a show that was captured by director Martin Scorsese and turned into one of the greatest concert films of all time. All of it coming at a great price to those involved on this episode. Cocaine. Chaos, Living fast, Dying young, Speedboats, Turkey, Martin Scorsese, the Band and the Last Waltz. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace Sam. Film opens on interior of house in the Hollywood Hills just off Mulholland Drive. We follow a POV tracking shot into the living room. It's like a cave in there. The windows are blacked out, the walls are covered with soundproof panels. We see people on couches and chairs, musicians, filmmakers, hangers on as we pass by them. The low hum of the central air unit is drowned out by the rhythmic clatter of a film projector coming from down the hall camera enters the bedroom and stops. An old movie flickers on the bedroom wall. It's late. A 33 year old man watches as the movie comes to an end. He has a neat beard and big eyebrows and is dressed in a T shirt tucked in to jeans, held up by a belt with a thick buckle. He talks like a guy wired on cocaine, because he is a guy wired on cocaine. This man is Martin Scorsese, the great American filmmaker recently honored with the highest award at the Cannes Film Festival, the Palme d' or, for a shocking movie, Taxi Driver. But Martin Scorsese isn't resting on his laurels. He doesn't have time for that. He is reminded every day about time, about life and mortality simply by breathing. Afflicted with asthma since he was three years old, growing up in New York's Lower east side, surrounded by men of the cloth and men of the gun, Marty here is a frail observer who knows that heaven and hell are both, well, just a shot away now. In the summer of 1976, to be exact, Marty lived well above the smog line in LA on doctor's orders, suffering from not one, but two afflictions. Well, three if you count the cocaine habit and four if you count the need for absolute chaos in his personal life. But more on that later. I'm talking about the affliction of movies, watching them, making them. Marty truly had an obsession. He also had an obsession with work. And he was thankful for the work. He was defined by the work, by movies, by obsession. He was driven by compulsion. A compulsion not just to keep making movies, as he was doing now, working on his follow up to Taxi Driver, a musical with Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli called New York, New York, but a compulsion to work so hard that it would push his life right to the edge. It was this compulsion that led him to say yes to directing the Last Waltz, the farewell concert film for the band, and to do so simultaneously while making New York, New York. He wasn't supposed to say yes to the band. His contract with United Artists prohibited him from taking on another movie until New York, New York was finished. But he couldn't turn down the opportunity to burn the candle at both ends to work himself to death. And I'm not even being hyperbolic here, Martin Scorsese himself said about his lifestyle at the time, and I quote, I wanted to push all the way to the very, very end and see if I could die. But there was something else too. Marty couldn't turn down the opportunity to work with the Band for two reasons. One, Martin Scorsese was rock and roll to his core. One of his earliest professional credits came as an editor on the Woodstock documentary. And his use of music in his 1973 film Mean Streets, like that slow motion scene in which De Niro walks into a bar while the Rolling Stones Jumpin Jack Flash plays, was nothing short of masterful. The second reason this was the band we're talking about, one of Marty's favorite rock and roll groups, and also one of the most consequential groups in American music over the previous decade. It's impossible to really overstate just how revolutionary the band were when their debut album, Music from Big Pink, dropped in the summer of 1968. That record, it sounded unlike anything else that had been released at the time, which at that time, the music of the so called counterculture was psychedelic and super far out. But this music, the music that the band was making, was far in. As Richard Thompson, then a member of Fairport Convention, put it, music from Big Pink was counter counterculture. It was organic, lived in homespun. It made Eric Clapton quit Cream. It inspired George Harrison of the Beatles to visit Woodstock, New York, where that unique brand of homespun American music was coming from. But that American music was in fact being made by four Canadians. Robbie Robertson on guitar, Rick Danko on bass, and Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson on keys, along with just one American, Levon Helm on drums. And those guys. The band had been a band for years, touring ever since they were teenagers, first as the Hawks, the backing group for rockabilly artist Ronnie Hawkins, and later with Bob Dylan, and then briefly as the Crackers, and now simply as the Band for the first time performing their own songs, most of which were written by Robbie Robertson. Robbie wasn't a singer, but he didn't have to be. Because perhaps the greatest thing about the band was that they boasted three of the best singers of their time, or of any time. Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Levon Helm all traded vocals, each with a voice as compelling as the last. Especially Levon, who lent his soulful, authentic Arkansas drawl to songs like the Weight up on Cripple Creek in the Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. And just like Martin Scorsese, the members of the band were defined by obsession and driven by compulsion. A compulsion to play, to tour constantly. At this point, they've been doing it since 1957, for 19 long years, and the demanding lifestyle was taking its toll. Richard Manuel, for one, was struggling. Two suicide attempts in 1976 alone. First he tried to Set himself on fire. And then he put a BB gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Richard kept on ticking, at least for now. But his days were numbered. And ditto for the band. Or so Robbie Robertson thought as he watched his group's good fortune run out. Just like he was watching as Richard almost died on a speedboat outside Austin. That summer of 1976. The band were booked to perform a music festival at Steiner Ranch. The roads to the festival were blocked, and the only way in was by water. So the five guys piled into a speedboat which was now hauling ass up the Colorado river to their destination. The Texas heat bore down and the wind rippled through their hair. Richard stood up from where he was seated in the back to move up front, and as he did this, the boat hit a wave and leapt from the water. Richard felt his legs wobble and tried to steady himself, but it happened too fast and the boat came back down hard, and Richard was thrown backwards. His head swung violently and something snapped. The doctor told Richard his neck was fractured. He prescribed bed rest, but Richard only knowing a life on the road, a life that never slowed, instead self medicated with a bottle of Grand Marnier. Robbie, meanwhile, read into Richard's accident like a fortune teller reading a deck of tarot cards. The band needed to hang up their rock and roll shoes. So Robbie hatched a plan. One final show at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, the location of the band's very first show as the band. They would invite a bunch of their peers, their friends, their influences, even, to join them on stage in cameo appearances. And to top it all off, Martin Scorsese, the rock star director, was going to capture it all on film. Levon Helm, however, objected to the whole thing. He didn't want to hang up anything. In Levon's eyes, the band was at the top of their game. But there was no arguing with Robbie. He was the primary songwriter. If he was done, the band was done. So the plan was set. So the tickets went on sale for the Last Waltz, which would be the last concert that the band would ever give on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, Nov. 25, 1976. Robbie Robertson thought it would be a great parting gift to the fans. And Levon Helm prayed it was all a cosmic joke. And Martin Scorsese hoped it would kill him.
- [15:21]
Commercial Announcer
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- [15:33]
Jake Brennan
Sounds sketchy.
- [15:34]
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Exactly. The networks can leave your personal info like credit card numbers exposed to hackers. McAfee's secure VPN lets you browse and bank safely from where? Whenever. Learn more@mcafee.com Online Protection hey everyone, I'm.
- [15:51]
Josh Radner
Josh Radner and I am so excited to tell you about How We Made youe Mother a Rewatch podcast looking back at How I Met yout Mother. And I'm here with Craig Thomas, who co created the show along with Carter Bayes. Hi Craig.
- [16:03]
Craig Thomas
Hey Josh. Somehow it has been 20 years since the show premiered that seems I'm gonna check the math on that. Ten years since it went off the air and we we thought that made this a perfect time to look back, see what the hell we did and why the show still seems to resonate with fans around the world today.
- [16:17]
Josh Radner
Follow and listen to How We Made youe Mother wherever you get your podcasts.
- [16:21]
Jake Brennan
Extra value meals are back. That means 10 tender juicy McNuggets and medium fries and a drink are just $8 only at McDonald's for a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary.
- [16:33]
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Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and California.
