9. Martin Scorsese
In Richard Schickel's book "Conversations With Scorsese," iconic director Martin Scorsese tells a story from his childhood.
"My father was assisted by a crime family. They made it possible for us to have a house in Queens. But my father had many problems with his brother Joe. From what I understand, he had "sit downs," where he tried to make sure Joe wasn't killed by the mob people. The landlord was a guy that had a vegetable truck in a garage next door. He didn't like my brother, and he had a chicken. The guy grabbed the chicken and just wrung it's neck in front of my brother, and made the kid run and cry. And he started to resent my father, because my father became friends with the landlord's brother. And he took the brother to get a new suit in New York. Anyway, he may have felt my father was involved with underworld figures, which he really wasn't, but he behaved maybe a little bit like that; my father always liked to dress. And this guy was a man of the earth so to speak. And I think also his wife liked my father. So all this resentment was building up. And then there was a confrontation. Probably my father used some language he shouldn't have, because I remember he apologized for it. So the next day, my father got back from work and confronted him in the yard. That led to the fistfight, and the landlord picked up an ax. And my mother's younger sister pushed him aside and said 'Stop that. Don't do that to my brother in law' And he stopped. And that night there was another fight on the corner. I saw the two of them fighting, and I came back in and told my mother. 'I know,' she said. And then the next thing I knew we had to leave."
If that story is any indication of how Marty's childhood went, this is a biopic that needs to be put into production immediately. The filmmaker was born into a Catholic family, and actually had aspirations of becoming a priest (imagine confessing your sins to Martin Scorsese?), until he turned to film. Down the line, he became addicted to cocaine, and was in an extremely bad state. It was Robert De Niro who acted as his savior, convincing him to kick his coke habit and direct Raging Bull. Fortunately (for everyone, really), De Niro was successful in his efforts, and Raging Bull ended up becoming one of the greatest films of all-time. The biopic (which seems inevitable somewhere down the line) could begin with Scorsese's coke addiction, telling the story of him getting clean and making Raging Bull, all the while flashing back to his childhood.