On This Day Of His Birth (Martin Scorsese) Poem by Richard Ford Bunuel Whale Carnegie Edison Simon Hitchcock Welles Christ Antunes Rodriguez Kubrick

Legends only come true
If enough people believe in you,
As your parents had before
And your legions of cinematic family
That flock to see your films,

Crossroads of cinema
In self contained worlds
You create from film to film,
As long as there has been films
Your's Marty are an oeuvre
Of a cinematic engine
Transcending time and generations

Where your films made decades ago
Feel oddly and justly contemporary,
As the pistons of your engines
Of your own dream factory...
You create characters
And allow them to come to life
Off the written page

During your sessions of rehearsal
Where your actors bring to life
These characters to match
The speech mannerisms of your actors
By writing their improvisations
Into the script as you had
In Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore...

As you had learned from your mentor
John Cassevetes
The film earned an award winning performance
By Ellen Burstyn
That wouldn't have been
If not for your tuteledge
Of your cinematic control of the apparatus...

Of which you from the infancy
As student cinephile while at NYU...
Where although you got the letter grade of B
For your paper on The Third Man
As the professor counteracted your paper
By stating that The Third Man was just a film noir,

Nonetheless you have championed directors
As you had Michael Powell's filmography
As Peeping Tom would have been swept away
And retreat from the brilliance it was denied
You shined awarance and enlightenments
For the films of Michael Powell and Peeping Tom...

It was always blantantly apparent of your potential,
Your short films won awards like The Big Shave
As it had won the top prize at a surrealist festival...
I am greatly appreciative of you
As your living legend status lives on in repeat viewings
Of your films as if your audience
Of one and of many upon television and movie screens
Feel as if they are visiting an old friend...

You live on in my heart and mind
For all time...
Because if it hadn't been for Goodfellas and Raging Bull...
I wouldn't have cast off upon a cinematic Odyssey
But instead of Ulysses leaving his family once again
For a further life of high adventures...
I would bring along with me my family
So they could share and live out my experiences...
As Odysseus or Ulysses...
I'll always return to my cinematic family
And not stray far off course of my dreams,

And in honor of your birth... Remember...
Legends come true only if enough people believe in you...
And I believe in you on this day and every day, Marty...
A legend unsurpassed by many,
And as my prayers and predictions and confidence in you rise...
I knew you would finally win that allusive Oscar

The Departed was great and I hope
To see you make the sequel and prequel of Infernal Affairs
As a competitive Best Director Oscar win
That was due to you for decades
And here on forward may you win more...
Like the one for life time achievement
Because... I believe in you Marty