Mean Streets with Miriam Bale

And we don't pay podcast, podcast, I'm a podcast, what's a podcast, there's a fourth character

“Griffin, this is a disaster, Ben, take that one, take that line, I don't know.”

What's a podcast, you can't call me a podcast, I can't, no, I'll give you a podcast, I thought I guess this is not moving with like, should we all just clap for ourselves, that's really good. It's a little, a little scene lit, what, what David, what? I know what 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, you know, like they're just all yelling at each other. There's a lot of, I kind of dialogue, I mean, I'm DB, of course, points out, repeated line, what's the matter with you? What's the matter with you? I just like brackets, repeated line, that's not even what it's like, yeah, what's the matter with you?

Honorable men go with honorable, honorable podcasts, cheers, go with honorable podcasts, that's pretty. I don't know how to do it if I picked the wrong thing, this was, this was fun, this was a little afternoon, I'm just looking at the, it's free time, keep the word over and over again.

“You know, at the Queen said, if I had balls, I'd be king, I don't remember that.”

This is our first course, AZ session, and I got to tell you, yes, disaster, no off the

rate. Perfect. I watching this movie, it's been a minute, I am feeling so comforted. Bit of a bad movie. Oh, not just over to 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, 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 criteria and disc, and there is like a promotional feature at, that is, let me see what the name of it is.

It's called, 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 lift, but it also has little neighborhoods, and what are those little neighborhoods is called Little Italy, and what do you believe in a filmmaker came from their name, Martin Scorsese, and now he's back on the block, and it's like Scorsese explaining what

his childhood was to create a frame of reference for the movie, you know, that like, I hear you, 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 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, we're very, very, very Italian, and some of them were little. Well,

“only one of them gets sped a little. I, it's for it. Yeah, I remember my parents,”

uh, saying little Italy once, and I was like, what do you mean little Italy? And they're like, this is a neighborhood that's kind of informally called Little Italy. And I was like, why, and they're like, is the Italians live there? It's something where I was like, aren't they, you put it that way. It sounds patronizing. Absolutely. I was like, what do you have that little, you know, right? No, like, no, but it's where the Italian restaurants

are. I'm like, I've been to Italian restaurants and other parts in New York City, but this was a little neighborhood. You can talk, uh, a friend of the show who's on this show. You can, you can, you can just guest is the terminal usually. Yes. Yeah. Hey. Nice. Do you like Little Italy? I, I do. I like Little Italy. Yeah. I mean, sure. I mean, I would say the same when I lived here when I lived in New York. I liked Little Italy except for

the festival. The festival is tough. It's quite annoying. And it's, it's kind of the best part of this movie. Is it sort of frustration at like, uh, fucking, original. Yeah, I was talking about the San General Festival. Yeah. Uh, which takes over probably like three, four blocks. It's just, it's really just a couple of blocks. Yeah. It's mulberry and mott probably between like, now and literally is quite small. Well, Little

Italy now is right. It's like a historically protected like two to three blocks. Right, because no Italian, not that many times actually lived there. And we're all trying to tell. Sure. And then also like so, and yeah. And it's a restaurant. 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 really another place to get a red sauce. Yeah.

But they're, it feels so touristy these days. But it means still kind of fun. Sure.

Gracezzi. And he was talking about, um, he 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. We're 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 Genero. Do you live in a apartment? Like a month. This is San Genero. Trying to the show rate. Yeah. Yes. Uh, when I was going through a break up,

I was couch surfing and our friend Ray was gracious enough to let me stay in his apartment and literally. And it felt like, oh, this is like a miracle. What a nice place to stay. He's going to be at a town working. This is perfect. How I couldn't have a better set up. I realized why he had left town because the festival is quite loud. And there was just felt like there was a floodlight directly outside of the window where the bed was. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. There was like a week or two of you coming to records very, 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 grid. Oh, like, we're using my my sportscaster. No, he's good for someone. Yeah. Get a good get a good one. Griffie, Griffie, Palm. Yeah. Sure. My name's Griffie, Palm. That's actually really good. Yeah.

I'm here with my co-host David Spaghetti. I feel like we could pass that. That's actually a little

“fancy. David Spaghetti. David, I think David Spaghetti is really sticky. No. I think it's David”

Bags because he's got bags. Oh, that's actually pretty good. What if it's David Bags O Spaghetti?

No, I, I'm not a big Spaghetti guy. It's all like it's like, oh, David, he's always eating.

He's always working 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 Spaghetti. David Spaghetti. I would say it's a podcast about homographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. And sometimes those checks

clear and sometimes they bounce baby. This is a mini series on the films of Martin Scorsese. And of course, it is called podcast fellas. I think it's the best title we've ever come up with podcast fellas podcast fellas. One word rolls off the tongue trippingly. Do you think we should all just look the cover should just be us? Yeah. Arms cross. Arms cross? Yeah. Yes. It should be all of us back to back to back arms cross, but I want to be

Ellen Burston and now let's live here. Cool. And I want to be the clockwork thing in Hugo.

“Yeah. Thought I'm a ton. Yeah. That's what I want to be. Yeah. And he's writing down the name David Spaghetti.”

That's what the, that's what the automaton's doing with its pan. All right. Well, for calling it out, then I want to be a dinero and casino with those big sunglasses. Oh, sure. Sure. Yeah. That would be good. Maybe I want to be Sharon's don't in casino. Maybe we should just all be in casino. Maybe she's just because seen it. Well, I like peshy in the casino. When I was a kid in casino came out and I was nine or yeah, nine and 95 right. Yeah. And I was like, well, I know casino has dice.

And so I really appreciated that Joe peshy was holding a pair of dice on poster. Sure. Because I was like, what's this when we got dice like they make dice? They roll dice. If I'm paying eight dollars, I better get dice. And I want just sea cards. Well, it's where my mom being like, it's really violent. I'm like, why? They aren't they roll like, roll the dice and they win or they win or they play. Oh, he's dice. He's literally holding a pair of fucking dice on the poster.

How violent can got to get exactly. We'll get to that in in some months from now. But watching casino in 4K is quite an experience because you can see that Joe peshy's face is literally being pulled back by strings. He looks crazy. That movie. A whole era of peshy, he like, wouldn't get a face lift. No. But would put like, rubber bands. Yes, underneath a wig. And all those movies now, like my cousin Vinnie's the same way where you're watching, you're like, what the

fuck is going on with this face? We were never supposed to see this this clearly. Yeah.

Beautiful. Yeah. Who's our guest? We have to introduce our guest. Or are we talking about the movie first? We have to say that this is an episode on Mean Street. Mean streets. The guarantee. Oh, absolutely. Yes. A phenomenon I would maybe call the second first film. Sure. You know, first real debut. Right. You make other movies, but this is your debut. Like Cameron with the Terminator. Yeah. And they travel almost six cents. Right. Right. Where this is the first

most people on the street if you ask them would say this is the first film. But it's also because this is the movie where everything clicks. And the rest of the careers off to the races. We're talking

Box corporate. 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. That's that's kind of is the spanner in the range. Yeah. I mean, some of those. Yeah. The, the, the like party scenes and stuff. You know, I would make an argument even more than being the debut of it was 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. I think this is the debut of Deniro. Yes.

