Blank Check with Griffin & David - Mean Streets with Miriam Bale

Episode Date: August 16, 2026

We're heading to Little Italy's San Gennaro festival this week with Griffy Parm, David Bags, and the great Miriam Bale as we chat about 1973's Mean Streets - a major breakthrough for both Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro. Join us as we chat about the seismic impact this film had on American cinema, DeNiro's screen persona, those iconic needledrops, and the ways racism and misogyny permeate the film's atmosphere. Also - did you know this movie was mostly filmed in Los Angeles!?! Listen to Bobby on Off Menu Follow @judis.annie on Instagram Read the Next Scorsese series in Esquire Listen to SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook!  Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're not paying because this guy. This guy's a fucking podcast. But I didn't say nothing. And we don't pay podcasts. Podcasts? I'm a podcast. Yes. What's a podcast?

A podcast. What's a podcast? There's a fourth character, Griffin. This is a disaster. Ben, take that one. Take that line. I don't know. What's a podcast?

You can't call me a podcast? I can't. No. I'll give you a podcast. I don't. Oh. I don't. Wow.

I guess this is not a movie with like... Should we all just clap for ourselves? That's really good. So good. It's a little scene lit. What? What, David? What?

No, I'm thinking about Mean Streets. I'm thinking about how I guess, yeah, it's not... I mean, it has some of the inner dialogue is very iconic. But the dialogue is iconic just because it's that. It's all them going like... Oh, they're just all yelling at each other. There's a lot of iconic dialogue. I mean, IMDB, of course, points out a repeated line.

What's the matter with you? What's about you? I just like brackets. Repeated line. That's not even what it's like. What's the matter with you? Honorable men go with honorable. Honorable podcasters go with honorable podcasters.

I don't like this attitude of I picked the wrong thing. This was fun. This was a little act out. I'm just looking at the mainstream. It's fun. Just they repeat the word over and over again? You know what the queen said? If I had balls, I'd be king.

I don't remember that. This is our first Corsese session. And I got to tell you. Yes. Disaster. No. Off the rails. Perfect.

I, watching this movie, it's been in a minute. I am feeling so comforted. A Ben movie. It's not just that it's a Ben movie, but it's reminding me of growing up in northern New Jersey. Well, hey. And the characters that I used to know. And I'm just, I'm thrilled to dive back in. Are you telling me Mean Streets is autobiographical to your life?

Not at all. I just liked that this movie, I was watching. some of the special features on the Criterion disc and there is like a promotional featureette that is, let me see what the name of it is. It's called

Martin Scorsese colon back on the block and it almost feels like a national geographic documentary. They're like New York City, City of Dreams or some of the wealthiest live, but it also has little neighborhoods and one of those little neighborhoods

is called Little Italy. And what do you believe It a filmmaker came from there named Martin Scorsese And now he's back on the block And it's like Scorsese Explaining what his childhood was To create a frame of reference for the movie

You know that like I hear you The marketing of this film was like This guy came from a place You can't even imagine These people that he grew up with You'd never seen them in movies before That was the vibe right?

Yeah It's just funny because like There's lots of neighborhoods in New York that were very, very, very Italian. And some of them were little. Well, only one of them gets to be a little Italy. It's rude. Yeah. I remember my parents saying Little Italy once, and I was like, what do you mean Little Italy?

And they're like, it's a neighbor that's kind of informally called Little Italy. And I was like, why? And they're like, because the Italians live there. It's somewhere where I was like, aren't they? You put it that way. It sounds patronizing. Absolutely. I was like, what do you get the force to live?

And they were like, no, but it's where the Italian restaurants are. I'm like, I've been to Italian restaurants in other parts of New York City. But this was a little neighborhood. You can talk a friend of the show who's on the show. You can jump in. Guest is the term we usually. Yes. Yeah.

Hey. Nice. Do you like Little Italy? I, I, do I like Little Italy? Yeah. I mean, sure. I mean, I would say the same when I lived here, when I lived in New York, I liked Little Italy except for the festival. The festival is tough.

is quite annoying and it's it's kind of the best part of this movie is it's sort of frustration at fucking san janao yeah we're talking about the san janeiro festival yeah um which takes over probably like three four blocks it's really just a couple blocks yeah it's mulberry and mot probably between like now and well little italy is quite small well little italy now is right is like a historically protected like two to three block thing because no italian not that many italians actually live there anymore it's all chinatown sure and then And also like Soho and, yeah. And some restaurant.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just those couple blocks where there's still the, you know, you want to pay a lot of money for red sauce, even though there's a million other places you can get red sauce. Yeah. It feels so touristy these days. But, I mean, it's still kind of fun. Sure. Get some mutts, you know.

Wait, I saw an interview before this with Bressezi and he was talking about, it was important for him to set it at the festival because it was about the malevolent nature of a cell. Oh, fuck yeah. See, he gets it. That's also a very New York thing where any time there's a celebration like that, you're like, this city can't handle this right now. This is getting in the way of too many things. We're not a town that can stop and shut down and be like, today is just about San Giro. Didn't you live in an apartment for like a month? This is a friend of the show, Ray Tintore. Yes. When I was going through a breakup, I was couch surfing. And our friend Ray was gracious enough. to let me stay in his apartment in Little Italy. And it felt like, oh, this is like a miracle.

What a nice place to stay. He's going to be out of town working. This is perfect. How I couldn't have a better setup. I realized why he had left town. Because the festival. The festival was quite loud. And it just felt like there was a floodlight directly outside of the window where the bed was.

Yes. Yeah. There was like a week or two of you coming into record. It's very frazzled. For sure. Yes. This is. Yes.

Blank check with Griffin and Dave. Thank you. I'm Griffin. You're welcome. What's your nickname? Come on. What's my nickname? Griff the Grip.

Oh, we're using my sportscaster nickname. No, he needs a new one. Yeah. Griffy, Griffey Parm. Yeah, sure. My name's Griffey Parm. That's actually really good. Yeah.

I'm here with my co-host, David Spaghetti. I feel like we can pass that out. That's actually a little offensive. David's bag David Gabagool I think David spaghetti is really sticky No I think it's I think it's David bags

Because he's got bags Oh that's actually pretty good What if it's David Bagso spaghetti No I'm not a big spaghetti guy It's not like it's like oh David He's always eating his spaghetti He's always slurping up spaghetti David what is the matter with you

It's not about what you like It's about honoring Little Italy Of course David Bags I love David bags. David's bags, I would say. It's a podcast about filmography, as directors who have massive success

early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want, and sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby. This is a mini-series on the films of Martin Scorsese, and of course it is called Podcast Fellas.

I think it's the best title we've ever come up with. Podcast Fellas. Podcast Fellas. One word, rolls off the tongue, trippingly. Do you think we should all just, the cover should just be us, you know?

Arms crossed. Arms crossed? Yes. It should be all of us back to back to back, arms crossed, but I want to be Ellen Burstyn

and Alice doesn't live here anymore. Cool. And I want to be the clockwork thing in Hugo. Yeah, the automaton. Yeah. That's what I want to be. Yeah.

And he's writing down the name David Spaghetti. That's what the, that's what the automaton's doing with its pen. All right. Well, if we're calling it out, then I want to be De Niro

and Casino with those big sunglasses. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. That'd be good. Maybe I want to be Sharon Stone in casino. Maybe we should just all be in casino. Maybe we should just be casino. Well, I like Peschi in the casino. When I was a kid

and the casino came out. And I was nine. Or, yeah, nine. 95, right? Yeah. And I was like, well, I know a casino has dice. And so I really appreciated that Joe Pesci was holding a pair of dice on the poster. Because I was like, what's this movie about? Dice? Like, they make dice?

They roll dice? If I'm paying $8, I better get dice. I don't want to just see cards. I don't remember my mom being like, it's really violent. And I'm like, why? Like, aren't they roll, like, playing board games? And they win or they lose? Aren't they playing?

Well, he's dice. He's literally holding a pair of fucking dice on the poster. How violent can Gatsy get. Exactly. We'll get to that in some months from now. But watching Casino in 4K is quite an experience because you can see that Joe Pesci's face is

literally being pulled back by strings. He looks crazy in that movie. That whole era of Pesci, he like wouldn't get a facelift. but would put like cables Yes Underneath a wig And all those movies now

Like my cousin Vinnie's the same way Were you watching? You're like what the fuck is going on with this face We were never supposed to see this this clearly Yeah Yeah beautiful Yeah Who's our guest?

We have to introduce our guests Or are we talking about the movie first We have to say that this is an episode on Mean Streets Mean Streets The Guarantor Yeah absolutely Yes A phenomenon I would maybe

recall the second first film? Sure. Your first real debut. Right. You make other movies, but this is your debut. Like Cameron with The Terminator or... Yeah, and like Chamon with Sixth Sense. Right.

Right. Where this is the first... Most people on the street, if you ask them, would say this is the first film. But it's also because this is the movie where everything clicks and the rest of the career is off to the races. We're talking about mean streets. Is Boxcar Bertha? It doesn't count.

I mean, of course it counts. But, like, you know, this is kind of also his debut. You know what I mean? I mean, I think Who's That Knocking is, like, very him. It is. That's kind of is the spanner and the wrench. Yeah, I mean, some of those, yeah, the, like, party scenes and stuff. You know, I would make an argument even more than being the debut of, like, Scorsese style.

It is. I mean, especially with the movement and the music, which we'll get into. but like I actually this is a more of a wild take. I'm excited to hear this. I think this is the debut of De Niro. Yes. Oh, yes. That's the big thing.

He made a lot of movies before. He's been in stuff, but not right. Not in any significant way. And I think it's almost accidental. Like, because like, you know, he was maybe going to play Charlie or like wanted to. And then the only thing left was playing this role. And it wasn't what he was going towards before. Before that, he was like, you know, in the De Palma movies.

Right. You know, he's just this guy. Yeah. Yeah. But he's also kind of like a cipher. He's always this like weird creepy. And then all of a sudden he comes and he's this like crazy Italian American. And that's who he is.

It's not what he becomes known for. This performance is kind of unique in his career. Undeniably is like what makes him stick. Yeah. Did he ever play like this kind of wild card? Because it's like the ontobiles. Or not Gatchables or whatever where he's over the top. That's different.

It's different. He's gone big before and he's played like charismatic before. But I do think the wild card thing is kind of unique. And it's like off of this, Coppola Kasim and Godfather Part 2, which is more what we think of. Yeah. It's the focus. Right. There's a scariness, but it's quiet.

What's he like? I've never seen the gang who couldn't shoot straight. Okay. I was hoping you were going to bring that up. Because I feel like I'm one of 30 people who have seen this. It's like a couple years before. Let's say our guest today is Miriam Bail. Maybe breaking the record for longest time in between appearances.

But incredibly excited we could get you on this because I feel like you have a lot of early Scorsese context takes. Sure. This is one of your. My guys. Yeah, right? Yeah. You're not supposed to say that here. No.

We say that here. We say that proudly here. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah, I love him. I mean, this was like, I could, I mean, I should just get into it. This was for, well, I said. saw Goodfellas, like, way too young, way too young. And, like, it kind of changed my life in a way.

But I saw Mean Streets when I was in, as I was studying film production. Okay. And this is such a, you're in film school. You love this movie. It has, like, lines and a bar and sheets, you know, just has all these, like, accessible things. It also kind of has the story of, like, this is kind of the patron saint movie of just, like, go out and just make the movie that only you can make. You know, the ethos of what this comes out of and how it does feel like the full emergence of a person.

Yeah. Yeah. But even more importantly, it's sort of, I mean, it's the personal film, like the, you know, the Cassavetti's personal film. And Cassavetes really encouraged him to make this movie because he had made Boxcar Bertha. And he was like, you're just been a year of your life. He shat all over it. Cassidy's so mean.

I know. He said that he gave him a big hug. He was always remembered. That story, it's so, it's, I've never forgotten it whenever I've heard. You know, because it does feel like something you would be really, you know, made him make mean streets, right? The Casabettys was like, you wasted a year-your life on this shit. The legendary story is the Cassavetes was a mentor of Scorsese's and he shows him boxcar Bertha, which is like the first movie he does for hire. And he goes, congratulations, you just wasted a year or your life making a piece of shit.

Damn. And then from here, basically kind of like grabs him by the little. And says, like, you need to make the movie that only you can make, the personal film, the film about you, the thing that comes from you. And Scorsese says, like, that I never would have, it would have been difficult for me to feel emboldened enough to prioritize mean streets, which we'll get into. He had spent like seven years kind of drafting and noodling on had Cassavetti's not said that to him. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. But it is, you know, do you think Scorsese is going to say, like, you know, come on. Vinegar's syndrome is going to put out really nice. nice edition of Boxcar Bertha. This will be interesting. Right. People will watch it and be like, oh, there's stuff here. It's not nothing.

Come on, John. Give me a break. I think John said there's stuff here. It's like the actors are good. Right. It's a piece of shit. It also feels like Cassavetti's like, that's what he was like as a director with actors.

Like, he was a very keen psychological manipulator of knowing what's the thing I need to say to a person to get what I need out of them. And I think the subtext of that story is he knew that. the way it would fire up Scorsese to actually make the move. Totally. Right. But Gagne shouldn't, who couldn't shoot straight? The 1971, James Cole said. Yeah. Oh, wait. I was going to say about this film. Can I finish? Finish. I'll go back. Oh, yeah, right. We were right. No, no, it's okay. I can go all the way. All the way back. All the way. So, yeah, I saw this in film school and I loved it. And I was in a sound

class, Dan Olmsted, the greatest sound mixer. So I wrote a paper on this. And I wrote a paper on and was really interested in, like, the music and, like, and how so much of the movement was cut to music. And I was, like, so into that. And unfortunately, or fortunately, no, I think unfortunately, it led me down a path of writing about movies. Sure. Terrible, terrible news. Yeah, and I kept going. And then also, I would say that this film is, like, a personal film, like we were saying about Casavetes, but it's also a genre film.

It's like, and the combination of that is why this is like, yeah, the films, like this is, this is the urtex for these kind of things. It's like, and that was the next step for me, as you guys might know, as I was here before, just listing off films from the 40s. Hell yeah. This is, this is, like, he was really inspired by these, like, you know, these especially Warner Brothers crime films of the 30s. And he loves the Cagney movies, right? Like Roaring 20s. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But what if you take the movie? the plot mechanics out of it? What if it's also a hangout movie? Yeah,

no. And then so for me, the next step for me for Scorsese is like he, I think he is as important as like a film scholar as he is a filmmaker. Like, I think like, and a film preservation is like, I think that that, so soon after this, I watched like the personal journey

through American film. The best. Yeah. And then it was just like my life has changed. Like I was, you know, and so that's my origin story. No, I mean, when I said it's the second first film. It's not that I, because I like, who's that knocking my door a lot, and I think Boxcar Berth is interesting, but it's more that thing of like, right, he makes kind of a traditional first film that is like a small personal focused thing. And then he makes an impersonal genre

exercise. And then this is the movie where he's like, I've figured out the entire thing. I have figured out how I can use genre to make my personal statements. Here's the style. Here's one of my key collaborators, you know, something in, it's fascinating to have this be the like, you know, Kytel De Niro two-hander movie. It's not like those two guys don't coexist in the same movie ever again, but it does feel like there's a bit of a baton pass here. He always says, like, the three actors I had this kind of, like, I'm all connection with in my career where Kytel De Niro and DiCaprio. They're the three guys where there's just been the unspoken language. And Kytel's, starts out as like his Antoine Donnell. It's like this is my representation on screen. This is the

prism through which I'm expressing my things. And then, you know, it's it's one of those moments where an actor enters a movie, where a character enters a movie and a star is born definitively, inarguably, in a moment. De Niro at the bar and Jumping Jack Flash like changes the course of American movies. You see Scorsese watch what's happening on screen and going like, there's shit I can do if I have this piece of technology here that I never even considered before. Well, I think his intro is also the mailbox. Yes. You see him.

And to me, that's the thing. That's like you see him. And it's like, I mean, let's just take a moment to appreciate how good looking. He is so hot in this movie. He is so hot. The haircut. Robert De Niro. It's incredible.

I was obsessed with it in high school. Like the bits. It's like a wasis. You know a waste. Obviously, no way. Entering the rock and roll Hall of Fame. Like, you know, on the sidebirds.

Yes. But it has the, like, the kind of, like, severe bang. It's so good. That's what I love about it is that it is the haircut of a guy who probably doesn't think that hard about the haircut he's getting, but he still looks like cute. A model.

