Right, this is a digital film in 2025.
Oh, yeah. And I still have the viewfinder. Yeah, it’s ridiculous. But the name was an amalgam—of Marty Scorsese, obviously, and DeBergi was Vittorio DeSica, Ingmar Bergman, and Fellini. So I put all these directors together into one place, and that was the idea. And then I have a whole history of the guy. I can tell you all about him, and I write about it in the book—where he started, what he did. He tried to get into the USC film school and Tisch at NYU and UCLA, but he got rejected. So he wound up at the Ed Wood School of Cinematic Arts.
Was he a character you had conceived as an alternate reality for yourself, had you gone a different path in the entertainment industry?
No, I never thought of it that way. But the idea of putting myself in the film came from The Last Waltz. I looked at all the documentaries from Don’t Look Back with Dylan and The Kids Are All Right and The Who, and The Song Remains the Same with Led Zeppelin. But I saw he put himself in The Last Waltz. He was in the film asking questions. I said, “OK, I could do that.”
Did you ever hear about it from Martin, or even Steven?
Yes. Initially, Marty was like, “Hey, what are you doing? I never wore a baseball cap!” But he loves the film now and he loves that we did that. So, yeah, he’s a big fan.
Did you preserve the naval cap for the sequel? Or is this a new cap you’re wearing?
We had to make a new one because they’re a million years old. It was the USS Coral Sea. And they wouldn’t give us clearance, so Karen Murphy sewed it and made it OORal Sea. But when I was doing Princess Bride, I asked Mark Knopfler if he could do the score. And he said, “I’ll do it. But the only way in which I’ll agree to do it is if you have that cap somewhere in the movie. I have to see that cap.” And I said, “But it’s a swashbuckling movie in days of yore.” Then I realized I could put it in the wraparound interview stuff. So if you look, you’ll see in the background of the boy’s room that the cap is sitting there on his lamp.
Paul McCartney and Elton John both get some real screen time here. You probably had your pick of the litter in terms of iconic musicians. Did you reach out to them? How did they join the project?
We reached out. The scene with Paul McCartney came out of a very real place, which was a while ago. The guys were rehearsing for a tour they were about to go on in a big rehearsal complex in the valley here in Los Angeles. There were many, many studios. And Paul McCartney was next door to—he was about to go on tour. He happened to stop by one day. He wandered in and said, “Hey, fellas, give us a tune.” And so that became the thing that we used for this. And then, I just like what Elton’s doing. I did a thing with him here in California. We were the first group of people to bring a Supreme Court case for marriage equality. This is back in 2008. And we did a big fundraiser to raise money for the legal stuff. And Elton John came and performed at that. So I knew him from before, but I became more friendly with him. And then I thought, “Maybe he’d like to do it.” So I gave him and his husband David Furnish a call. And they were like, “Hey, they’re great. We love to do it.”
