Mean Streets with Miriam Bale

blank check with griffin and david blank check with griffin and david don't know what to say but to expect all you need to know is that the name of the show is blank check 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 podcast i'm a podcast yes what's a podcast podcast what's a podcast oh 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 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 a little scene lit what what david what i know i'm thinking about mean streets i'm thinking about how i guess yeah it's not i mean it has some of the the inner dialogue is very iconic but the dialogue is iconic just because it's that it's all them going like like you know like they're just all yelling at each other there's a lot of iconic dialogue i mean imdb of course points out uh 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 podcast i don't like this attitude of i picked the wrong thing this was this was fun this was a little attitude i'm just looking at the street does 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 scorsese session and i gotta tell you yes disaster no off the rails perfect i watching this movie it's been a minute i am feeling so comforted if a ben movie oh that we're doing this 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 are you telling me mean streets is autobiographical to your life not at all i just like that this movie i was i was i was watching some of the special features on the criterion disc and there was like a promotional featurette um that is let me see what the name of it is it's called uh uh 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 crazy 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 uh were very very very italian and some of them were little well only one of them it's rude yeah i remember my parents uh saying little italy once and i was like what do you mean little italy and they're like it's his 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 i was like aren't they aren't they you put it that way it sounds patronizing absolutely i was like what do you got your little italy right and they're 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 you can you can jump in guest is the term we usually use 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 gennaro yeah we're talking about the san gennaro festival yeah um which takes over probably like three four blocks it's really just a couple blocks yeah it's mulberry and mott probably between like now and 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 also like soho and yeah and some restaurants yeah yeah it's just there'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 let's you know wait i saw an interview um before this uh with grisezzi and he was talking about um he it was important for him to set it at the festival because it was about the malevolent nature of a celebration oh fuck yeah see he gets it that's also a very new york thing where anytime 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 janeiro didn't you live in an apartment for like a month this is friend of the show ray tentore yes uh when i was going through a breakup i was couch surfing right 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 there it just felt like there was a floodlight directly outside of the window where the bed was yes yeah yeah there was there was like a week or two of you coming into records 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 my sportscaster nickname griffy griffy parm yeah sure my name's griffy parm that's actually really good yeah i'm here with my co-host david spaghetti i feel like we can post that that's actually a little offensive david spag david gabagool sims 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 i'm not a big spaghetti guy it's not like it's like oh david he's always eating his 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's bags i would say uh it's a podcast about filmography as directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a chance to do a lot of great things a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects 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 yeah arms crossed arms crossed or yes it should be all of us back to back to back arms crossed but i want to be uh ellen burston and alice doesn't live here anymore cool and i want to be uh the the clockwork thing in hugo yeah the automaton yeah yeah that's what i want to be yeah and he's he's writing down the name david spaghetti that's what the that's what the automaton is 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 sure yeah that'd be good maybe i want to be sharon stone and casino actually maybe we should just all be in casino maybe we should just be casino i like pesci in the casino when i was a kid and casino came out and i was nine and i was or yeah nine ninety five right yeah and i was like well i know casino has dice and so i really appreciated that joe pesci was holding a pair of dice oh sure poster sure because i was like what's this movie about dice like they make dice they roll dice if i'm paying eight dollars i better get dice i don't want to just see cards um well i just remember my mom being like it's really violent and i'm like why like aren't they rolled like they roll the dice and they win or they lose aren't they playing well he has dice he's literally holding a pair of fucking dice dice on the poster how violent can got to get exactly we'll get to that in in some months from now but uh watching casino in 4k is quite an experience because you can see uh 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 no but would put like rubber bands yes yeah underneath a wig and all those movies now like uh uh my cousin vinny is the same way were you watching you're like what the fuck is going on with his face we were never supposed to see this this clearly yeah yeah beautiful yeah who's our guest she's to shoot we have to introduce our guests are we talking about the movie first we have to say that this is an episode on mean streets mean streets the guarantor absolutely yes a phenomenon i would maybe call the second first film uh sure your first real debut right you make other movies but this is your first real debut like cameron with the terminator or yeah and mcchomalon with six cents right right right where this is the first most people on the 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. Wait, is Boxcar Bertha? It doesn't count. I mean, of course it counts. Boxcar Bertha counts. Yeah. 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 kind of is the spanner in 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 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, this is 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. Yeah. 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 and you know, he's just so experimental. Yeah. But he's also kind of like a cipher. He's always this like weird creep. And then all of a sudden he comes and he's this like crazy Italian-American and that's who he is. It's also, it's not what he becomes known for. This performance is kind of unique in his career. It undeniably is like what makes him stick. Yeah. Did he ever play like this kind of wild card? Because it's like the Untouchables 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 Casim and Godfather Part 2, which is more what we think of. It's the focused, taciturn. 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'd 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 Bale, 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. You're not supposed to say that here. No, we say that here. We say that proudly here. Of course. Yeah, I love him. I mean, this was like, I could I mean, I could just get into it. This was for, well, I 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, 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 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 Cassavetes personal film and Cassavetes really really encouraged him to make this movie because he'd made Boxcar Bertha and he was like, you're just spending a year of your life. He shat all over it. Cassavetes is so mean. I know. He said that he gave him a big hug. He was always remembered. He came in and he gave him a big hug. It's so, it's, I've never forgotten it whenever I've heard, you know, because it's, it does feel like something you would really, you know, made him make Mean Streets, right? The Cassavetes was like, he wasted a year of your life on this shit. Yeah, Ben, the legendary story is that 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 of your life making a piece of shit. Damn. And then from there, basically kind of like grabs him by the lapels 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 Cassavetes not said that to him. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. But it is, you know, do you think Scorsese's gonna say, like, you know, come on, Vinegar Syndrome's gonna put out a really nice edition of Boxcar Bertha in 50 years. 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, but it's a piece of shit. It also feels like Cassavetes, 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's the way it would fire up Scorsese to actually make the move. Right, but Gangnam shouldn't shoot, who couldn't shoot straight? The 1971 James Coulson. Um, yeah. Oh, wait. I was gonna say about this film. Can I finish it? Oh, yeah, right. We were No, no, it's okay. I can go all the way. All the way back. All the way. Um, so uh, yeah, I saw this in film school and, um, I loved it, and I was uh, in a sound class. Dan Olmsted, the greatest sound mixer. So I wrote a paper on this, and, um, 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 Cassavetes, but it's also a genre film. It's, like, and the combination of that is why this is like, yeah, the film's, like, this is this is the urtext 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. Um, this is I'm gonna go back to that. Um, this is, like, he, he was really inspired by these, like, you know, these, especially Warner Brothers crime films of the 30s, and Um. He loves the Cagney movies, right? Like, Roaring Twenties. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. But what if you take 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, I think he is as important as, like, a film scholar as he is a filmmaker. Like, I think, like, and a film preservationist, like, I think that that, so soon after this, I watched like, The Personal Journey Through American Film. The best. The Scorsese, yeah, and then it was just, like, my life was changed. Like, I was, you know, and so, that's my origin story. No, when, I mean, when I said it's the, the second first film, it's not that I, I, because I like Who's That Knocking My Door a lot, and I think Boxcar Birth 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 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, it's fascinating to have this be the, like, you know, Keitel, 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, final connection with in my career were Keitel, De Niro, and DiCaprio. They're the three guys where there's just been the unspoken language. And Keitel starts out as, like, his Antoine Daniel. 