Yeah, exactly. Kind of casual. It's great. But he's so, yeah, I would say Robert De Niro, he's sort of the mascot of many black women. We love him. Well, he obviously. Yes.

he's got a type that is, you know. Miriam, do you know the awakening story? No. I think I've told this anecdote like five times on the podcast because I do think it's one of the funniest things to ever happen. Okay. But, you know, Awakening's where he plays this guy with this medical condition who was like frozen in his body. Yeah. Basically fully paralyzed for like years and years and years.

And there was a scene they were shooting where Robin Williams and De Niro were in a cab or in the back of a car at least. and it was in the period before he has the awakening. So here's De Niro, this incredibly focused, famously sort of intense Methody actor, and he's fully, you know, frozen. And they're just driving around New York City. And this guy on the street corner is yelling stuff out. Oh, right, Mark! Hey, De Niro! And De Niro's just locked in, you know, unconcerned.

Robin Williams is, like, focused. And then the guy goes, Bobby, you still like that black person? Pussy. Did he break? Yes. That's amazing. Yes. And Robin Williams was like, it was the only time he ever broke.

And he kind of just looked at the guy and like nodded. Spags. He's the best. He's the king. I mean, I always shout out to his off-menu podcast appearance where they ask him. So what's your favorite appetize? He's like, no, I don't know. What do they want to give me?

And they're like, well, no, you have to pick. The premise of this show is your dream menu. And he's like, I'd ask the chef whatever's good. It's the best thing I've had been. And they're like, don't you own restaurants? And he's like, yeah, I just tell him to do whatever they want. Yeah. And they're like, okay, well, what about the food at your restaurant?

It's like, yeah, it's good. Yeah. You guys, this is what I mean. I'm not saying this was the birth of De Niro, like, his type. I'm saying this is the birth of him as a person. Do you remember? Yes, he has zero person. Yes, Miriam, so fascinating.

Do you remember the Who's Hotter De Niro-Puccino debate on Twitter? Do you remember that? I think I missed it. It was such a war. It was a few years ago. And it is just one of those things where it's like, I don't know, like, pick your day. You know, like, you know, like, aren't we who you prefer? They're such different guys.

They're both sexy. They're also both kind of odd. Like, they're both like these funny little guys, but they both can also kind of shock you with how, you know, beautiful they are. De Niro was more conventionally handsome. De Nore's a little more handsome. I think so. Yeah. I don't know.

I don't know. I think Pacino's more pretty. And Pacino's a little scary, you know? Oh, I prefer De Niro, but I think that Pacino's beautiful. Yeah, he's gorgeous. He's so beautiful. Yeah. I mean, I guess we're not going to talk about it.

Talk about what? We're not going to talk about Young Pacino? No, young Pacino in Scorsese's career. It's, you know, you got to wait for old Pacino. Ben and I just spent the weekend in Wisconsin with J.J. Burge, our researcher. That's right. And he was saying, I don't know if he made it made into the dossier because J.J. vets his information very thoroughly. but he asked me, he was like,

had you ever heard this anecdote that Scorsese wanted Pacino to play Johnny Boy? Uh-huh. And Pacino just straight up turned it down and then they don't work together, obviously, for like 40 years. I mean, like, Pacino had already been in the godfather. So, like, it would have been, like, right.

I mean, yes. Well, Pacino was supposed to be in the gang who couldn't shoot straight. And that's how... And then De Niro got it because he was making the godfather. But I hadn't heard that about for Mean Streets in Pacino, who was who he wanted to play, which doesn't make sense at all, John Voigt.

Yes. That's crazy. Yes. That's interesting. Right. But I think that was also a little bit of like, would that appease the studio? Yeah, exactly. And we can look at the dossier.

But like, wait, because you mentioned again, the gang who couldn't shoot today. I just want to add. What is denier, that's, Jerry Orbach is the star of that. Oh, my God. The great Jerry Orbach. This is the crazy thing. It was, like, it was written for Marcello Mastrioni. That sounds pretty good.

Yeah. And then he admitted towards when they were getting close to production that he couldn't speak English. Perfect. Pardon. It's the right time. So they replaced him with Cherry Orbach. We love. One to one.

Yeah. I mean, Cherry Orbach makes more sense as like a New York tough. He's not Italian, but he was, you know. Yes. He was close enough. Right. It would have been weirder to have Marcel Mastroni. Yeah.

Right. Okay. Well, and De Niro actually plays an Italian. He plays in Italian, like a kleptomaniac Italian. Mario Tronino. Yeah. So is he silly? Like, is he kind of in more of a racial mode. Right. So this is a weird thing is like, I've interviewed De Niro. And I think one of the things he really hate, I mean, you know, he barely says anything in an interview. But he, I think you can tell he's annoyed with this idea that he started comedy in the 2000s with analysis or with like Midnight Run or something. Because he was doing comedy. in the beginning. And like he was doing comedy with, um, with De Palma. And this is like a straight-up comedy. Is it good? No, it's not. It's very bad. Right. It's so bad. It's like very, it doesn't work. So they were thinking at first mean streets would be kind of like the gangster comedy. Like, and there was like, oh, like the gang who couldn't shoot straight. But then the gang who couldn't shoot straight was didn't work. Right. Like it was a failure. So at first they were like, oh yeah, Deere, De Niro will be in like shorts and shooting and, and, you know, When we see him, when he walks down that street, in the bar, he's, like, in his boxers.

So I think in the beginning he was, like, doing these kind of zany comedy roles. I mean, this is the thing. He's, like, we're talking about Little Italy, but, like, De Niro's from the village. Right. He's from, like, his artist parents. He went to the Little Red School. It's very different. He's like, he's like, it's like a couple blocks, but it's such a difference.

And I like. He talks about it. I didn't know those guys as well. Like, in the, in the, the, you know, the, in the, the, you know. He had proximity. He understood it. He saw these things. And he's Irish Italian. Right. He's let he's not full Italian. Right. He's Irish. His mom is Irish. His father is Irish Italian. His mother is like a sort of Dutch English. Oh yeah. Like who knows. And his dad was like a lapsed Catholic. So there was no real like religion in the same way. Like it's not like it's not the Marty thing of like, I mean, Marty is just like a child's cartoon of a little Italian American boy. Yeah. With you know, with this, with his, with his, with, you know, with his, with. It's not like, it's not. It's not. He's not. I mean, Marty thing of like, like, I mean, Marty is just like, you know, with his. He's. He's. He's. He's. He. He. He. his vaguely mobbed up dad and his mom just like constantly stirring a big pot of sauce. And him looking at a window with asthma. Right.

And then living in a tiny apartment with a bunch of people. Right. And like, you know, like everyone in the neighborhood knows each other and they play stickball and shit. But there's something to De Niro's priests. De Niro having like the same reference points without the same lived experiences in a way. Yeah. That I do think gives him this sort of like this expressive. elasticity and what he can put on screen that's different than Scorsese's very personal experience.

Yeah. Well, I think that they're both kind of outsiders because of the whole asthma thing. So they're both kind of like know the thing, but I don't see either of these guys getting in big stakes, big fights. You know, I think they're there. Yes, they're observers. They're like, they're insider outside. So that's like where they overlap. It's a thing Scorsese said that while I'm making the movie about my experiences and being this age and growing up with these people and all of them. And then he said, I think, years later when he rewatched the movie, he's like, this is actually about, like, my dad and my uncle.

Well, Charlie, that's his dad. Right. He's like, this isn't my lived experience. I said it in the present day. I gave it the milieu of the songs I grew up on and the outfits and the language. But actually, in terms of the characters. Right. He didn't have this crisis of, like, am I too close to this criminal life and all that?

Right. Like, in the same way. Right. He was like, am I going to be a priest or a director? He wasn't. He was too little to get in trouble. But it is this thing that is a little lost of time. I think you're right, Miram, which is like those early De Palma movies, because what DeNiro and De Palma go on to do separately are so different and loom so large, people forget that those early movies are like closer to like Matt Johnson films, that they're like weird sort of exercises.

They're almost like multimedia projects. And they're really kind of using De Niro as like, if not a purely comedic figure. It's like this is a guy who's just like boundless energy pushing boundaries. I said bound fucking twice. And then and then, you know, like Mean Streets is harnessing that into a dramatic context. And then Godfather Part 2 like just sets the mold for how he's seen forever. A little bit. I feel like he was like a phenom.

there was obviously Panic and Needle Park happened pretty early. And even when people were like, are audiences ready for this guy as a leading man? There was a type he had established in the way he could sort of hold the center and the focus and this nervy sort of unconventional protagonist that was very different than what De Niro was doing up until this point. You know, I have a question. What do you think his like natural accent is? Because I don't think.

It's a really good question. I don't think he has one. I mean, I think it's, I think he has a voice. And I think, like, you hear it in those, you know, he talks like this. And he has, like, he's kind of gravelly and you hear it in the things. And it's like, great. But I think that he obviously, you know, from his Italian-American family, he heard some of this in his neighborhood. But I think it's kind of, I think it's kind of a role.

I think he's sort of like, you know, what you hear about Peter Sellers, like, just kind of a blank. Right. And then, like, he would just reflect something, you know, but he was, right. if there was no real guy that you could find. It's interesting. I mean, he is famously one of the worst interviewers. Interview subjects alive, right? Essentially always, although once in a while you'll see like someone he knows,

essentially get a little more out of him. Yeah. I mean, and don't ask him about our president Donald Trump, who I support. But De Niro's... What does he do? He applauds him. He has a couple nitpicks about it. My favorite thing about De Niro is just...

It's so crazy. To be clear, I don't support Donald Trump. But, like, you know, just... just like when you're like, he's such an amazing actor, he's got such a long legacy. He's like, I watch MSNBC all day. I think Trump sucks. You know, like, they're just so like regular boomer dad about politics. And also every time he gets up and is like, I'm presenting the breakout artist award to Harris Dickinson.

Fuck Donald Trump. He does it with an energy as like, maybe this takes him down. Yeah, right. You're like, you know, I think it might be time to say it. Trump no good. Yeah. He's so crazy about it. But then maybe he's the only one who's not crazy about it. That's right.

I think Bobby's right. Yeah. It absolutely is. I was going to say that I have heard people who have worked with De Niro in interviews been like he's very protective of his process. That unlike Peter Sellers where there was this kind of like there is no me. I am just weirdly like a conduit for these things. I can't talk about this shit. That De Niro there like is a very specific process but it's entirely internalized and that part of it for him is that he feel. like it needs to be private.

Yeah. So that even the people who are right up next to him are like, there's something going on. It's not just that he's like a savant. It's not just that he's like a cipher. There's intentionality and there's like work and there's effort. But he really doesn't want to talk about what he's pulling from. I wouldn't be able to go out to him and be like,

would I be able to talk to him about the mats or something? Like, would I've never like... That's my feeling. Like, can I get him just chatting? I think just from like the brief time that I tried to interview him, he's communicating, but it's not in words. It's all in body language, which is really hard to transcribe. Yeah.

But he's communicating really well. I just think he's sort of somewhat nonverbal. And so you got this kind of like nonverbal guy who meets motor mouth Marty. That's also what's so interesting about him being a motor mouth in this. I was struggling to think of another performance where he is this verbal. I mean, like, I think of, I don't know. Where he's nonstop, you know? Where is he non-same?

Because there's, like, stuff in his later career, like, Silver Linings Playbook, where he has, like, big kind of, like, yelly speeches and stuff. That's the, that's the De Niro explosion. It's not... What about the comedian? I haven't seen his set yet. Have you seen Taylor Hackford's the comedian? No, I missed it.

I heard... He does a lot of stand-up commenting it. And my memory, it's De Niro-esque. But he's still doing, you know... But I was going to say, isn't that... like a movie where people go, it feels unnatural to watch you do this. I mean, my brain is erased it. Clearly is a trauma response.

So, yes. That movie's co-written by Jeff Ross. Good. Does he talk a lot in Dirty Grandpa? Let me, uh, C-R-S. That's what I imagine Dirty Grandpa is saying. Yeah. You know, I have seen it.

There's the part of Dirty Grandpa where he raps, right, doing karaoke. Yeah. And he asks the audience if he can say the N-word and they say that he can and then he does, right? I've seen that clip. Well, I've just seen that clip because people will post it. Because the whole thing with De Niro is like he made 200 movies. Yeah. 140 of them are bad.

Right. And so you can find these clips where it's like, do you know that De Niro did this? Right. You know, it's like, people post Al Pacino doing Dunkinio. I was going to say. Give it a break. De Niro has endless that. The stuff that De Niro has done on screen is wild.

But I think you're right that when he does something that feels outside of these sort of basic cultural understanding of the De Niro archetype, it basically just gets memory washed. People just don't keep that shit in their hair. It doesn't matter. He's still bulletproof. Right. He could make shit for another 100 years, and maybe he will. But even when he does it well,

like even when he stretches outside of his sort of obvious movie star persona successfully, I feel like within five years, people are still just reducing him to the 10 big performance. You've seen Alton Nights. I have. So he's two characters in that. Are either of them big?

You know what? Yes. Like one of them's big? I actually think he's very good. Frank Costello is probably the bigger one or like which of the two guys? One of them he is clearly playing Peschi. One of them he's playing like more the elderly De Niro archetype. And one of them feels like him doing trying.

It looks so fun to be the Joe Pesci guy in a movie. Because I guess that's the other part of it is Pesci starts to be the Johnny Boy standing next to De Niro. as the strong silent type, right, as the person who's struggling to communicate with words. That's true, actually. Well, so I think, like, I think there's some conflicting stuff in, as far as biographies I've said, I've read. But I think that they started shooting with Harvey Kytel. So basically, like, it was October. The festival was coming.

They didn't have all the funding. They didn't have everything together. So they're like, if we don't shoot now, we have to wait till next year in October to do it. So they shot some stuff with Harvey Kytel. And I'm not just, this is where I'm not sure, but I think he met, like De Niro, met Scorsese or officially really met at some, or at some party at Christmas after that October. And so then he was like, oh, you can play anything, but you can't play Charlie because it's already this. And he was annoyed.

Yes, he wanted to play Charlie. He wanted to play Charlie. But then he ran into Harvey Kytel on the street. And they were just like, they started. laughing. They were just like, okay, you're an actor too. This is going to be fine. But I think, yeah, so he played the Joe Pesci. He played the crazy guy. Right.

Right. And that's just something he doesn't get to do much. Altonites, he does play the old man version of it. You're right that one of the two characters. As Mean Streets, right? No, it's better than Mean Streets. Marty could never. Do you think Marty saw Altanine? Do you think Marty

sees everything De Niro makes? Definitely not. Like, DeNor's like, I made a movie with Sebastian Menacell. You got to watch it. And He's like, okay. Life is short. I think he watches most of it. Because he watches a lot of movies. Yeah.

But it does feel like he's very invested in Bob's career. You know? Like, it does feel like there's a sense of like, I want to keep up with what Bob's doing. I think De Niro hasn't seen all the movies. De Niro's done. I'm sure he has. Yeah. Wait, you guys keep saying that there aren't a lot of like wild card roles for De Niro.

Yeah. What about Cape Fear and TaxiDriver? But those are all, like, scary guys, right? Right. And it's like, Cape Fear, he is so, so big. That's so true. But, like, by Wild Card, I mean the kind of jokey, like, character in a group of guys where there's the Wild Guard who's kind of like he might put a fucking firecracker in a mailbox, right?

And the guy who's the motor. Yeah, who's just like, ah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like so often, yes, there's stuff like Cape Fear. But, like, in, like, Brazil, he's so funny. weird. Yes. But that movie is not a reality-based movie. Those also feel like when he's doing kind of character actory stuff. Even Cape Fear where he's like a lead, but he's

obviously not the protagonist of the story. But like in the 80, in the 70s it's the Godfather 2 stuff. So it's like 1900 and last it. Right. Like all that. In the 80s it's the raging bull stuff. So I feel like it's like... Transformation. That's true. But also just like, you know, more like intense, scary characters. Wait, I want to sort him by pornography here because actually this is

there's so much to talk about. Yeah. I know we haven't even started. I know, God. I mean, this is all about it. We're talking about De Niro. No, because I think you are right, Mary-R-A-old.

I guess it really didn't make a lot of movies in the air. But like once a time, upon a time in America, it's like that the mission is like the angel heart, these like stoic characters. And then like in the 90s, I've never seen Jackknife. Have you ever seen Jackknife? I've never seen Jack Knife.

