Check out these rare pho­tos from the mak­ing of Rag­ing Bull

The idea for writ­ing a book on the mak­ing of Rag­ing Bull came when I met up with Robert De Niro in Decem­ber 2019 to present him with his copy of Coattail’s pre­vi­ous pub­li­ca­tion, ​‘One Shot: The Mak­ing of The Deer Hunter’, which he had kind­ly con­tributed to. Bob asked me what was next, and I wasn’t going to waste that oppor­tu­ni­ty. I imme­di­ate­ly replied that a book on Rag­ing Bull would be a dream.

With the UK enter­ing lock­down in March 2020, I emailed Bob and asked if it would be okay to begin work on telling the sto­ry of the mak­ing of Rag­ing Bull. Receiv­ing the green light, I start­ed to approach the film’s cast and crew to share their mem­o­ries to add to the research I was accu­mu­lat­ing. Our book was underway.

Ini­tial­ly direct­ing a movie about box­ing did not appeal to Mar­tin Scors­ese. ​“The idea of, ​‘Let’s get two guys into the ring and let them hit each oth­er,’ was some­thing I didn’t – couldn’t – grasp,” he has said. In fact, any form of sport was of lit­tle inter­est, with the direc­tor stat­ing ​‘if there was a ball involved then for­get it.’

Scorsese’s pas­sion out­side of film was music, not sport. But De Niro felt there was some­thing with­in the life of for­mer champ Jake LaM­ot­ta that had real cin­e­mat­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties and began a war of attri­tion on Scors­ese, which ulti­mate­ly saw the direc­tor acquiesce.

Inter­view­ing Bob, Mar­ty, Joe Pesci, Cathy Mori­ar­ty, John Tur­tur­ro, pro­duc­er Irwin Win­kler, edi­tor Thel­ma Schoon­mak­er, screen­writer Paul Schrad­er, and many oth­ers, revealed how they dis­sect­ed a seem­ing­ly self-destruc­tive man, whose pri­ma­ry form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion was through vio­lence, and gave us unques­tion­ably one of the great­est films of all-time.

Rag­ing Bull marked Scorsese’s fourth col­lab­o­ra­tion with De Niro, and in the four decades since its release it has lost none of its abil­i­ty to aston­ish. Writ­ing the book, and choos­ing the images and ephemera to adorn it, has been a rare priv­i­lege and honour.

‘Rag­ing Bull – The Mak­ing Of’ by Jay Glen­nie is avail­able to pre-order from coat​tail​-pub​li​ca​tions​.com