Scorsese, Robertson waltz on

NEW YORK — "The Last Waltz" may have been a festive parting for the members of the Band, but for Martin Scorsese and Robbie Robertson, it was the opening number.

Since directing Robertson and his bandmates in that famed 1978 concert film, Scorsese, 67, and Robertson, 66, have been close friends and consistent collaborators. From "Raging Bull" to Scorsese's latest film, "Shutter Island," Robertson has frequently consulted on the music in Scorsese's movies.

"We've always had this relationship going back and forth," Scorsese said in a recent interview. "We started a kind of relationship in which we'd touch base as to every film I was doing and the type of music I was using."

"Shutter Island," the eighth film they've worked on together by Robertson's count, is one of their most interesting efforts. A Gothic thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio, "Shutter Island" is as much about mood and atmosphere as anything — making the music particularly critical.

While Scorsese's loyalties to Robert De Niro and DiCaprio have been widely documented, his work with Robertson has spanned more time than either. Sandy Weintraub, a girlfriend of Scorsese's in the '70s, once said the best relationship Scorsese (who has been married to his fifth wife, Helen Morris, since 1999) ever had was with Robertson.

"With some people you just know: We're in it," says Robertson.

The two were first introduced by Jonathan Taplin, who produced "Mean Streets" and also helped in the management of The Band, the revered, multitalented '70s act with whom Robertson played guitar.

"He was too cool, far too cool," recalls Scorsese of his first impression. "There was a different sensibility, I thought."

From small film to ‘The Last Waltz’
When Scorsese came aboard to direct The Band's final concert on Thanksgiving in 1976 at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, the project grew from a modest attempt to document the event, to a full-fledged production on 35mm film.

Despite their different backgrounds — one a paranoid Catholic from New York, the other a Canadian-born rocker of Jewish and Mohawk heritage — they hit it off. Robertson moved in with Scorsese at his Mulholland Drive house in Los Angeles, where the two spiritedly shared their respective disciplines in marathon listening sessions and midnight double-features.

It was also a time when cocaine was rampant around Hollywood, especially at Scorsese's house. The director recalls it as "a pretty heated time" that he narrowly survived, partly thanks to De Niro's intervention.

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"It was almost like having a war buddy," says Robertson. "We were in the trenches together and we got out alive and a bomb went off right beside us. It's that kind of feeling. In the course of that, it just made us really, really good friends."

Slideshow: Celebrity Sightings Scorsese's next film, "Raging Bull," would synthesize those times. It also was the first time Robertson assisted on a Scorsese score.

In nearly four decades of making movies, Scorsese has only worked with three composers: Bernard Hermann (the jazzy score of "Taxi Driver"), Elmer Bernstein ("Cape Fear," "Bringing Out the Dead") and Howard Shore. Shore has contributed to "After Hours," "Gangs of New York," Aviator" and "The Departed," for which Scorsese says he wanted to be scored by tango "because the tango is dangerous."

"I've always felt obliged not to do a conventional score because I don't come from that world," the director says. "I'm concerned that sometimes scores are used to tell you what to feel, when to feel it."

Scorsese's relationship to music is as strong as any filmmaker's. Not only do moments like Eric Clapton's "Layla" in "Goodfellas" or the Rolling Stones in "Mean Streets" immediately come to mind, but Scorsese's filmography is doted by music documentaries.

Working on a George Harrison documentary
Aside from "The Last Waltz" (the most common criticism of which was that Scorsese focused too much on Robertson), there's 2008's "Shine a Light," "2005's "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan" and 2003's miniseries "The Blues." He's also currently finishing a George Harrison documentary and planning a Frank Sinatra biopic.

Rock 'n' roll like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Band and Bob Dylan "scored my life," Scorsese says, along with earlier ballads like Kay Starr's "Wheel of Fortune," which he calls "a refrain echoing through the streets" of his childhood.

Scorsese and Robertson had long wanted to do an untraditional score for a film that you'd expect a traditional one. They decided the '50s-set "Shutter Island" — a twisting genre film in the tradition of film noirs like "Out of the Past" and "Laura" — was the perfect opportunity.

Robertson suggested modern symphonic music, and they gradually narrowed the sound, pinpointing works later than Charles Ives. They finished with a tonal score (Scorsese proudly asserts "there's no melody anywhere") with composers such as John Cage, Max Richter, Brian Eno and John Adams.

"As all of this was coming together, it started to feel like, 'This is really, really working,'" says Robertson. "Then we were getting excited — this kind of music with the faces of Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow. It all blended together."

The most noticeable choice — "the boldest" selection, according to Scorsese — is the thundering "Passacaglia" movement from Krzysztof Penderecki's "Symphony No. 3." It plays repeatedly, but is first heard when DiCaprio's detective character is arriving on Shutter Island. It's foreboding to say the least.

"It even got to a place working on this where Marty was saying, 'No, that sounds too much like movie music,'" says Robertson. "And I thought, 'Ah, now we're talking."