That is a classic, I would pull that off the shelf at Blockbuster or at the video store all the time being like, what is this movie? Yeah. Vietnam Bat movie. And the poster is just a painting of De Niro with a beard and a Boston Red Sox hat. He does have a Red Sox hat. But, you know, the 90s of like Goodfellas, let's put Cape Pier aside. But like Goodfellas, Bronx Tale, you know, casino heat, sleepers, like these movies, Ronan, where he's just like the impassive guy. Yeah.

And he also did, dude, like, Jackie Brown and this boy. his life in Frankenstein. He did a lot of weird shit, too. He's the best. Jackie Brown, but Jackie Brown, the whole thing is how with Ron. I know. He's hysterical. And then he breaks. Oh, yeah, that's another kind of wild card. But, I mean, it's a silent until he breaks. Sex scene in that movie makes me laugh so hard. Oh, please. Thank you. It was in, you read my mind. This is his sexiest era.

He and Jackie Brown. For me, I think this is, I mean, I've thought this. The 90s era is for you. Before I was middle age. What about, what about, um, Midnight Run? I always will go back where I think. He's so hot in me. He's so hot. Midnight Run is one of his best performances, but I wouldn't say his hottest. I feel like there's something about that a little bit later. Yeah, just that 90s, like that, that, there's, uh, yeah. You like sad mustache De Niro. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that it's just, I mean, I just think it's objectively his hottest. I mean, some might say this is mean streets. I don't know. Yeah. I guess Wag the Dog is almost him doing something similar.

He's fucking great in Wag the Dog. To this. Yeah. Right. I love that performance. Like it's... He rocks. You know what? De Niro's not so bad. We think De Niro's a good actor. Yeah. That's our official stance on blank check.

I think what is mirror is what you're saying, that like, Coppola was mentor to all these guys, right? He watches mean streets and is like, fuck, that's my young Corleone. And that's not an obvious move. It was kind of genius to see him and go, like, if this guy stops talking, but that energy is still there, it's going to be really captivating to watch. And that's a performance where he doesn't. talk that much and all the talking he does is in Italian and he wins an Oscar basically for physical

presence and for how much he's able to communicate just in his body silently. Yeah, before the gang who couldn't shoot straight he went to Sicily. So to learn Italian. To like to practice Italian but the character is from Calabria so I think like was he

was he gaming for this? Like was he I don't know. Yeah. I think they're going to do a prequel. I'm going to be Brando. David? Yes. I got myself into a real pickle. Uh-oh.

I thought it'd be funny to put on some Groucho Marx glasses. Uh-huh. Very, very funny. Very funny. Classic. I've been stuck wearing them for five years because it's such a hassle to replace your glasses that once I made that commitment. Now I'm walking around with the big schnaz, the eyebrows, the mustache, all times. I know what you're saying?

Glasses cost hundreds of dollars. You know, you just kind of live with whatever you've got. Wait a second. What about Zeni Optico? What? David, I forgot about Zeni. Zendney Optical is an online eyewear shop with stylish prescription glasses, sunglasses, and customizable lens options at prices that make it easy.

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At that price, you're going to stop asking, do I really need new glasses? Why wouldn't I just, you know, stick with it? this. No, you can get a few pairs. A work pair, fun pair, pair that only goes with one outfit. You don't have to justify it. Upgrade today with Zeni. Go to Zeni.com slash podcast and use code podcast 15 for 15% off your first order plus free shipping on all U.S. orders over $65. The style sell out, so don't sit on it. That's zE and n.com slash podcast promo code, Podcast 15. All right, I'm going to open the dossier actually just so we can stay on track a little bit. So mean streets originally called, Miriam, do you know?

Season of the Witch. She's fascinating. You know, and they, Marty correctly was like, Cage is going to want that. I assume Nicholas Coppola was, what, like five years old? Yes, yes.

He was like, we'll save that for Nick Cage. Yes. Is it a reference to the Donovan song? I think it's reference to the song and to the festival, right? And all that, you know, it's like the kind of like, you know,

you're playing with the devil. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the way the club is like all red and it's like the underworld or, you know, like Mean Streets is better. Mean Streets is a great title. I don't think Mean Streets. streets can really be beat as a title.

This is his long gestating passion project. He works on it with his college classmate, Martin. Sorry, I just want to... He's interrupting me. No, no, I wanted to be correct about this. The movie they're watching with Vincent Price. Yes. Is that the Witchfinder General?

I mean, that's a classic Vincent Price movie, but... Yeah, okay. No, it's... I don't think it would be. It looks like a dumber Vincent Price movie. It's a Roger Corman movie. Right.

Okay. It's, um, which is a... Witch Finder General is the Vincent Price movie that's, like, really intense. Yes. And, like, his performance in it is so magnificent. It's not trashy. Right.

But there is the season of the witch movie. Well, that is a Romero movie that has two titles. No, it's not... Okay, okay. It's not a reference to anything. Okay. So, uh, Mardick Martin.

So Marnik Martin worked on what? On, who's that knocking at my door? On New York, New York. on raging, you know, like the early Scorsese collaborator. Am I saying it right? This is our first episode. Martin Scorsese?

How do I say it? Scorsese. Scorsese. Mirren, I feel like you... I feel like it's Scorsese. I feel like I've heard him say Scorsese. And like... He's one of those guys who's kind of, it's fine.

You know, it's funny? I saw an old comedian talking about, like, on the David Letterman show, and he was like, Coppola. And he was like, Coppola? He doesn't know how to pronounce his name. This was in like the early age. And he's actually right.

It's the classic thing of the Americans don't know how to pronounce there. I mean, his name is a transcription error. Yeah. The family was Scossazi or what is because with double zes in Sicily, which means Scottish or something, like, you know, in Italian. And it was changed when they, you know, moved. Yeah. Because someone wrote it down wrong or whatever. So it's, you know.

I feel like the effort to correct the last 15 years has been. towards Scorsese versus Scorsese. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Everyone used to say Scorsese and that's wrong. Yeah.

I think. Yeah. Then? I've just been saying that the whole time. Yeah. You're wrong. All right. I think.

Scorsese. Okay. Do you feel okay? How do you, do you feel familiar enough to say Marty? Right. Can we just call, can we give ourselves permission to call him Marty? Of course. You've worked with him.

I have. I have been in his office and screening room. Sure. It wasn't there. Yeah. but I watched Killers of the Flower Moon in his office. I'm sure I'll bring up a million more times. I was going to say that's where you saw the Super Mario Galaxy movie.

So, Marduk and him sat down. They work out the structure of this movie. They work out the characters. They work out the incidents. I guess who's that knocking at my door. This was originally meant to be a continuation. A continuation of that. Anton D'Onielle style.

I'm following this guy, Charlie, will be my analog across stages in life. And when this movie came out, he said, he was going to make a third film of him settling down and having a family that was... Fucking bed and board or whatever, like the third... But also, like, Italian-American. Like, I want to represent my family life

that I've put into this documentary through this fictional character. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I think it was written, but never made. Yeah, it's kind of boring. It's kind of a fun way. I don't think I read it, but...

So he started this Mean Street season in The Witch in, like... Did you say the date? Like mid-60s, right? It's, like, 65 is where he puts it, basically. maybe 66, like, and obviously it's inspired by his life a little bit, but as you guys already said, like, he wasn't in a gang. They didn't really get in fights.

They hung out in bars and picked up girls or whatever, but, like, they didn't even smoke pot, he said, like, really, like, you know, we were not like... He's got asthma for God's today. He's got asthma. He didn't really do the hard stuff. No. Years later, Mars Percese would, yes, identify his nose and the possibilities. Ah, my lungs aren't connected.

Well, they are. but I mean it's a less direct route yeah Marty has been working to be clear was working on Mean Streets for a long time before like the godfather was ever thought of

because when this movie comes out I think it draws comparisons to the godfather because like press is probably a little like Italian American gangster you know that's an epic film obviously this is the opposite the priest who has the young man

test his hand against the flame of a candle that comes from like a retreat he went on with, you know, other boys, you know, so that's a memory that's real. As you said, Miriam, right? One of you two said, like, it's really his father, he realized. Yeah, is the story. Right. Film screenplay initially was much harder on the religious aspects to make a story of a modern saint

in his own society, but the society happens to be gangsters. But also more reflective of our friend Marty's personal experience, which was like, do I go into the parish or do I make movies? You know, they'll be really being pulled between the two as equal forces rather than in this where it just feels like it's kind of a thing hanging over his head, but not the active tug. Yeah, so I think like some of the difference, so I think some of the religious stuff changed and then also he developed the Teresa character a little more. And then I think a big influence on developing the screenplay was, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um,

Sandy Weintrape was his girlfriend at the time. Right. And her dad was a studio exec. And she's in the film. I think playing Heather Weintrapp. So she said, you've got to put some more of your funny stories in there. You know, like I think he had his thing. He's like, put in the MOOC story, put in the firecrackers story, put in this kind of stuff.

So I think, yeah, what do you guys think? I mean, maybe we're not ready for that, but what do you think of the women in this film? Look, it is. And he talks about it. It's why he went straight to Alice doesn't live here anymore after this. Because even from this film, people were saying, this guy doesn't really know

to put women on screen. Like this early on, he felt the need to combat that. Yeah. It definitely feels like it's interesting. I think Amy Robbins is really fucking good in this movie. Yeah. I also think it's interesting that in the way we're talking about

this being positioned as an autobiographical film, but him acknowledging I didn't actually really live you know, walk the walk and talk the talk of these characters. I watched these guys that her and her epilepsy does feel...

Oh, okay, she's Amy Robinson's Teresa. Yes. Yes. Who is De Niro's cousin. Right, right. And Charlie's love interest. Right. Yeah, and she was friends with, I think she worked with DePama, so she knew, like, Margot Yeah, she worked on sisters and stuff. Yeah. But her

epilepsy feels a little bit like an analog for Scurcese's asthma to me. Maybe, yeah. This feeling of here is someone in and of this community who's looking to get just a little bit out. And one is treated a little, like it's not a community that I've always had to empathetically deal with someone who has a condition. But like you can't be tough. You can't be in this action because you're too delicate and everyone being right. Yeah. read the women.

I also just think it's like, it is fairly reflective of what I imagine these men, like how they perceived women. Maybe. I mean, it's not like, who's that knocking straight up sexist? Just garbage. Like someone named girl,

like just real bad. I would say, I mean, I think Marty is pretty down on who's that knocking. Yeah. Like, he's like, it's kind of sucks. Like, I mean, in a nice way, but he's sort of like, it's kind of a mess.

I agree. Who's that knocking is so juvenile. Like, not in like a, the humor way or anything. It's just like, it's just all these, it's an undeveloped idea bouncing around in his head.

But yeah, I mean, like, you know, look, Anna Pacquin will be silently sitting for every episode. I already made that clear, right? Yes, yes. Of course, she's sitting right there, Anna Pacquint. She won't speak at any point in these. She's a guest on every episode.

And we don't want to hear you complaining about how rarely we ask her questions. Right. So, okay. Scorsese. That's what's interesting to me, though, is I think he relates a lot to the Teresa character, but he's obviously not building the movie around her

and she's kind of treated almost like a secret in the film. Totally. Yeah, he's ashamed of her. Right. Or ashamed of the relationship. But the movie hides her in a way that's similar to the way that Charlie treats her. Yes.

Which is a thing you get into with Scorsese. It is the same with the Inopaquin thing. Literally will be a running discussion for like decades of his career of if he is sidelining women, when is that an oversight or failing of his? and when is it a very pointed statement? Yeah. I think like, yeah, it's something, like, people will say that about, like, PTA.

And I don't agree with it there. But with Scorsese, it's hard, you know, it's not his strength. I mean, he's gotten into it. Like, he's obviously, like, more recently, Killers of a Flower Moon, interesting. He's grown into it. He's grown. He's, like, done that. But, like, for this film, it kind of feels like, oh, you,

make a movie, you got to have a woman. Like, you know, like, it's kind of like, you make a dish, put a little salt in it. She's a conflict. She's a story element, not really a character. I think, by the way, that's why he says yes to Alice. It's not an I'll prove them thing. It's a, I should work on this, right? Like, if I want to be an actor's director, let me figure out different rhythms of actors, not just working with, like, actors of a different gender, but also just like, here's a different milieu, here's a different, like, cultural type. Uh, I need to have that range. At this point, he's making films where the women represent what women were when he was growing up, which was these men are obsessed and driven by sex, but also kind of need to compartmentalize it. Yeah, I don't know.

It's not as interested as the romance, if you will. But I want to talk about the other woman who was probably what first drew me to this film. in that there's that opening scene where, or it's very early on, where Charlie Kytel is like watching the woman who's a stripper, Jeannie Bell, playing Diane, I think, and, yeah, Diane. And it's so beautiful, and you've got these, like, really beautiful close-ups that are kind of abstracted. And I love this woman. She's so beautiful. I looked her up. She is a fitness influencer.

Currently? Yes. On Instagram, she was the world's oldest competitive jump rope skipper. Wow. Yeah. She was a play at the time, she was a playboy model. I mean, she's just gorgeous. And she goes by Annie Judas now. You can find her on Instagram. But yeah, I think I love her. I love her presence in this. But, you know, so there's that scene where he's like, well, she's really good looking. Yeah. She's black. She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Right. But he's like, but she's black. Right. Like, obviously, it doesn't make you do. difference. And that's, that's Grisesi's. I'm pretty sure that's his, because you know, they,

they alternate. He's interchangeably cutting between Kytel doing a voiceover and him doing voiceover. Yeah, this really personal thing. He's saying that. So I'm going to say, this is my other wild take is like, this is a film about race. Like, you know, like, there's that with like, then he, he stands her up. What is it, Mulingian? Do you know, is that it? Moolingian. It's a slur. Yeah, it's a slur. And then he's like, and then there's someone who's kissing an N-word. Lillignon means eggplant. Like, that's the, right, right. You know, it's from the Sicilian.

I mean, it's a nasty thing. It's a nasty thing to say. I know. So maybe I should have said the M word. I don't know. But, like, I feel like that's part of the religious thing. The changing of this Italian-American family. You know, just talking about Francis of Assisi, but like, what is his real sense of empathy?

Because there's these, like, dueling ethnic groups. I think that's a key theme in this. I think it's also going back to the Little Italy talk. What confounded me about? little Italy as a child, but what I didn't understand is like, this is this idea of almost fighting against the melting pot of not just America, but New York specifically, where that's the great promise. But then also it's like, but these five blocks, it's just us. Yeah. It's just us. And we're going to maintain tradition and evolve tradition to figure out what the Italian-American

experiences versus the Italian experience, but also Italian gets first billing over America. And so there's that feeling of like, we got to keep everyone at a distance because we can't lose what we are. And even if it's not driven by like racial animosity, I think there's that protectiveness. Yeah. Where even just to make a gangster film, a crime film in the 70s and not keeping those things on the sidelines in the same way that you're keeping the women's at the sidelines is like what this movie is really about, which is sort of like a masculinity crisis of its time. Yeah. I mean, masculinity crisis, but it's so much of identity. So I say it's about race, but really what I mean is it's about racism. It's a really interesting thing about this movie is that he goes and tries to pitch it to Corman, to finance. And Corman's like, yeah, I love that. Can you make it a black exploitation movie? Oh, yeah. Can you take the same script and like cast it with black actors? Because that is in vogue right now. That there had been enough successful black exploitation for.

films that he was like, that's sellable. The Italian-American version of this movie doesn't really have a precedent, especially before Godfather came out. But even post-Godfather, it's like, well, that's Tony. That's sort of the class of the old mafioso kind of thing. You know, he says, like, I said I'd consider it because you always have to say you'd consider anything. But I don't know that I really would have known how to make that movie. And it goes against the exercise of what's trying to. driving to make this in the first place, which is what we're saying, like, what's the most personal thing I can make? What's the thing I understand the most? And the blind spots of this movie are, I think, a self-conscious awareness of what he doesn't understand if that makes

sense. Yeah. You know, like he was, one of his teachers at NYU or maybe it was just called Washington Square University or something. But, like, had said, you know, make what you know. He said there was no one else like him in his classes. Like, there's no one. someone else that was from this like, you know, lower middle class. I know. And like, again, a few blocks away. Right. Yes.

Yes. It was a whole different world. Yeah. And NYU was not what we think of it as, you know, now at all. No, he also said, like, he'd be going and, like, studying, like, English literature and then meeting his childhood friends at clubs that are, like, the clubs you see in this movie. Right. Like, there were two completely disconnected worlds, even though they were five blocks away from each other.

