 To help celebrate and memorialize the 50th anniversary of the 1963 debut of "The New York Review of Books", Silvers approached Scorsese, who is known as an avid reader of the "Review", with the idea to make a documentary about the paper.Scorsese said, "I have learned so much over the years from "The New York Review of Books" – it’s given me so much that I jumped at the chance to make this film ... a film about the adventure of thought, and, as Colm Toibin puts it, the sensuality of ideas.