Yes. Because he made a lot of him. He's been in stock. But not right. Not in any significant way. And I think it's almost accidental. Like, because like, you know, he was maybe going to play Charlie

“or like wanted to. And then the only thing left was playing this role. And it wasn't what he was”

going towards before before that. He was like, you know, in the Japanma movie. And he, you know,

you're so experimental. Yeah. Yeah. But he's also kind of like a cipher. He's always like a weird

girl. Yeah. And then all of a sudden he comes and he's this like crazy Italian American. And that's who it is. 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 couple of cast him and Godfather part two, which is more what we think of. Yeah. That's that's it's the focus. It's fascinating. Right. There's a scaryness.

“But it's, 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 out because I feel like I wanted 30 people who have seen this. Our couple years. Let's say our guest today is Miriam Belt. Maybe breaking the record for longest time in between the 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 this is one of your my guys. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You're not supposed to say that here. No, you're my guy. We say that

proud of you. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. I love him. I mean, this was like, I mean, I should just get into it. This was, well, I saw good fellas 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 blinds 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, this 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, it's the personal film, like the, you know, the Casa Vetties personal film and Casa Vetties really encouraged him to make this movie because he'd made Bob's Carbertha and he was like, you're just finished

every life. Yeah. He shot all over it. Yeah. Casa Vetties. So mean. I know. He said that he gave them the

big hug. He was always remembering. That's going to be a big hug. It's so, it's, I've never forgotten it

whenever ever. You know, because it does feel like something you would really, you know, made and make means. Yeah. Right. The Casa Vetties was like he wasted a year. Yeah. Ben, the legendary story is the Casa Vetties was a mentor of Scorsese and he shows in Box Carbertha, 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. And then, for 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, and the Scorsese says like that, I never would have, it would have been difficult for me to feel and boldened enough to prioritize mean streets, which we'll get into. He had spent like seven years kind of drafting and nude on had, had Casa Vetties not said that to him. Yeah, anyway, sorry. But it is, you know, do you think Scorsese is going to come on? vinegar syndrome is

going to put out really nice edition of Box Carbertha. So be interesting. Yeah. People will watch it and be like, "Oh, there's stuff here." It's not nothing. Come on, John. Give me a break. I think John said there's stuff here. It's like the actors are good. Right. It's a piece of shit. It also feels like a passivities. 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 that the subtext of that story is he knew that's the way it would

shoot straight? The 1970 one James. Yeah. Oh, we, I was going to say about this film. Can I finish

“it? I can go all the way back. All the way back. So yeah, I saw this in film school and I loved it.”

And I was in a sound class Dan Olmsted and the greatest sound mixer. So I wrote a paper on this. And was really interested in the music 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. Yeah, I kept going. And then also, I would say that this film is like a personal film like we're saying about Cassavetti's. But it's also a genre film. It's like,

and the combination of that is why this is like, yeah, the films like this is this is the or text 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. Oh, yeah. This is, I'm going to go back to that. This is like, he was really inspired by these like, you know, these especially Warner Bros. crime films of the 30s. And he loves the Cagni movies, right? Like, more in 20s. 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 Anna and a film preservationist. Like, I think that that so soon after this, I watched like the personal journey through American film. The Scorsese. Yeah. And then it was just like, my life has changed. Like, I was, you know,

and so that's my origins, right? But no, I mean, when I started the the second first film,

it's not that I, I, I, because I like, who's that knock in 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 in person whole genre exercise. And then this is the movie where he's like, I figured out the entire thing. I 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, Cytel didn't ero two-hander movie. It's not like those two guys don't coexist in the same movie ever again.

But it does feel like there's a bit of a baton pass here. He always says like the three actors,

I had this kind of like, I'm all connection with in my career where Cytel didn't ero and decaprio. The three guys where there's just been the unspoken language. And Cytel starts out as like his Antoine Dunyel. 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 in arguably, in a moment,

De Niro at the bar and jumping track 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 it's intro is also

that the mailbox that you see him. And it's like, that's like, you see him. It's like, I mean, let's just take a moment to appreciate how good looking. He is so high in this movie. He is so high. The hero engineer. That's incredible. I was obsessed with it in high school. And like the bits. It's like a waste. It's like a waste. It's like a waste. It's just a waste. Yeah, that comes in the rock and roll. Yeah. Like, you know, on the sideburn. Yes.

“It's, and but he has the, like, the kind of, like, the severe bang. It's so, that's what”

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 pretty so looks like cute. A model. Yeah, exactly. And a casual. It's great. But he's so, yeah, I would say Robert Neuro. He's sort of the mascot of many black women. We love it. Well, sure. Yes. He's got, he's got a type that is, you know, mirror, do you know the awakening story? No. I think I've told this anecdote like five times on

a podcast because I do think it's one of the funniest things to ever happen. Okay. But you know, awakenings where he plays this guy with this medical condition who was like frozen in his body. Yeah, basically fully paralyzed for like years and years and years and years. And there was a scene they were shooting where Rob Williams and De Neuro 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 Neuro, this incredibly focused

famously sort of intense methodology actor. And he's fully, you know, frozen. And they're just driving

De Neuro. And De Neuro's just locked in, you know, unconcerned, uh, Rob Williams is like focused. And then the guy goes, Bobby used to like that black pussy. Did he break? Yes. That's everything. Yes. And Rob Williams was like, it was the only time he ever broke. And he kind of just looked at

the guy and like, not. Spagged the best. He's my favorite. I mean, I always shout out to his

off menu podcast appearance where they ask him. So what's your favorite appetizer? She's like, no, I don't know, whatever they want to give me. And he, they're like, well, no, you have to pick the premise of your favorite sports dream menu. And he's like, I asked a chef whatever was good. And they're like, don't you own restaurants? And he's like, yeah, I just told him to whatever they want. Yeah. And they're like, okay, what about the food of your restaurants? Like, yeah, it's good. Yeah.

Because this is what I mean, I'm not saying this was the, the birth of De Neuro, like, his type. Yes. This is the birth of him as a person. Do you remember this? Yes, zero person? Yes, I remember this. Do you remember the who's hotter, De Neuro Prachino debate on Twitter?

“Do you remember that? I don't think, I think I missed it. It was 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, pick your day.

You know, like, you know, like, aren't we who you prefer such different both? Actually, 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 without, you know, beautiful. They are. De Neuro was more conventionally handsome. De Neuro's a little more handsome, and I think so. Yeah, she knows so. She knows more pretty. And Pachino's a little scary, you know? I prefer De Neuro, but I think that Pachino's beautiful.

Yeah. She knows what it is. Like some Pachino. Yeah. I mean, I guess we're not going to talk about it. We're not going to talk about young Pachino. No, young Pachino, and Scorsese's career. You know, we got a way for old Pachino. Then I just spent the weekend in Wisconsin, with JJ Bush, our researcher. That's right. And he was saying, I don't know if he made it, made into the Zasia because JJ vets his information very thoroughly. But he, he asked me. He was like,

had you ever heard this anecdote that Scorsese wanted Pachino to play Johnny Boy and Pachino just straight up turned it down, and then they don't work together, obviously, for like 40 years. I mean, like Pachino had already been in the godfather. So like it would have been like, right. I mean, yes, well, Chino was supposed to be in the gang who couldn't shoot straight. And that's interesting. Right. And then Dineer got it because he was making the godfather. But I hadn't heard

that about about for mean streets in Pachino. Who he wanted to play, which doesn't make sense at all.