- [16:35]
Jake Brennan
And for delivery, the Last Waltz is widely acknowledged as one of, if not the greatest concert all time. And for good reason. I mean, come on, from the moment the band come blasting out of the gate with that funky cover of Marvin Gaye's Don't do it, you know you are in the hands of one of the greatest groups to ever do it, documented by one of our most visionary directors who in that moment is bringing super rich visual vocabulary to a film genre that had never been treated with with such care. But the Last Waltz, it was a monumental undertaking. It's kind of a miracle that it ever happened. Nothing of this scale or scope had ever been attempted before in live concert filmmaking. Seeing as it was Thanksgiving, the legendary concert promoter Bill Graham, who ran the venue, the Winterland Ballroom, decided to serve all 5,000 concertgoers a full Thanksgiving dinner. That's £4,000 of turkey, £2,000 of candied yams, £800 of pies and 90 gallons of gravy. And there were the logistics of the dinner, which took place at tables on the floor of the ballroom. Then there were the logistics of cleaning the dinner and the tables to make way for, yes, waltzing, ballroom dancing. And then the concert itself. Doors opened at 5pm Dinner was served at 7. The music started around 9 and the whole thing didn't end until after 2 in the morning. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Even more of a cluster than the catered dinner was the film production. Martin Scorsese decided to shoot the movie not in 16 millimeter, which was the norm for rock docs like Monterey Pop and Gimme Shelter, instead opting to shoot it in 35 millimeter. If you're unfamiliar with the film stocks, 35 millimeter was for a long time the industry standard. It's more versatile than 16 millimeter and it gives you better image quality. But that said, typically a documentary filmmaker wouldn't spare the extra money or the headache involved to shoot on 35 to shoot a concert. Documentary budgets weren't that big. Besides, you got a raw or grainier image with 16. But Martin Scorsese, of course, was not your typical filmmaker. The problem with 35 mm film was that it was more flammable than 16 millimeter. And the cameras required for this caliber of a shoot were these huge Panavision cameras. They weren't designed to run constantly, which they would need to do to capture a concert in real time. One take only, no safety net. And this led to a real concern that the cameras would explode into flames. So just imagine 5,000 people running for the exits as Winterland burned. And then there was Winterland's floor. It had too much give, which is to say it was a bit spongy. When the house was full, as it would be on this evening, Martin Scorsese and his cameraman had to drill holes in the floor to install stabilizing poles so that they could perfectly render the images that Marty had so meticulously storyboarded ahead of time. Build. Bill Graham, for one, was less than thrilled with this plan. But here's the thing. It was a risk. And Bill Graham was a guy who trafficked in risk. He understood that the bigger the risk, the bigger the payoff. And the payoff for this particular risk, well, it's right there in the movie. After the dinner, after the dancing, and after the band's hour long opening set. You're standing there in the crowd and you, you can hardly believe your eyes. You thought you were just gonna see the band tonight, but all of a sudden, all these heavyweight guest stars begin to appear. Each one a bigger surprise than the last. You had no idea and now you are stoked. Just look at all these icons. Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Muddy waters, Paul Butterfield, Dr. John, Bob Dylan, and Neil Diamond. Okay, hold up. I love Neil diamond. Full stop. Okay, not full stop, but when he showed up at rehearsal earlier in the week, the band's drummer, Levon Helm, the one who didn't want to do the whole Last Waltz thing in the first place, was like, what the fuck is Neil diamond doing here? And what the hell does Neil diamond have to do with the band? He asked Robbie Robertson these questions, and Robbie's response was that all the musicians involved represented a part of the musical whole that made up the band. For example, Muddy Waters and Eric Clapton were the blues. Dr. John was new Orleans R and B. And, you know, Neil diamond was there to rep the great tradition of Tin Pan Alley pop. Levon called bullshit. He knew the real reason Robbie invited Neil, because Robbie just produced Neil's new album. It was Robbie looking out for Robbie, or so Levon thought. Levon also thought that Neil diamond was one guest too many. At this rate, the concert would never end. The sentiment was shared by the studio United Artists, which sent one of its lackeys to talk to the band about making some changes. And the lackey got to leave on first. Levon the lackey said, there's too many damn guest stars in this thing. We gotta cut somebody. Levon assumed Neil diamond was the logical choice, but the studio had other ideas. Levon the lackey said, we were hoping you could go talk to Muddy Waters and tell him that he's no longer a part of the show. Levon literally could not believe what he was hearing. Time was tight, and given the options, they wanted to cut Muddy Waters over Neil Diamond.
- [22:28]
Home Depot Announcer
The.
