Vanity Fair - September 2001
by Evgenia Peretz
For months, movie-lovers have been awaiting the release of Martin Scorsese“s Gangs of New York, about the 19th-century immigrant gangs who ran Manhattan“s Five Points, a neighborhood so squalid and brutal it shocked even Charles Dickens. Scorsese has been waiting a lifetime. "When I was a young boy on the Lower East Side, I became aware of the history of that area," Scorsese recalls. "The very cobblestones of the street seemed to cry back to a different time and place, when the country was still being formed." In 1970, Scorsese picked up a copy of Herbert Asbury“s The Gangs of New York, a nonfiction account of the neighborhood, which re-ignited his fascination. In 1977, Gangs of New York was announced as Scorsese“s next movie. Plagued by financial constraints, the project moved on and off the back burner until 1998, when Michael Ovitz suggested reviving the idea and casting Leonardo DiCaprio as its lead. Destined to return DiCaprio to the epic stardom he enjoyed with Titanic (and absolve him of The Beach), the film also marks the return to the screen of Daniel Day-Lewis after a four-year absence. For Scorsese, who re-created Five Points at Cinecittį in Rome, it was a return of sorts, too: "My roots are there. In my mind it was like being home.
Thanks to Pax !
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