“John Boy. Yes. That's crazy. Yes. That's interesting. Right. But I think that was also a”

little bit of like, with that appease the studio. Yeah. Exactly. And we can look at Pachino. See, but like, wait, because you mentioned again, the gang who couldn't shoot straight, I just want to ask. Yeah. What is Dineer? That's an interior box is the star of that. Oh my god, that's a great chair. This, this is the crazy thing. It's like, it was written for Martello, Mestreoni. Right. And then. Yeah. And then he admitted towards, when they were getting close to

production that he couldn't speak English. Perfect. A pedadone. It's the right time. So they replaced him with a cherry or back. I mean, we like one to one. Yeah. I mean, cherry or back makes more senses like a New York tough. Yeah. Italian, but he's, you know, yes, he's close enough. Right. It would have been weird to have for Martello. Yeah. Right. Okay. Well, and Dineer actually plays in Italian. He plays in Italian. Like a

“kleptomaniac at home. Mario trontino. Yeah. So is he silly? Like is he kind of in war?”

He's so silly. So this is the weird thing is like, I've interviewed Dineer and I think one of the things he really hate. I mean, you know, he barely says anything in an interview. But he, I think you can tell he's annoyed with this idea that he started comedy in the 2000s with an analysis or with like midnight run or something, because he was doing comedy in beginning. Right. And like he was doing comedy with, um, with Depama. 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 they were like, oh, like the gang who couldn't shoot straight. But then the gang who couldn't shoot straight was didn't work. Right. Like it was a failure. So at first they were like, oh, yeah, Dineer will be in like shorts and yeah, shooting. And you know, when we see him when he walks down that street, you're talking that in the bar, he's like in his boxers. So I think in the beginning, he was like doing these kind of zainty comedy roles. I mean, this is the thing. He's like, we're talking about

little Italy, but like, Nero's from the village. Right. He's from like his artist parents. He went to

but it's such a difference. And I like, I didn't know those guys as well. Like, and then the Marty

doc. He had proximity. He understood it. He saw these things. And he's Irish Italian. Right. He's led. He's not full of 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, 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

way. You know, with his vaguely mobbed up dad and his mom just like constantly stirring a big pot of sauce. And he's looking at a window with asthma. Right. They're living in a tiny apartment with a bunch of people. Right. Like, you know, like everyone in the neighborhood knows each other and they play stick ball

and shit. But there's something to do. Nero's priests. Senator of having like the same reference points

without the same lived experiences in a way that I do think gives him this sort of like this expressive elasticity and what he can put on screen that's different than Squarespace is 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 just they're insider outsider. And so that's like where they overlap. It's a thing. Squarespace, you said that 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 rewatched the movies,

he's like, this is actually about like my dad and my uncle. Well, Charlie, that's his dad. Right. He's like, this isn't my lived experience. I said it in the present day. I gave it the milieu of the songs I grew up on and the outfits and the language, but actually in terms of the character. Right. He didn't have this crisis of like, am I too close to this criminal life and all that. Right. In the same way. Right. He was like, I'm not going to be a priest or director. He wasn't. He was too

“level to get in trouble. But it is this thing that is a little lost time. I think you're right,”

Miram, which is like those early diploma movies because what De Niro and De Palma go on to do separately are so different and looms so large. People forget that those early movies are like closer to like Matt Johnson films that they're like weird sort of exercises. They're almost like multimedia projects and they're really kind of using De Niro as like, if not a purely comedic figure. It's like this is a guy who's just like, boundless energy, pushing boundaries. I said bound,

fucking twice. And then, and then, you know, like mean streets is harnessing that into a dramatic context. And then Godfather Part II like just sets the mold for how he's seen forever. Love. I feel like he was like a phenom. There was obviously panic and needle park happen pretty early and even when people were like, our audience is 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

on this nervous 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 is like natural accent is? Because I don't think it's really good question. I don't think he has one.

“I mean, I think he has a voice and I think like you hear in those, you know,”

he talks like this and he has like his kind of gravity 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 and his neighborhood. But I think it's kind of, I think it's kind of a role. I think he's kind of like, you know, what you hear about Peter Sellers, like, just kind of a blank. Right. And then like he would just reflect something, you know, but he was right. There was no real

guy that you could find. It's interesting. I mean, he is famously one of the worst interviewers

interview subjects alive. Yes. It's actually always, although once in a while, you'll see,

like someone he knows essentially get a little more out of him. Yeah. I mean, I don't ask you about our president Donald Trump who I support. But De Niro, what does he do? He applaud some of me hands. He has a couple and it packs him on the back. My favorite thing about De Niro is just, and it's 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, "Oh, watch him. It's in BC. I think Trump sucks." You know, like, they're just so regular

boomer down about politics. And also, every time he gets up and is like, I'm presenting the breakout artist or what the Harris dip is saying, "Fuck Donald Trump." He does it with an energy as like, maybe this takes him down. Yeah, right. You're like, you know, man, who would be time to say it? Trump, no good. Yeah. He's so crazy about it. But then maybe he's the only one who's not crazy.

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, they're 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. I wouldn't be able to go out to him be like, would I be able to talk to him about the maths or something like,

“would I never, like, that's my like, can I get it 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 and body language, which is really hard to transcribe. Yeah. But he's communicating really well. I just think he's sort of somewhat nonverbal. And so you got this kind of like nonverbal guy who meets motor mouth, Marty. That's also what's so interesting about him being a motor mouth in this. I was struggling to think of another performance where he is this verbal. I mean, like,

I think of, I don't know, or he's nonstop, you know, where is he nonsense? Because there's like stuff in his later career like silver lining's playbook, where he has like big kind of like yelling speeches and stuff. But that's the, that's the, that's the dinner you were able to explode. It's the explosion. It's not right. What about the comedian? Uh, 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 coming in. Right. My memory, it's dinner, Oask. We're still doing, you know, but I was going to say, isn't that like a movie where people go, it feels unnatural to watch. I do this. I mean, my brain is erased it. Clearly, it's trauma response. So, yes,

“that movie is cooperating by Jeff Ross. Good. Is he talking a lot in dirty grandpa?”

