Does Martin Scorsese Know What ‘Hits Different’ and ‘Simp’ Mean?

Martin Scorsese has proven once again that, even into his eighties, he’s still capable of grasping and channeling the particular nuances of the American experience better than anyone. No, this doesn’t have to do with his new movie Killers of the Flower Moon, but rather his really solid understanding of a lot of contemporary, extremely online slang.

Scorsese’s daughter, Francesca — who’s roped her dad into several delightful TikToks already — enlisted the filmmaker for a quiz in which she read off slang terms and asked the director to provide the meanings. For the most part, Scorsese aced the exam, especially thanks to context clues in his vernacular like, “Watching a movie in 70mm ‘hits different’,” “Lily Gladstone ‘ate’ in Killers of the Flower Moon,” or “That critic ‘threw so much shade.’” 

In maybe the best moment of the quiz, Scorsese needed a little extra help with “slept on,” so Francesca reframed the clue as, “The King of Comedy was slept on.” That prompted the filmmaker to launch into some score settling over the now-widely regarded, but then-dismissed 1983 flick: “People hated it when it came out… It was the flop of the year. That’s what it was called on Entertainment Tonight. New Year’s Eve, ’83-’84. It’s ok, it’s alright.” (Sure, Marty.)

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Scorsese did get stumped on a few terms, however, like “ship” (“A ship is a boat!”) or “simp” (“a person who’s whining all the time… A person who’s always complaining. I do that, I complain a lot”). And when Francesca asked him about “sneaky link,” she had to resort to some even more outdated slang, “booty call,” to explain the term. Scorsese then quipped. “We never used that term. We never saw specific people in my day.” 

“Oh, ok,” Francesca replied, not missing a beat. “Alright, you had a nice little variety.” To which Scorsese responded: “Yeah, what else you got?”