Billy Crystal reveals decades old connection with ‘scary’ Martin Scorsese

Billy Crystal has a decades old connection with the famous filmmaker Martin Scorsese.

On Today’s Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist podcast, Billy revealed he had Martin as one of his professors in New York University.

Billy said, “I was in film school here [at NYU], and Martin Scorsese was my film production professor. He was a graduate student at the time, just doing his first movie, called Who’s That Knocking at My Door. And it was 1968, 1969, 1970.”

“And [he] had a big beard and granny glasses and hair down to his shoulders. He looked like everybody. e’d stand behind you while you were editing your film, and he would be very scary, because he would look and he was so intense and he would speak very quickly — even then — he spoke quicker then because he was, you know, 50 years younger,” he recalled further.

Billy went on to say, “And he’d go, ‘Why’d you shoot it that way? Use a wide shot! Howard Hawks always used a wide shot.’ I said, ‘I’m 19 — I don’t know who Howard Hawks is!’”

For the unversed Howard Hawks was a legendary director of classics like Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday.

It is worth mentioning that while Martin was Billy’s professor Oliver Stone and Christopher Guest were his classmates at the time.