- [22:28]
Jake Brennan
The father of modern Chicago blues, the hoochie coochie man himself. He spells it, man. Levon looked the lackey in the eye and said, sure thing, boss. I'll go talk to Muddy, and not only will I talk to him, but I'll take him back to New York with me and we'll do the Last Waltz, just the two of us. How about that? I get the hell out of my sight before I have a couple Arkansas boys stomp you to death. Thanks to Levon Helm, Muddy Waters wasn't going anywhere. He stayed and he delivered one of the Last Waltz's most riveting performances. And this was good news for the audience that night and for the millions who eventually saw the movie, but especially for Martin Scorsese. Because if Levon Helmut actually left, if he fucked with the plan, there would be no concert. And if there was no concert, there would be no movie. And if there was no movie, Martin Scorsese would not be able to make the Last Waltz while also simultaneously making New York, New York, and thus could not work himself to death, or at least to a near death experience, as was his desire. Now in the grand scheme of things, it only really mattered if Bob Dylan left, because Bob Dylan was the only reason Warner Brothers agreed to finance this whole thing. And yeah, I know I said earlier that United Artists was a company putting out the movie, which is true, but Warner Bros. Was slated to Release the Companion 3 LP soundtrack album. So you won't be surprised to hear that Martin Scorsese's heart, already beating a mile a minute, thanks to, you know, the cocaine, just about lodged up in his throat when he was told that Bob Dylan had changed his mind and no longer wanted to perform. This announcement came during intermission, 15 minutes before he was supposed to appear on stage. At the time, Dylan was in the middle of making his own movie, Ronaldo and Clara, featuring footage from his recent Rolling Thunder Review tour. And he'd come to the decision that participating in Martin Scorsese's film was a conflict of interest. But he came to this decision 15 minutes before he was supposed to go on stage. Marty could feel his heart pounding in his head now this would be is ruined. That Palme d' or wouldn't mean shit the next time he wanted financing for a movie if Bob Dylan walked and Warner's pulled the plug. Bill Graham, meanwhile, looked at the situation the way he looked at all those holes that were drilled into Winterland's beautiful old floors. He saw the risk. Furthermore, he knew that Bob Dylan was a kindred spirit to the boys in the band and to Martin Scorsese. He was obsessed with with his job. He had a compulsion to perform. And Bill Graham knew he could change Dylan's mind. He just had to take that next risk. He went to talk to Dylan alone in the dressing room like a hostage negotiator. And after a few minutes, he emerged. Bill Graham and Bob Dylan had reached a compromise. Dylan would appear in the movie after all, but they could only film the last two songs of his set. Marty and the band agreed. Everything was good again. That is, until immediately after the show was over, when Bob Dylan did the unthinkable. He stole the Last Waltz audio tapes. We'll be right back after this.
- [25:51]
Commercial Announcer
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- [25:56]
State Farm Announcer
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- [26:26]
Streaming Service Announcer
Tis the season for all your holiday favorites like a very Jonah's Christmas Movie and Home Alone on Disney.
- [26:32]
Commercial Announcer
Did I burn down the jewelry?
- [26:33]
Streaming Service Announcer
I don't think Then Hulu has National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
- [26:37]
Jake Brennan
We're all in for a very big Christmas treat.
- [26:39]
Streaming Service Announcer
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- [26:57]
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- [27:29]
Jake Brennan
The story of the stolen Last Waltz tapes is so unbelievable that it's easy to write it off as apocryphal. Like Bob Dylan is going to be Bob Dylan, sure. But is he really going to steal the audio tapes that his longtime buddies in the band needed for their farewell concert film and soundtrack? According to what seems to be the best source for this particular story, it did happen the tapes were stolen. Only Dylan himself didn't take them. His lawyer did. In Levon Helm's memoir, this Wheel's on Fire, he writes that just as the Last Waltz concert was coming to a close around 2:20am On Friday morning, November 26, 1976, Dylan's lawyer walked out of the Winterland, made a beeline for the mobile recording truck parked outside, and took the audio tape reels that featured Bob Dylan. He did this as a negotiating tactic most likely to drive home the handshake compromise that was reached earlier in the evening that Mark Martin Scorsese had promised to limit Dylan's appearance in the film to only two songs. Or maybe it was to secure a bigger windfall for Dylan. Either way, the tapes were safely returned soon after. But just because they were, and just because the show was a great success and Bob Dylan was relatively happy and Warner Bros. Kept the checks coming, that didn't mean Martin Scorsese was over the hump he hadn't even reached the hump yet. Back at his LA home, Marty went into post production mode. Only now things were different. His wife, the writer, Julia Cameron, pregnant with their first child together, his second overall moved out. She'd had it with Marty's chaotic lifestyle, his obsessions, the working around the clock, watching movies, making movies, doing endless lines of cocaine, spewing endless lines of commentary about the French New Wave and Italian