14 February 1981: Derek Malcolm interviews the director of Raging Bull who says the film finishes off what he started to say in Mean Streets
No one ever floored Jake LaMotta, one of the middle-weight
boxing division’s toughest and roughest champions. No one, that is, except himself. This was the idea that fascinated Martin Scorsese, and the main reason why he made Raging Bull, with Robert De Niro as LaMotta. It was not that he wanted to film a story about boxing, which even now doesn’t interest him very much. But this particular boxer, born like himself in the Bronx and of Italian parents was “something else.”
Related: Jake LaMotta: a flawed character alchemised by Raging Bull into a mythical figure