Yeah. He said, like De Niro says when he brings the winthrop girls, he's like, they're from the village. Right. You know, like this other world. Yeah. So he brings Mean Streets to AFI. They are just starting their feature program. And he says the outline he'd written was ridiculous.

There was no female character basically at all. It had no characters. It had basic elements. Gets turned down there. He takes it to Joe Brenner, who's a sex film distributor, who's the guy who distributed, who's that knocking. And he said, no, probably because it's just not. you know, sexy enough. One of the old professors at NYU told him,

hey, no one wants to see films about Italian-Americans anyway, so forget about it. So that's, I can assume not the guy who's encouraging him. Yeah, it's like he's shopping around a genre film that doesn't conform into any of the sellable areas of genre at this point in time. Totally. I mean, he invents a kind of movie here. He does.

He does. Right. So instead, he works obviously on Woodstock, editing Woodstock, which is, you know, a formative, Scorsese thing. and he enters Roger Corman's orbit. We talked about all that last week, I'm sure. So, Boxcarwertha.

Jay Cox, who's working at the New York Times, Cox spelled like the cool way. Multiple penises. Right. He's the one who shows John Casabettys, who's that knocking in my door? And Casabetti's response to it and says, like, what's the film you're dying to make?

And he's like, I have this thing, but it needs a rewrite. And Casabetti says, well, rewrite it then. Right. You know, like, what are you? waiting for. Cox obviously is a guy who works with Scorsese a bunch, you know, over years. But that's also very indicative about

why Scorsese or why Cassavetti said the like you wasted a year of your life, but making a piece of shit because he knows the thing he wants to make. Right, totally. So, Sandy Weintraub, obviously, he's dating at the time. She's the one who says, right, put in the funny stuff,

take out the religious stuff. So he puts in the pool hall. He puts in the mooks scene of the firecrackers and all that stuff. It ends up in Corman's hands. Corman is basically like, I've just made the cool breeze, which is like, it was sort of like a black exploitation asphalt jungle. And so he's the one who's like, yeah, could we make this a black exploitation movie essentially, like, in all black cast? And Scorsese's like, I don't think so. He still, Corman does still eventually agree to distribute the film, but then Warner Brothers ends up distributing it.

So I guess, like, Corman backs out when it becomes more of a real thing. And Scorses is a whole... But there's a tribute to Corman in there. A lot of Corman crew. I mean, this is one of those movies where when you get into it, it's like the money appeared and then disappeared like six times. It kept coming together and falling apart, but it would happen in quick enough rotations that the movie never fully collapsed. Jay Cox was married to Verna Bloom, who I remember best as being Dean Wormser's wife in Animal House. Sure.

My version of the way you're describing Goodfellas, Miriam, a movie I watched way too many times before I was 10 because my father basically. treated it as the Bible. Yeah. But she was the one who I think helped locate the money that freed him from being dependent on Corman. It costs about $150,000, I think. Jonathan Tapplin is also very important, who is the touring manager for the band.

That's who I believe, Werner Bloom connected with. Yeah. Right. She saw that he was talking to Corman and that he was, that he felt like I can see Marty in a month, starting to bend on his principles in order to get the money he needs and it's going to dilute the movie

he actually wants to make. So she goes and finds... 300 grand. She finds the money in a way that wouldn't make him have to constantly justify his decisions. You'll make it in Cleveland.

Yeah. Then the money falls through and then... Right. And then they end up with $175,000 and they get some other stuff from like CFI Labs. I don't know.

You know, they scrape money together. they, obviously, he had written Charlie for Harvey Kytel because it was essentially going to be a sequel to who's that knocking, like you guys said. And then he decides to separate it, which is smart. Right. At one point, John Void is involved, but then they shoot the festival stuff

before they even start doing pre-production, and at that point, Harvey is basically locked in. John had already done Midnight Cowboy, and apparently Void says, says he, like, I'm too famous. Like, you need unknowns. Like, you need, like, this needs to feel real or whatever. There's the other thing, which is we were talking about it when you came in, David, and I was watching.

There's a Q&A discussion between... We were watching Linklater interview. Linklater and Scorsese, Rick and Morty. And it was a series called Game Changers that the DGA was curating of movies that changed the industry. And Linklater was like, this is the definitive game changer for, like, filmmakers taking their careers into their own hands and self-realizing. what they want to do. But he was talking to him about how much of this movie was shot in L.A., which is the craziest fucking thing,

that, like, more than 90% of this film was shot in Los Angeles. Right. And the New York exterior stuff they did, especially San Giro, is so impactful. And then Scorsese finds the right locations in L.A. without building sets that he can sort of double, that you don't question it when you're watching it. And Linklater's asking him, were you concerned it all about, like, the concession of needing to move to L.A.,

and if you were going to lose some of the authenticity and the character. And Scorsese was like, well, I wasn't concerned because we just didn't have money. Right. It's like, you need to make the movie. There was, like, no principal stance that could be taken. Right. But the other thing he said was he kept saying, but I got the guys. So that's the whole thing.

Those guys, it's not an act. They're New York guys. David Proval, they find him at this John Voight workshop as with Richard Romanos, but they're both Brooklyn. They're New York. These guys have a shared language. It's from New York. If I put them in the same room, even if that room's in L.A. instead of New York, they're going to talk like they're in New York. That's what the audience will connect to.

They shot, they did 10 days of rehearsals in New York. They shot all the interiors in Los Angeles, a fair amount of the exteriors, including the big crash at the end, too. Then they did some hallways and the beach in New York. And the weirdest, we were talking about this before we recorded. When De Niro is shooting the gun on the roof, the roof is New York, because you can see the Empress Dib Building. But the window is Los Angeles. Yes. And so, like, there's no establishing shots, right?

There's no, like, they didn't have time for that. They shot the whole movie in about 27 days. This movie has so much accidental language like that, where there's something that you don't even clock the first time about the fact that it's not giving you those establishing shots, that you're just in the places without a feeling of being eased into them. That is just a result of them not having the time to shoot establishing shots in New York, but it becomes its own language. And then the handheld stuff is just like, we didn't have time for fucking tracking shots. Yeah. We didn't have money for the equipment to do anything more complicated. And you need longer shots.

You need scenes playing out longer takes. And you need the camera being able to just move really quickly from one focus to the other because that's the only way we're getting our pages done. And the DP on this movie, remind me his name. So the DP on this movie's name is Kent L. Wakeford, who's his first movie. He was like a commercial director. In documentaries and stuff. I think like with the handheld Altman famously saw it at, or I don't know how famously,

but saw it at New York Film Festival and said that if he, he would have done tracking shots instead of the handheld. And Scurces, he was just like, well, if we had, we'd still be shooting it out. Right, right. The other thing Wakefield said was like there wasn't, Wakeford. Wakeford, that there was no intentional strategy, but then even when they started watching dailies, it was like, oh, this feels anxious. Yeah. This is a camera language that we've landed on just out of necessity, but it actually is reflecting the energy we want. So then they lean into it.

And everything is like that where it's like, we're doing it this way because we don't have any other options. And then they look at it and they're like, this is a miracle. This actually is better than we could have planned. I don't know how he feels better now. But I think immediately afterwards he kind of thought versus he thought it was like a little sloppy, you know? Right. But like it's what I love about it is how like handmade it is. And for me, this is going to be my wildest take of all.

But to me, I prefer this to the godfather. To me, they're very similarly about like... There's such different movies. Yeah. This is the termite godfather. You know? This is like... Right.

The godfather's like the porterhouse and this is a burger or whatever. You know, like, I mean, they're so different. Like, I love them together. I've never loved the godfather while also never denying its power. Like, I have no complaints about it, but it's just not... It's not a... It's not a movie. No, it's fine.

Slash movies. Yeah, yeah, it's not your way. That was a big movie for Teen David. I cannot. Yeah. I love the Godfather. Godfather is great. But I love this.

This is way more my vibe. It's also like that roughness you're talking about is like what people are still chasing today. Like the Safdi's careers are built on. Can we figure out a way to get back to that feeling? Wait, which I was wondering which Saftees movie is Mean Streets. Is it Daddy Long Lakes? Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Because that's the personal one. Yeah. Yeah. It's the personal one. And like it's like something like, Heaven knows what is so about, like, drugs and, like, addiction and stuff.

Like, that's more fucking, you know, New York, New York, or whatever. And that they all weirdly become... Heaven knows what is there in New York, New York. What am I talking about? I'm like an idiot. Go ahead, Daddy Longlegs. No, Marty Supremus, they're condemned. No, I was just going to say that...

The other movies become kind of genre movies. Yeah. Because they start to get so into the kind of, like, chase structure. Right. The outrunning thing. Right. Which this has that narratively of like, when is shit going to catch up to Johnny Boy? But the movie doesn't have the narrative engine of they're getting closer.

I said this to see when I came in. Read the Wikipedia synopsis. It's four paragraphs. The final three paragraphs of the last 15 minutes of the movie. There's nothing else. There's no plot in the movie before them. Because it's just hanging out. The first paragraph is a bird's eye overview of the table setting of the movie.

He's dating this girl and he's got Johnny Boy and all that. And then it's three-trial. between Catholicism and gangsterism. Devoted to 15 minutes. Anyway, at the end, they try to fucking get some money from Johnny Boy and it all pops off. Like, that's all that happens in the movie. There's no complex structure here. I mean, it's just about like the ending.

And the end or banish. And I feel like that happens in, I like not to bring back the Safeties. I feel like that happens in it too. They like end up leaving. That is like daddy long legs. But yeah, like it's, yeah, not all that happens. It's just, it is kind of a hangout movie. And I think-

You hang out in the club with Johnny Boy and the boys. You hang out with the mob a little bit. And then you hang out in the church. And you hang out with Teresa in her apartment. I was also thinking a lot while watching this of Mikey and Nikki. Oh, me too, in the graveyard. Right. It's like, here's the one who's a little bit more of a straight arrow.

Here's the fuck up. I can't you fucking stop it? Right. And as much as that's like a one crazy night movie that has hangout elements, that movie is also a funereal march. That movie has the narrative engine of, you know this is going somewhere bad. Yeah. Main Streets, even though everyone's kind of saying, like, you got to get Johnny Boy under control, it doesn't feel like it's pushing you towards some obvious outcome.

In Mikey and Nikki also, you're kind of like, they've been doing this dance for so long. They're older. This has become untenable. Like, mean Streets is a little, right. They're young, and it's just kind of this like, you got to pick your friend's moment of like, are you really going to stick with this guy? Like, can you be a grown up? That's the thing. It doesn't feel like, well, obviously this movie is going to end with either Johnny Boy, Gets.

getting killed or killing everyone else. You're like, there's a scenario in which this guy just stops hanging out with Johnny Boy and that's the end of the movie. Is Johnny Boy fun? Do we want to hang out with Johnny Boy? He's really fun to watch. Hell yeah. When I was a younger man, I used to just love the chaos of the character.

Like, is it, I mean, this movie's sort of about when you start to get a little bit, you know, like, hey, could we actually just hang out without you doing something insane, like one time, right? Getting a little bored of it. One of my best friends in high school was very much a Johnny Boy. A Johnny Boy. And I was very much the Charlie to his side. Yeah, I would gravitate to those types because they're fun and exciting. There was something about the like adjacency to danger.

Sure. Even if I never was the person getting into danger. And if anything, I felt like I was the one sort of trying to moderate him. But there was something, I don't know, as a very neurotic, anxious person about watching someone right next to you cross the line. constantly, you know? Yeah. Or just like push things to the extreme. But I see it now and he's just so sad and clearly suffering.

Johnny boy? Yeah. Yeah. He's easy. Wow. Because I think he's suffering because he is stuck. He is stuck. He is stuck in his position.

Yeah. He really, he can't get the job. Right. Right. With Charlie's uncle. Charlie keeps denying him. Because he's too chaotic. The mom doesn't want that.

Like, they don't want those guys. Right. But he can't be honorable like his friends. Right. Sure. My take is slightly different, which is that he, everyone's looking at him like, is this guy fucking dumb? Doesn't he realize that he's like putting his neck out there, right? That he's not playing this.

That he, shit's going to catch up to him eventually. And I think for him, it's like, what's the fucking alternative? Right. What's the end game? There's not, like, none of the. options available to me seem interesting. So why don't I just do what's fun to me? Like, I think it's less that he's sad and that he's trapped and more that there's something he finds freeing in the idea of like, then I'll just like fucking be an instinctual hedonist in a way, you know? Like, let me do

whatever is most interesting to me at any given moment because the long game just doesn't seem worth playing to me. The long game is a dead end job. Right. Right. Yes. So when I'm making this movie, I just want to say in the Lower East Side, the few days that they are, people would come up to them and see the title on the clapper and be like, the movie, nothing wrong with these streets. Call it nice streets. Yeah, these streets aren't so mean. Yeah.

What's your fucking problem? They get to a fight with them. What is the matter with you? He sees the title as an homage to like a Cagney movie, you know, right? Like, you know, like to a Warner Brothers gangster movie or whatever. Wait, I think it has a different reference. It's a Raymond Chandler essay called The Simple Art of Murder

And it has the line But down these mean streets A man must go who is not himself mean Who is neither tarnish nor afraid So it's about it's about Charlie Yeah, right, it makes sense So the Minestrees is about like, yeah But it also sounds

I mean Scorsese is the one saying Like I was trying to make a kind of homage To those gangster movies of like It's a punchy title But Jaycock showed him the essay and said like That's a good fucking title And it does have that kind of Season of the Witch

But it has that thing like white heat where you're just like, those two words are interesting together. Oh, man. White heat's so normal. I love that movie. Well, speaking of, can we talk about the gangster movies? Yes, please. Yes. I think something that he said is that the big movies, the big, like, Warner's movies that they would watch were Public Enemy and Little Caesar.

And he said that he hated Little Caesar. He thought it was like vulgar, very overdone, heavily acted, but loved Public. Enemy. Little Caesar is Edward G. Robinson, right? Edward G. Robinson, so that's Mervyn LeRoy. And then Public Enemy is William Wellman. So this was, the other person who's really important for this movie

and for Scrissezzi is Andrew Saris and the Cyanidus. The Auturis. Because when these guys were coming up, it was Andrew Seris and these French guys were appreciating all these like movies that they grew up with. These like junkie movies.

Like movies that at the time were not scene as like they were being on tvs crime movies western totally they're yeah they were like and so like and so he was figuring out the ones that he liked and the ones he didn't and so he was going to you know no offense to mervin la roy but he was not a mervin la roy guy he was like a william wellman guy he was a fuller guy he was a a hawks and and for a and so that that's really important to figuring out the films that these same films that all feel junkie but some of them are really good and some of them are not. And he was specifically,

Public Enemy was about Irish people, but he was like, we can still relate with this, like even though it's about Irish gangsters. Right, because that's Kagney. Public Enemy is like young Kagney. Public Enemy, yeah, exactly. And it's like what he was really, there's actually also some like street noises.

I don't think it's a festival, but something like that. He said he was really influenced by the way that film used popular music in the background. So it was not score. It was source music. The last shot is a record play.

Sure. And like that was like important for him. So it was important for him to bring in the music. Because we talked about Jonathan Kaplan, but Jonathan Kaplan probably also helped get all this mood, these music. No, he totally did. He was the soundtrack he wanted for who's that knocking at my door. He was always like, my movies are going to have a soundtrack that reflects the music of my life. He did not have the budget to get any songs for that movie. Yeah. This one he said it somehow was only like $65,000, $75,000, $75,000 for the the soundtrack of which $15,000 was just to the Rolling Stone. 30. 30.

Right. The Stones was 15 each and they have both Jump and Jack Flash and tell me. Yeah. They have Be My Baby, which is the most important one. Yeah. And they have various other, you know, but like, Be My Baby was the one that he was like, that obviously was the song. Like, we needed that one.

Yeah. Those female singing roots right before the Beatles, like, that's his music. Link later said a thing in that DJA talk I thought was really interesting where he was like, there are things like Easy Rider that come before this that have famous soundtracks and contemporary soundtracks. He was like every other music, movie that used popular songs, up until this point,

it felt like the soundtrack was above the movie. Right. And Mean Streets, to me, feels like the first movie where the music is coming out of the film. Yeah. And Scorsese said, like, yeah, it was important that it's like you're seeing,

even when it's not supposed to be diogenic within a scene that you get the sense that it could be and that often enough you point at this is coming from a jukebox or whatever it does invent this shit it does you can hear the pop in the hiss he said this is for actually his records right right like with with bringing a baby which is a huge difference right it's not just bringing a baby bringing a baby um the music thing i just it's i i was saying it to my wife last night i'm I was just like, I know this sounds so boring, but like no one had ever done this before. No, it's so true.

