May 16, 2023 | Read Online

Raging Bull.

How to take your fate into your own hands.

Cole Schafer
May 16, 2023

Robert De Niro hated auditions because he hated the idea of his fate being in another man's hands. So one day De Niro decided he was going to create his own role; a role that required no audition at all.

De Niro had just read a book about a brawny, hard-nosed boxer by the name of Jake LaMotta, who wasn't naturally gifted by any stretch of the word but who could take a beating in the ring like the world had never seen before.

Considered to have possessed the strongest chin in all of boxing, LaMotta fought 110 bouts over his 14 year career and only got knocked down to the canvas once.

De Niro was inspired. So much so, that he wanted to make a movie about the boxer's life and career where he himself would play LaMotta.

For a couple of years, De Niro carried the book about LaMotta around with him everywhere he went and pitched his dream role to anyone who would listen. Producers kept shrugging him off until he finally found one that agreed to finance the film.

But, under the following condition...

De Niro had to land Martin Scorsese as the director.

The problem with De Niro landing Scorsese wasn't that DeNiro lacked the clout––by this time in the actor's career he had played in huge pictures like The Godfather Part II, Taxi Driver and New York, New York––but that Scorsese didn't give a shit about boxing.

Scorsese kept turning De Niro down, again and again, until one day the legendary director hit rock fucking bottom in his personal life (due to what was rumored to be a Cocaine addiction). In the throes of his darkest hour, Scorsese phoned De Niro and asked him to pitch him the film one last time.

It was during this final pitch that Scorsese saw LaMotta's story through an entirely new lens. Scorsese saw himself; and in seeing himself, he realized the film wasn't so much about boxing but about battling one's internal demons.

While LaMotta was a great boxer, he was a flawed man.

LaMotta was an addict whose drugs of choice were massive quantities of food, a masochistic pleasure for punishment in the ring and, in his later years, obscene amounts of alcohol.

Scorsese agreed to direct the film.

Ragging Bull would go on to win Robert De Niro an academy award for Best Actor... for a role he didn't even have to audition for.

Your fate is delicate.

Place it in your hands, not somebody else's.

By Cole Schafer.

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