Martin Scorsese can be revered as one of our greatest living filmmakersbut he often had to fight tooth and nail to bring his visions to the big screen. This is largely due to the box office. Yes, Raging Bull, King of Comedy and Good Friends are considered masterpieces, but they were not box office hits. So when, after being repeatedly passed over for Oscar recognition, he set his sights on making his magnum opus, Gangs of New York, almost every studio in town refused to finance his dream.

It wasn't like he pushed the project into the film industry. Alberto Grimaldi, the famous Italian producer of classics by Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone and Bernardo Bertolucci, released an advertisement announcing the production of the film back in 1977. But when the New Hollywood revolution died with the failure of Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate (a great movie no matter how much money it lost), there just wasn't much enthusiasm for Gangs of New York.

This changed briefly in the early 1990s when Universal considered greenlighting the project with a $30 million budget, but it never made it past the starting line and was eventually committed to Disney, which, under studio head Joe Family Roth, I wouldn't touch the extremely violent material. Finally, in 1999, Miramax, fresh off a Best Picture Oscar from Saving Private Ryan with Shakespeare in Love, pounced in part because they believed they could win Scorsese the Oscar they had denied him for decades. .

Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein raised enough funding to ensure that Scorsese could build his circa-1860s sets on the backdrop of Italy's legendary Cinecittà film studio. But at some point, he started saying no to some of Scorsese's set-building requests. When Scorsese needed more and couldn't get it from his financiers, he turned to one of the biggest movie stars on the planet.

It was Harvey Weinstein's idea to fly Tom Cruise - who was promoting the horror film The Others, which he produced for Miramax - to Rome to visit his director The Color of Money on the set of a film he was trying to make more than 20 years. It was a surprise that should have delighted the Italian-American maestro, but after seeing Cruz he began to complain. Scorsese and production designer Dante Ferretti wanted to build a church with a full interior that would allow the director to do a 360-degree pan. Weinstein was against it, but in Scorsese's mind it was essential. Cruise was moved by the director's plea.

In the Entertainment Weekly article of the film's production, Scorsese said, “Harve was concerned about how much the interior of the church would cost. He asked question after question.

Put him on the spot, Weinstein, who is currently serving a total of 39 years in prison for rape and sexual assault, coughed up the $100,000 needed to finish building the church. The production called the holy building "Saint Thomas". The film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards in 2003, but went home empty-handed. Scorsese would finally win Best Picture and Best Director for 2006's The Departed.