Scorsese waltzes with David Johansen in ‘Personality Crisis’

Martin Scorsese was knee-deep in preparation for “Killers of the Flower Moon” when Mara Hennessey reached out to invite him to see David Johansen. The former frontman for the trailblazing 1970s proto-punk band the New York Dolls — and Hennessey’s husband — was performing a new show at the Café Carlyle.

Scorsese, a longtime fan of Johansen (he had once played the Dolls to rile up his actors for a fight scene), went eagerly with a handful of others, including his frequent documentary collaborator David Tedeschi. There, they saw Johansen perform a lounge act of grit and grace.

Here was a downtown fixture relocated to one of uptown’s swankiest rooms. As his pompadoured alter ego, Buster Poindexter, Johansen was performing stripped-down versions of his own songs and Dolls hits, with plenty of reflective, comic interludes. Scorsese, smitten by Johansen’s performance, immediately resolved to shoot it — the still ringing echo of a