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 in 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, um, the mailbox. The, the, the, you see him. And to me, it's like, 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. He is so hot in this movie. He is so hot. The haircut is incredible. I was obsessed with it in high school. Like, the bits. It's like Oasis. You know Oasis. I know Oasis. Entering the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Like, uh, you know, on the sideburns. Yes. It's, and, 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 mod rocker. Yeah, exactly. Kind of casual. Um. It's great. 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. Sure, sure. Yes. He's got, 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 is where he plays this guy with this medical condition who was, like, frozen in his body. Yeah. Um, basically fully paralyzed for, like, years and years and years, and there was a scene they were shooting were 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 hey Mark hey De Niro and De Niro's just locked in you know unconcerned uh Robin Williams is like focused and then the guy goes Bobby you still like that black 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 he's the best he's the king he's my I mean I always shout out to his off-menu podcast appearance where they they ask him so what's your favorite appetizer he's like no I don't know whatever they want to give me and he they're like well I know 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 and they're like don't you own restaurants and he's like yeah I just tell them do whatever they want yeah they're like okay well what about the food at your restaurant it's like yeah it's good yeah because this is what I mean I'm not saying this was the the birth of De Niro like his type I'm saying this is the birth of him as a person do you remember the who's hotter De Niro Pacino debate on Twitter do you remember that I don't think I think I missed it it was a such a war it was a few years ago yeah and it is just one of those things where it's like I don't know like what pick your day you know like you know like aren't we who you prefer such different 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 Niro's a little more yeah I think Pacino's more pretty and Pacino's a little scary you know I prefer De Niro but I think that Pacino's beautiful yeah he's gorgeous like young Pacino yeah I mean I guess we're not gonna talk about it talk about what we're not gonna talk about young Pacino no young Pacino in Scorsese's career it's you know you gotta wait for old Pacino Ben and I just spent the weekend in Wisconsin with our researcher that's right and he was saying I don't know if he made it made into the dossier because JJ uh vets his uh information very thoroughly but he he asked me he was like had you ever heard this anecdote that Scorsese wanted Pacino to play Johnny Boy 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 right and then De Niro got it because he was making The Godfather but I I hadn't heard that about about for Mean Streets and Pacino I who was who he wanted to play which doesn't make sense at all John Voight 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 right exactly and we can look at the dossier but like wait but as because you mentioned again the gang who couldn't shoot straight I just want to ask what is De Niro and that's in Jerry Orbach is the star of that oh my god that's great this is the crazy thing is like it was written for Marcello Mastroianni and then good yeah and then um he he admitted towards when they were getting close to production that uh he couldn't speak English perfect uh pardon it's the right time so they replaced him with Jerry Orbach one-to-one yeah I mean Jerry Orbach makes more sense as like a New York tough yeah Italian buddy yes he's close enough right it would have been weirder to have Marcello Mastroianni yeah but yeah okay well and and De Niro actually plays an Italian he plays an Italian like a kleptomaniac Mario Trantino yeah so is he silly like is he kind of in more so this is a weird thing is like I've interviewed De Niro and I think one of the things he really hates I mean you know he he barely says anything in an interview but he I think you can tell he's annoyed with this idea that he started in the 2000s with Analyze This 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 it right like it was a failure so at first they were like oh yeah De Niro will be in like shorts and yeah shooting and you know when we see him when he walks down that street you're talking the 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 so it's like a couple books but it's such a difference and I like talks about I didn't know those guys as well like in the the Marty doc 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 uh 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 well you know with his with 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 and like you know uh like everyone in the neighborhood knows each other and they play stick ball and shit but there's something to De Niro's priests De Niro having like the same reference points without the same lived experience 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 um elasticity and what he can put on screen that's different than Scorsese's very like 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 like they're observers they're insider outsiders so that's like yeah where they overlap it's a thing Scorsese said that he was a big fan of De Niro's priests De Niro was a big fan of De Niro's priests De Niro was a while I'm making the movie about my experiences and being this age and growing up with these people and all of this and then he said I think years later when he re-watched 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 and the language but actually in terms of the characters 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 gonna be a priest or a director it wasn't he was too little to get in trouble but it is this thing that is a little lost time I think you're right Miriam which is like those early De Palma movies because what De Niro 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 um I said bound fucking twice uh and 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 there was obviously Panic at 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 really good I don't think he has one I mean I think it's I think he has a voice yeah 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 um 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 yeah interesting I mean he is famously one of the worst interviewers interview subjects alive yes 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 what does he do he applauds him he hands him he has a couple nitpicks on the back my favorite thing about De Niro is just and it's so crazy these guys to be clear I don't support Donald Trump um but like you know just like when you're like he's such an amazing actor he's got such a long legacy he's like uh 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 uh trump no good yeah he's so crazy about it but then maybe he's the only one who's not crazy about it 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 entirely internalized and that part of it for him is that he feels 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 but i wouldn't be able to go out to him be like would i be able to talk to him about the mats or something like what i've never like that's my feel like can i get him just chatting i think like 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 non-verbal and so you get this kind of like non-verbal 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 non-stop you know where is he non-stop because there's like stuff in his later career like silver linings playbook where he's like he's like he's like he's like he's like he has like big kind of like yelly speeches and stuff that's the that's the deniro explosion it's the explosion it's not right 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 comedy in my memory it's deniro-esque but he's still doing you know but i was gonna 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 uh that movie is co-written by jeff ross good does he talk a lot in dirty grandpa let me uh let me uh see your ass that's what i imagine dirty grandpa saying yeah you know i have seen it there's the part of dirty grandpa where he raps yeah 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 because the whole thing with deniro is like he made 200 movies yeah a hundred and 40 of them are bad right and so you can find these clips where it's like do you know that deniro did this right you know it's like people post al pacino doing dunka chino i'm like give it a break deniro has an endless that the stuff that deniro has done on screen is wild but i think you're right that when he does something that feels outside of the sort of basic cultural understanding of the deniro archetype it basically just gets memory washed people just don't keep that doesn't matter he's still bulletproof right he could make shit for another hundred 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 you've seen alto nights i have so he's two characters in that are either of them big you know what yes i actually one of them is 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 close to the big one he's probably the bigger one he's probably the bigger one he's probably clearly playing pesci one of them he's playing like more the elderly deniro archetype right 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 deniro as the strong silent type right as the person who's struggling to communicate with words that's true actually i will 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 and 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 and october to do it so they shot some stuff with harvey kytel and um i i'm not just this is where i'm not sure but i think he met deniro like deniro met pesci or or officially really met at some yeah 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 and so he wanted to play charlie he wanted to play charlie but then he ran into um harvey kytel on the street and they were just like they started laughing they were just like okay you're you're an actor too this is gonna be fine but i think yeah so he played the joe pesci he played the crazy guy right right right and that's just something he doesn't get to do much all two nights he does play the old man version of it you're right that one of the characters as mean streets right no it's better than okay right yeah uh marty could never um you think marty saw all tonight do you think marty sees everything deniro makes like deniro's like i made a movie with sebastian menescal you gotta 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 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 i think deniro hasn't seen all the movies deniro'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 deniro but what about like cape fear and yeah but those are like scary guys right and it's like there he cape fear he is so so big that's so true but like by wild card i mean that he's like he's like he's the kind of jokey like yeah character in a group of guys where there's the wild card 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 you