Scorsese reunites with DiCaprio, who plays the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes. He says of his leading man: “Leo and I have a 32-year age gap, but we seem to be attracted to similar characters and storytelling. He’s not afraid to deal with characters that have a darker side. He played a wealthy homeowner in Gangs, and a photographer in The Age of Innocence, but his dry humour was best displayed as the voice of Sykes, the puffer fish, in last summer’s animated hit, Shark Tale “One has to have a sense of humour,” he says, grinning. This was especially the case with Gangs of New York, which failed to win any of the 10 Oscars for which it was nominated.Like Hitchcock, Scorsese makes “blink and you’ll miss them” cameo appearances in some of his films.

You don’t make pictures for Oscars.”Scorsese’s distinguished list of credits includes Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Casino and The Last Temptation of Christ. He has tackled many genres, from dark comedy to thriller to period drama to film noir to Michael Jackson video. His fascination with the grimy underbelly of Manhattan is in contrast to the rose-coloured tint that fellow-Manhattanite Woody Allen offers in his movies. And yet, Scorsese and his “Goodfellas” – thieves, thugs and cokeheads – were up against the noble Lakota Sioux and a white-knight Union soldier, in director/star Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves. The Goodfellas producer Irwin Winkler acknowledged at the time: “The Academy doesn’t favour violence that is too graphic. They like nice family films.” Well, that didn’t prevent the director from forging ahead, in 2002, with Gangs of New York, which was three hours of barbarism. Surely it can’t be a case of losing Brownie points if your movie is too sadistic?”I think a lot of it has to do with the nature of the community.

I’ve lived here in Los Angeles, but I’m more of a New Yorker, and the nature of my films is regarded as somewhat violent and the language is considered tough,” Scorsese muses, nodding his head “As you grow older, you change I make different films now. well, maybe those are the films that should have won me the Oscar. When Taxi Driver was up for best picture, it got three other nominations: best actor (Robert De Niro), best supporting actress (Jodie Foster), and best music But the director and writer were overlooked. I was so disappointed, I said: ‘You know what, that’s the way it’s going to be.’ What was I going to do, go home and cry?”Speaking from his sunlit Beverly Hills hotel suite, Scorsese shrugs his shoulders and animatedly throws his hands up in the air. “Basically,” he continues, “you make another movie, and another, and hopefully you feel good about every picture you make And you say: ‘My name is on that I did that. It’s OK.’ But don’t get me wrong, I still get excited by it all. That, I hope, will never disappear.”Like all Scorsese watchers, I was prepared to meet an excitable, bushy-eye-browed, stocky fellow who talks as if he has imbibed 20 cups of strongest coffee And I wasn’t disappointed.

Not only are we the same height (both 5ft 3in), but Denis Healy has nothing on Scorsese’s brows. The director Martin Scorsese is just as perplexed as the rest of us as to why on earth he hasn’t won an Oscar. The 62-year-old New Yorker, who has received five Oscar nods, takes a moment to compose his thoughts in an effort to shed some light on the dilemma “I don’t know how much it means to me any more. It’s more about the movie at this point, because I’m too old for it,” he finally says, with a trace of irritation.
“I think when you’re young and have that first burst of energy and make five or six pictures in a row that tell the stories of all the things in life you want to say… The kick of creative confidence that fuels this defiantly nostalgia-free set of entirely new songs – Anderson gives an audience request for Suede’s “The Drowners” short shrift – explains what he meant.

Like Suede’s first post-Butler album, Coming Up, it sees Anderson finding his way with an easy melody again, each song thwacking you with suave hooks, loping melodies and affecting lyrics. Many of the lyrics, too, play like love songs between the two of them, particularly “The Ghost of You”, on which Anderson croons, “I tried to move on/ But the ghost of you stays.”When Anderson broke Suede up, he issued an opaque statement about needing to regain his “demon”. Every track sounds utterly, effortlessly fresh, an impression enhanced as Butler’s formidable playing makes them crackle with life.There’s some sadness attached to the question of what might have happened had Anderson and Butler stayed together 10 years ago, but their songwriting excels at that kind of fateful romanticism anyway. It resulted in a great break-up album with DMS, and it now sounds like it’s resulted in a great make-up album. The most exciting new band in Britain, twice? Now that would be a coup.. On song after song, Anderson’s vocal rides the melody of Butler’s guitar lines smoothly, t grand effect on the very Suede-like romanticism of the set’s centrepiece song, “Apollo 13″. He decided to split the band up, but his co-writer, Suede’s vocalist, had other ideas: Brett Anderson simply recruited another guitarist.
Still, as Suede’s fortunes slipped, largely due to a 2002 comeback album, A New Morning, on which their pop classicism and louche romanticism started to stiffen up, Anderson and Butler seemed to court and circle each other tentatively in their separate interviews.