neorealism. Allowing his personal life to go to shit just so he could prove some point about. About. About what? What was the point? Actually, it didn't matter, because the last straw for Julia was the affair Marty had been carrying on with Liza Minnelli, who was starring in the other movie he was currently making, New York, New York. Marty didn't even seem to care that Liza, who was was also married, also had her own side piece. The dancer, Mikhail Baryshnikov. It was all part of the chaos, all of it pushing Martin Scorsese in the direction he desired, toward a great big end. But before that end came rushing at him like one of his manic dolly shots, he had to assemble the final cut for the Last Waltz. He did so with Robbie Robertson by his side. And I mean that literally, because when Julia moved out, Robbie, who'd been kicked out of his house by his wife, moved in. The two were the perfect pair. Martin Scorsese, the rock and roll filmmaker, and Robbie Robertson, a rock and roller who fancied himself an undiscovered Hollywood star. Robbie brought over a pair of giant studio speakers. They listened to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks at maximum volume. And they weren't watching old movies. They partied. They enjoyed the company of the non stop rotation of characters passing through. Weirdos, freaks, artists, raconteurs like the great Stephen Prince, Marty's good friend who played Easy Andy the gun dealer and taxi driver, and whom Marty made an excellent short film about called American Boy. But I digress. And they also did cocaine, lots of cocaine. Which for someone like Martin Scorsese with his asthma and with his asthma meds, with his other prescription meds, with his careless way of living, was a pretty bad idea. But bad ideas were what appealed to Martin Scorsese circa 1976 and 1977, he didn't hide. This, unlike the big coke rock hanging from Neil Young's nose that was clearly visible in the Last Waltz footage, which Martin Scorsese was for forced to hide. Neil Young's manager got wind of this footage and demanded Marty do something about it, or else. Now Martin Scorsese, as a director, isn't known for special effects, but he had his team create a bespoke special effect just for this problem. They called it the Traveling Booger Mat. I swear to God, that's what they called it. Which essentially acted as a concealer that floated over Neil's nose. The Traveling Booger Mat was expensive. So expensive that Robbie Robertson later joked it was the most expensive cocaine he had ever bought. When it came to Martin Scorsese's personal life, he wasn't interested in creative solutions like these. The bigger the problem, the better. With his wife gone and his affair with Liza Minnelli winding down, Marty started a relationship with an assistant. She was suicidal. It scared Marty, but in some dark, perverse way, it excited him too. He wondered if she would actually do it. Nah, she wouldn't dare. She was just getting off on the drama of it all. As was he. They argued to Bundchen. She left him one night, just like Julia and just like Liza. But he couldn't let her go. Not tonight. If she left, the chaos left with her. The crazy left too. He wanted to wrap himself up in crazy. He dressed himself in crazy. It's all he was wearing that night as he gave chase. He didn't even have time to get dressed. Just Martin Scorsese out there, buck ass naked, coked out of his mind, tearing ass down, Mulholland Drive in the dark, screaming, don't go running after her. Running toward the edge. An edge that gave way to a chasm and then an abyss where he could let himself go and at long last be consumed by the end of his own life. Until then, at least, he had the work to make him happy. But then the work turned on him, too. New York, New York was a flop when it was released in the summer of 1977. Panned by critics and ignored by audiences, it devastated Martin Scorsese. A foul mood hung over him for months and continued into the next year. 1978, as he was watching the Last Waltz at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. When the movie finally premiered that spring, he was watching the credits crawl just after the band played the film's final song, a haunting instrumental, one of three songs in the film that they shot on an MGM soundstage after the Winterland Show. As the final seconds played out, Marty felt he'd gotten what he wanted. Death. But not in a physical way. It was a creative death. He didn't know what he'd been trying to say with this film, or if he had anything else to say in any Other film. Maybe this was it. The house lights came up and suddenly he was over the edge, falling, arms outstretched, wide, until he landed hard. He looked around him. He was at rock bottom. Or so he thought. Because just a few months later, he hit rock bottom for real. And this time, it looked like there was no coming back. Hey guys, I'm gonna get to the conclusion of our story about Martin Scorsese, the band and the making of the Last Waltz here in just a second, but I wanted to mention real quick that as is always the case, only so much stuff we can cover in a 30 minute podcast. So there are all these wild stories about the band, secret pact, should one of them die on the road that we uncovered when we were doing our research. And then there's the near mythological recordings that the band made with Bob Dylan in the basement of a house outside of Woodstock, New York. That house known as Big Pink. And not only what the real reason was for those recordings, but also the story of how those recordings were reason for the very first bootleg in rock and roll history. So if you want to hear all about that stuff, you can hear it in this week's brand new mini episode of