know and it's like so often yes there's stuff like cape fear but like so i mean like brazil he's so funny and weird yes but that movie is not a reality like when he's doing kind of character actor right stuff even cape fear where he's like a lead but he's obviously not the protagonist of the story but like in the 80s in the 70s it's the godfather 2 stuff so it's like 1900 and lasted right like all that in the 80s it's the raging bull stuff so i feel like it's like transformation um that's true but also just like you know more like intense scary characters i want to sort him by uh chronology 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 about deniro no because i think you are right miriam that really didn't make a lot of movies in the air but like once upon a time in america is like that the mission is like that like angel heart these like stoic characters and then like the 90s i've never seen jackknife have you ever seen jackknife i've never seen jack 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 um and the poster is just a painting of deniro with a beard and a boston red socks hat he does have a red socks but you know goodfellas let's let's put cape here aside but like goodfellas bronx tale you know casino heat sleepers like these movies ronin where he's just like the the impassive guy yeah and he also did dude like jackie brown and this boy's life and frankenstein he did a lot of weird shit too so he's so funny and but jackie brown the whole thing is how funny i know it's yeah he's hysterical and then he break oh yeah that's another kind of wild card but i mean it's like it's a silent until he breaks sex scene in that movie makes me laugh thank you i it was in you read my mind this is his sexiest era heat and jackie brown for me i think this is i mean i've thought the 90s era is for you what about what about um midnight run i i always go back where i think so hot midnight run is one of his best performances but i wouldn't say it's 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 deniro like hopland yeah yeah i think that it's just i mean i just think it's objectively his hot 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 great and wag the dog this yeah right i love that performance like it's he rocks you know what that's our official stance on blank track i 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 his life is not so bad 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 sissy - To learn Italian. - To like, to practice Italian. But the character is from Calabria, so I think, like, was he gaming for this? Maybe. I don't know. Yeah. I think they're going to do a prequel. I'm going to be brain-tongued. David! Yes? Did you know there's a new place where you, you specifically, can let your nerdy freak flag fly? I did know that because it's a real digital town, Video Game Town. And it's populated by some of the best freelance writers on the internet, where you can read compelling editorials, reviews on the latest pop culture releases, get exclusive interviews with tastemakers, and even get rankings of sexy mascots if you're into that. Video Game Town covers all things geek-related. We've got coverage on meme culture, film reviews from Sedanth Alaka, articles dissecting television, both new and old, and a weekly podcast with some stellar guests. They deliver the kind of analysis. privacy analysis, editorials, podcasts, videos, rankings, and nerdy ephemera that you can't find elsewhere. So check them out at VideoGame.Town. And if you want to support the return of fully independent web media, you can directly support them on Patreon at patreon.com/videogametown for exclusive articles and podcasts. VideoGame.Town for new stuff every single day. Alright, 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." Which is 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? Oh, sure. Yes, yes. He was like, "Well, save that for Nick Cage." Yes. Is it a reference to the Donovan song? I think it's a 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 club. Mean Streets is a great title. I agree. I don't think Mean Streets can really be beat as a title. This is his long-gestating passion project. He works on it with his college classmate, Marty Martin, who. Sorry, I just want, I want to. He's interrupting me. No, no, I wanted to be correct about this. The movie they're watching with Vincent Price. Yes. That's, 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, no. It looks like a dumber Vincent Price movie. It's a Roger Corman movie. Yeah. Right, okay. It's, um, which is it? "Witchfinder 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, Marnick Martin. So, Marnick Martin worked on what? On who's that? That knocking at my door on "New York, New York," on "Raging Bull." And what you like. You know, like, the early Scorsese collaborator. Yes. Am I saying it right? This is our first episode. Martin Scorsese? How do I say it? Scorsese. Scorsese. Miriam, I feel like you. I feel like it's Scorsese. Scorsese. I feel like I've heard him say Scorsese. And, like, um. He's one of those guys that's kind of like, "Oh, it's fine." You know what's funny? I saw an old comedian, um, talking, like, on "The David Letterman Show," and he was, like, "Coppola," and he was, like, "Coppola?" He's, like, he doesn't know how to pronounce his name. This was in, like, the early 80s. And he's actually right. It's the classic thing of these Americans don't know how to pronounce their. I mean, his name is a transcription error. Yeah. The family was Scorsese or Scorsese with double Zs 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. I feel like the effort to correct the last 15 years has been towards Scorsese versus Scorsese. Right. Yeah. Right. Everyone used to say Scorsese, and that's wrong. Yeah. I think. Yeah. Oh. Ben? I've just been saying that the whole time. Yeah. You're wrong! All right. I think. Uh, Scorsese. Okay. So, uh. Do you feel okay? How do you. Do you feel familiar enough to say Marty? Marty. Can we just call. Can we give ourselves permission to call him Marty? Marty, of course. Marty. Yeah. You've worked with him. I have. I called him Marty. I have been in his office and screening room. Sure. But he wasn't there. Yeah. Uh, but I watched Killers of the Flower Moon in his office. I'm sure I'll bring it up a million more times. I was gonna say, that's where you saw the Super Mario Galaxy movie. Um, so, uh, Mardik, uh, and him sat down. They work out the structure of this movie. They work out the characters. They work out the incidents. Uh, I guess, who's that knocking at my door? This was originally meant to be a continuation. A continuation of that. Yeah, an Anton Doignel style. I'm following this guy, Charlie, will be my analog across stages. Right. 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. Right. 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, I think it was written, but never made. It sounds kind of boring. Well, actually. It's kind of in a fun way. I don't think I read it. But I, so he started this Mean Streets season in The Witch in like, did you say the date? Like mid sixties, right? It's like 65. 65 is where he puts it basically, maybe 66. Like, and obviously it's inspired by his, his, 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 sake. He's got asthma. Yeah. Didn't really do the hard stuff. No. Years later, Martin Scorsese would identify his nose and the possibilities. My lungs aren't connected. Well, they are, but 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 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, that's a memory. That's a, that's real. As you said, Miriam, right? Did you some one of one of you two said like it's really his father. He realized. Yeah, it's 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 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 I think a big influence on developing the screen play was Sandy Weintraub was his girlfriend at the time. Right and her dad was a studio exec and she's in the film, I think playing Heather Weintraub. Mm-hmm. So she said you got to put some more of your funny stories in there, you know, like I think he had his like things like put in the MOOC story put in the firecracker 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? 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 and this guy doesn't really know to put women on screen right 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 okay. She's Amy Robison's Teresa. Yes. Who is De Niro's cousin, right? Yeah, right and and Charlie's love interest, right? Yeah, and she was friends with I think she worked with De Palma. So she knew like Margot. Yeah, she worked on sisters and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. But her epilepsy feels a little bit like an analog for Scorsese'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 community. Then I always had to like empathetically deal with who has a condition but the 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 right 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 and not in like a the humor way or anything. It's just like it's just all. It's an undeveloped ideas bouncing around in his head, but yeah, I mean like, you know, look and a Paquin will do it. will be silently sitting for every episode. I already made that clear, right? Of course, she's sitting right there in a pack when she won't speak at any point. 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 Anna Paquin thing. It literally will be a running discussion for, like, decades of his career of if he is sidelining women, when is that an oversight or a 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. 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 bromance, 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 Keitel is, like, watching the woman who's a stripper, Jeannie Bell, playing Diane, I think. Diane. 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. Wow. On Instagram. She was the world's oldest competitive jump rope skipper. For her? Yeah. She was a, at the time, she was a Playboy model. I mean, she's just gorgeous. And she goes by, 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. But 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 a difference. And that's, that's Grisezzi's. I'm pretty sure that's his, because, you know, they alternate. He's interchangeably cutting between Keitel doing voiceover and him doing voiceover. Yeah, this really personal thing. It's like, he's saying that. So, I'm going to say, this is my other, my other wild take is, like, this is a film about race. Like, you know, like, there's that with, like. It's in there. But then he, like, he stands her up. What is it? Moulinon. Do you know? Is that it? Moulinon? It's another. 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. Moulinon means eggplant. Like, that's the, you know, it's from the Sicilian. I mean, it's a nasty thing. Like, it's a nasty thing to say. I know. So, maybe I should have said the N-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, 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. Yeah. 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 experience is versus the Italian experience, but also Italian gets first billing over American. 