Vickie LaMotta was open enough to the idea of a movie about her ex-husband that she let Martin visit her in Florida and pick her brain about her relationship with the volatile pugilist. “Lived with” is how he phrased it on the 30th anniversary Blu-ray. For research, Raging Bull screenwriter Mardik Martin lived with Jake LaMotta's ex-wife for a few days. This glut actually helped Scorsese convince United Artists to let him shoot Raging Bull in black-and-white, as it would make his boxing movie stand out visually from the others. In late 1978 and early 1979, when Scorsese was getting started on Raging Bull, there were at least four others in the works: Rocky II, The Main Event, The Champ, and Matilda (the boxing kangaroo). Rocky started a trend, as movies that win Best Picture often do. Raging Bull was one of several boxing movies being shot around the same time. When those same producers approached that same studio about doing another boxing movie, the studio said, “A sequel to Rocky? Sure!” That wasn’t what they had in mind (though they did soon enough), but in the meantime, Rocky’s huge success was enough to sell UA on another boxing movie. Rocky was produced by Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, and released by United Artists. Raging Bull partially owes its existence to Rocky.Ĭomparisons to that other Oscar-winning boxing movie from four years earlier were inevitable, but the two were actually connected. Here are 15 facts to enhance your next viewing of one of the best sports dramas ever made. It’s the movie where the guy who would later play Coach on Cheers sees a handsome boxer get mutilated and says, “He ain’t pretty no more.” It’s Raging Bull, and it will punch you in the face. It’s the movie that earned Martin Scorsese his first nomination for Best Director. “It had heart,” he said.It’s the movie that won Robert De Niro his Oscar for Best Actor. In a 2013 interview with Time, the actor recalled reading La Motta’s memoir for the first time and being moved by his story.
Though Scorsese directed the movie, it was De Niro’s idea to make the film-to the point where it became his obsession. To boxing and film fans, La Motta will forever be known as the Raging Bull, an unforgettable fighter and subject of the eponymous black-and-white drama, which starred a young De Niro as the hotheaded champ.
In a short statement, Robert De Niro acknowledged La Motta’s passing: “Rest in Peace, Champ.” “I just want people to know, he was a great, sweet, sensitive, strong, compelling man with a great sense of humor, with eyes that danced,” she told the outlet. TMZ first reported the news on Wednesday, revealing that the boxer’s wife said he died in a nursing home due to complications from pneumonia. Jack La Motta, the fiery boxer whose life story was immortalized in the 1980 Martin Scorsese-directed film Raging Bull, has died.
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