Never won a Directing Oscar: Kubrick, Hitchcock, Godard, Welles, Kurosawa, Lynch, PTA, Chaplin, Tarantino, Cronenberg, Malick, Fellini, Bergman, Varda, Leone, Fincher, Altman, Hawks, Lumet, Herzog, Scott, Gilliam, Preminger, Cassavetes, Lang— It’s all meaningless, folks.
And yet, in recent years, Martin Scorsese has made it no secret that he would have liked to have won more statuettes. As it stands, Scorsese has that lone Best Director win for 2006’s “The Departed.” Looking at the nominees from that year (Inarritu, Greengrass, Eastwood, Frears) and, yeah, he deserved the Oscar that night.
However, Scorsese has directed a handful of better films than “The Departed” in his illustrious career. His go-to editor, the legendary Thelma Schoonmaker, tells Esquire that he should have won “at least seven” times!
Yeah, we're not very lucky with the Oscars. I mean, Marty has deserved many […] Marty should have won at least seven, as far as I'm concerned. But we're very unlucky at the Oscars because the films are sometimes very unusual. And people are sometimes not used to it, or they resist it, or [resist] voting for it.
I mean, Schoonmaker is being very specific about this. To come up with that number, she must have thought this through.
There are two big WTF Oscar losses for Scorsese. Firstly, for 1980’s “Raging Bull” which lost Picture and Director to “Ordinary People” and Robert Redford. Then there’s Scorsese again losing to an actor-turned-director in 1991 — “Goodfellas” and Scorsese were beaten by Kevin Costner’s “Dances With Wolves.
Here’s Schoonmaker detailing how devastated they were losing to “Ordinary People” (which she still hasn’t seen!)
I think he would have liked to win for Raging Bull. When we were standing there, those of us who did win, I was waiting for Marty to come with his Oscar. And he didn't. It was the worst night of my life. It was devastating that he didn't win. A movie like that, that is so brilliantly directed. But it was a tough movie. And Ordinary People, I understand it's a very good movie, I've never seen it. But people were maybe a bit put off by the toughness of Raging Bull. But look how it's lasted. It's a benchmark movie.
I guess another time Scorsese should have won was for 1976’s “Taxi Driver,” but he didn’t even get nominated for that film. Go figure.