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 discrimination, 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 blaxploitation 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 blaxploitation 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 driving him 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. But he said there was no one else like him in his classes. Like, there was no one else that was from this, like, you know, lower middle class. From the neighborhood. 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. Yeah. Like, there were two completely disconnected worlds even though they were five blocks away from each other. Yeah. He said that, like, De Niro says when he brings the Weintraub girls, he's like, they're from the village. Right. You know, like, there's 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? Mm-hmm. And he said, no, probably because it's just not, you know, sexy enough. Mm-hmm. 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, like, I 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 these sellable areas of genre at this point in time. 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. Mm-hmm. And he enters Roger Corman's orbit. We talked, you know, we talked about all that last week, I'm sure. So, Boxcar Bertha. Jay Cox, who's working at the New York Times, Cox spelled, like, the cool way Multiple penises. Right. Mm-hmm. He's the one who shows John Cassavetes who's that knocking at my door. And Cassavetes responds 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 Cassavetes 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 the years. But that's also very indicative about why Scorsese, or why Cassavetes said the, like, wasted a year of your life making a piece of shit because he knows the thing he wants to make. 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 mook scene and 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 blaxploitation asphalt jungle. And so he's the one who's like, yeah, could you make could we make this a blaxploitation movie, essentially, like an 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. But there's a tribute to Corman in there. Yes, 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. 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 cost about $150,000, I think. Jonathan Taplin is also very important, who is the touring manager for the band. That's who I believe Verna Bloom connected with. Bloom introduces them. Right. She saw that he was talking to Corman and 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 they end up with $175,000 and they get some other stuff from like CFI Labs. I don't know. They scrape money together. Obviously, he had written Charlie for Harvey Keitel 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, Jon Voight is involved, but then they shoot the festival stuff before they even start doing pre-production. Yeah. Yeah. And then at that point, Harvey is basically locked in. Jon had already done Midnight Cowboy and apparently Voight says to Scorsese, 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, like, 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 LA, which is the craziest fucking thing. Yeah. That, like, more than 90% of this film was shot in Los Angeles. Right. And the New York exterior stuff they did, especially San Gennaro, is so impactful. And then Scorsese finds the right locations. In LA, 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 at all about, like, the concession of needing to move to LA and if you were going to lose some of the authenticity in 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 a movie. We just 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. Because Keitel are. 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 guys. These guys have a shared language. Amy Robbins is from New York. If I put them in the same room, even if that room's in LA 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. Beach in New York. And the weirdest, we were talking about this before we recorded, when De Niro's shooting the gun on the roof, the roof is New York, because you can see the Empire State Building, but the window is Los Angeles. 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 as 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. We didn't have money for the equipment to do anything more complicated. And you need longer shots. You need scenes playing out in longer takes. And you need the camera being able to just move really quickly from one, the 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. Done 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 Scorsese was just like, well, if we had, we'd still be shooting it out. Right, right, right. The other thing Wakefield said was, like, there wasn't, 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 about it now. But I think immediately afterwards, he kind of thought, Scorsese thought it was like a little sloppy, you know? 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- They're such different movies. Yeah. It's like, this is the termite godfather. Yeah. This is like, yeah. 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 brutal. Wow, we're going to get killed. It's not my movie. No, it's fine. Slash movies. Yeah. It's not your movie. That was a big movie for Team David. I cannot- Yeah. I love The Godfather. Godfather's 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 Safdies careers are built on, can we figure out a way to get back to that feeling? Wait, which, I was wondering, which Safdies movie is Mean Streets? Is it Daddy Long Legs? Yeah, it's Daddy Long Legs. Yeah. Yeah. Right, because that's the personal one. That's the- 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. I don't know. And that they all weirdly become like- Heaven Knows What is their New York, New York. What am I talking about? I sound like an idiot. Go ahead, Daddy Long Legs. No, I was just gonna 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. Go, go, go, right. Which this has that narratively of like, when is shit gonna catch up to Johnny Boy? But the movie doesn't have the narrative engine of they're getting closer. I said this to you when I came in. Read the Wikipedia synopsis. It's four paragraphs. The final three paragraphs of the last 15 minutes, 15 minutes of the movie. There's nothing else. There's no plot in the movie before them. It's just hanging out. The first paragraph is a bird's eye overview. It's like, you know, Charlie lives in Little Italy and he's dating this girl and he's got Johnny Boy and all that. And then it's three paragraphs. And then he's torn 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. Yes. I mean, it's just about like, the ending. In the end, they're banished. And I feel like that happens in, like, Not to Bring Back the Safdies. I feel like that happens in it, too. They, like, end up leaving. That is like, 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. A lot. You hang out with the mob a little bit. Yeah. Or you have the, and then you hang out in the church. Yeah. 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. Why 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's also a funereal march. That movie has the narrative engine of, you know this is going somewhere bad. Yeah. And in the streets, even though everyone's kind of saying, like, you gotta 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. Right. Right. This has become untenable. Yeah. Like, Mean Streets is a little, right, they're young, and it's just kind of this, like, you gotta pick your friend's moment of, like, are you really gonna 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 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. 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 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 lines 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. Is he? Wow. Because I think he's suffering because he is stuck. He is stuck. He's stuck in his position. 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 they're 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 into a fight with him. What is the matter with you? He sees the title as an homage to, like, Cagney. 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 tarnished nor afraid. So it's about, it's about, it's about Charlie. Yeah, right. It makes sense. So the mean streets 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, you know. Yeah. It's a punchy title. But Jay Cox showed him the image. And said, like, that's a good fucking title. Right. And it does have that kind of. It's been in the 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. Because 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. 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 Scorsese is Andrew Sarris. And the kind of cinema guy, the auteurist. Because when these guys were coming up, it was Andrew Sarris 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 seen as, like, prestigious films. Yeah, they were being spammed. On TVs. Crime movies, westerns. Yes, totally. 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 Mervyn LeRoy, but he was not a Mervyn LeRoy guy. He was, like, a William Wellman guy. He was a Fuller guy. He was a Hawks and Ford guy. And so that's really important to figuring out the films. 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 Cagney. Public Enemy is, like, young Cagney. 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. Mm-hmm. It was not score, it was source music. The last shot is a record player. 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. Yeah. But Jonathan Kaplan probably also helped get all this music. No, no, he totally did. He was the music supervisor. Right. This 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 for the soundtrack. Of which $15,000 was just to the Rolling Stones. $30,000. $30,000. Right, it was $15,000 each. The Stones was $15,000 each. And they had both Jumpin' 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 groups right before the Beatles. Like, that's his music. Link later said a thing in that DJ talk. I thought it was really interesting, where he was, like. There's, um. 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 diegetic 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 and the hiss. Yes, yes. He said this is for actually his records. Right, right. Like, with Bringing Up Baby. Which is a huge difference, right? It's not just. No, not Bringing Up Baby. Bringing Up. Bringing Up Baby. The music thing, I just. It's. I was saying it to my wife last night. 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 had 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. Sam Levinson is one of our great returnts. He just released a magnificent new season of his great show, Euphoria, right? We've got, like. And, 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. Be my baby, my baby. Someone's definitely done that, right? Has someone done that? And then the film flickers, and then a knife cuts through it. I think it's in. I haven't seen it, but I think it's in, like, Barbarian or something, right? I think. Maybe? Is there a. There's a lot of baby stuff in that movie. It would make sense. Yeah, it's in Barbarian. Yeah. 