Books from Martin Scorsese

Journey to the End of the Night

Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every page of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the reading public in Europe, and later in America where it was first published by New Directions in 1952. The story of the improbable yet convincingly described travels of the petit-bourgeois (and largely autobiographical) antihero, Bardamu, from the trenches of World War I, to the African jungle, to New York and Detroit, and finally to life as a failed doctor in Paris, takes the readers by the scruff and hurtles them toward the novel's inevitable, sad conclusion.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
Shifting away from cinema, Scorsese specifically called out Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s book Journey to the End of the Night and the feeling of experience and regret a life of crime leads to. “I always talk about there’s a quote towards the end where the main character gets killed, he’s talking with his girlfriend. She says, ‘What happened to you?’ He says, ‘What happened to me is a whole life has happened to me’ and she shoots him. It’s a tough book. It’s ugly. When he says that, it hit me, he’s right. A whole life. Something I can never explain to you. You had to live it with me. You had to be me. That’s what we were trying to go for in the film.”
Books from Martin Scorsese

I Heard You Paint Houses

The inspiration for the major motion picture, THE IRISHMAN, directed by Academy Award® winner Martin Scorsese, starring Academy Award® winners Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Anna Paquin, and Academy Award® nominee Harvey Keitel, and written by Academy Award® winner Steven Zaillian. “Sheeran’s confession that he killed Hoffa in the manner described in the book is supported by the forensic evidence, is entirely credible, and solves the Hoffa mystery.” — Michael Baden M.D., former Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York“Charles Brandt has solved the Hoffa mystery.” —Professor Arthur Sloane, author of Hoffa“It’s all true.” — New York Police Department organized crime homicide detective Joseph CoffeyIncludes an Epilogue and a Conclusion that detail substantial post-publication corroboration of Frank Sheeran's revelations about the killings of Jimmy Hoffa, Joey Gallo and JFK."I heard you paint houses" are the first words Jimmy Hoffa ever spoke to Frank "the Irishman" Sheeran. To paint a house is to kill a man. The paint is the blood that splatters on the walls and floors. In the course of nearly five years of recorded interviews, Frank Sheeran confessed to Charles Brandt that he handled more than twenty-five hits for the mob, and for his friend Hoffa. Sheeran learned to kill in the U.S. Army, where he saw an astonishing 411 days of active combat duty in Italy during World War II. After returning home he became a hustler and hit man, working for legendary crime boss Russell Bufalino. Eventually Sheeran would rise to a position of such prominence that in a RICO suit the US government would name him as one of only two non-Italians in conspiracy with the Commission of La Cosa Nostra, alongside the likes of Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano and Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno.When Bufalino ordered Sheeran to kill Hoffa, the Irishman did the deed, knowing that if he had refused he would have been killed himself. Charles Brandt's page-turner has become a true crime classic.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
Brandt’s book is great, but perhaps – given that he is a lawyer – it goes in all sorts of directions. It must have been hard to adapt? "There are so many wonderful things in the book, but I had to get it down to him [Frank Sheeran], to find my way with him, not Charles Brandt’s. "