Let me see this. I imagine dirty grandpa said. Yeah, you know, I have seen it. There's the party. I'm dirty grandpa, where are you by? Yeah, doing karaoke. Yeah, and he asks the audience if he can say the end 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 are posted because the whole thing with dinner is like, he made 200 movies. Yeah, 140 of them are bad. Right. And so you can

find these clips. We're like, do you know the dinner did this? Right. You know, it's like, people post Al Pacina doing Dunkachino. I'm like, give it a break. Didn't hero has an endless that. You know, that's a hero has done on screen as well. But I think you're right that when he does something that feels outside of these sort of basic cultural understanding of the

dinner or archetype, it basically just gets memory washed. People just don't keep that

to murder. He's still bulletproof. Right. He could make shit for another hundred years. Maybe well, 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 ten bigs. You've seen all toned eggs. I have. So he's two characters in that either of them big? You know what? Yes. I actually think he's very good in front of Stella is probably

the bigger one or like which of the two guys. One of them he is clearly playing Peshie. One of them he's playing like more the elderly De Niro archetype and one of them feels like him doing fine. It looks so fun to be the Joe Peshie guy in a movie because I guess that's the other part of it is Peshie starts to be the Johnny Boy, standing next to De Niro as the strong silent type. Right. As the person who's struggling to communicate with words. That's true actually. I

“will also 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. I'm not sure where to do it. So they shot some stuff with Harvey Kytel and I'm not just this is where I'm not sure but I think he met De Niro met Scorsese or officially really met at some or at some party at Christmas after that October. And so then he was like oh you can play anything but you

can't play Charlie because he's already this and he was annoyed and he wanted to play Charlie. Then he ran into Harvey Kytel and the street and they were just like they started laughing. They were just like okay you're an actor too. This is going to be fine. But I think yeah so he

get to do much. All tonight's he does play the old man version of it. And all of a sudden one is his

good as Mean Streets right? No it's far better than it was. Okay right. Marty could never

Marty saw all tonight. Do you think Marty sees everything De Niro makes? Yeah really. Like De Niro's like I made a movie with Sebastian Menniscope. You got to watch it.

“And he's like okay life is short. I think he watches most of it because he watches movies.”

Yeah. But it does feel like he's very invested in Bob's career. You know? Like it does feel like there's a sense of like I want to keep up with what Bob's doing. I think De Niro hasn't seen all the movies. De Niro's story as well. Yeah. Well you guys keep saying that there are in a lot of like wild card roles Virginia. Yeah. Yeah. But those are like scary guys. Right. And it's like they're Cape Fear. He is so, so big. That's so true. But like I'm by wild card. I mean the kind of joky like

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 guys. And the guy who's the motor. Yeah. He's just like and it's like so often. Yes there's stuff like Cape Fear. But like so in like Brazil he's so funny and weird. Yes. But that movie is not real. Yeah. Those are just real like when he's doing kind of character actor. Right stuff. Even Cape Fear where he's like oh lead. But he's obviously

not the protagonist of the story. But like in the 80. In the 70s it's the godfather too stuff. So it's like 1900 and last it. Right. Like all that. In the 80s it's the raging bull stuff. So I feel like it's like transformation. That's true. But also just like you know more like intense scary characters. We want to sort him by our analogy here because actually this isn't there's so much to talk about. Yeah. I know they haven't been started. I know. Come on. This is all about to hear that.

“No because I think you are right near us that really didn't make a lot of movies in here. But like”

once a time upon a time in America it's like that the mission is like the like angel heart. He's like

stoic characters. And then like the 90s I've never seen Jacknight. Have you ever seen Jacknight?

I've never seen Jacknight. That is a classic. I would pull that off the shelf a blockbuster or the video store all the time being like what is this movie? Yeah. Vietnam Bat movie. Um and just the poster is just a painting of dinner with a beard and a Boston red socks hat. He does have a red socks. But you know the 90s of like good fellas. Let's let's put Cape Fear aside. But like good fellas, Bronx tail, you know casino heat, sleepers like these movies are grown in where he's

just like the the impassive guy. Yeah. And he also did do the Jackie Brown and this boy's life in Frankenstein. He did a lot of weird shit too. He's so funny and but that's where I'm the whole thing is how funny. I know it's yeah. He's staring on the right. Oh yeah. That's another kind of wild card. But I mean it's like it's a silent until he breaks. It's sexy in a movie makes me a lot of funny. Thank you. I was in you read my mind. This is his sexiest era. Eat and Jackie Brown.

“For me. I think this is I mean I thought the 90s era is for you. What about what about um and I run?”

I mean I run that where I think so hot and so hot. I mean I run as one of his best performances. But I wouldn't say his hottest. I feel like there's something about that little bit later. Yeah. Just that 90s like that. There's I. Yeah. You look. Yeah. I think that it's just I mean I just think it's objectively as hot as hot. I mean someone say this is mean trees. I don't know. Yeah. I guess why the dog is almost him doing something similar. Fucking great and wag the dog. This. Yeah.

I love that performance. Look it's he rocks. I know what he's not so bad. We get to near those guys there. Yeah. That's our official stance on blank check. I think what is mirrored is what you're saying that like Copila was mentored to all these guys, right? He watches mean streets and is like fuck. That's my young Crowley on it. And that's not an obvious move. It was kind of genius to see him and go like if this guy stops talking but that energy is still there,

it's going to be really captivating to watch. And that's a performance where he doesn't talk

that much. And all the talking he does is in Italian. And he wins an Oscar basically for physical

presence and for how much he's able to communicate just in his body silently. Yeah. Before the gang who couldn't shoot straight, he went to Sicily. So to learn Italian. To like track the Italian. But the character is from Calabria. So I think like was he was he gaming for this? Like was he? I don't know. Yeah. I think they're going to do pretty cool. I'm going to be brain talk. All right. I'm going to open the dossier actually just so we can stay on track a little bit.

You know, and they they already correctly was like cages going to want that. I assume Nicholas

Copa was one of five years old. Yes. Yeah. He was like, we'll save that for Nick K. Yes.

“Is it a reference to the Donovan song? I think that's right. It's a song into the festival. Right.”

And all you know, it's like you're kind of like, you know, you're playing with the devil. Yeah. I mean the way the club is like all red and it's like the underworld or, you know, like Mean streets is better. Mean streets is a great title. I don't think the streets can really be beat as a title. This is his long-just dating passion project. He works on it with his college classmate, Marty Martin. So I just want I want to. Yeah. No, no, I want it to be correct about this.

The 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. Yeah. Okay. I don't know. I don't think it would be now. It's a good summer. Vincent Price movie. It's a Roger Corman movie. Right. Okay. It's um, which is it. Which kind of general is the Vincent Price movie that's like really intense. Yeah. Like he's performance and it is so magnificent. It's not trash. Right. But there is the

season of the witch movie. Well, that is a Romero movie that has two title. No, it's not okay.

“Okay. It's not a reference to anything. Okay. So Marty Martin. So Marty Martin worked on what?”

Who's that knocking on my door on New York, New York, on raging, and what you look? You know,

like it's the early Scorsese Collaboration. Yes. Am I saying it right? This is our first episode.

It's Martin Scorsese. How do I say it? Scorsese. Scorsese. Scorsese. Miram, I feel like you. I feel like it's Scorsese. Scorsese. I feel like I've heard him say Scorsese. And like he's one of those guys going, oh, that's fine. Yeah, it's funny. I saw an old comedian talking like on the David Letterman show. And he was like Copola. And he was like Copola. He doesn't know how to pronounce his name. This was in like the early eighties. He's actually right. It's actually

gonna be the Americans don't know how to pronounce there. I mean, his name is a transcriptionary. Yeah. The family was Scorsese or Scorsese with double zes and incisely, which means Scottish. Or something like, you know, in Italian. And then it was changed when they, you know, moved. Yeah. Because someone wrote it down wrong or whatever. So it's like the effort to correct the last 15 years has been towards Scorsese versus Scorsese. Yeah. Yeah. You said everyone used to say

“Scorsese and that's wrong. Yeah. I think. Yeah. Then I've just been saying that the whole time.”