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? I kept thinking while watching this, it is crazy how much of this movie is in the DNA of the early Wes Anderson stuff. Yeah, Wes Anderson, PTA, honestly, Tarantino. And much more. Also, Sofia Coppola. Yeah. Like, these are. These are people who wrote to mixes, to, like, pop mixes. But the thing is, those were from all over. Those were, like, from all over. You know, that was. They were from all eras. And it really was, like, a mixtape or something. Yeah. 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 Mean Streets is it's capturing a specific era. It's, like, present tense. It's capturing the 60s and the early 70s. Yeah. And, like, those songs, Bill Spector and those stones have been used in these like other kind of mixtape things. But this is something we've gotten away from, which is like it's evoking a specific era. I mean, that's what like Linklater does with Dazed and Confused. You know, it makes sense that he talks about how much that soundtrack felt like eye opening to him. But, you know, Scorsese won our March 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 happen for the final two. Sure. 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. I know. Scorsese is the definitive filmmaker of the last 50 years. You know, the second half of the 20th century. This was after Baudelaire. Exactly. And they had like a bunch. It was like the Wachowskis were in this. People made their case. They asked like a bunch of different film scholars and critics. And then they asked Scorsese and he said Wes Anderson. He said. Wes Anderson off of Bottle Rocket and Rushmore. And when he. Shall I tell you all the nominees because it's crazy. Yes. I know. Andrew Sarris 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. Is he far from paradise? What is he? I don't know. Kevin Turan nominated David O. Russell, which is interesting because David O. Russell. I could see that at that time. But that's. - It's even more obvious three guys going for that nervy comic energy yeah todd mccarthy nominated paul thomas anderson sure uh tom carson nominated alexander payne sure although i don't really see that in payne's work at all but okay elvis mitchell nominated wachowskis which i think is a fun pick by elvis and then martin e says wes and he you know after gene siskel dies scorch says he uh does the best of the decade uh episode with ebert yes that i've watched it multiple times it's so good but he puts bottle rocket on his like 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 in the type of film they were making in the subject matter uh 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 royal tanaboms on and even just like the colors of the bar and the energy of the characters and their costumes yes it's like so much of of wes anderson starts here weirdly you know i've never seen the horse thief i haven't either you know that the 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 gotta watch that what else did he have on that the puppet master he uh he's like he's like he's like he's he's got uh malcolm x fargo crash uh bottle rocket breaking the waves bad lieutenant eyes wide shut uh thin red line borrowed life and the horse thief borrowed life is a is a chinese or taiwanese movie that i've also never seen i can't see you where are you oh my god david my glasses are so dirty oh no they're cracked wait a second what about zeni wait a second what about zeni wait a second what about zeni that's an online eyewear 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styles sell out so don't sit on it that's z-e-n-n-i dot com slash podcast promo code podcast 15 endless summer escapes start here travel the worlds of netflix irl inspired by fan favorites like stranger things and squid game brave the upside down face off with the front man play leveled up arcade games shop exclusive merch and enjoy themed food and drinks beat the heat play eat and shop on repeat at netflix house at galleria dallas bring your crew and save get your tickets today at netflix.com slash house uh mean streets should we talk about it because i mean i've talked about we've talked about the production just just plenty yeah let's talk about let's well like back to the um what you were saying about us 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 there 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 scrooge has said about this and like the you know the commentary for the criterion 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 films he had studied which ones bounced off of him it's like well there's two silos it feels like they're 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 the their system even if they're doing for hire work for sure but for fuller was also specifically the movie that he was doing for hire work and he was doing for hire work and he was doing for hire work movement and that's when we're talking about this film when 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 kytel like on a dolly and in some way yeah where he's going through but he's drunk it's yeah that's so fun yeah i love that shot like before there was steady cam they invented it like this thing 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 seen park master oh my god it's a masterpiece i'm not a huge fuller like not not i like fuller a lot but i'm not an expert on fuller i feel like i've seen like three or four fuller movies i want to hit some of those blind spots before shutter island i mean i've seen like shock order naked kiss obviously i've seen you know um big red one and you know the later ones but um 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 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 i would like to do a review of that film just listing all the classic cocktails oh interesting many anyway it's a great movie yeah so it was again like um 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 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 but it's interesting because this guy i don't know it was his he i saw an interview and he was they were asking him about like the lighting setups and stuff i i i just get the feeling that scorsese told him what to do because he was saying oh why the red in the um in the bar and he's like that's just what it seemed like to me i'm like you liar i this is totally marty 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 it'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 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 well and charlie is so alienated from or is it so increasingly alienated from his his only world which is these bars and these streets these yes mean streets and like i think it's just like shots like the dolly shot just they're so good at making him feel a little alienated or separate in a way like it's so yeah and just then the calm of the church like you i i would hang out at 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 in a fight i might die you know like if someone punches me the wrong way it's and it takes a while for someone to pull my body up like it's in the dock and it's in all you know it's like they 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 mom and in the dockies like that felt like being kicked out of paradise and like you could like you was feeling in this movie just like i just want the wide open streets of flushing it's like how do i still an urban environment but i just why long for like the relatively open skies yeah i mean and obviously you know that's not a plot in this movie but like the way he makes new york feel in the like the san janeiro's like shots and all that just like it's it's alive and and it's cool, and I'm watching it being like, "Ah, fuck it, yeah, New York. rocks but like it's it's overwhelming but he also i mean i saw him say in 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 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 thing you like sounds pretty cool 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 it's the old joke like you you bid your mother good tearful goodbye give her a big hug and then you move 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 right johnny doesn't want to like open a barber shop right he's not you know what my dream is to someday make enough money that i can move to boise you know but he doesn't there's a farm 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 made guy and he's just kind of stuck he's the loser of the group the caridin bar fight right that basically plays out without dialogue largely and is like brother actors and ending in a death action david and robert yes yes yes um and that's what these guys recently dead robert right r.i.p yes 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 made man or working it you're 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 walk down are we in trouble are we off course no 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 let's talk about 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 we've got super eight footage we've got you know it's so about marty um i just yeah i love the i love the mook scene uh the mook scene uh there's the a fight that he witnesses at a bar which is what happens in the movie and it starts with the bartender called you a mook called me a mook and everyone starts fighting and then someone says what's the mook and the guy's like i don't know yeah what's the 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 they're like did did scorsese invent it 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 neapolitans you know naples and like uh it was a neapolitan word for like a loudmouth sicilian a mook a mook like mooka 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 like 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 uh up yours names that the wisecracking 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 right you brought wes sanderson one of my favorite sort of generic unknown racial epitaphs is when um um in royal tenenbaums when he's like did you just call me coltrane yes and one of the fucking funniest things is in any wes andrews movie ever it's so good those kind of things where you're like is that racist it feels bad when reacts it feels pretty racist yes no it's so great though but i love these sort of like funny it 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 due diligence and say that mean streets was the first film to be rated by core the congressional um congress on racial equity um yeah it was the first one um and it uh was declared extremely offensive uh from for its black perspective and uh because of of the stripper and the the policeman who's like takes a ride sure and like i don't know if i agree with that i mean i think i would think i would say i mean i again i really do think it's about these like you know these unknown racial epitaphs it's about 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 i mean like that must be so far from marty's understanding at this point yeah i don't think of gay characters in marty movies also we should call it deniro's father was gay deniro's father was gay yes that's another fascinating part of it 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 deniro 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 deniro 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 uh 