![]() To that end, De Niro one-upped every screen actor before, and halted production on the film for four months to get “in shape.” But the wrap-around scenes set in the 1960s needed more padding. Scorsese hired the genius makeup artist Michael Westmore (who later created the look of nearly every alien species from Star Trek: The Next Generation) to create LaMotta's busted-up schnozz. ( Raging Bull would be their fourth collaboration out of an eventual nine.) But after the great director's personal problems with drug addiction led to a collapse (exacerbated by asthma and a trip to the high altitude Telluride Film Festival in 1978), he realized, from his hospital bed, that he and “Bob” were going to make this their next project. Scorsese never cared for sports, and especially not boxing, claiming that what little he'd seen on television wasn't very visual. ![]() While the book is hardly a masterpiece, De Niro saw in it a rich character: a belligerent and insecure beast that took all his psycho-sexual demons into the boxing ring until he eventually reached rock bottom. He read Jake LaMotta's autobiography during the production of The Godfather Part II, in 1973 or 74. Raging Bull was Robert De Niro's passion project, and it took him years to convince his friend, director Martin Scorsese, to make the film. ![]() ![]() Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull isn't a boxing movie, it's a movie about a boxer – one whose greatest fights were against himself.
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