Yeah. You're wrong. All right. I think Scorsese. Okay. So. Do you feel okay? How do you do you feel familiar enough to say Marty? Can we give ourselves permission to call him Marty? Be, of course. Yeah. You've worked with him. I have a call to Marty. I have been in his office and screening room. Sure. It wasn't there. Yeah. But I watched killers of the fire moon in his office. I'm sure I'll bring you out of a million more time. I was gonna say that's where

you saw the Super Mario Galaxy movie. So, Marty 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 a continuation. A continuation and Tondonial style. I'm following this guy Charlie will be my analog across stages in life. And when this movie came out, he said he was going to make a third film of him settling down and having a family that was

fucking bed and board or whatever, like the third. But also like Italian American like I want to represent my family life that I've put into this documentary through this fictional character.

That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was, I think it was written that never made.

And it kind of boring. I should have fun way. I don't like I read it. But so he started this mean street season in the witch in like, did you say the date like mid 60s? It's like 65 is where he puts it basically maybe 66 like and obviously it's inspired by his life a little bit. But as you guys already said, like he wasn't in a gang, they didn't really get in fights. They hung out and bars and picked up girls or whatever. But like they didn't even smoke pot. He said like really,

like, we were not like, he's got asthma for God. He's got asthma. He didn't really do the hard stuff. No. You're a later margin. Yes. He would just identify his nose. He would possibilities. My lungs aren't connected. Well, they are, but it's a let's direct route. Yeah, Marty has been work to be clear. It was working on mean streets for a long time before like the Godfather was ever thought of. Right. Because when this movie comes out, I think it draws comparisons to the Godfather.

Yes. Like press is probably a little like entirely. Yeah. 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

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, with 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 ought to be really being pulled between the two as equal forces, rather than in this, where it just feels like it's kind of a thinking 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 this screenplay was a sandy wind trip, which is girlfriend at the time. Right.

And her dad was a studio exec, and she's in the film. I think playing Heather windtrip. So she said, you got to put some more of your funny stories in there. You know, like, I think he had it's like things like, put in the MOOC story, put in the firecracker story, put in this kind of stuff. So I think, you know, what do you guys think? I mean, maybe we're not ready for that. But what do you think of the women? Look, it is. And he talks about it. It's why he went straight to Alice,

doesn't live here anymore after this, because even from this film, people were saying, and this guy doesn't really want to put women on screen. Like this early on, he felt the need to

“combat that. Yeah. It definitely feels like it's interesting. I think Amy Robinson's really”

fucking good in this movie. Oh, 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, you know, okay, she's Amy Robinson's Theresa. Yes. It was De Nero's cousin. Right. And Charlie's love interest. Right. Yeah. And she was friends with, I think she worked with De Pama, so she knew like Margot. Yeah, she worked on sisters and stuff. Yeah.

But her epilepsy feels a little bit like an analog for Scersesi's asthma to me. Maybe, yes, I mean, this feeling of, here is someone in and of this community who's looking to get just a little bit out. And what, those treated a little, like it's not a community that Nero has had an empathetically deal with, who has a condition. But 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, it's a 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. Uh, I agree. Who's that knocking is is so juvenile? Like, not, and not in,

like, the humor way or anything. It's just like, it's just all these, like, undeveloped ideas bouncing around this head. But yeah. I mean, like, you know, look, an empath one will be silently sitting for every episode. They already made that clear, right? Yes. 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. Um, we don't want to hear you complaining about how rarely we ask her questions. Yeah. Uh, right. So, okay. Uh,

“Scorsese, um, that 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 in the same number. Right. We're ashamed of the relation. 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's, it's, it is the same with the end of a pack when things literally will be a running discussion for, like, decades of his career

of if he is sidelining women, when is that an oversight or failing of his and when is it a very pointed statement? Yeah. I, I think, like, um, uh, yeah. It's, I, something like, people will say that about like, ETA and I, I don't agree with it there. But with Scorsese, it's hard, you know, it's not his strength. I mean, he's not into it. Like he's obviously, um, like more recently, killers of a flower moon. Interesting. He's grown into it. Sure. Wrong. 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, he got, he's kind of like, you make it just put a little salt in it. She's a conflict. She's a story element. It's not really a character. By the way, that's why he says yes to Alice. It's not an

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 romance, if you will.

But I want to talk about the other woman who was probably what first drew me to this film,

in that there's that opening scene where, or it's very early on where Charlie,

“Kaitel, 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. She personally, yes. On Instagram, she was the world's oldest competitive jump rope skipper. Yeah. She was a play at the time. She was a playboy model. She's just gorgeous. And she goes by Annie Judas now. You can find her an 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. She's black. She's supposed to be a floating I've ever seen. Right, both. She's like, but she's black. And like, obviously, doesn't make you difference. And that's Chris Sezzi's. I'm pretty sure that's his because you know, they, they all turn in and dribbly cutting between, I tell doing a 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 wild take. It's like, this is a film about race. Like, you know, like, there's that with like, then he, like, he stands her up. But what is it? Moolinion. Do you know, it's a slur. Yeah, it's a slur. And then he's like, then there's someone who's kissing an end word and like, Lillion means eggplant. Like, that's it. Right. Right. You know, it's from the Sicilian. I mean, it's a nasty thing. It's a nasty thing to say. I know. I'm,

so maybe I should have said the M word. I don't know. But like, I feel like that's part of the religious thing, the changing of the Italian American family. You know, talking about Francis of the CC, 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, the little”

Italy talk. What can found it me about little Italy as a child. But what I didn't understand is like, this is this idea of almost fighting against the melting pot of not just America, but New York specifically where that's the great promise. But then also it's like, but these five blocks. It's just us. Yeah. It's just us. And we're going to maintain tradition and evolve tradition to figure out what

the Italian American experiences versus the Italian experience. But also Italian gets first billing

over American. And so there's that feeling of like, we've got to keep everyone at a distance because we can't lose what we are. And even if it's not driven by like racial animosity, I think there's that protectiveness. Yeah, we're 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 winds at the sidelines is like, what this movie is really about, which is sort of like a, a, a masculinity crisis of

its time. Yeah. I mean, a 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 corpsmen to finance and corpsmen's like, yeah, I love that. Can you make it a black exploitation? Oh, yeah. You can take the same script and like cast it with black actors because that is in vogue right now that that there had been enough successful

black exploitation 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 mafia, so kind of thing.

You know, he says like, I said I consider it because you always have to say you 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 and make this in the first place, which is what we're saying like, what 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's

he said there was no one else, like him in his classes. There's no one else that was from

“this like, you know, lower the budget. I know, and like again, if you block the way.”