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 sidetracked do you know his mom dated manny farber no deniro'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 uh 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 he really liked mean streets i don't know what point he reviewed it but he really liked it at one point he came up to deniro at a party and was like ah i remember you when you were a kid in like the 14th street and deniro 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 like that they're like they're they're 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 katherine was born in new york yeah i forget about the dad yeah charles second or third yeah he was born in new york 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 totally the 10 people i know you know it feels deliberate yeah it feels like really this changing like you were saying like this time period and 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 so funny he's like yeah i'm going to jersey you know actually i'm going to philly right but the way he sort of is just kind of exhausted in being like actually more money yeah i changed i changed the ride home that that's where i think the movie is kind of knowingly about how limited their worldview is i mean that they they live in like forced blocks right the way um theresa's character talks about moving uptown it's leaving the country exactly like yeah as he said that'd be the equivalent of a girl telling you she was moving to ohio you're never gonna see her again that's impossible right can we talk about kytel a bit yeah you know what i mean i assume we this is we're recording this one yeah a week before yeah is 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 a 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. But between Taxi Driver and Last Temptation, he doesn't work with Marty. Right. And then is there anything between Last Temptation and Irishman? I was trying to remember if there was 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 Keitel 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 remain very close. 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 her. Like, what happened to Keitel 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. Yeah. 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. And of his interests. Or like some cyclone. 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 Gangs of New York. But I wonder if part of that is him recognizing in the sort of like the forcefulness of what De Niro is able to do as 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 out the window and watches what's happening, who thinks about it, who will stand a little close to the danger, but never actually plays. 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 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. Yeah. You're just an actor. I'm like throwing interesting challenges. 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 was this like Polish Jew. His parents were Russian Jews. Yeah. So he was like stand. Brighton Beach guy. So first he was the stand in for Marty. And then, but I was, you know, just now we were talking, like, could Harvey Keitel have been in Casino? Yeah, totally. Like in either role. Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. Like, Harvey Keitel 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 five movies a year for 30 years, right? Like, yeah, 80s and 90s. Like, he just says a zillion credits and he can 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. It's 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 Toback, which is very Tobackian, you know? 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 of 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. With, with, with Keitel? Yeah. Was he, was the, 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 and 2000s Keitel. 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. The guy behind Desk. But that's the thing. It's like, what's he doing there? You want to steal the Declaration of Independence. I mean, there's like, right. And which is like, that's just like Thelma and Louise, right? Like, it's like, he does Thelma and Louise, and then he'll just like do that every so often, ever since. I'm like, do you want me to play the tired cop, like Clockers? Sure. He's good in Clockers. Yeah. Like, and he's sort of the lead of Clockers, but he's not really. Like, Mackay Pfeiffer 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 Dogs. Yeah, he's incredible. And. I've never seen it. You've never seen Reservoir Dogs? Why have you never seen Reservoir Dogs? Is there an active avoidance, or have you just not gotten around to it? I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. It's just. It's like 90 minutes long. They play it in rep cinemas constantly. And bars. And like, yeah. Hytale is incredible. Probably 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 Buscemi is doing the James D. kind of thing. Right. You know, and Hytale is the lead. He's the center. And he has this 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? 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. I mean, even the way Wes Anderson uses him is very fascinating. Hey, which one? Wes Anderson is the answer. He's so fun in Budapest. Yes. Oh, I forgot about that. And he's also in Moonrise Kingdom as like the major troupe leader at the end. They keep going up the ladder to who's the ultimate troupe leader. And then you reveal like old Harvey Hytale in little khaki shorts. And Hytale's like, just have to say it. It's not even that 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, 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 nonverbal, 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 Hytale's insane body. 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 performances that I don't really see with De Niro. Like, I feel like De Niro, De Niro's like, I'm sure a sexy guy, but there's not like a real sensuality with him. Hytale is weirdly sexual and feels transgressive. And he also moves towards that. Right. Like in the roles he takes. 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. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he's so kind of weirdly like compressed. Yeah, he's like stockier, 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, right? I know, it's how it reads 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. Yeah. I've never thought about Harvey Cartel's body as much. Well, like, if you think of like Bad Lieutenant, the sort of iconic him, like, you know, when he's like, you know, it's on the, you know, 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 piano where he's getting naked, he's got, he's got the V. Okay. He's got like a tiny little ripped tongue. He's got the deep V. Miriam is covering her mouth in shock and shame. Oh, she's shaking. She should. She should. I'm blushing. Miriam, on the desk there, we have a postcard of Austin Powers frozen in ice, because when we watched that movie, Marie Barty said, is Mike Myers cut? And then just kept calling out the deep V. Hytale obviously doesn't have the Austin Powers chest hair. 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 a-- -Mm-hmm. -Is that-- -I mean, still, we're still in-- -Yeah, what? Sorry. -But then he gets drunk? where he gets drunk and he walks and he's like blessing i think he's like he's uh baptizing people he's like yeah going around with water and like baptizing people but you were thinking specifically of the the of the vietnam thing of the era of what like the vet is clearly suffering from yeah 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 set off a bunch of loud noises and streamers and shit that it was like obviously like could be very traumatic for them yeah i mean i mean the literal opening of this movie is him lighting the candles in church right is that the opening shot uh yeah i mean the 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 pull 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 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 right or like empathy and like you know you're not going to be able to do anything about it you're not going to empathy and savior and saving people and like and um 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 into the script but there is one like improv scene and it's like right after the trash can yeah yes 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 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 word play and talking about joey clams no joey scallop no they're the same person yay and like this whole thing that was all improvised and that was something that um scorsese said he was really i feel like he needed something there and he needed something to set the tone in the comedy and he was really influenced by like abbott and costello and who's on first right but also like the road movies and bob hope and and um ben crosby and this like you know someone always trying to get one over but i think the word play is really key i love that the line where he he's like which girl he's like my left or your left we were sitting we were on the same side but 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 that's in it and it's like it's the language that's in it 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 um 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 and then if they came up with something good an improv exercise they would transcribe it and tighten it and just writing a lot of times when there are these fucking famous moments and 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 is that they're not just doing the improvisation they're doing the improvisation 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 right it's been going it was 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 yeah they're always like was that improvised fucking question it's so annoying cameras roll you know but the answer is always if people see something that sounds natural 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 a scene where you're making a scene where you're making a scene where you're making a scene where you're making a scene where you're making a scene where you're making a scene interesting formal experiment scorsese kind of figured out a way to harness the energy of improv into more conventional seasoning lightning in a bottle the whole thing is that's the other part of it deniro right if you're like cassavetes 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 cassavetes 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 once 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 in back into them and people enjoy that these movies feel riffy but then they all start to feel really visually static because they need three cameras running at the same time to get what actually is a real improv riff so david yes red alert uh-oh there's been an outbreak biohazard of a new patreon series yeah it's contagious oh that's so true it's it's uh 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 uh the one movie oh it's got the one movie oh it's got the one movie we'll be covering all of them on patreon uh doing commentaries on yes the resident evil apocalypse extinction afterlife retribution the final chapter welcome to