Disgraceland, which is available only to our All Access members. Just go to Disgracelandpod.com to learn more about that and to become a member today. All right, back to our story. September 1978. Martin Scorsese was back in New York City, but he was thinking about Telluride. Only a few days earlier, he'd been out west in the small Colorado town for the fifth annual Telluride Film Festival, along with his new girlfriend, the actress Isabella Rossellini, and his good friend and frequent collaborator, Robert De Niro. Telluride was a place where the unexpected happened. It's where Martin Scorsese met the great German director Wim Wenders for the first time and quite by accident, when he's trying to fix a flat tire on the side of the road. Even the drugs were unexpected. In Telluride, he bought some bad cocaine. He knew as soon as it hit the back of his throat that it was shit. And it made him sick as hell. The Marty suddenly felt strange. He began to cough. He covered his mouth with his hand and then pulled it back. Was that blood? And then Martin Scorsese blacked out. He returned to New York, alert, awake, alive, but still not feeling 100%, still creatively bankrupt, and still wondering if his his time as a filmmaker was up. He felt this even as the Last Waltz received great acclaim upon its release. Some were Already giving the film its due as the greatest concert film of all time. But Marty wasn't thinking about the Last Waltz, or the critics or the fans. He was thinking about that bad batch of Telluride White. It had fucked him up real good. And he felt like it was still inside him. It was talking, toxic. And he knew it wasn't done with him yet. He knew this when suddenly, out of nowhere, all the strength and energy left his body. He dropped to the ground and he was bleeding again. But this time, he wasn't just coughing it up. The blood was everywhere. It was coming out of his mouth, his nose, his eyes. Even his ass was bleeding. His good friend Stephen Prince is AKA Easy. Andy rushed Marty to the hospital, where it was discovered that his blood was completely lacking platelets, platelets being the thing that helped stop bleeding and form blood clots. Marty was minutes away from a brain hemorrhage, a brain bleed. Minutes away from death. Of course, Martin Scorsese did not die, thanks in part to the quick action taken by Stephen Prints and thanks especially to the steady hands of the emergency room doctors who went to work to stabilize Marty and put him on a path to recovery. During that recovery, Robert De Niro paid a visit to Martin Scorsese in the hospital. Very bluntly, as only the best friends do, and in the most Robert De Niro way possible, he asked, oh, what's the matter with you? Didn't Marty want to see his kids grow up? Didn't he want to make more movies? Was he not excited about this new film they were about to start production on together? About the boxer Jake LaMotta, a project called Raging Bull? De Niro's pep talk was like cold water to the face. Martin Scorsese was a lifelong Catholic. He knew he should be dead. In fact, he had purposefully flirted with death through his reckless lifestyle. But he wasn't dead. He'd been saved. Didn't matter why. He now had a second chance, and it was his duty to put it to good use. So Martin Scorsese dove headfirst into Raging Bull. Another masterpiece, One that would redeem him from the failure of New York, New York. But not before he first returned home to Los Angeles, where he hosted a huge Thanksgiving dinner. On this particular Thanksgiving, Martin Scorsese was thankful that he was alive. He was thankful that he had creative purpose again. And he was thankful that he was surrounded by his friends, like Robbie Robertson of the band. And he knew, in many ways, it was a privilege to be thankful and that not everyone got to give and experience thanks the way he did like Richard Manuel. For instance, in 1986, 10 years after the the Last Waltz, Richard was still on the road. The band, minus Robbie, for whom the Last Waltz really was the end, had reformed a few years earlier and continued to tour in small venues, just as they had when they started together all those years before. What else were they going to do? This is the only life they had ever known and as Levon once said, they weren't in it for their health. Following a show and Winter Park, Florida, Richard thanked his longtime bandmate Garth Hudson for 25 years of making great music together, then drank his last bottle of Grand Marnier and hanged himself in the bathroom of his room at the Quality Inn. He was just 42 years old. While Martin Scorsese continued to give thanks that he had escaped the self destructive tendencies that drove him for so long, Richard, Richard Manuel was not so lucky. And that is a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace. All right, that was a lot of fun. Thank you guys. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. I am grateful for all of you. Hope you dug this episode. This week's Question of the Week. It's an obvious one. It's an easy one. What is the greatest concert film of all time? Tell me why. 617-90-66638 Leave me a voicemail, send me a text and let me know. You can also reach me disgracelandpod as well on Instagram X and Facebook. Leave a review for the show on Apple podcasts or Spotify and win some free merch. All right, here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com if you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to Disgracelandpod.com Rate and Review. Review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook Disgracelandpod and on YouTube@YouTube.com Disgracelandpod Rocka Rolla He's a bad, bad man.
- [42:47]
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