From a Flat Tire to the Honorary Golden Bear
by Pat Frickey

The audience was sitting quietly in respectful anticipation when a voice boomed over the sound system requesting that we greet Martin Scorsese, the winner of the Honorary Golden Bear Award for Lifetime Achievement (Goldener Ehrenbär). From a side entrance near the stage Scorsese slipped into the theater to sit with his entourage, including his daughter Francesca and Sharon Stone. Once the audience members spotted the diminutive director walking to his seat they jumped to their feet and began clapping, then clapping crescendoed into cheering. It took quite a long time for the audience to regain its composure so that the eighty-one-year-old Scorsese could finally sit down; he was beaming. I was fortunate to have a seat in the third row and was clapping and cheering as wildly as the others, spellbound by the magic in the air.

The ceremony began with a live orchestra playing the score of Scorsese’s latest film, KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, as clips of the film flashed on the screen. Scenes with Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Lily Gladstone in Osage Indian country were accompanied by the late Robbie Robertson’s haunting score.

German director Wim Wenders, himself having been awarded the Honorary Golden Bear in 2015, was there to honor his longtime friend. Wenders told the amusing tale of how he had come to rescue Scorsese on a dusty, deserted road in the middle of nowhere in 1978. They had both attended the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado in 1978 where the festival director had encouraged all participants to make a side trip to Utah on the scenic route through the Valley of the Gods and meet at Monument Valley. Wenders set off with his girlfriend and her son, and along an abandoned road saw a stranded car with a woman waving for help while two feet extended from underneath the chassis. It turned out they were Martin Scorsese’s feet. He was there with his future wife, Isabella Rossellini, and they had had a flat tire. Upon hearing an approaching vehicle, Scorsese emerged from under the car. “Ladies and gentlemen, Martin Scorsese did manage to take off the flat tire.” (The audience at the Berlinale Palast roared its approval.) “But much to his dismay, we all realized that his bloody rental car did not have an extra tire, which was a real bummer—the whole effort had been in vain.” What a perfect photo op for filmmaker Wenders. Wenders then presented the audience with a photo slideshow of the Chevy, the two couples, and the flat tire. “Proof that a young German director, equipped with a panoramic camera, rescued his American colleague and his future wife from a dreadful fate.” The next photos were of them altogether at Monument Valley where they stayed in Goulding's Lodge where John Ford had lived during the filming of his epic westerns. Tears welled up in all our eyes as Wenders said: “Dear Marty, I stand in awe that we’re both here in this room now forty-six years later.”