record sydney this is an exciting time uh zach crager friend of the podcast has a 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 dracula 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 all right i'm i'm not even trying i'm like am i the charlie are you the charlie and yeah i don't want to 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 yeah i mean i definitely i always uh had less tolerance for the the guy who is like let's throw a firecracker in a mailbox i'll be like i'm going home um 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 um but i do i don't love this movie though i gotta beef with this movie this is a big movie for my mom my mom loves this movie why does your mom love it because she's a new york girl like you know i don't know she i think it was probably she 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 martys are too fucked up i think stuff like taxi driver like she's seen taxi driver right but like she's like oh but those are so dark like and those are so violent mean streets is sort of the appropriate amount of it is fascinating too where it is a movie where even living 50 years past its release date in 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 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 Stories weren't structured like this. When you watch it now, it just feels kind of sloppy. And there's stuff in M.A.S.H. that I think is incredible. There's stuff in M.A.S.H. that is beyond retrograde. Sure. I haven't seen M.A.S.H. in 20 years. But there's also a lot of it that's just kind of mushy. M.A.S.H.y 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 Streets still has all of that power, even though we've seen everything it's influenced after. It also, I feel like, you know, your mom was the right age, like 22 or whatever. Like, it just so captures the, like, in-jokes and language of a friendship group in your, like, late teens and early 20s. You know? Doesn't it? Of course. And though I never worked for the mob, nor hung out at Italian American Social Club. And say that again. Let's make sure you have that on the record. I never worked for the mob yet. My phone number is 123-456-7910. 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 I may be telling tales out of 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, a no-show job. Like the whole thing the mob does, where they're like, you know, we run this union now, and you're going to have five extra salaries. Oh, oh, yeah. I wonder if the mob is in on podcasting yet. All right. What? I'm in the audio business. What do you want from me? It's a legitimate business. Hey, I talk to my friends. I make audio go boom. I turn heads into gum. Oh, boy. Wow. I was looking up letterbox logs for this movie, and there was one from Paul Schrader 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, you know, a movie with 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 of. It's so funny. It was happening. I know. It is so funny that Schrader and Scorsese start working together because Scorsese's the Catholic thing versus the Calvinist thing. Very different approaches to religious guilt and fervor. 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 do. I think they're hilarious. We love them. But do you think Scorsese, like, obviously. 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 doesn't do anything. This and Goodfellas. Yeah, the language. Goodfellas has the most incredible screenplay and in the same way where you're like, is this just improvised? Like, all these guys talking, like, did Scorsese 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. Corrected, Miriam. Let's wait to see Shine A Light. Okay. Let's wait to watch Shine A Light. There was a moment in 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 of 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? 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. Okay, so his scripts are Mean Streets, Goodfellas. Wow. No screenplay credit between those two movies. Yeah. Age of Innocence. Casino. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, you know, and then, like, Silence, Killers, The Fire and the 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. Jay Cox. It's years and years of development. Cannavale 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 Shutter 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 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's had done, like, but as far as, like, the actual coverage, he brought in the Boxcar Bertha Corman team to be, like, okay, how do we do this, like, efficiently and stuff? But yeah, so he had drawn, like, every scene. And so. He had a version in his head of what his perfect movie would look like. 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 Boxcar 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. I thought I saw, like, an additional editing or something. I don't think he was credited, but he did. He said he edited it, but he couldn't. He couldn't take credit. Yeah. The original edit was terrible by whoever gets credit. So this is, like, so Shoemaker, Thelma Shoemaker did, did his first one, Who's That Knocking? But, and then, so, and this one is, is, like, is Marty without Thelma. Yes. Right. Well, she's also, like, working on Woodstock for years. Yeah. But no, but Woodstock comes out in 70. Okay. Which he worked on, too, obviously, but she is sort of what, and that's where they reconnect, or, but yeah. But she doesn't come back to him until, until Raging Bull. Yeah, which is crazy. Like, Taxi Driver is edited by somebody else. I forget. Yeah, Marshall Lucas and Todd Rolfe. 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, Miriam? 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, it's 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. And everyone's like, ah! 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. Yes, cocaine. There's a little bit of cocaine. And then Raging Bull is the like, I gotta show people I can just like, focus it up again. But like, King of Comedy's a bounce. I mean, he's got a lot of bounces. I'm saying just that part. No, I know. I agree with you. Because who's that knocking is 69 or 70? 67. So it's 67 to, and then Raging Bull's 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, It did ruin things for him a little bit. Yeah. And like his other big bomb. 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 right yeah 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 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 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 we're not gonna do it feels like there's enough new releases coming out the end of this year in 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 it's 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 are there marty's you sort of respect or stick up for or what 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 katherine hepburn invitation i need to see it again i but also i'm very curious i'm excited to also haven't seen it since it's never been a favorite release 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're saying that transition it's really good leo yeah i was like um let's see wait is there anything i i don't remember loving bringing uh bringing out the dead but and possibly worth a rewatch yeah and then but and so i think the only one i haven't seen is the color of money color money rocks yeah i bet movie right i never think of it as a real scorsese but i know it is i know his 80s are so weird because that's kind of like a commercial play of like you got to get back in the movie you got to get back in the good graces of the studio and it's a big hit and he gets newman an oscar but there was a little bit of like 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 it's fascinating how up and down he was there yeah and yeah i like but the rest i love i love i love i was i was saying if i didn't do this i would do shutter island love yeah so much that's gonna 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 gonna do kandun we have guests lining up around the block 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 that that i've visited the kandun set it's amazing and and kandun the soundtrack is mostly rogers and clark right they use mostly their yeah that's the director's cut um i i've never seen kandun before and i've never seen last temptation i'm very eager to see you've never seen last temptation temptation is amazing best i just rewatched it which caused our fans to go insane being like they're recording out of order i was like nope right we watched it not because of the podcast yeah let us let us watch movies please let us watch movies let's do the box office game for mean streets which came out i mean i should 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 huh i don't know why they picked that one interesting uh no yeah so um it premieres in fall of 73 at the new york film festival um warner brothers had you know it does end up distributing it they get shopped around and they pick it up um and you know what in that link later chris was saying they showed it to columbia maybe and they passed on it they showed to a different studio first 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 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 deniro 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 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 a 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 like he's that's just like a guy from back home and that was also the thing for he was like yes like if this works for if this 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 um so the release strategy score says he was not very happy with um you know uh 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 um and they had no idea how to sell the picture and they didn't know how to sell the picture and they didn't know how to sell the picture i mean it's funny because the poster is so iconic but don't you think i mean like yeah it's such a famous poster but they don't have stars yet no yeah um the exorcist is coming out 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 um so the film comes out it gets nice reviews it makes three million dollars domestically but it maybe doesn't it's not like a huge deal but it's not like a huge deal but it's not like a huge deal hit and it was interesting in that link later convo we watched where link later they were talking about how it got no oscar nominations it got 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 um 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 it didn't feel like we were in the conversation he wasn't surprised it didn't get the nominations uh right so when this film is 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 um i think it's a double 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 uh you know i think a bit of a fun sexy movie for you to go see and then the other is an animated film that is famously raunchy and i imagine they were being presented okay so fritz the cat fritz the cat is the first is the animated film the first one the 1972 you know the back she fritz the cat and then it was on a double bill with yeah i mean i doubt you've heard the other it's a sex comedy directed by paul glickler