Like, it's, and it seems like the most, like, what do you mean? No one had ever, like, put pop music in a movie before, but it's like kind of no one really done that yet. Not this way, not in this sort of, but the thing is, it's hard to watch this movie and not see all the people who ripped it off. Like Sam Levinson. Of what, yeah. All the terrible copies that we've gotten. We've gotten so far. All the, all the, the horror.

Is one of our great returns. He just released a magnificent new season of his great show Euphoria, right? We've got like, we've, and the, you know, the horror movies with the ironic pop music, you know, and like this sort of thing. And every trailer with like the slowed down, like hit song or whatever. You've gotten to me. Has someone's definitely done that, right? Has someone done that? And then the film flickers and then a knife cut.

I think it's pretty good actually. I haven't seen it, but I think it's in like Barbarian or something, right? I think. Maybe is there a baby? There's a lot of baby stuff in that movie. It would make sense. Yeah, it's in Barbary. Oh, okay.

And so, but like the thing that's interesting is that, like, and then all the guys, the better than Sam Levinson, I feel like all the Gen X guys, all these like mixtape guys, you know, all these like. Thinking while watching this, it is crazy how much of this movie is in the DNA of the early Wes Anderson stuff. Yeah, West Anderson, PTA, honestly, Tarantino. And much more. Also, Sophia Coppola, like, these are people who wrote to mixes, to, like, pop mixes.

But the thing is, those were from all over. Those were, like, all over, you know, and that was, they were from all eras. And it really was, like, a mixtape or something. And it was like, and they would write in the same way Scorsese would to, like, write the scenes to these songs. But the thing that's different about Mastries is it's capturing a specific era. It's, like, present tense. It's capturing the 60s and the early 70s. And like those songs, Bill Specter and those stones have been used in these like other kind of mix tape things.

But this is something we've gotten away from, which is like capturing a specific era. I mean, that's what like Linklater does with Days and Confused. You know, it makes sense that he talks about how much that soundtrack felt like eye-opening to him. But, you know, Scraise won our Mark Madness thing. Marty. It almost came down to him. and Wes Anderson. True.

And there was a nerd part of me that really wanted to see that matchup happened for the final two because there's that article I'm obsessed with that I think Esquire magazine did in 1999 that was who's the next Scorsese. We've decided

Corsese is the definitive filmmaker of the last 50 years. You know, the second half of the 20th century. This was after Badaura. Exactly. And they had like a bunch It was like the Wachowski's were in this.

People made their case. They asked like a bunch of different film scholars and critics and then they asked Scorsesey and he said, Wes Anderson. He said Wes Anderson off a bottle rocket and Rushmore. And when he... Shall I tell you all the nominees because it's crazy. Yes. I know...

And Truceras nominated Kevin Smith. Yes. Which his essay is fascinating because he's like, I know this one sounds crazy. Right. It's basically on the strength of chasing Amy and if he pursues this. Yeah. Is he far from Paradise? What is he? Yeah. Kevin Turan nominated David O. Russell, which is interesting because David O.

I could see that at that time. But that's more obvious this guy is going for that nervy comic energy. Todd McCarthy nominated Paul Thomas Anderson, sure. Tom Carson nominated Alexander Payne. Sure, although I don't really see that in Payton's work at all, but okay. Elvis Mitchell nominated Wachowski's, which I think is a fun pick by Elvis. And then Martin E. And he, you know, after Gene Siscoll dies, Scorcese does the best of the decade episode with Ebert.

Yes. I've watched it multiple times. It's so good. But he puts Bottle Rocket on his top 10 of the 90s. He was like one of the early champions. And I think versus a lot of these filmmakers who were more clearly influenced by Scorsese and the type of film they were making in the subject matter. He saw like this guy is making movies about his own life and his own worldview that is more analogous to what I did. and also the way he is experimenting with form and language. And this movie is, it's obviously not symmetrical, but like Bottle Rocket and Rushmore are a lot rougher around the edges than everything becomes from Rural Tannenbaum's on.

And even just like the colors of the bar and the energy of the characters in their costumes. Yes. It's like so much of Wes Anderson starts here weirdly. You know, I've never seen The Horse Thief. I haven't either. You know that on that list. And he's like, I mean, number one is this like Tibetan movie called The Horse Thief.

And I'm like, I've always like, I've got to watch that. What else did he have on that? The Puppet Master? He's got Malcolm X Fargo, Crash, Bottle Rocket, Breaking the Waves, Bad Lieutenant, Eyes Wide Shot, Thin' Red Line, Borrowed Life, and the Horse Thief. Borrowed Life is a Chinese or Taiwanese movie that I've also ever seen. David. Yes. He's got back from Spain.

Okay. Lovely. And I'm feeling it. What are you feeling? Too much, Hamon. Too much. But it's the year of, it's the summer of Haman, Griffin. Well, I'm ready for the fall of less Haman is what I need to say.

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Yeah, well, let's talk about, well, like, back to the, um, what you were saying about, uh, about Wes Anderson and about this is being a very personal thing. I mean, I think they're both also big fans. They're big supporters of like classic films. You see those references. They're, um, but they're also just like finding like a color and movement to express emotion and biography. Right.

And that's kind of what Scorsese has said about this and, like, the, you know, the commentary for the criteria. And I think from the old commentary when I first saw it in, like, 2004 or something, he says, it's hard for describe this as a film. He feels like instead it's like the final culmination of everything I was to do and who I am. Yeah. Yeah. There's that synthesizing of personal experience and all the films he had studied. And even you talking about him trying to study and figure out which. gangster films dug in on him and which ones

bounced off of him, it's like, well, there's two silos. It feels like there are the people where he's recognizing the craft. He's recognizing the formalism of what they're doing and how they're able to express contradictory things through the language of the filmmaking. And then there's the people like Fuller where it's like, what's going on with this guy? You know, there's like some psychology that's seeping into the movie of a personality that you cannot get out of their system, even if they're doing for higher. work. For sure, but for Fuller was also

specifically the movement. And that's when we're talking about this film and we're talking about the difference between like, who's that knocking. This film moves. It has like this like dynamic and I think he called it like an involved camera. And obviously we talked about it's like handheld. We've got that weird he's got Harvey Kitell like on a dolly

and in some weird sharing. But he's drunk. It's like wearing it like a harness. Yeah, I love that shot. Like before there was steady can They invented it. But he said he was really inspired by Fuller, specifically like Shock Corridor and like Park Row. Because there's all this like movement park. Yes. Are you kidding me?

I've seen it. I've never seen Park Corridor. Master. Oh my God. It's a masterpiece. I'm not a huge Fuller. Like not, I like Fuller a lot, but I'm not an expert of Fuller. I feel like I've seen like three or four Fuller movies.

I want to hit some more of those thriller blind spots before Shutter Island. I mean, I've seen like Shot Horror, Naked Kiss. Obviously, I've seen, you know, big red one and, you know, the later ones. Oh, okay. So Park Row, like... Park Row is an early one. I mean, I love Park Row. I used to work on Park Row.

Yeah. It's a newspaper movie, I assume. It's totally a newspaper movie. It's like the newspaper movie. It also has... Okay, we'll do another thing in there. It also has, like, I would like to do a review of that film just listing all the classic cocktails.

Oh, interesting. Anyway, it's a great movie. Yeah, so it was, again, like, for Fuller, it was like the movement. But hiring a... documentary DP. And Scorsese also having come off of being a cameraman himself on Woodstock, where he's holding a camera and feeling that urgency of fuck, something's happening here. Can we catch it in time?

Yeah. It feels like the movie has that energy despite being a scripted film. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of the camera being worried, it's not going to catch the thing. Yeah, I mean, he was editing docs the Scorsese was. So it totally makes sense that that combination of that. It's interesting because this guy, I don't know, I saw an interview and he was talking, they were asking him about like the lighting setups and stuff. I just get the feeling that Scorsi told him what to do because he was saying, oh, why the red in the bar?

And he's like, that's just what it seemed like to me. I'm like, you liar. This is totally Marty. This is, this is, this is, this is, this is, Duel in the Sun. This is the Red Shoes. This is like gone with the wind. This is Marty. I do also agree.

with him that that's how bars feel. If you take a picture in a bar, it might not look like this. Yeah. But that's what it feels to be inside a bar. No, that's true. It's also there, the movement and the energy of the movie feels like, versus Altman who's like, you know, a god for me. But what I love about the Altman tracking shots is they do feel like a God telling you this is the interesting thing. This, you might not be drawn to this at first, but I'm slowly going to. to push your focus over here. Mean Streets is like a panic of, can this movie keep up with its

characters? You know? You feel the urgency and also the stress of they might be moving too fast. They might leave the frame. And Charlie is so alienated from, or is it so increasingly alienated from his only world, which is these bars and these

streets, these mean streets. And like, I think it's just, like, shots like the Dolly shot just so good at making him feel a little alienated or separate in a way. Like, it's a... Yeah. And just then the calm of the church, like, you...

I would hang out of the fucking church. Like, if I was, like, if I had to grow up in Mulberry... It looks nice. Sure. It's quiet. Yeah. Right. It's just like, okay, finally, I can, like, read a book and sit down. Well, so Scorsese's like a kid where the asthma is so bad that it's like, if I get

a fight, I might die. You know? Like, if someone punches me the wrong way... It takes a while for someone to pull my body up. It's in the dock and it's in all... You know, it's like they, he was born in Flushing, right? And they lived in Queens. And then they were kicked out of Queens because his dad, like, got in a fight with the local, like,

mob. And in the dockies, like, that felt like being kicked out of paradise. And, like, you could, like, you feel it in this movie. It's just like, I just want the wide open streets of flushing. It's like, how do I survive? But I just, why long for, like, the relatively open skies. Yeah. I mean, and, you know, that's not a plot in this movie.

But, like, the way he makes New York feel in the, like, the San Gennaro's, like, shots in all that just like, it's alive and it's cool. And I'm watching it being like, oh, fuck it. Yeah, New York. This rocks. But like, it's overwhelming. But he also, I mean, I saw him say an interview. Maybe it was in the link later thing as well that like the entire social life was built

around these after hours clubs. Yeah. Where ostensibly what was driving you was the pursuit of women. Right. But women were rarely at these places. Why would they fucking go? You were hoping that one might show up almost by accident. What?

Do you want to drink rolling rock with degenerates? Right. So he's like more often you're there with degenerates and you're either recounting your victories with women in the past, which are probably bullshit. Right. Or you're telling people your aspirations of what you want to do with women someday. Yeah. Or you're just like getting in a fight over pool. Right.

And he said all these people still basically live with their parents because even though they were driven by sex, it was like if you're living on your own, that's an admission that you're living in sin. Right. It's like the only reason you would have your own apartment is so you could have sex there, which is a. the thing you like can't do. Even if you're talking about it all the time, you can't be that visible about it. And like he was like, the guys who moved moved around the corner, you know? Like the idea of moving to the village. Well, it's the old joker like you you bid your mother tearful goodbye, give her a big hug, and then you moved downstairs. Right. You move to the apartment downstairs. And the implication is you need your own space, you know, and maybe it's more

you need private space because the work you're doing is violent and unseemly and you need to hide that from your parents, but also they're close enough that your mom's gonna fucking come over and make your bed and do your laundry. You're still basically, it's like living in their garage, you know? Does Johnny Boy just need money because he's a gambler? Like, that's where he's blowing his money?

Yeah. I think so. It's mostly just that, right? Like, it's just like on the horses or whatever. Because he's always trying to get ahead. I know. But there's no end goal. Like, it's important that he's not... Johnny doesn't want to, like, open a barbershop. Right, he's not...

You know what my dream is to someday make enough money that I can move to Boise. But he doesn't, he can't dream because he just doesn't see any path forward. His friend's a business owner, right?

The other one's working for his uncle. The other one is like, I guess, making his way up as far as being a maid guy. And he's just kind of stuck. He's the loser of the group. The caridine bar fight, right, that basically plays out

without dialogue largely and is like brother actors and ending in a death. Carradine violence. David and Robert. Yes. Yes. Yes.

And that's what these guys Recently dead died Robert, right? RIP, yes. But that's what these guys are witnessing And it's like, so right, at any fucking moment A guy can just walk in here drunk With some petty grievance and shoot you And it's over.

Like, what's the fucking point? There is that like, even if you're trying to stay clean out of this stuff And you're not becoming a maid man or working, you're adjacency to these things puts you on like The Battlefront to a certain degree. and Scorsese said that that scene is based off of a thing that happened at one of those clubs in his 20s and he was like, and we went to the other club that night. But it was like a coin flip.

There were two places that we went back and forth to. And we picked the other one and then heard the next day, did you hear some guy just came in? He got drunk and he was upset and he shot that dude. And that guy's dead. And it's like, that's, it could have been us by the difference of like which block we walked down. Are we in trouble? off course. No, we're fine. This is what this podcast is. Also, like, what other big scenes should we be talking about? Because again, this is not a film

with a very, very, you know, heavy plot. Let's talk about just how personal it is. Like, from the very beginning, we have, like, a scene about German lenses and Jap adapters. Like, you know, we've got super eight footage. We've got, you know, it's so about Marty. I just, yeah, I love the, I love the MOOC scene. The MOOC scene, there's a fight that he witnesses at a bar, which, you know, is what happens in the movie. And it starts with, the bartender called you a moot. Called me a mook and everyone starts fighting.

And then someone says, what's a mook? And the guy's like, I don't know. Yeah. What's a mook? You know, I looked it up. Like, what is it? It means big mouth. Big, is it?

Yeah. It's like Neapolitan, like, sort of slang for, like, talking too much. Big mouth. Interesting. Yeah. There's a Reddit thread that is like every possible iteration of, like, did Scorset the invention or, like, did Scorset the invention or, where did it come from?

And it's, it obviously goes somewhere, but it's, it's, um... According to Marty, he later realized, he didn't know at the time. Right. That it's Neapolitan. Yeah. And he is a Sicilian, you know, the Sicilians, the Neapolitans always hated each other. And, you know, Naples. And, like, it was a Neapolitan word for, like, a loudmouth Sicilian.

A mook. Like, muk. I mean, it is that thing. And I've learned this a couple times, unfortunately, on Mike on this podcast. But as someone who was raised on, like, Bugs Bunny and, like, old comedy, shit. I was so obsessed with all the slang of mid-20th century guys. And then you unpack it and you're like nine out of ten are like racially charged. Yeah. Like all these sort of up yours names that the wise crack and characters will throw at people. But you're right that people don't even understand what

they're saying. And it's like they're throwing these Molotov cocktails and not quite sure what the impact of them are. You brought Wes Sanderson one of my favorite sort of generic unknown racial epitep is when in Royal Tenenbaum's when he's like, did you just call me Coltrane? Yes. One of the fucking funniest thing is in any West Enders movie ever. It's so good.

But those kind of things where you're like, is that racist? It feels bad. It feels pretty racist. No, it's so great though. But I love these sort of like, it's sort of abstracts some of the language we use. But I have to say,

I did say it was about racism. I do want to do my due diligence and say that Mean Streets was the first film to be rated by core, the congressional Congress on Racial Equity. Really? Yeah, it was the first one. And it was declared extremely offensive for its black perspective and because of the stripper and the policeman who's like takes a ride. Oh, sure, sure.

And like, I don't know if I agree with that. I mean, I think I would say, I mean, again, I really do think it's about these like, you know, these unknown racial epitaphs. It's about racism. It's about like that with morality. But I will say what I do find really offensive is the gay couple. That's just... Oh, sure. That's...

And that must be so far from Marty's understanding at this point. Yeah. I don't think of gay characters in Marty movies. Well, so we should call it De Niro's father was gay. De Niro's father was gay. Yes. That's another fascinating part of him. I don't know how much that's being discussed at the time.

No, no, no. No, but that's what I'm saying. Like, De Niro does have a model in his life. And obviously, he was... married to a woman at one point. He was out later in his life, although it was sort of more quietly. Who knows what De Niro knows about his father at this point, what his father self-identifies as and whatever. But his father was a man he lived with who was a more realistic, you know, version of a West Village artistic homosexual man in the 60s 70s.

