Ladies, Martin Scorsese Wants To Be Your Instagram Boyfriend
A Good Man Who Knows The Rule of Thirds is Hard to Find
“These poor girls—what they have to put up with from these guys!”
We’re sitting in a room at the iconic Plaza Hotel on Central Park South with acclaimed film director Marty Scorsese (Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Goodfellas). We’re hunched over a cell phone, scrolling through various Instagram feeds showcasing photos of young women in exotic locales:
· on the beach
· on a mountain trail
· pondering the ruins of a medieval Scottish castle.
“Look at the lighting in this one!” Scorsese scoffs. “Her face is in shadow! Does her boyfriend even know what a key light is?”
Scorsese is rightly frustrated. Sure, the “Instagram Boyfriend” or “Instagram Husband” is now a worldwide pop-cultural phenomenon, but the quality of cinematic artistry these so-called boyfriends and husbands produce is nothing short of scandalous.
“I can’t look at these anymore!” Scorsese sighs as he sits back and motions to his PA to bring him another espresso. “I mean—look at that!”
He wags a finger at the latest photo in the scroll: a medium close-up of a young woman sitting, apparently, in the observation deck of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
Scorses guffaws. “Her eyeline is right in the middle of the frame! Does her boyfriend even know the Rule of Thirds? You need her eyes in the top third of the left-side sweet spot. You need to accommodate the direction in which she is looking. This is Film School 101 stuff. Absolutely fundamental—and her boyfriend’s blowing it!”
“It’s a cultural landslide,” Scorsese concludes. But the director of Gangs of New York has a solution.
“Recently I shot a little thing with Timmy Chalamet, right here in New York. An ad for Bleu de Chanel—maybe you’ve seen it? Turned out to be a nice little 90-second picture. I took Fellini’s 1968 short Toby Dammit as a source. Anyway, I really enjoyed making that picture. At my age, a short shoot like that is preferable.
“So, I ask myself. Why stop with Chanel? Why not make short pictures for some of these poor women on Instagram? Really take their brands to the next level.
“I told my agent to put the word out—and bingo! Next week I’ll be in Fiji with a young gal, a cashier at Costco. Great scenery down there in Fiji. Beaches. Waterfalls. Iguanas. We’re going to do a bit with the gal playing with the iguana on the beach. I’m taking Bedtime for Bonzo as a source.”
But Scorsese’s interest in helping young women out on Instagram is no mere matter of cinematic aesthetics. His concerns are more, well, philosophical.
“The real crime is, your average knucklehead boyfriend doesn’t have a clue about what’s happened to Western Civilization in the last four hundred years,” says Scorsese, sipping his espresso.
“I mean, since Locke, at least, we’ve known that reality is not self-revealing.”
When asked what this means, Scorsese explains:
“The way the world shows up to ordinary observation—that’s all misleading. It’s a mirage! We can’t know the world, as it is, directly.
“Say some woman is wearing smoky blue eye shadow. The ‘smoky blue’ isn’t out there, on her face. ‘Smoky blue’ is conjured in the mind as certain wavelengths of light hit the eye. ‘Smoky blue,’ in short, is a mental state. It only exists inside our cranium!
“The point is: we only know the world by way of representations of it in our heads. Whether those representations ‘match up’ with the ‘real world’ is a pointless question.
“Ergo, image, representation, is everything. Image is reality!
“But here’s the thing: if all we got are representations, why not manipulate those representations to create a better, more pleasing reality?
“Why not go from Costco cashier to…Heroic Rescuer of the Nearly Extinct Crested Fiji Iguana!
(“The crested Fiji iguana is not actually nearly extinct,” Scorsese hastily adds, as some of our crew were looking anxious. “That’s just the angle we’re taking with this picture.”)
Scorsese finishes his espresso and gets up to go. A pre-production meeting for the Fiji shoot beckons. But he stops at the door.
“These knucklehead boyfriends—they think they’re in a relationship with a person. What they’ve got to understand is, they’re managers of a brand. And a successful brand needs more than some schlub with an iPhone, but a master of the image. That’s where I come in.”
And with his trademark smile and a wink, the Oscar-winning director is gone.
For the above, thanks to
’s Substack post, “Your Boyfriend Isn’t Your Cameraman,” and ’s book, The World Beyond Your Head, for the inspiration.All the cool kids are reading Beauty & Imitation this summer. How about you? Get yours here today.
