Director's Cut

MIRAMAX
Scorsese directs DiCaprio on the Gangs set, built at Rome's Cinecittà studio

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You mean you can't afford it? You want to be making films that will feed your family?

Well, I think for the next one, yeah. But at a certain point, I mean, how much food do you need? My family would rather see me doing something that I could feel good about.

After tangling with Harvey on Gangs of New York, you're working with him again on The Aviator. Are you two becoming some sort of love-hate team, like Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the Lethal Weapon series?

Or The Sunshine Boys. It's like that.

How about Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter?

Oh, absolutely. [Laughs.] Which one's Hannibal?

I'll say Harvey. Are you comfortable with his strenuous promotion of you for Best Director?

Not necessarily. All I feel comfortable about is that he wants me to be Best Director. It's important. He's told me over the years he wanted to do a picture where I get an Oscar. The reality is, if I don't do the p.r., I'm hurting the picture. And as many things as I did, that's as many things as I turned down.

How about giving me a run-through of your acceptance speech? Just improv for me. I can clean it up in the edit.

It's a funny thing. It's a hard thing to sit through when you're nominated. I've got to tell you, the Golden Globes this year was the first time I ever went to one of those ceremonies that I won. And I didn't know how to deal with it. But that's part of me. I've always felt myself as an outsider, you know what I'm saying? Usually at these events they name the nominees, and I'm always sitting there, and I lose. So I've gotten used to that. But I don't know how to take it this time. Now I'm nervous.

C'mon now. Wouldn't you rather be in the group of Hitchcock, Chaplin, Howard Hawks, Renoir, King Vidor, Antonioni and Andrzej Wajda -- great directors who never won a competitive Oscar but late in life got an honorary award?

Oh, that'd be wonderful. Yeah, I'm fine with that.

But you have to live 20 more years, till you're 80.

I'm fine with that too.