Right. Yes. Yes. It was a whole different world. Yeah. And then my you was not what we think of it. That's, you know, now it all. No. He also said like he'd be going in 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 they're like, uh, De Niro says when he brings the

wine trap girls, he's like, they're from the village, you know, like just this other world. Yeah. So he brings me in 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. He had no

characters that had basic elements. Get's turned down there. He takes it to Joe Brenner, who's a sex film distributor, who's the guy who distributed, who's that knocking. And he said, no, uh,

“probably because it's just not, you know, sexy enough. One of the old professors at NYU told him,”

hey, no one wants to see films about Italian Americans anyway. So forget about it. So that's I could 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 the sellable areas of genre at this point in time. Totally. I mean, he invented a kind of movie here. He does. He does. Right. Um, so instead he works obviously on Woodstock, editing Woodstock, which is, you know, a formative, of course, as a thing. And he enters Roger

Corman's orbit. Uh, we've talked about all that last week. I'm sure. So, uh, box cover with a J Cox, who's working at the New York Times, Pock spelled like the cool way. Multiple penis says. Right. He's the one who shows John Casabetti's who's that knocking in my door. And Casabetti's response to it and says, like, what's the film you're dying to make? And he's like, I have this thing, but it needs to rewrite and Casabetti says, well, rewrite it then. Right. You know, like, what are

you waiting for? Cox obviously is a guy who works with Scorsese a bunch, you know, over the years. But, but that's also very, uh, indicative about why Scorsese or why Casabetti said the, like, you've wasted a year of your life making a piece of shit because he knows the thing he wants to make. Right. Probably. So, Sandy windtrop, obviously, uh, he's dating at the time. Uh, she's the one who says, right, put in, put in the funny stuff, take out the religious stuff.

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

but then Warner Brothers ends up distributing it. So, I guess like Corman backs out when it becomes more of a real thing. And Scorsese, there's a tribute to Corman. 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.

Uh, Jay Cox was Mayor DeVernu Bloom, right, who I remember best as being Team Wormser's wife in, uh, Animal House. Sure. My version of the way you're describing, uh, good fellow as Miriam, a movie I watched way too many times before I was, uh, 10, uh, because my father basically treated it as the Bible. Yeah. Um, but she was the one who I think helped locate the money that freed him from

“being dependent on Corman. It costs about $150,000. I think Jonathan Taplin is also very important.”

Who is the touring manager for the band. That's who I was referring to Bloom introduces them. Right. She saw that he was talking to Corman and that he was, yeah, 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 every time. She finds the money in a way that wouldn't make him have to. Well, constantly. He likes decision. You'll make it in Cleveland.

Yeah. Then the money falls through, uh, and then, right, and then they end up with $175,000, and they get some other stuff from like CFI labs. I don't know. They, you know, they scrape money together. They obviously he had written Charlie for Harvey Cytel 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. Uh, at one point John Void is involved, but then they shoot the festival stuff before they

even start doing pre-production. And then that point Harvey is basically locked in.

John had already done midnight cowboy and apparently Void says this course says he, like, I'm too famous. Like, yeah, you need, I don't know. It's like you need like this needs to feel

and I was watching. There's a, um, uh, Q&A, uh, discussion between we were, we were watching the link later interview. Link later in Scorsese, Rick and Morty. Uh, and it, it was a series called game changers that the DGA was curating of like movies that changed the industry. And link later

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 that like more than 90% of the film was shot in Los Angeles. Right. And the New York, uh, exterior stuff they did, especially Sanginero 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 link later

is asking him where 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, why wasn't concerned because we just didn't have money. So I need to make a money. 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. I knew that's the whole thing people. Do you know how to tell it?

It's not an act. They're New Yorkers. Dave Proval, they find him at this John Void workshop as with Richard Romanoz. But they're both Brooklyn, they're the New York guys. These guys have a fair language from New York. If I put them in the same room, even if that rooms 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 X-series, including the big crash at the end, too. Then they did some hallways and the beach in New York. And the weirdest, we were talking about this before recorded. The when-tonier shooting, the gun on the roof, the roof is New York because you can see the impressive building. But the window is Los Angeles. There's no establishing shots, right?

They didn't have time for that. They shot the whole movie in about 27 days. This movie has so much accidental language like that where there's something that you don't even

clock the first time about the fact that it's not giving you those establishing shots that you're

just in the places without a feeling of being eased into them. That is just a result of them not having the time to shoot Estelle Shinshots 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 and longer takes. And you need the camera being able to just move

“really quickly from one focus to the other because that's the only way we're getting our pages done.”

And the DP on this movie remind me his name. So the DP on this movie's name is Kent L. Wakeford, which is first movie. He was a commercial director. I think with the handheld Altman famously saw it at, or I don't know how famous. But saw it in 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. Right. Right. Right. The other thing Wakefield said was

like, there was. Wakeford. Wakeford that there was no intentional strategy. But then even when they started watching Dailys, 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 to the night lean into it. And everything is like that where it's like we're doing it this way because we don't have any other options. And then they look at it and they're like,

this is a miracle. This actually is better than we could have planned. I don't know how

“he feels better now. But I think immediately afterwards he kind of thought, Gorsese thought”

it was like a little sloppy. You know? Right. But like, it's what I love about it is how like handmade it is. And for me, this is going to be my wildest take of all. But to me, I prefer this to the Godfather. To me, they're very similarly about like, there's such different movies. Yeah. It's like, this is the the term I Godfather. You know, it's like the Godfather's like the Porterhouse. And this is a burger. You know, like, I mean, they're they're so different. Like I love

them together. I've never loved the Godfather. Well, also never denying it's power. Like I have no complaints

about it. But it's just not. It's for it. Oh, how are you? It's not horror movie. It's fine. It's movies. Yeah, it's not you. That was a big movie for a team day. But I cannot. Yeah, I love the Godfather. Godfather is great. But I love this. This is way more my vibe. It's also like that roughness you're talking about is like what people are still chasing today. Like the safeties careers are built on. Can we figure out a way to get back to that feeling? Wait, which I was wondering which safeties movie

is mean streets. Is it daddy Longley? Yeah. It's daddy Longley. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Because that's the personal one. Yeah. It's the personal one. And like it's like something like heaven knows what is

and I don't know. And that they all weirdly become like, what is there in New York, New York?

“Where am I talking to? Let's take an idiot. You go ahead day long. No, Marty Supreme is their”

condon. No, I was just going to say that the other movies become kind of genre movies. Yeah, because they start to get so into the kind of like chase structure. Right. The outrunning thing. Right. Which this has that narratively of like when is shit going to catch up to John Boyboy? But the movie doesn't have the narrative engine of they're getting closer. I sent this to you and I came in. Read the Wikipedia synopsis. It's four paragraphs. The final three paragraphs of the last

15 minutes of the movie. There's nothing else. There's no plot in the movie before that.

