Martin Scorsese Trivia
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50 free Martin Scorsese trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Martin Scorsese trivia quiz starts with an asthmatic boy in Little Italy whose parents took him to the movies, the failed seminarian who found NYU instead, the professor he called 'the most precious gift', and the Roger Corman quickie that taught him to work fast. Then the films: Mean Streets and the arrival of De Niro, the Palme d'Or for Taxi Driver and the Hinckley shooting, the cocaine crash before Raging Bull and how De Niro saved his life, After Hours, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, Casino, Kundun and Disney, Gangs of New York at Cinecitta, the Best Director Oscar for The Departed, Hugo, The Wolf of Wall Street, Silence, The Irishman on Netflix and Killers of the Flower Moon. The rest is Scorsese the man and the advocate: five marriages, the cameos, the Michael Jackson video, The Last Waltz and the Dylan and Stones films, the Emmys for Boardwalk Empire and George Harrison, The Film Foundation's 850 restorations, the World Cinema Project, the Jefferson Lecture, and the Star Wars voice role. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Robert De Niro and Al Pacino quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which New York neighbourhood did Scorsese grow up?
Little Italy
Little Italy is also where, in 1974, he filmed his parents over dinner in their Elizabeth Street flat for Italianamerican; his mother's meatball recipe runs in the end credits.
Q 02Scorsese's family name was Scozzese until a transcription slip; what does Scozzese mean in Italian?
Scottish
Scottish is what Scozzese means. When Scorsese first visited his grandfather's home town in Sicily in 1979, the mismatch meant his search for relatives at the town hall drew a blank.
Q 03Which childhood condition kept Scorsese from sports and sent him to the movies instead?
Asthma
Asthma kept him off the streets and in cinema seats, where he saw The Red Shoes as a small boy; decades later he led the drive to restore that very film.
Q 04The only other teenager renting The Tales of Hoffmann as often as Scorsese later directed which film?
Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead was the debut of George A. Romero, who travelled in from the Bronx to hire the 16mm print and called the opera fantasy his favourite film of all.
Q 05Which career did the teenage Scorsese first set his heart on?
Priest
Priest was the plan: he entered a junior seminary but was out within a year, and enrolled at New York University's film school instead.
Q 06Raging Bull closes with a dedication to Haig P. Manoogian, who was Scorsese's what?
Film professor
Film professor at NYU: Haig Manoogian pushed Scorsese to rework his first feature and helped produce it, and Raging Bull's credits thank him 'with love and resolution'.
Q 07Scorsese's short The Big Shave was his response to America's involvement in what?
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War: the short, also known as Viet '67, simply shows a young man shaving on and on until his face and the white bathroom are red with blood.
Q 08Scorsese's first feature, Who's That Knocking at My Door, introduced which two lifelong collaborators?
Harvey Keitel and Thelma Schoonmaker
Harvey Keitel and Thelma Schoonmaker: he made his screen debut in the lead and she edited. The film first screened in Chicago as I Call First, then was reworked and retitled before its release.
Q 09Which fellow 'movie brat' introduced Scorsese to the actor who became his most frequent leading man?
Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma had already directed the young actor in his comedy Hi, Mom!, and he later handed Scorsese the script for Taxi Driver as well.
Q 10Which low-budget producer gave Scorsese his first Hollywood feature, the Depression-era Boxcar Bertha?
Roger Corman
Roger Corman wanted a follow-up to his Bloody Mama. When John Cassavetes saw the result, he urged Scorsese to stop making other people's pictures and film what he knew; Mean Streets came next.
Q 11Where was the majority of Mean Streets, the archetypal gritty New York film, actually shot?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles stood in for Manhattan because the budget was tiny: most of the film was shot in disguised California locations, with only a short stint of location work back home.
Q 12Which actress chose Scorsese for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and won Best Actress for it?
Ellen Burstyn
Ellen Burstyn was sent the script by her agent and took it to Warner Bros. herself; asked who should direct, she said she wanted somebody new, young and exciting.
Q 13Which prize did Taxi Driver win at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival?
The Palme d'Or
Q 21Which Michael Jackson video did Scorsese direct in a Brooklyn subway station in 1986?
