Martin Scorsese grew up a frail, asthmatic boy in Little Italy, sidelined from the street life outside his window and parked in dark movie theaters by parents who needed somewhere safe for him to be. This episode follows how that quiet observer, who once enrolled in a preparatory seminary hoping to become a priest, instead found his confessional in 35mm film and became the architect of some of the most kinetic and violent movies in American history.

The conversation moves through his mentorship at NYU under Haig P. Manoogian, the Movie Brats era, the partnership with Robert De Niro on Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, and the collapse that followed the failure of New York, New York, when cocaine addiction and internal bleeding put him in the hospital. It then covers the kamikaze making of Raging Bull, the manic editing of Goodfellas with Thelma ...