No, it's just hanging out. The first paragraph is a bird's eye. It's like, you know, Charlie,

people setting a little in. He's dating the car and he's got Johnny Boy and all and then it's totally torn between Catholicism and gangsterism and then it's like a 15 minutes. Anyway, at the end, they try to fucking get somebody from Johnny Boy and it all pops off. Like, that's all that happens in the movie. There's still complex structure here. Yeah. I mean, it's just about like the ending and their banish. And I feel like that happens and like not to bring back the safeties. 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 hang”

on the club with Johnny Boy and the boys hang out with the mob a little bit. Yeah, you have the end

then you hang out in the church and you hang out with Theresa in her apartment. I was also thinking a

lot while watching this of Mikey and Nicky. It's like here's the one who's a little bit more of a straight arrow. Yeah, it's the fuck off. I can't you fucking stop it. Right. And as much as that's like a one crazy night movie that has hangout elements, that movie's also a funeral march. That movie has the narrative engine of you know this is going somewhere bad. Yeah, streets even though everyone's kind of saying like you got to get Johnny Boy under control. It doesn't feel like it's pushing you

towards some obvious outcome. It might be Nicky also. You're kind of like they've been doing this dance for so long. They're older. Right. This is become untenable. Like it really means streets. It's a little right. They're young and it's just kind of this like you got to pick your friend's moment of like are you really going to stick with this guy like right? And you be a growner. 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. It's just way fun. Do we want to hang out with Johnny Boy? He's really fun to watch. Yeah. I just want to watch. When I was a younger man, I used to just love the chaos. Yes, I heard. Like is it? I mean, this movie's sort of about when you start to get a little be you know like hey could we actually just hang out without you doing something in saying like

one time right? Getting a little bored of it. One of my best friends in high school was very much Johnny Boy. And I was I was very much the Charlie to his side. Yeah. I would gravitate to those types. And because they're fun and exciting. There was something about the like adjacency to danger.

Even if I never was that you're not getting a danger in 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. Yeah. Did I see it now? And he's just so sad and clearly suffering.

“Johnny Boy? Yeah. Yeah. He's easy. Wow. Because I think he's suffering because”

he is stuck. He is stuck. He's stuck in his position. Yeah. He really 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. Yeah. But he can't be honorable like his friends. Sure. My take is slightly different, which is that 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's shit's gonna catch up to him eventually. And I think for him it's like, what's the fucking alternative? Right. What's the endgame? There's not like none of the options available to me. Seeing 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 they're when I'm making this move, I just want to say in the lower side the few days that they are. People would come up to them and see the title on the clapper. Yeah. And be like, the movie, the the wrong would

They get to a fight with them. What is the matter with you? He sees the title as an

homage to like a gag, you know, right? Like you know, like to a one over this 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 or freeed. So it's about, it's about, it's about Charlie. Yeah. It makes sense. It's 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, yeah. It's a it's a punchy title. But Jay Cox showed him the essay and said, like, that's a good fucking title. Right. And it does have

that kind of season of a witch. But it has that thing like white heat where you're just like, those two words are interesting to get. Oh, man, white heat so normal. Love that movie. Well, speaking of what can we talk about the gangster movies? Yes. Yes. I think something that's that he said is that the big movies, the big like Warner's movies that they would watch were public enemy and little Caesar. And he said that he hated little Caesar. He thought it was like,

vulgar, very overdone, heavily acted, but loved public enemy. Little Caesar's ever, would you rob it, right? And Richie Robinson, so that's Marvin LaRoy. And then, and then, um,

“public enemy is William Welman. So this was the other person who's really important for this”

movie and for Scorsese is Andrew Saras. And the, and the try to cinema guy, the Autourists. Because when these guys were coming up, it was Andrew Saras and these French guys were appreciating all these like movies that they grew up with. They were like, junkie movies. Like movies that at the time were not seen as like, they were being designed. 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 Murphy LaRoy. But he was not a Murphy LaRoy guy. He was like, William Welman guy. He was a fuller guy. He was a, a hawks and, and Ford guy. And so that that's really important to figuring out the films, the, the same films that all feel junky, but some of them are really good and some of them are not. And he was specifically, a 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 Cagmy. Public enemy is like, young Cagmy. 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, popular music in the background. So it was not score with 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 Kapplin, but Jonathan Kapplin probably also helped get all these moves. No music. He told him. Music seems to be a pleasure. 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 Stone. So 30. Yeah. This Jones was 15 each and they have both jump in Jack Flash and tell me. Yeah. They have B. My baby, which is the most important one. Yeah. And they have very so they're, you know. But like B. My baby was the one that he was like that obviously was the song.

Like we needed that one. Yeah. Yeah. The female singing roots right before the Beatles. Like that is music. Link later said a thing in that DJ talk. I thought was really interesting where he was like there's um, there are things like easy writer 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 Squarespace he said like,

yeah. It's, it was important that it's like you're seeing even when it's not supposed to be diagetic within a scene that you get the sense that it could be and that often enough you pulling to at this is coming from a jukebox or whatever. It doesn't vent this shit. It's right. You can hear the pop in the hiss. Yeah. He said yes for actually his record. Right. Like with bringing a baby. Which is a huge difference. Right. It's not. No. Not bringing a baby. Bringing a

baby. The music thing I just, it's, I was saying it to my wife last night. I was just like, I know this sound so boring, but like no one had ever done this before. Yeah. No. It's so true.

“Like it seems like the most, like what do you mean no one had ever like put pop music in a movie before?”

Yeah. But it's like kind of no one really done that yet. Not this way, not in this sort of um,

I am loving it. But all the terrible copies that we've gotten. We've gotten so far,

all the, all the, all the, still the word. It was one of our great returns. He just released a magnificent new season of his great show, you for it. Right. We've got like, we've, and the, you know, the horror movies with the ironic pop music. Yeah. And like this. And every trailer would like the slow down, like yeah. So long or whatever. And then the film flickers. Yeah. And then the film flickers.

“And then a knife cuts. I think it's really good. I haven't seen it. But I think it's like burberry and”

or something, right? I think maybe is there a break? There's a lot of baby stuff in that movie. No, no. Yeah. It's in burberry. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so um, but like the thing that's interesting is that like, and then all the, the guys, the better than Sam Levinson, I feel like all the, um, the Gen X guys, all these like mixed tape guys. You know, all these like thinking while watching this, it is crazy how much of this movie is in the DNA of the early West Anderson stuff. Yeah,

West Anderson, uh, KCA, honestly turned into more. Also, Sophia Copeland, like nicer 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 areas. And it really was like a mix tape or something. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, and they would, they would write in the same way, Scorsese would to like write the, the scenes to these songs. But the thing that's different

about these stories 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, Phil Spectre and those stones have been used in these like other kind of mixed tape things. But this is something we've gotten away from,

“which is like, it's a book sharing a specific era. I mean, that's what like link later does with”

days and confused. You know, it makes sense that he talks about how much that soundtrack felt like eye opening to him. But, you know, the Scorsese won our Mark Madness thing. Maddy, it almost came down to him and West Anderson. True. And there was a nerve part of me that really wanted to see that matchup happen for the final two, because there's that article I'm obsessed with that I think Esquire magazine did in 1999 that was who's the next Scorsese. We've decided, I know it says he

is the definitive film maker of the last 50 years, you know, the second half of the 20th century.