And this movie presents what, like, feels like the most kind of laughing version of that character. Totally. Wait, side track, do you know his mom dated Manny Farber? No, the Niroro's mom? Yeah. And like when they were just like, you know, bohemians in the village and stuff. So I had said that this was like the termite, like to the godfather. So that's like Manny Farber is one of the great film critics and the whole termite versus white elephant is him. And I guess Manny Farber came up to, he really liked Mane Streat's. I don't know what point he reviewed it, but he really liked it. At one point he came up to De Niro at a party and was like, oh. I remember you when you were a kid in like the 14th Street. And De Niro just ran away. Wow. Yeah, because I guess his parents split up pretty early. Yeah.

Yeah. I think there's something too of like what. I guess these guys would be like third generation Americans theoretically. These guys? Yeah. Like their grandparents came, you're saying. Their grandparents immigrated. Yeah.

Right. I know what you mean. Their grandparents immigrated probably with their parents as young adults. Yeah. I mean, well, Marty's parents. were, well, Catherine was born in New York. Yeah, I forget about the dad, Charles. Second or third.

Yeah, he was born in New York. Charlie. Their parents were. Right. This sense of this inherited tribalism that isn't even actually motivated by anger in talking about like the racial dynamics of this movie, that it feels more like they're just worried about,

I don't understand what's going on outside of these three blocks, these clubs, the 10 people I know, you know. It feels deliberate. Yeah, it feels like really. really this changing, like you were saying, like, this time period. And even the kind of, like, corrupt black cop character, it feels like what is driving him is just like, I just don't even want to have to deal with you guys. I love that guy.

The way he, like, accepts the bribery is just like, can you please just make it easy for me to disengage from this? Yeah. I want to just let this be whatever the fuck it is. It's so funny. He's like, yeah, I'm going to Jersey. You know what, actually, I'm going to Philly. Right.

But the way he sort of is just kind of exhausted in being like, actually, more money. I changed, I changed the ride home. That's where I think the movie is kind of knowingly about how limited their worldview is. I mean, they, they live in like forced blocks. Right. The way Teresa's character talks about moving uptown. Yeah. She's leaving the country. Yeah, exactly. Good call. Yeah. Spurs as he said, that'd be the equivalent of a girl telling you she was moving to Ohio. You're never going to see her again. That's impossible. Right. Can we talk about Kytel a bit? You know what?

I mean, I assume we, we're recording this one a week before. Yeah. He was that knocking because Miriam's in town. Soon we talked about Harvey a little there. But Harvey, very important. From this moment on, now that he's discovered De Niro, Keitel becomes more of a stock company player. And more often, he is presented as a villain or rival.

Like, he's in Alice and taxi driver. But he's right. He's a fucking pedophile pimp and taxi driver. He's literally Judas. Between taxi driver and Last Temptation, he doesn't work with Martin. Right. And then is there anything between Last Temptation and Irishman? I was trying to remember if there's like one thing. Maybe not.

It feels like every time he uses him after that, other than Irishman, which feels like a kind of like, isn't this nice to put them all at the same table again? I know. The other ones, it feels like what he's using Kytel to be like, I want to show that this guy has range. Right? I want to test him and put him in a different light. Obviously, like, Scorsese was such a, you know, he loved bad lieutenant or whatever. Like, he would, he would pump, you know, praise other Harvey stuff. And I think they remained very close and still do.

I wonder if Harvey's like, fuck you, why am I not, you know, why do I not get to be your De Niro? Like, why does De Niro get to be your star? On my rewatch, I really had that. I'm like, happened to Hart. Like, what happened to Katel after this? He's a great actor. This is what struck me watching it, right? Yeah.

is like, it's interesting that he had this guy who was so much the stand-in for him, and then he picks this other guy who was so different from him, who becomes the driving force of his movies going forward, or at least a majority of them. And then you look at the filmography, and you're like, all of these movies are personal in that they are explorations of the things that clearly Scorsese wrestles with constantly, but his movies no longer past this point really feel like they're about characters that reflect him.

They become explorations of his. worldview. Yeah. Or like some... But like, and also, right, he doesn't write as many movies. No. And when he does write, it's often adaptation, you know, like something like, age of innocence or, you know, like, um, Gangs in New York.

But I wonder if part of that is him recognizing in the sort of like, the forcefulness of what De Niro was able to do is Johnny Boy and putting a character that sort of exciting, that much of a wild card into the mix. that he's like, I'm kind of a passive protagonist. I'm a guy who looks at the window and watches what's happening, who thinks about it, who will stand a little close to the danger, but never actually place myself, you know, in real harm's way.

And he wants to start to build movies around characters who are actively moving the plot. So then Keitel becomes sort of an odd duck, you know? In a way that maybe his association with him was too strong at the beginning. Yeah, maybe you don't want to be. to get locked into it, but then he gets locked into it with De Niro to some extent. Which is why he then from that point on is like, Harvey, I'm going to ask you to play all sorts

of wild different things. You're just an actor I'm like throwing interesting challenges at. How do you feel about Harvey, Miriam? I like him. I mean, I was really like, what happened? Like, you know, I was thinking about he's got some great roles. I mean, he's Jewish, right? Yeah. And so that was the whole thing. It was this like Polish Jewish. His parents were Russian Jews. Yeah. So he was like Stanton Beach guy. So first he was the stand in for Marty. And then. But I was, you know, just now we're talking, I'm like, could Harvey Kytel have been in casino? Yeah, totally.

Like, in either role. Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. Like, Harvey Kytel is a good actor. Yeah. If he's in a movie, it's usually good. Yeah.

I mean, his performance. He's in lots of bad movies. Like, I mean, he just was one of those guys who, I feel like this year. Sure. Five movies a year for 30 years, right? Like, yeah. 80s and 90s. Like, he just says a zillion credits. And he can do. do big, or he can do restrained.

Like, you know, he doesn't feel like an egotistical actor to me. I, I, I, there's a part of it. And some of this is conjecture on my part, right? But you look at him in, like, the 70s and the 80s. You look at the stuff he did with Tobac, which is very tobacian. Oh, of course, yes. It is that he, for a while, I would say, until the 90s, really wants to be the leader, the co-lead of the movie. And sometimes these guys do just get into a place where they're like,

I'm willing to play the dilemma. I'm willing to play the side character or the villain for Marty. But otherwise, I'd rather be the guy. And that sometimes can dictate the choices, you know? There's a lot of weird stuff in the 80s. Yes. With Kyle? Yeah.

When was piano? Was that the 90s? 93. I love that performance. It's a great performance. We've talked about a fair amount of 90s in 2000. Right, because we've done Campion, so there's multiple, you know, Campion performances from him. What else have we talked about?

Well, of course, we did the National Treasure movies on Patreon, probably his two finest performances as Guy Behind Desk. But that's the thing. It's like, what's he doing there? The Declaration of Independence. I mean, there's like, right, and which is like, that's just like Thelman Louise, right? Like, it's like, he does Thelman Louise and then he'll just like do that every so often ever since.

Like, do you want me to play the tired cop, like, clockers? He's good in Clockers. Yeah. Like, and he's sort of. the lead of clockers, but he's not really, like, Mackay-Fiper is the lead of clockers. But Harvey's, like, the face. That's the other thing. That's like, right,

Tarantino and Spike Lee and all these other filmmakers using him almost in a mixtape way. He is so good in Reservoir. Yeah, he's incredible. And... I've never seen it. You've never seen Reservoir Dogg? Is there an active avoidance, or have you just not gotten around to it?

I don't know. It's just... It's like 90, but... minutes long. They played in rep cinemas constantly. And bars and like, yeah.

Kitell is incredibly good. The whole thing with Reservoir dogs is like Michael Madsen, I assume, you know, is kind of like the character that pops or whatever. And Bishemi is being so funny. Right. You know, but, and Kitell is the lead and it's the center.

Super emotional role. And he's so good. And it's different, but it does feel like Tarantino is casting him because it's like using, an impactful pop song, you know? I. There is, he becomes somewhat representational by the 90s

for a lot of filmmakers who grew up inspired by the Scorsese movies. And then I think they'll, I don't know, they'll rework him in interesting ways. Even the way Wes Anderson uses him is very fascinating. Hey, which one, Wes Anderson is in... He says in fun in Budapest. Yes.

Oh, I forgot about that. And he's also in Moonrise Kingdom as, like, the major troop leader at the end. They keep going up the ladder to who's the ultimate troop leader. And then you reveal like old Harvey Kytel in little khaki shorts. And Kytel's like, just have to say it. It's not even though he has a great face. He has one of the most fascinating skulls in history where you're just like,

who has a head like this, right? He just doesn't look like anybody else. And it's hard to read him. It's really kind of fascinating to watch him listen to people because you can't really tell what's going on. And I think similarly when he talks, it sort of feels like a struggle to him.

Not that it's non-verbal, but that it's really like an effort to get things out. It's funny because I feel like in press interviews, he's far more gregarious, that he is not a guy who's like incredibly self-serious

or protective about his process. But then on screen, he plays things that feel often a little bit closer to De Niro maybe as a guy where this guy doesn't have the language to get what he wants to say out of his system and also so much of that is just like

Keitel's insane body, right? Yeah, I feel like he can also I mean, maybe I'm just misjudging from certain roles, but I feel like there's like a dangerous eroticism to a lot of his performance that I don't really see with De Niro. No.

I feel like De Niro's like I'm sure a sexy guy, but there's not like a real sensuality within his world. Weirdly sexual and feels transgressive. And he also looks. And then he moves towards that. Right. Like in the rolls he takes and stuff. But he's got this fucking pit bull thing.

You know, he's got this kind of like perma frown. Yeah, I love his walk. And this furrowed brow. And he's so kind of weirdly like compressed. Yeah, he's like stocky or although I don't know if he was really stocky. Like, because they're all little guys. This is all just how things read on camera. I know.

It's how he's on camera. But he's just a guy where you're just like, it's just fucking shoulders and biceps. At a time where people in American movies aren't really built, you know? and it's not like he's like a jacked bodybuilder, but he always just had kind of like a weird spilling of muscles in his upper body. He's a funny body, and he shows it off a lot. He likes to show his penis.

I've never thought about... Harvey Cartel's body as much. Well, like, if you think I like Bad Lieutenant, the sort of iconic him, like, you know, when he's like... Yeah. You know, it's on the... He has a fun...

And then the piano and stuff. As Marie would call out, a very deep V, too. I feel like those movies like Bad Lieutenant And the panel where he's getting naked. He's got the V. Okay. He's got like a tiny little ripped tongue.

Miriam is covering her mouth in shock and shame. As she should. As she should. I'm blushing. Miriam, on the desk there, we have a postcard of Austin Powers, Frozen and Ice, because when we watch that movie, Marie Barty said, is Mike Myers cut? And then just kept calling out the deep V. Hattel obviously doesn't have the Austin.

powers chest hair. Oh. Okay. Other scenes we should talk about. How about the Vietnam vet party? That feels significant. Yeah. Is that where he...

speaks to the time that it's at. I mean, it's still... We're still in a... What? What? But then he gets drunk? Is that where he gets drunk? And he's like blessing.

I think he's like... He's baptizing people. He's like... Yeah. Going around with water and like baptizing people. But you were thinking specifically of the... of the Vietnam thing of the era of what... And then the vet...

is clearly suffering from, you know, his experience there and he attacks that woman. And then Kytel has that moment where he dances with her in the closet. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. Oh, that's weird. It's so weird. I don't know what to read from it. Yeah.

It feels like another story. Like that, you know, Scorsese remembered or whatever. And it, like, makes so much sense, obviously, if you threw a party for a Vietnam vet. And we're like, let's sit off a bunch of loud noises and streamers and shit. Then it was like obviously like could be very dramatic for them. Yeah. I mean, the literal opening of this movie is him lighting the candles in church, right? Is that the opening shot?

Yeah, I mean, the opening is the monologue. And the narration, which is Scorsese's voice is, you don't make up for your sins in church, you do it in the streets, you do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it. Rather than it being a movie where the poll is, is this guy going to follow faith? The movie's telling you up front while the guy is going through the motions. and the rituals, that this is kind of all, not that it's bullshit, but that it can't overpower the rest. It's actually like an impossible battle that you've already lost. It's not that it's bullshit. It's just that you have like all these opportunities for like empathy and savior,

saving people and like and real testing of stuff. And then the real work isn't going to happen here in a theoretical space. It's going to happen in your actions outside in the world. Yeah. Yeah. One scene that we didn't talk about is most of this is scripted, but they would do like, kind of like, you know, they would do like little sessions then add it into the script. But there is one like improv scene and it's like right after. The trash can. Yeah. Oh, no.

Yeah, that might be. But I was thinking about when they go into the back room. So when De Niro first walks in, it's the stones and, you know, it's the slow motion and we're really in a Scorsese movie. And then they go into the back room. And that's when they're like, they're like, the Tuesday after. the Tuesday after this Tuesday or you know and they're doing all this wordplay and talking about Joey clams no Joey Scallet no they're the same person yeah and like this whole thing that was all improvised and that was something that um as griszi said he was really i feel like he he needed

something there and he needed something to set the tone and the comedy and he was really influenced by like abbott and castello and who's on first right but also like the road movies and bob hope and and um bin crosbie and this like you know someone always trying to get one over but i think The wordplay is really key in us. I love that scene. The line where he's like, which girl? He's like, my left or your left, we were sitting, we were on the same side. My left are your left.

It's so good. The same shit. It's like, it's rock music and it's like old vaudeville comedy dynamics and it's the language of how people fight with each other verbally. You know, it's all rhythm shit. It's rhythm and word selection, which I feel like are always the thing, like the metronome that his movies go off of. David Denby, when this came out,

said that Scorsese has used improvisation better than anyone in American movies so far, which is an interesting line to me because, A, less of this movie is improvised than people think. It's really those two big moments, but a lot of what you said, there was a really solid script,

then they would do rehearsals, and then if they came up with something good in improv exercise, they would transcribe it and tighten it and just writing. A lot of times when there are these fucking famous moments in movies where people go, like, And do you know that was actually improvised? It's like that was improvised when they did the blocking rehearsal.

Yeah. And then they wrote it into the sides. And then they did it 80 times and they refined it. It's not like the moment you're watching is the one time that happened. And this is one where the improvisation is happening developmentally. But I think what they're getting at and even just the way Denby words that, it's like they're talking about improvisation like it's 3D or something. Like there's this new technology in movies and people are like, is this a gimmick?

do you make whole movies out of improv? Is this something that you can use as part of the language? It's been going on for so long. Like, Gregory Lukava was doing it. Like, it's so interesting when people, like, people are, I mean, you know, if you guys have ever been to an awful Q&A, they're always like, was that improvised? It's so annoying. Just let the cameras roll, you know?

But the answer is always, if people see something that sounds, it sounds to them like real dialogue, they want to believe. It's improv. And, you know, movies, you do fucking a thousand takes of everything. Things are, like, iterative, you know? It's rarely, like, improv in the way you think of seeing a fucking improv show where two people are making up a scene from the get-go. But I think versus a lot of these other things we're talking about where improv was used as, like, this is like an interesting formal experiment. Scorsese kind of figured out a way to harness the energy of improv into more conventional. seasoning.

Well, lightning in a bottle. That's the other part of it. Right. If you're like Cassavetti's where those films are less improvised than people think. Yeah. But they have the energy of the main purpose of the camera here is to capture what the actors are doing rather than say something with the camera themselves. I think in later Cassavetti's movies, he does meaningful things visually, but it's really like serving the performances first and foremost. And to have a movie that has improv energy in it.

but also has complicated camera moves, you know, has like three minute traveling shots through an apartment and things like that is where people start to feel like, oh, improv isn't an either-or thing. I mean, all these conversations just fucking cycle themselves. But it's like what kind of kills

the American comedy movie in a way is they all felt really stagnant and high concept. And then improv comes back into them and people enjoy that these movies feel riffy, but then they all start to feel really visual static because they need three cameras running at the same time to get what actually is a real improv riff.

David? Yes. Red alert. Uh-oh. There's been an outbreak. Biohazard. Of a new Patreon series. It's contagious.

Oh, that's so true. It's been cooked up in the lab for your pleasure. From the fine folks at the Umbrella Corporation, we are covering resident evil. The film franchise. Yes. We've got the first franchise. Six movies. Yes. That beautiful second franchise. How many? Six, seven? It's got the one movie. Oh, it's got the one. We'll be covering all of them on Patreon doing commentaries on, yes, the Resident Evil, Apocalypse, extinction, afterlife, retribution, the final chapter. Welcome to Recrund and Sydney. This is an exciting time. Zach Greger, a friend of the podcast has the new Resident Evil coming out. And we thought this was a good

opportunity to revisit the history of Resident Evil movies. Why not? Why not? Why can't we? Why can't we? We can. Check in for that, August 1st. And it's going to be running all the way through November 1st.

