Awards Season 2012 is rolling full force ahead as the 18th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards kicked off this past sunday unbeknownst to many.  The SAG Awards are in fact a special occasion for actors and actresses however, as the awards are chosen by the actors themselves.  Big winners in the feature film department included The Help and The Artist, while TV’s big winners include Modern Family and Boardwalk Empire.  Mary Tyler Moore was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award, while Bridesmaids trio (Melissa Mccarthy, Kristen Wiig, and Maya Rudolph) lightened the mood by inventing a SAG awards drinking game in which ‘you have to drink every time you hear the word Scorsese’.  Actor Steve Buscemi (after winning Best Actor in a Drama Series) capitalized on such a joke by mentioning the iconic filmmakers’ name in his acceptance speech, as Scorsese was an executive producer for Boardwalk Empire.  Although his film Hugo didn’t take home any SAG Awards, he and his film are very much in the Oscar race so let’s take a look at the man himself, legendary director Martin Scorsese.

Martin Charles Scorsese (born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian.  Scorsese was raised in New York City by two devout Catholic Sicilian actors.  Martin had asthma, and as a result wasn’t able to play sports and engage in outdoor activities like many of the other children.  Marty found other interests however, as his passion for cinema developed at a very early age.  Enamored with the stories that the films of his time were telling, Scorsese went to NYU film school, and after graduating started making films of his own.  After becoming friends with the ‘movie brats’ of the 1970s: Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg, Marty was ready to make his mark on Hollywood.  He went on to make such films as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas– all of which he collaborated on with actor and close friend Robert De Niro.  He is a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and DGA Awards.  Scorsese’s body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, machismo, modern crime and violence.  Scorsese is hailed as one of the most significant and influential American filmmakers of all time, and is known for his uncanny ability to create a warm, positive, and encouraging environment on-set.  Indeed Marty values “harmonious relations” and “can handle people with charm and concern”.  Sweet-hearted, charismatic, highly nurturing, very expressive, and a natural leader of groups Martin Scorsese is undoubtedly a Teacher Idealist.  Certainly Marty is arguably the best director of his generation, and has an incredible ability to put himself in the shoes of the people he is making a movie about:

Teachers have a highly developed ability to empathize by introjection, that is, taking into themselves the characteristics, emotions, and beliefs of others—even to the point of unconsciously mimicking others.  But this unusual ability to relate to other with empathy can also pose a danger for them, because they can easily over-identify with others and pick up their burdens as if they were their own, actually putting at risk their own identity.

Please Understand Me II, p. 151

 Now more than ever we need to talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we see the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this.

—Martin Scorsese

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