Bad
Bad was made as a short film with a script and a story, and its choreographers have said the gang's dance through the station drew on West Side Story.
Q 22David Bowie played Pontius Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ, but which singer had the part in the cancelled 1983 version?
Sting
Sting was set to play Pilate until Paramount pulled out weeks before shooting; Scorsese made the film four years later at Universal, on a far smaller budget.
Q 23Which first-time director beat Scorsese to the Best Director Oscar for Goodfellas?
Kevin Costner
Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves beat Goodfellas to both Director and Picture, yet when the AFI revised its list of the 100 greatest American films in 2007 it kept Goodfellas and dropped the western.
The Palme d'Or went to Taxi Driver even though its screening drew boos and walkouts, and jury president Tennessee Williams had spoken out against films that revel in bloodshed.
Q 14Which screenwriter began his long collaboration with Scorsese by writing Taxi Driver?
Paul Schrader
Paul Schrader wrote it in under a fortnight as a kind of self-therapy: he had lost his job and his marriage and had spent weeks living in his car.
Q 15The Last Waltz documented the 1976 farewell concert of which group?
The Band
The Band got their director through Jonathan Taplin, their former road manager: he had raised the money for Mean Streets and suggested Scorsese film the farewell show.
Q 16Scorsese directed the 1977 Broadway musical The Act as a vehicle for which star?
Liza Minnelli
Liza Minnelli won a Tony for the show, though Scorsese, new to musical theatre, had been quietly replaced by a veteran stage director before it reached New York.
Q 17Who is credited with saving Scorsese's life by persuading him to quit cocaine and return to directing?
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro had been pressing a boxer's memoir on him for years; after his collapse Scorsese finally said yes, and the film they made from it was Raging Bull.
Q 18Raging Bull is the story of which real middleweight boxing champion?
Jake LaMotta
Jake LaMotta's own memoir supplied the story. Scorsese, convinced he would never direct again, called it a 'kamikaze' film and put everything he knew into it.
Q 19For which 1985 black comedy, shot cheaply in SoHo, did Scorsese win Best Director at Cannes?
After Hours
After Hours was a deliberate step down in scale: Paramount had just shelved his long-planned The Last Temptation of Christ, so he turned to a small independent script instead.
Q 20The Color of Money won Paul Newman an Oscar for reviving Fast Eddie Felson, his character from which earlier film?
The Hustler
The Hustler introduced Fast Eddie in 1961. Playing him again 25 years on finally won Newman a competitive Oscar, a year after the Academy had handed him an honorary one.
Q 24Whom did Scorsese play in Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990)?
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh appears in the episode called Crows: an art student steps inside the paintings and finds Scorsese's bandaged painter hard at work in a field.
Q 25Goodfellas follows the rise and fall of which real-life mob associate, played by Ray Liotta?
Henry Hill
Henry Hill turned FBI informant after a 1980 drugs arrest, and his testimony helped put his old associates in prison before he told his story to a crime reporter.
Q 26Scorsese's Kundun (1997) tells the early life of which figure?
The 14th Dalai Lama
The 14th Dalai Lama: China froze Disney's business there over the film, and in 1998 the studio's chief told China's premier that releasing it had been 'a stupid mistake'.
Q 27Which blacklist-era director's Honorary Oscar did Scorsese controversially present in 1999?
Elia Kazan
Elia Kazan had named former colleagues to a congressional committee in 1952, so while part of the audience stood to applaud, dozens stayed seated and protesters picketed outside.
Q 28Gangs of New York (2002) was shot on vast sets built at which studio?
Cinecitta in Rome
Cinecitta in Rome is where designer Dante Ferretti rebuilt the Five Points slum for real: more than a mile of buildings, standing in for several blocks of Lower Manhattan.
Q 29Which eccentric aviation tycoon is the subject of The Aviator (2004)?
Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes gave Scorsese the most-nominated film of its year, and it won more Oscars than any rival that night, yet Best Director went to Clint Eastwood instead.
Q 30On accepting his first Best Director Oscar for The Departed, what did Scorsese joke?
'Could you double-check the envelope?'
'Could you double-check the envelope?' was his opening joke after years of losing the prize, which was handed to him by three fellow directors and old friends from the 1970s.