Followed by your March Madness winner, Dracula. Dr. Acula himself. That's so fun. So that's great. That's great. Thank you. Thank you so much. So are you guys all the Charlie in your bromance?

Yes. Yeah. I'm not even charlie. I'm like, am I the Charlie? Are you the Charlie and your male friendships? I don't like go out with these people. Or maybe you're, I feel like you might, you have a little Johnny Boy sympathy. I think I'm Amy Robinson.

You're Johnny Boy, David's Charlie. I love this. I mean, I definitely, I always had less tolerance for the guy who is like, let's throw a firecracker in a mailbox. I'd be like, I'm going home. I find this movie invigorating because I love like, New York movies. I love how Marty tells any story or whatever. This has never been

like my favorite Marty because I don't relate to it very much. But I do love this movie, though. I got a beef with this movie. This is a big movie for my mom. My mom loves this movie. Why does your mom love it? She's a New York girl. Like, you know, I don't know. I think it was probably, what, this is 73, so she was 22. Yeah. Like, you know,

she saw it at the right time and it was Thundercrack kind of movie for her. Like the later Marties are too fucked up, I think. Stuff like. taxi driver. Like she's seen taxi driver right but she's like oh but those are so dark like and those are so violent mean streets is sort of the appropriate amount of violent it is fascinating too

where it is a movie where even living 50 years past its release date in a media landscape that is like permanently influenced by what this movie does you feel like you're watching the Big Bang it doesn't

you understand that what you're seeing is all of these things starting to crystallize for the first time everything he's synthesizing together and what he'll do in the rest of his career and how other people will be influenced by it. Like, Bonnie and Clyde feels that way to me too where even if you've seen all the movies that come after it,

when you watch Bonnie and Clyde for the first time, you're like, I can tell this is them breaking the sound barrier in certain areas. Same with this. Totally. You're right. And there's stuff like MASH, which for how much I love Robert Altman, that's a movie that I think, like, you cannot watch without context of what it was coming out of

and actually fully understand it because so much of what people like my father who saw it in 1970 and were like, this is just no one talked like this, stories weren't structured like this. When you watch it now, it just feels kind of sloppy. And there's stuff in MASH that I think is incredible.

There's stuff in MASH that is beyond retrograde. Sure. I haven't seen MASH in 20 years. But there's also a lot of it that's just kind of mushy. And you're... MASHY almost. David, five profundity points. But at the time,

every single thing people were seeing was that's never been on screen. before. Nothing's ever felt like this. It's never sounded like this. It's never looked like this. And Mean Street still has all of that power, even though we've seen everything it's influenced after. Yeah. It also, I feel like, you know, your mom was the right age, like 22 or whatever. Like, it's just so captures the like in jokes and language of a friendship group and you're like late teens and early 20s. Yeah. You know, doesn't it? Of course. And though I never worked for the mob nor hung out at a Italian-American social clubs.

And say that again. Let's make sure you have that on the record. Yet. My phone number is one, two, three, four, five, six. I never yet is a funny sentence structure. They want to call me and offer me a job. I have never, and I mean never worked for the mob. I would like one of those jobs.

And maybe Tong Tales at a school here where you do not show up to it and get the money anyway. A no show job. If they give me one of those. One of those, please. Like a mob desk job? No, you know, no show job. Like the whole thing.

mob does where they're like, you know, we run this union now and you're going to have five extra salaries. I wonder if the mob is in on podcasting yet. What? I'm in the audio business. What do you want for me? Legitimate business. Hey, I talk to my friends. What do you want from me?

I make audio go boom. I turn heads into gum. Oh, boy. Wow. I was looking up a letterbox logs for this movie. And there was one from Paul Freider from 2019, the before times. where he just wrote All caps, mean streets.

Watched it tonight for the first time in almost 50 years. I'd first seen it in rough cut. What struck me most was how well I remembered it, line for line, scene for scene, needle drop for needle drop, and how in place Marty's aesthetic was. I was tempted to think, quote, this director's been watching a lot of Scorsese films. Way back then, I knew it was very good.

I fancied myself a film critic after all, but I didn't realize it was a fucking Roman candle. Perfect. The Roman candle thing really stuck with me. Because it is not a movie with like this very clear direction to it. It is firing off in all directions. And he wasn't seeing it for what it was at the time because also he was part of the movement that it was coming out. It's so funny.

I know. It is so funny that Schrader and him find and Scorsese like start working together because like Scorsese's like the Catholic thing versus the Calvinist thing. Like very different approaches to religious sort of guilt and fervor. and yeah. They've made some good movies together. But speaking of Schrader, do you think that, like, I mean, because obviously... Do you think that his AI Facebook posts are good?

Of course, I think they're hilarious. We love them. But do you think Scorsese, like, I don't think his screenplays are his strengths. And I actually think this is one of his strongest screenplays. Even though you're right, it just doesn't do anything. It's never sure. Yeah, the language.

The most incredible screenplay and in the same way where you're like, is this just improvised? Like, all these guys talking like, dude, of course, does you really write this down? Yeah.

I mean, what are his other screenplays? Now I want to look. But this is, when Departed came out, I feel like he kept making the joke of like, it took me 40 years, but I finally made a movie with a plot. Yeah. That he always was this guy who, you know,

and he's very self-effacing about it, but he talks about it like, it's not even that I don't find that stuff interesting. I'm not good at it. Right. I don't know how to. do it. I feel like I've told this story before. Okay. But on the set of vinyl,

there was this point, I was in the worst thing Scorsese ever directed, Miriam. Let's wait to see Shina White. Okay. Let's wait to watch Shina White. There was a moment the pilot, where there was a boardroom scene with like 15 speaking roles, which is the worst fucking thing in the world to shoot. It's

stagnant. Everyone's at chairs. You have to get so much cross coverage. And then the angles are like, fuck, he delivers most of his lines to this guy at one end of the table, but one line to the other end at the table. So we need to get coverage from the other side as well just for that one line. And he comes in and they're like, Marty, what should we get next? And he stands there and he's sort of muttering to himself and he's like pointing and doing directions. And he's trying to figure out the

math on like what coverage are we still owed. What do I need? What would help me? And he just looks up and he goes, I've just never been good at this stuff. Right. Okay. So his scripts are mean Streens Goodfellas. Wow. No screenplay credit between those two movies. Yeah. Age of Innocence. Casino. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, and then like, uh, silence, Killers of the Flower Moon, like, more recently. It's also obviously very hands-on with his writers are his closest friends, his closest collaborators. He works with the same people often.

Jake Cox and-it's years and years of development. Cannavali was like, Marty, what the fuck are you talking about? You're Martin Scorsese. You know what coverage you need. And he was like, I really, I just don't have a head for that. And you realize, not that he's being, like, falsely modest, but much in the same way that, like, the anxious camera work is a byproduct of we don't have time to set up multiple shots, that a lot of his language comes out of, like, I'm just not going to do the stuff that doesn't come to me innately. Yeah. I'm going to go to the stuff I feel like I can do better than anyone else. And I think similarly, he's like, I'm not a tight plot construction guy.

Yeah. You know, and I can do it when I need to. And when he does it, it's usually the things that are more. conventional genre riffs like Cape Fear or Shudder Island where he's playing in the tradition of a type of movie and then what he's doing is having fun stylistically or making the performances unconventional within it. But left to his own devices, it's like what he likes is finding a world. What he likes is like digging into the corners. What he likes is exploring every little sub-dynamic, but he's not someone who is into, I think, tight story construction.

I do want to say as far as like coverage for this one, I think, think because he'd worked on it for so long for like whatever eight, seven years, he had drawn everything. He's an incredible fucking artist. So he had done shot. But as far as like the actual coverage, he brought in the box car bertha Corment team to be like, okay, how do we do this? Like efficiently and stuff. But yeah, so he had drawn like every, every scene.

And so he had a version in his head of what his perfect movie would look like. Yeah. But then the reason you bring in the Corman people is they are. like the A team, they are like the weirdos who know how to just like, fuck, well actually, if we only have five minutes, here's the way to do it. Like, they exceed

under pressure. Right. Also, I want to say the different, like what makes this film a little different than the rest is he edited it. He edited this and Foxcar Bertha. He's not credited because of guild rules, but he says the original

editor who is credited. He's got a co-credit, but there was a guild rule that you couldn't be the sole editor of your own movie. No, he's not credited. He's not credited. I saw like an additional editing or something. I don't think he was credited. But he said he edited it, but he couldn't take credit.

Yeah. The original edit was terrible by whoever gets credit. So this is like, so, so Shoemaker, Thelma Shoemaker did, did his first one, who's not knocking, but, and then so, and this one is, like, is Marty without Thelma. Yes. Right. Well, she's also, like, working on Woodstock for years. Yeah. But Woodstock comes out in 70, which he worked on too, obviously.

But she is sort of what... And that's where they reconnect or... Yeah. But she doesn't come back to him until Raging Bowl. Yeah, which is crazy. Like taxi driver is edited by somebody else. I forget... Yeah, Marsha Lucas and Todd Rolf.

Oh, I forgot. Wait. I actually have some interesting points about Marshall Lucas. I'm going to make in the next episode. What were you going to say, Mary? Well, you can edit this out because it's probably you're going to get to it. But is New York, New York very bounced? Oh, yes.

Oh, yes. New York, New York is the first... bounce. This is a classic I mean, this is an arc of, but the way we used to when the show started and things were more narrow and we were like, we need people who fit into these very

classic tight arcs. The first 10 years of his career are so thoroughly that of like you have two developmental movies, then you have the movie where it all comes together, that's the guarantor to like, we're going to let you elevate to taxi driver, which is the crazy breakthrough.

And then he cashes that in on New York, New York, where people are like, you're fucking done. And New York New York is just the classic bounce of, like, he spent too much money on a movie that didn't need to be expensive. And he had, like, a whole artistic idea of, like, how to present this story and do a musical differently. It's very similar to Spielberg with 1941, where it's, like, overloaded with ideas and passion. I can do a different genre. You have overthought this movie.

And cocaine. Both are overlaid with cocaine. There's a little bit of cocaine. And then Raging Bull is the like, I got to show people I can just like focus it up again. But like King of Comedy is a bounce. I mean, he's got a lot of bounces. I'm saying just that part of. I agree with you.

Because who's that knocking is 69 or 70? 67. So it's 67 to and then Raging Bull is 80. Yeah. That's where there's a real tight like sort of this is how a career develops, grows, crashes, rebounds. And then the 80s are up and down. You disagree, David?

I see. No, I don't disagree. The 80s are more up. I mean, like, Last Temptation nominally made money. Yeah. Like, it did ruin things for him a little bit. Yeah. And, like, his other big bombs are king of comedy.

That's a huge bomb. Like, that makes no money. And was framed as an embarrassment. Like, people were, like, shame on you. Yeah. Right. And bringing out the dead was, like, honestly, like, a really big bomb. Yeah.

Because that movie's also pretty expensive. And that was, I feel like bringing out the dead is a another kind of low point for him career-wise of like, why should studios keep giving you money? You know, like, when we were talking about... After that, he's been able to do whatever he wants. We were talking about, because the series is so long, did we, like, split it in half and do we do a little short series in between so that there's a little bit of a break in Marty? And every time...

That's probably not going to do. It feels like there's enough new releases coming out the end of this year and the beginning of next so that will kind of naturally happen. Yeah, it's fine. But when we talked about it, I was always adamant. the only place to break it up is 1999 to 2001. Because, like, what happens between the 20th century and the 21st century is Leo unlocks everything. And it feels like from gangs of New York on, he's working with bigger budgets than he's ever worked with. Yes.

He's got this hot young star who will do anything for him. And everyone is like, it's time when's he getting the fucking Oscar? And then after he gets the Oscar, it's like he gets to do whatever he wants. And bringing out the dead feels like the last time there is, like, an attempt at doing a classic Scorsese movie that doesn't work for people. A movie I love and think is a masterpiece. Yes. But his otter films in the 21st century are him going way outside of his wheelhouse.

Miriam, are there movies you don't like or love? Good question. Are there Marties you sort of respect or stick up for or whatever? I do not like the Aviator, but that might be partly because I'm too loyal to the source material. I do not like seeing a Catherine Hepburn invitation. I need to see it again. I'm very curious to rewatch because I also haven't seen it since. It's never been a favorite.

I've seen it since release, but it does so many bananas visual things that I bet I will enjoy on rewatch. I think I would too. And it's like early Leo. Like you were saying that transition. It's really good Leo. I was like, let's see, wait, is there anything? I don't remember loving, bringing up the dead. Sure.

Possibly worth a rewatch. Yeah. And so I think the only one I haven't seen is the color of money. Color Money Rocks. Yeah. I bet. Hot movie. Right.

I never think of it as a real Scorsese, but I know it is. I know it is. His 80s are so weird because that's kind of like a commercial play of like you got to get back in the good graces of the studio. And it's a big hit and he gets Newman and Oscar, but there was a little bit of like how Scorsese sold out, right? And then after hours is him trying to be like, I can be responsible. I can make a low budget thing. I can like get on base. But it's like a comedy.

It's not seen as like a major work. It's fascinating how up. and down he was there. Yeah. Yeah, but the rest I love. I love, I was, I was saying, if I didn't do this, I would do Shutter Island. I love that show. Yeah. I can't love Shutter Island so much. That's going to be a fun out. I love you guys. I'm in good company. Oh, Miriam, we love you too. I can't wait to see who's going to do Cundoon. We have, we have, you know, guests lining up around the box. Well, let's, let's just say, the Dalai Lama is a blankie. I don't know if we can get him because,

you know, we ask people to be in person. We don't want to do a Zoom episode, but yeah. Kandun famously filmed in the same place as Ishtar. Really? Yeah. Same studio in Morocco. I know that. That fucking rules.

I've visited the Kandoon set. It's amazing. And Kandun, the soundtrack is mostly Rogers and Clark, right? Exactly. Yeah. That's the director's cut. I've never seen Kondon before and I've never seen Last Temptation. I'm very eager to see it.

You've never seen Last Temptation? Never seen it. This temptation is amazing. Yeah, it just rewatched it, which caused our fans to go insane. insane being like, they're recording out of order. I was like, nope, we watched it, not because of the podcast. Yeah, let us, let us watch movies. Let me watch my movies.

Please let us watch movies. Let's do the box office game for Mean Streets, which came out. Actually, before I do the box office game, I should just notice release. It premiered kind of a surprising choice here at the New York Film Festival. I don't know why they picked that one. No, yeah, so it premieres in fall of 73 at the New York Film Festival. Festival. Warner Brothers had, you know, it does end up distributing it.

They get shopped around and they pick it up. And you know what? In that link later, thanks, Chris was saying. They showed it to Columbia, maybe, and they passed on it. They showed to a different studio first. Paramount. Paramount. Thank you.

And then they went over to Warner Brothers. And he was like, we're there with all the Warner Brothers execs. And they're getting their sandwiches delivered. We're screening the movie for the second time in two days. The first day, they were like, this is. well-made kid, but there's no money here, right? Right. And he's like, I'm spooling my movie up. It's starting, and the guys are arguing over, like, is that the corned beef? I got the corned beef. And he was like, I'm losing them. And then De Niro came on screen. Right. And one of the guys looked up and went like, oh, this guy's interesting. And then they all started looking and they all started engaging with the movie and they bought it. You have to imagine that's a moment that changes his entire life where he's like, huh, this guy. guy unlocks doors for me. Yeah. There's something here that is undeniable that translates across

audiences where if I have this guy in my movies, people are going to watch. Even if he's not famous yet, he makes people lift their heads up and stop paying attention to their sandwiches. Totally. That's so true and such a good story. But also I think what was happening then is that the guys were like, these Warner Brothers guys were like, oh, I know a guy like that. I know what I'm like. He's just like a guy from back home. And, And that was also the thing for Scorsese. It was like, yes. Like if this works for, if this is familiar to people, then this works.

People don't want to watch a movie about a guy like me. They want to watch a movie about the guys I know. And the movies can still be personal. But yes, if I can put those guys on screen, I really have something. So the release strategy, Scorsese, was not very happy with, you know, Warner Brothers didn't really know what to do and was against them opening in New York. because I think New York Film Festival was not really as glitzy back then, maybe. No. And they had no idea how to sell the picture.

I mean, it's funny because the poster is so iconic. But don't you think? Yeah, it's such a famous poster. Yeah, but they don't have stars yet. No. Yeah. The Exorcist is coming around the same time, although it is not in the top five, so that's not a spoiler, thank God.