uh you i don't know why i'm trying to give you guys clues it's called the cheerleaders oh my god i was gonna say paul glicker was at the cheerleaders okay i was wondering miriam i was like making miriam david but i didn't want to patronize her i didn't know no i love this movie okay tell me about the cheerleaders let me let me see uh 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 pretty fucking good these great softcore films that hey that they made like i think three of them and all these like experimental filmmakers like worked on yes the swinging cheerleaders in 74 and then uh cheerleaders wild weekend at one point i don't know there's a bunch of them abstract tna love these films it's just cheerleaders uh having fun so that was the same week that so this is the right that is number one at the box 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 uh 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 streaming media and then it just says streaming media and then it just says streaming media the film is often available at licensed streaming movie sites with two citations oh interesting feels like a real abandoned wiki page yes sorry number two at the box office what's the most famous martial arts movie ever made entered the dragon so that's number two right correct uh and that's been in the box office for three months at this point and 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 seeded into the consciousness of the world and it's like he's finally seeded into the consciousness of the world and it's like he's finally seeded into the consciousness of the world 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 this is the final object um do you like enter the dragon I haven't seen it Fair enough I need to do a double feature Pretty fucking awesome 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 Green Door? Not behind the Green Door Misty Beethoven? Not Misty Beethoven Not Deep Throat It's not Emmanuel Not No It's not It's not the horny Alice in Wonderland No No Devil and Miss Jones I knew I knew Just like name the big ones Yeah The Devil and Miss Jones The Devil and Miss Jones The Gerard Damiano Is that his name? Right Who's the guy that Who also did 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 Wow My Puppets Come That was not presented as like This is like a parody of porn It was like Do people want to jerk off To puppets? Yeah And so the parody The title is a parody of Let My People Come And instead it's just Horny puppets I'd like an apology as well I own it on Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray Didn't get the slipcover It's just I just need 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 out of here I'm not saying I get my rocks out of here 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 Friedkin calls Devil and Miss Jones A really good essay in the book 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 And then like The devil right Is like Or Like an angel Is basically like There's like You can earn your place in hell By being A horny lady on earth Something I think so 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 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 Foreign films A pornographic movie But the characters Are puppets It's kind of It's 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 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 Yeah Let My Puppets Come This was another thing Revealed in the Linklater 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 Ah 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 Californian We should note of course That Marty is in Mean Streets And does shoot Robert De Niro In the neck 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 the weird music That's such a crazy ending What were you gonna say Ben? When they're on their way To Brooklyn I wrote down This really funny quote From Keitel Do I know Brooklyn? Do I know the jungle? And I just love that At that time Brooklyn All 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 Right 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 was It took place in Brooklyn So they could film it in LA Yeah I think David already talked about that Yeah Yes So How long has 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 at number seven And a reissue of The Last of Sheila Oh sure With Richard Benjamin Is number eight Yeah Then you have Electra Glide in Blue At number nine Which is I wanna 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 with Robert Blake Postmodern Yeah And then there's the movie Hit with Billy Dee Williams The Sidney Fury movie Okay That's like You know It's maybe not even Blaxploitation But it's like a sort of Like all black cast Action Thriller Yeah From Paramount Like a big sort of Actiony movie With Billy Dee Williams And a young man A young Richard Pryor I just remembered That when we were talking About the soundtrack I wanted to Mention Michael Schultz's Cooley High Which was two years later Yes 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 went out They were everywhere I'm sorry What were you gonna say? No I was just gonna say Scorsese in that DGA thing said Badlands was the Closing night film At New York Film Festival This same year Yeah I guess that makes sense What a year And those two guys Being roughly the same age Yeah 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 The big 73 movie Is obviously Exorcist Yeah Well I don't know What wins 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 it feels Well they play the piano Like do do do do do do You know they do that It's just interesting That you've already had Like Midnight Cowboy 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 In expensive costumes Pull off cons Right We've been going through that In the last 10 years too Right We keep swinging back and forth And then Mean Treats plays Director's Fortnite At Cannes right 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 Treats And Sean Dillman So it's It's an iconic Director's Fortnite film 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 Uh huh Like it can't just be Charlie hanging out Yeah Like does Johnny Boy Come back When he's dead You're talking Robo Johnny Boy Well you don't know That he's dead You don't 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 that if he survives If he can't go back He needs people Basically to think That he's dead At the very least Or yeah They just can't go back And so they're exiled Yeah That's interesting Yeah Instead 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 Yeah Like so it's like He goes right to that And whereas I assume Taxi driver Well but that's Schrader's thing So like I don't even know That he's like nursing taxis Like it's like I don't think after This Scorsese's like Okay and now No New York, New York That was his thing I guess that's the next fixation I read an interview And he's like The next thing on his mind Is New York, New York Because again It's another genre I did the gangster film Now I do the musical He knows it's gonna take A lot of money And a lot of production resources To put that movie together He needs to play The studio game Right To be able to Be entrusted with those things Because it's the only game Back then Yeah And like it's funny Because it's like Alright so Jaws is what 75 Yeah And American Graffiti is 73 Mm-hmm 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, Cary's not until 78? Cary's 76. 76. Okay. But so, you know, all these guys are trying shit and doing exciting stuff. Right. Um, but they're not quite, you know, they're not quite atop the Hollywood pile yet. Whereas Coppola is like immediately atop the Hollywood pile after he does Godfather. But 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 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. Mm-hmm. And Spirit of the Beehive and shit like that, which, you know, like the great horror movies. Fucking rules. Spirit of the Beehive's pretty cool. Yeah. That guy rocks. I don't know if you've seen any of his other films, actually. They're all good. I mean, he only made like three. Do you like Victor? Yeah. Also a great band. Spirit of the Beehive? Really? Yeah. Let's be done. Let's stop talking about these things. Miriam, are there any other sort of general overarching Scorsese 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 Scorsese love for now, but I. 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. The Departed is amazing. Like, now that I've 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. It'd be nice for him to rescue Wahlberg. It would be nice, but also, I'm like, how disappointed would it be to see them work together again and not reactivate the same thing? I mean, this is another thing I remember. Sorry, just, 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 Wahlberg. Yes. That was in pre-production. Scorsese was on board to direct it. And Warner Brothers said, we don't believe that Wahlberg can carry this movie. Okay. It was gonna 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 gonna be the fucking rat in Congress, right? Like, the final shot. De Niro was gonna play, like, a corrupt congressman. I just died. Yeah, and it was gonna be Wahlberg. All this, I'm not saying anything prior to it, 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 wrap party. And he was, like, holding court with a bunch of us youngins. And he was like, I was ready to make it. The film won Best Picture. It was a big hit. I had Mark Wahlberg. He's a movie star. They wouldn't do it. I said, Marty, we 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? No. I'm just. You're vibing. I'm vibing. We love it. We love to see you vibe. We're here to vibe. It's very nice to have you on the show again, Miriam. It's so nice to be back. It's been far too long. It's, uh. Years-long project. There have been other episodes we've circled, and then trips changed. 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. Which now we've both seen. I fucking love Vamps. Vamps? Yeah, I told you. I hosted a Vamps screening in L.A. I think that movie's awesome. Anyway, it's such an honor to be on this episode for this series. Nice to have you. So glad it worked 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 silence. She once told Griffin to shut the fuck up. In a nice way. Well, it wasn't nice, but in a more polite way. In fact, the way she said it was, Griffin, try silence. 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. I wear it as a badge of honor. And then you went on to become a professional talker. Yeah, you know what? 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 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 Hoffman. 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 and the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Olly Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minik. 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. Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Production. Rave the upside down. Face off with the front man. Play leveled up arcade games. Shop exclusive merch. And enjoy themed food and drinks. Beat the heat. Play, eat, and shop on repeat at Netflix House at Galleria Dallas. Bring your crew and save. Get your tickets today at netflix.com slash house.