Martin Scorsese’s Rat Pack

Whatever else happens, no matter what other Oscar nominations The Irishman garners, Best Picture is guaranteed. The New York Film Critics Circle and National Board of Review, to name two groups, have already augured its success. But of course, winning is anyone’s guess. After decades of movies, Martin Scorsese seems to take the award season in stride, flanked by his posse including Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, as he was this week at Tao for the NYFCC. Picking up an award at Tao this week, jet lagged following the Golden Globes on the other coast, he spoke about another of his pack, Harvey Keitel, wanting to jump ship at that event. “We were sinking,” he confessed defeat. Harvey switched tables for Tarantino’s.

But there Marty was front and center at Tao, with everyone paying homage to the master as they took the stage.

Laura Dern, for example, honored for Best Supporting Actress paid gratitude: “I’m staring at Scorsese. He directed my mother in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” Diane Ladd played Flo in this 1974 movie, and Scorsese let Laura on set, when she was seven. “If she doesn’t throw up,” she recounted his prophetic words, “she is destined to be an actor.”

She went on to acknowledge her good acting bones. Her father, Bruce Dern, advised her, “Don’t let them pidgeonhole you. If you play an asshole in one movie, play saint in another. “This year I could take his advice in both films: I am asshole in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story and saint in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women.” Her parents, she said, met doing Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus Descending. And then she quoted Tennessee, “Art brings people home.”

Parasite director Bong Joon-ho gave Marty a nod, this is a very cool ceremony. “It awarded Goodfellas so I know it is a good award ceremony. It is surreal. They are all in front of me now.”

Alec Baldwin presented the Best Supporting Actor award to Joe Pesci, for The Irishman, “another piece of film history.” Baldwin couldn’t say enough, accolade after accolade praising Pesci’s work, as only Baldwin knows how. Pesci took the stage with his pals: I don’t know how to do this shit so I am bringing up Scorsese and DeNiro. And then he mumbled, incoherent. What’s he saying? What’s he saying? DeNiro gamely broke in, translating: “Joe just said thank you.”

For Best Picture Spike Lee, self-proclaimed resident of the People’s Republic of Brooklyn presented to Marty. Lee was his mother’s date for the movies; at a formative time, she took him to Mean Streets. He then met Jim Jarmusch and Ang Lee at NYU, and Marty was there too. Lee looked out at The Irishman table and gushed, “Marty, you got the gang back together.”