Why is Martin Scorsese making a fuss over Killers of the Flower Moon toilet breaks?

How did Martin Scorsese become the font of all that is solid and traditional in cinematic discourse? The Hollywood actors strike had something to do with it. With the actors prohibited from carrying out promotional duties, the Great Man has been almost single-handedly flogging Killers of the Flower Moon. There is also his status as last man standing. Contemporaries such as Paul Schrader and Francis Ford Coppola are still vigorously upright, but the former makes smaller films and the latter has struggled to make anything at all. Spielberg is as busy as ever, but he has always remained mainstream-adjacent. And, of course, Marty can talk as no other human can talk.

Scorsese has, over the last few years, got into endless scrapes with apologists for franchise gloop. “That’s not cinema,” he said of Marvel films back in 2019, and the poor man hasn’t been allowed to forget it. That debate bubbled up over the last week when Joe Russo, codirector of Avengers: Endgame, the second-highest grossing film of all time, released a video, quoting a clip of Scorsese with his dog Oscar, that referred to his own pooch as “Box Office”.

It wasn’t the greatest joke, but it was hardly worthy of the subsequent burst blood vessels. “In 50 years no one will know who Joe Russo is,” someone bellowed. “Most people don’t know who Joe Russo is even now ...” someone else followed up. I have bad news for you. Most people don’t know who Martin Scorsese is now.

Anyway, the director’s latest tussle with the great unwashed concerns unauthorised intermissions at screenings of Killers of the Flower Moon. There is no way around it; this film is properly long. Clocking in at three hours and 26 minutes, the crime epic is a whole hour longer than 2001: A Space Odyssey – and that told a story straddling three million years (or something). Have you seen the size of soft-drink cups in contemporary cinemas? Good luck getting through that without a visit to the facilities.

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It has emerged that a smattering of cinemas across the planet have been inserting their own loo breaks. Variety reports that virtually all venues run by UCI in Italy had inserted a “six-minute interval towards the middle of the film”. Pauses were also being offered in some British and Dutch cinemas. Sources told the trade paper that Paramount and Apple, the studios behind Killer Moon, had contacted US cinemas to tell them they had “violated their contract by splitting up the film”.

There is no word from Scorsese himself, but Thelma Schoonmaker, his veteran editor, does not sound happy. “I understand that somebody’s running it with an intermission which is not right,” she remarked. “That’s a violation so I have to find out about it.”

Opera-goers sit through days of Wagner without going for a slash. If you need to go then go. But allow everyone else the opportunity to enjoy the film in one continuous quantum. This wouldn’t have happened in the olden days. Right?

This is a tricky one. On the one hand, the cultured mind sides with the artist in such circumstances. Schoonmaker spent months and months cutting the film to a particular rhythm. She, understandably enough, is not keen on cinema owners arbitrarily imposing a pause of some minutes between two of her carefully thought-through frames.

It was one thing for Quentin Tarantino to schedule an old-school intermission in The Hateful Eight. The editor and director were in charge of where that fell. Opera-goers sit through days of Wagner without going for a slash. If you need to go then go. But allow everyone else the opportunity to enjoy the film in one continuous quantum. This wouldn’t have happened in the olden days. Right?

Well, wrong. I first saw some of the greatest films ever made – including a few of Scorsese’s – at the film society in Trinity College Dublin. Every 20 minutes or so the movie stopped while the amateur projectionist replaced the 16mm reel. That didn’t stop me enjoying Andrei Rublev or The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Out there in commercial cinemas, exhibitors would, until the early 1980s, randomly pause a film so that a lady with a tray could flog you choc ices and Maltesers. (And cigs? Am I misremembering that?)

I’ll stop now. Nobody wants a reprise of those ghastly memes in which old idiots boast about being clipped round the ear while eating egg and chips in freezing kitchens. “Never did us any harm!” The olden days were mostly dreadful and anyone saying otherwise should be ignored.

This is not an argument of any great significance. On balance, Thelma (and Marty) have the right to fume at alterations to the theatrical exhibition of their film. Killers of the Flower Moon will only be on the big screen for a short time. We will then have endless opportunities to pause the thing when it appears on Apple TV+. Heck, I stop the stream every 20 minutes when I’m watching Andrei Rublev. For old times’ sake.