For example, take a look at think pieces on Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. People often confuse performance with character.

Raging Bull is a direct cinematic descendant of Italian Neorealism (movies about survival) and deconstructs a troubled man’s code complex. He directed a movie for self-aware adults with a basic understanding of how emotional intelligence works. But here’s the thing: Scorsese didn’t intend to make an uplifting boxing drama like Rocky. In today’s film culture, the morally righteous are always quick to point out that Raging Bull’s subject, a real-life boxer named Jake LaMotta, isn’t “relatable” or “likable.” And why? Because he does things, in a movie, that should NOT be done in real life. Occasionally, it even gets lumped in with Scorsese’s “gangster movies” as a shorthand to dismiss the director as a one-trick pony.

To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.Raging Bull - a complex character study about methods and codes of conduct - all too often gets reductively tagged as Martin Scorsese’s toxic masculinity sports movie that allowed Robert De Niro to lose (and gain) weight in pursuit of an Oscar. This story first appeared in a December stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. That really stuck with me.” She still regrets taking off for Europe the day the Oscar nominations were announced. “He said the most important thing for an actor was to listen. Moriarty says the best advice she received was from De Niro. Moriarty was 17, living in the Bronx and completely unaware that a bicoastal search was going on for an actress who “must be blonde and have excellent figure. “I can’t say enough about how much they helped me,” she says. One person who owes her career to the trio was Cathy Moriarty, who received an Oscar nom for supporting actress.

The Hollywood Reporter said the film was “probably the most unromanticized movie biography ever produced in Hollywood.” Yet Raging Bull got eight Academy Award nominations, with De Niro winning for actor and Thelma Schoonmaker for editing.

Robert deniro raging bull