Okay. And Warner Brothers is more worried about that. They don't really care about mean streets. So the film comes out, it gets nice reviews, it makes $3 million domestically, but it maybe doesn't, it's not like a huge hit. And it was interesting in that Linklater combo we watched where Linklater, they were talking about how it got no Oscar nominations. De Niro got a couple critics.

He got like the New York and National. Yes, he got National Society and New York Film Critics Circle supporting actor, and it got a WGA nom. But like, the Oscars ignored it, but Marty was like, nobody saw it. Like, it was just not like a widely seen movie. the academy was different, but also just it wasn't, like, really out there very much. It didn't feel like we were in the conversation. He wasn't surprised it didn't get the nominations.

Right. Right. So, when this film was coming out, number one at the box office, this is crazy, is, I believe, I think it's a double feature. The way I'm reading this chart. I think it's a double feature. Well, I don't think that this chart is trying to tell me it's a tie. I think that these were double features because the first is like an erotic comedy. Okay. Whoa.

You know, I think a bit of a fun, sexy movie for you to go see. I'm gonna, humma. And then the other is an animated film that is famously raunchy. And I imagine they were reading presented together. Fritz the cat. The first one. The first one. The first one.

The first one, the 1972. You know, the back she, Fritz the cat. And then it was on a double bill with a sex game. I doubt you've heard the other. It's a sex comedy directed by Paul Glickler. I don't know why I'm trying to give you guys clues. It's called The Cheerleaders. Oh, my God.

I was going to say, Paul Glicker, was it the cheerleaders? I love this movie. Miriam, I was like, make Miriam knows. But I didn't want to patronize it. I didn't know. No, I love this movie. Okay, tell me about the cheerleaders. Let me see.

They don't bring it on. They take it off. Okay, I'm guessing that that tagline was put on a DVD later. That's pretty good, though. The cheerleaders, they're like, these great softcore films that, hey, that they made, like, I think three of them and all these, like, experimental filmmakers, like, worked on these. Yes.

The swinging cheerleaders in 74. And then Cheerleaders Wild Weekend at one point. I don't know. Just abstract TNA. Love these films. It's just cheerleaders having fun. So that was the same week that mysteries came out. So this is the right.

That is number one at the box office when watch next comes out. So that is number one. Number two is a martial arts film. Probably the most famous martial arts film ever made. I'm sorry. I'm on the cheerleaders Wikipedia page. Right up at the top, this article needs additional citations for verifications, July 2013.

Someone flagged this 13 years ago and has not followed up on it. But also there's a section at the bottom that says streaming media and then it just says, the film is often available at licensed streaming movie sites with two citations. Oh, interesting. Feels like a real abandoned

wiki page. Sorry, number two at the box office. What's the most famous martial arts movie ever made? Enter the Dragon. So that's number two. Austinists, right? Correct. And that's been in the box office for over three months at this point. it's a huge hit. That's another example, though, of like his other films had been, you know, kind of cult successes. And it was like he's finally ceded into the consciousness enough that

everyone's ready for the big mainstream breakthrough. Warner Brothers makes a Bruce Lee movie. And then he dies and it becomes a phenomenon because it's like, fuck, this is the final object. Do you like Enter the Dragon? I haven't seen it. I need to do a double feature with, with reservoir dogs. Yeah. Number three at the box office. is a porn film. So, like, I think cheerleaders is more like softcore,

but, like, this is, like, a classic, like, golden age of porn move. Is it a green door? Not behind the green door? Misty Beethoven. Not Misty Beethoven, not deep throats. It's not a manual. Not a, no.

It's not the horny Alice in Wonderland. No. No? Devil and Miss Jones. I knew. I knew who just, like, name the big ones. The devil in Miss Jones. In Ms. Jones, the Gerard Damiano, is that his name?

Right. Who's the guy that her Reynolds character is basically based on. Right. Who also made a movie. I apologize in advance to all of our listeners and our guests. Let My Puppets Come. Wow. Gerard Damiano made a puppet porn film.

Wow. That was not presented as like, this is like a parody of porn. It was like, do people want to jerk off to puppets? And so the parody The title is a parody of Let My People Come And instead is just horny puppets I'd like an apology as well I own it on Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray

Didn't get the slip cover It's just To speak my truth You own it? This movie made It's an interesting artifact of film history I'm not saying I get my rocks off watching it I don't look at puppets that way

Griffin relax He bought it for the liner notes Freedkin calls... Devin & Miss Jones... ...s says Devil and Miss Jones is the best, like, porn movie of those... Of that era, because it, like, has a plot. I saw it at Bologna, at this film festival for restorations.

It was so... It was weird to watch a film with, like, you know, all these, like, academics and stuff. It is a... Right. It was weird, but, no, it's a good film. I've seen it. She kills herself. Mm-hmm.

And then, like, the devil, right, is, like... Or, like, an angel or is basically... like there's like an you can earn your place in hell by being a horny lady on earth something I think something like that there's sort of a celestial element to it yeah the cheerleaders has a better plot where like if you want to win the football game you have to like out fuck the other team right right I mean look we love a good plot let my puppets come has a plot owning owning a mob boss half a million dollars that must be paid within 24 hours a group of executives come up with ideas for in films, a pornographic movie, but the characters are puppets.

It's kind of, I watch the movie for the story. Of course. That's what I watch it for. Number four, the box office. This is a crazy box office because it's all kind of like, you know, underground-y kind of movies, is like a Chinese action movie starring the female Bruce Lee as she was built. Oh. Is this

Fuck, sorry, tell me The actor is called Judy Lee Yes The film is called Queen Boxer Okay, yep And I've never seen it But she's like a kickboxer Who's taking revenge or whatever

Yes And yeah That's number four That's new this week And the number five is Well, it's a film that you just told me That the director wanted Marty to be in Let My Puppets Come

This was another thing revealed in the link later thing that American graffiti is basically filming the same time as Mean Streets and that George Lucas wanted Scorsese as an actor in the film to be the leader of the Pharaohs, he said. In American

graffiti, which of course is one of the biggest hits of 73. And he said, George, I don't even drive. I'm from New York. I'm not a California. We should note, of course, that Marty is in Mean Streets and does shoot Robert De Niro in the neck with a gun. Yeah. Nice work if you could get it. We didn't really talk about the ending, but the ending is so fucking insane. Like, it really, I love that you just don't know what happens to Johnny Boy,

or really to any of them. You know that they're making it to the hospital. It's the other part that was making me think of Mikey and Nikki, that it just, like, the big dramatic burst of violence happens and the movie ends, like, immediately. And then you get your other clip. You get the big heat when the wife dies. And, like, it's so devastating. So you're like, I don't know. And weird music, that's such a crazy ending. What were you going to say, Ben? When they're on their way to Brooklyn. I wrote down this really funny quote from Kytel. Do I know Brooklyn? Do I know the jungle? And I just love that at that time, Brooklyn, all of the outer boroughs were truly just like no man's land for people in Manhattan. It's not even that. It's just you don't leave your place. Sure. You got your spot. This is your neighborhood.

This is where your people are, you know? They filmed it in Brooklyn. I mean, it took place in Brooklyn so they could film it in L.A. I think David already talked about that. Yeah. Yes. So how long is it? American Graffiti been out at this point? American graffiti's been out for 11 weeks. Wow. So, yeah, three months. So other films, a reissue of Clockwork Orange is number six. Okay. That's obviously a couple years old at this point.

A reissue of Camelot, the musical, is it number seven. And a reissue of The Last of Sheila. Oh, sure. With Richard Benjamin is number eight. Yeah. Then you have Electroglyde in Blue at number nine, which is, I want to just double check. You know, this movie. That's like...

Yeah. the sort of biker movie, but it's like a sort of spoof of biker movies? A little bit. Yeah. Okay, Robert Blake. Postmodern. Yeah. And then there's the movie hit with Billy D. Williams, the Sydney Fury movie.

Okay. That's like, you know, it's maybe not even black exploitation, but it's like a sort of like all-black cast, action thriller from Paramount, like a big sort of actiony movie with Billy D. Williams and a young Richard Pryor. I just remember that when we were talking about the soundtrack. I wanted to mention Michael Schultz's Kulihi, which was two years later and that used all these Motown songs and that he said, recently he said, like, it was dirt cheap to get those songs then. And then just like right after this and that. Then they were. Yeah.

It's when they were everywhere. I'm sorry. What were you going to say? No, I was just going to say Scorsese in that DGA thing said, Badlands was the closing night film at New York Film Festival the same year. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. What a year. And those two guys being. roughly the same age, feeling like putting on the board new methods of, like, film language

for American artists. And he was like, that was the one that had all the heat and the energy behind it. Like, we were in the festival and we got a good reception, but the energy was something incredible is happening over here with Badlands. But I guess Badlands ends up actually releasing a little bit later. It released in 74, I believe. But it was the closing film of the 73 New York Film Festival. Yeah.

Yeah, the big 73 movie is obviously Exorcist. Yeah. Well, I don't know what woman's best picture that year. For 73? It's not the godfather, I'll tell you that much, because that was 72. It is The Sting. Yeah, it's the Sting, which, you know, was a giant hit that everybody loved. But also is a very old-fashioned movie, not just in being a period piece, but feels...

Well, they play the piano like, do-to-do-do-do, you know, they do that. It's just interesting that you've already had like Midnight Catalyst, Bowboy winning Best Picture and being like, oh, shit, is everything different now? And a couple years later, they're like, we watch, like, watching movie stars and expensive costumes pull off cons. We've been going through that in the last 10 years, too. We'll keep swinging back and forth. And then Mean Treats plays director's Fortnite. It can, right? And that's like, you still see it. If you guys go, like, they do this, like, kind of screensaver sort of like iPhone kind of collage of all the films that have played. And they always play Mean Streets and Jean-Dilman.

So it's an iconic director's Fortnite. That's also so funny because it must have been like six months after the movie came out in the States, right? Yeah. But back then. No, no, totally. Yeah. So the film obviously holds a special place in Marty's heart

because it's so personal. But he says he's never really sat down and watched it from beginning to end because it's too close. And indeed he wanted to make a sequel about Charlie living on Staten Island with a couple kids. again, I am kind of like, and what is the story of this film? Like, it can't just be Charlie hanging out. Yeah.

Like, does Johnny Boy come back? What he's dead? You're talking, Robo Johnny Boy? Well, you don't know that he's dead. You don't know what happened. Yeah. Like, he gets shot, he's bleeding out, and he, like, runs into the street. You assume Johnny Boy is probably not making it, but like...

I've heard him say that nobody dies, but that they can never go back. And, like, that's how he reads it, is that they don't die, or maybe we don't know. But if he survives, he needs people basically to think that he's dead. Or, yeah, they just can't go back. And so they're exiles and stuff. That's interesting. Yeah. Instead, Warner Brothers, who had released this film and found him very promising.

Right. Through him, Alice doesn't live here anymore as a challenge. Right, which comes out basically like one year later. So it's like he goes right to that. Whereas I assume taxi driver. Well, but that's traitor's thing. So, like, I don't even know that he's like nursing taxi. tax. I don't think after this

Corsese, he's like, okay, and now New York, New York, that was his thing. I guess that's the next thing. I read an interview. I read an interview and he's like, the next thing on his mind is New York, New York. Again, it's another genre. I did the gangster film. Now I do the musical. He knows it's going to take a lot of money and a lot of production resources to put that movie together. He needs

to play the studio game to be able to be entrusted because it's the only game back then. Yeah. And like, it's funny because it's like, all right, so Jaws is what, 75? Yeah. And American graffiti is 73. De Palma's, like, Sisters is what, 72?

Like, what's De Palma doing? De Palma's probably in the weirdest place. Yeah. Because what? Carries, not until 78? He's 76. Okay. But, you know, all these guys are trying shit and doing exciting stuff. Right. But they're not quite, you know, they're not quite atop the Hollywood pile yet. Whereas Copla is, like,

immediately atop the Hollywood pile after he does Godfather. He was also older than all of them. And he's in San Francisco, and he's, like, doing his own thing. He had made more films before Godfather. He had gone through were a whole sort of arc, and he was, like, the mentor to all of them. He was kind of like the camp counselor trying to encourage all of them to follow their things. My 73 list is, I mean, like, my favorite movies that year are Don't Look Now and Long Goodbye and The Exorcist.

And Spirit of the Beehive and shit like that, which, you know, like the great her art. Fucking rules. Peartyves, pretty cool. Yeah. That guy rocks. I don't know if I've seen any of his other films, actually. They're all good. I mean, I only made, like, three.

Do you like Victor Hireche? Yeah. Yeah. What you say? Are you ch? Also a great band. Spirit of the Beehive? Really?

Yeah. Let's be done. Let's stop talking about these streets. Miriam, are there any other sort of general, overarching Scurzzi takes or thoughts in your relationship with him and his work that you want to throw out as we start this journey for months? I think I've drained the Screzzi love for now. Okay. And we love him forever. Yeah.

I mean, he's the best. He's like... The one thing I'll say, the departed, I was wrong about it. People say, like, I used to think it was like he just got the award because, you know, it's a career achievement. Departed is, is amazing. Like, now there's seen more Hong Kong movies, I'm like, this movie fucking rocks. It's also, it's just so watchable. When will he work with Mark Wahlberg again?

It's crazy because- You're nice for him to rescue Wahlberg. It would be nice, but also I'm like, how disappointed. pointed would it be to see them work together again and not reactivate the same thing. I mean, this is another thing I remember, sorry, but this was public knowledge. But at the time we were shooting vinyl, it was pretty recent that he, William Monaghan wrote a departed sequel to star Walbert. Yes. And Corsesey was on board to direct it.

And Warner Brothers said, we don't believe that Walberg can carry this movie. Okay. It was going to be... He was the only one nominated in that film. That's crazy. Although that is also crazy that that happened. But De Niro was going to play... It was going to be the fucking rat in Congress, right?

Like, the final shot. De Niro was going to play like a corrupt congressman. I just died. Yeah, and it was going to be Walberg. All this... I'm not saying anything prior to her, but I just remember him... It's like the stupidest thing. Like, turns out Martin Sheen didn't die.

He's just like in traction. I'm trying to think of like the worst departed. sequel. Sure. Like, you know, what else happened? But he was, I think it was at the rap party and he was like holding court with a bunch of us young ins. And he was like, I was ready to make it. The film went in best picture. It was a big hit. I had Mark Wahlberg. He's a movie star. They wouldn't do it. Is it Marty, you don't see the vision. Sure. Well, I mean, that's funny. He was like, I've given up on it. I spent five years trying. I'm not. It's over. Miriam, is there anything you want to plug? Um, no. I'm just, uh, uh, you're vibing.

I'm vibing. We love it. We love to see vibe. We're here to vibe. We're here to vibe. It's very nice to have you on the show again, Mary. It's so nice to be back. It's, uh, yeah. Years long project. There have been other episodes we've circled and then trips change. No, I'm sorry. No, no, no, no.

There's one I would have loved to do. Which, remind me. Vamps. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Which now we've both said, I fucking love Vamps. Vamps, yeah, I told you. Hosted a VAM screening in L.A.

I think that movie's awesome. Yeah. Um, anyway, it's such an honor to be on this episode for this series. Nice to have you. So glad to work out. And thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe as we go through five more months of Martin Scorsese. Yes, next week will be Alice doesn't live here anymore.

Another gangster picture. Oh, God. The same thing every week. Why don't you try silence? We are going to try. In person. Yeah, right. She once told Griffin to shut up in a nice way.

Well, it wasn't nice. but in a more polite way. The way she said it was Griffin Tricy Islands. Who said that? Ellen Burstyn. Academy Award winner Ellen Burstyn. Oh my God. One of the most devastating things that has ever happened to anyone.

I think to anyone. It was incredible. I wear it as a badge of honor, but. And then you went on to become a professional talker. Yeah. You know what? You know what, Ellen? You know what Ellen?

And it's good that you didn't. Anyway, tune in next week. Tune in next week. As against her wishes, we talk extensively about. Ellen Burstyn. And as always, I want to say, I only watch Let My Puppets Come as a student of cinema. That is the only thing.

That's the prism through which it's just important. That's fine. I don't care. For film history, Ben. Sure. And there's some good puppetry in it. I don't endorse what the puppets are doing. I don't like it.

They can do it if they want. I'm not telling them they can't do it. Blank Check with Griffin and David is, hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hossley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas, and our associate producer is A.J. McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by A.J. McKeon and Alan Smithy.

Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Holly Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to Blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

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