This is after bottle art. Exactly. Like a bunch, it was like the Wachowski's work. We're made their taste. They asked like a bunch of different film scholars and critics. And then they asked Scorsese and he said West Anderson. He said West Anderson off a bottle rocket and Rushmore. And when I can, should I tell you all the nominees, because it's crazy. Yes, I know intrusuous nominated Kevin Smith. Yes, which is as fastenating because he's like, I know this

one sounds crazy. Right. It's basically on the strength of chasing Amy, and if he pursues this, yeah. Can I turn it from paradise? Yeah. Yeah. Can I turn it on nominated David O'Rossle? Which is interesting because David O'Rossle, I could see that at that time. But that's a more obvious this guy is going for that nervy comic energy. Yeah. Todd McCarthy nominated Paul Thomas Anderson. Sure. Tom Carson nominated Alexander Payne. Sure. Although I don't really see the

Tom Payne's work at all, but okay, Elvis Mitchell nominated with Chowsky. Which I think is a fun pick by Elvis and then Marnie says West. And he, you know, after Gene says school dies, Scorsese does the best of the decade episode with Ebert. Yes. I've watched it a thousand 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, he saw like this guy is making movies about his own life in 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 Earl Tambom's 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 West Anderson starts fear weirdly. You know,

never seen the horse thief. I haven't either. You know that, I'm not listening. He's like,

I remember one is this like Tibetan movie called the horse thief. And I'm like, I've always like, I've got to watch that. Well, did you have on that? The puppet master, he, he's got Malcolm X Fargo, crash, bottle rocket, breaking the waves, badly tenant, Ice White shot, thin red line, borrowed

“life and the horse thief. Borrowed life is a, is a Chinese or Taiwanese movie that I've all seen.”

Mean streets. Should we talk about it? Because I mean, I've talked about the production just

as about West Anderson and about this is being a very personal thing. I mean, I think they're both

also big, and they're big supporters of like, classic films. You see those references there. But they're also just like, finding like a color and movement to express emotion and biography. Right. And that's kind of what screses he 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 that was to do and who I am. Yeah. Yeah. There's that synthesizing of personal experience and all the films he had studied. And even you talking about him trying to study and figure out which gangster films dug in on him and which ones bounced off of him. It's like, well, there's two silos. It feels like 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 their system, even if they're doing for higher work. For sure, but for fuller was also specifically the movement. And that's when

we're talking about this film and we're talking about the difference between like who's that

“knocking? This film, 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 Kichel like on a dolly and in some weird. Yeah, we're going through. But he's track. It's yeah, we're kind of like all fun. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it's like before there was steady. Yeah, they invented it. They're kind of this thing. But he's that he was really inspired by fuller, specifically like shock corridor and like park row because there's all this like

movement. Yes. Are you kidding me? I've never seen it. I've never seen it. I've never seen

part of master. Oh, yeah, God. It's a master. I'm not a huge foot. Like I'm not. I like fuller a lot, but like I'm not an expert in fuller. I feel like I've seen like three or four fuller movies. I want to hit some words. Yeah, fuller blank check spots before shutter island. I mean, I've seen like shock corridor naked kiss. I've used to have seen you know, big red one and beat it the later one. Yeah, but I'm okay. So park row. Like a park row is an early one. I mean,

I love park row. You still work on park row. Yeah. To use paper movie ice. It's totally a new paper movie. It's like the new paper movie. It also has, okay, we'll do another thing in there. It also has like I would like to do review of that film just listing all the classic cocktails. Oh, interesting. Oh, many. Anyway, it's a great movie. Yeah, so it was again like for fuller. It was like the movement. But hiring a documentary DP and Scorsese also having come off of

being a cameraman himself on Woodstock, where he's holding a camera and feeling that urgency of fuck something's happening here. Can we catch it in time? Yeah. It feels like the movie has that energy despite being a scripted film. Yeah. Yeah. And we're 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 combination of that. But it's interesting because this guy, I don't know. It was his, his, he,

I saw an interview and he was talking, they were asking him about like the lighting set up since stuff. I, I, I don't, I just get the feeling that Scorsese told him what to do because he was saying, oh, why the red in the, in the bar. And he's like, that's just what it seemed like to me. I'm like, like, how am I? I, this is totally Marty. This is, this is, this is, this is, this is doing the sun. This is the red shoes. Right. Right. Right. 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, sure. It's also their, 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, these, 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 them feel a little

alienated or separate in a way. Like it's so yeah. And just then the calm of the church, like you,

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 screcies like a kid where the asthma's so bad. It's like, if I get on fight, I might die.”

You know, like, someone punches me the wrong way. It's going to take you all for someone to pull my body up. It's in the dock. And it's in all, you know, it's like they, they use born and flushing, right? And they lived in Queens. And then they were kicked out of Queens because his dad, like, gotten a fight with the local, like, mom. And in the dock, he's like, that felt like being kicked out of paradise. And like, you could, like, he was parent in this movie. It's just like, I just

want the wide open streets of Washington. It's like how do I still have an environment. But I just why long for like the relatively open skies. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I mean, that's not a plot in this movie. But like, the way he makes New York feel in the like the San Generous, like shots and all that just like, it's, it's alive. And it's cool. And I'm watching it being like, oh, fuck it. Yeah, New York. This box. But like, it's it's overwhelming. But he also, I mean, I, so I'm saying

interview, maybe it was in the only later thing as well. That like, the entire social life was built around these after hours clubs 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. I mean, you want to actually recalling 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 or probably bullshit. Right. Or you're telling people your aspirations of what you want to do with women in some day. Yeah. Or you're just like getting in a fight over pool. Right. And

about those 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 a friend who will 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, he idea of moving to the village. The old joker, like you, you

bid your mother good, tearful goodbye, give her a big hug of the new move downstairs. Right. You moved 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

“unseen. You need to hide that from your parents, but also they're close enough that your mom's”

going to fucking come over and make your bed and do your laundry. You're still basically, it's like living in their garage, you know? There's Johnny Boyd just the money because he's a gambler, like that's where he's blowing his money. Yeah. It must have just that, right? Like

it's just like on the horses or whatever. Because he's always trying to get a head. I don't know

but I, but there's no end goal. Like it's important that he's not, he 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. But he doesn't, there's a farm right here because he just doesn't see any path forward his friends a business owner, right? Yeah. The other one's working for his uncle. The other one is like I guess making his way up is just being a maid guy and he's just kind of stuck. He's the loser

of the group. The caretting bar fight, right? The basically plays out without dialogue largely and is like brother actors and everything, no caretting. He's a fighting action. David and Robert.

“Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And that's what these guys do. He's definitely dead,”

died, Robert. Right. RIP. 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 maid man or working, you're, you're adjacent to these things puts you on like the battlefront to a certain degree. And Square says he 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 clean 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 there. And that guy's dead. And it's like that's, it could have been us by the difference of like which block we walked out.

Are we in trouble? Are we off course? No. This is what this podcast is the better way. 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 how personal it is. Like from the very beginning, we have like a scene about German lenses and Japan actors. Like, you know, we've got, we've got super eight footage. We've got, you know, it's so about Marty. I just, yeah, I love the,

I love the MOOC scene. The MOOC scene. There's the, a fight that he witnesses at a bar, which is what happens in the movie. And it starts with the bartender called you. Who called me a MOOC and everyone starts fighting. And then someone says, what's a MOOC? And you guys like, I don't know. Yeah. What's a MOOC?

like sort of slang for like talking too much. Big mouth. Yeah. Yeah. There's a Reddit thread that is like,

“every possible iteration of like, they're like, did Skorsa the invention or where did it come from?”

And it's, it obviously goes somewhere. But it's, it's, um, according to Marty, he later realized. He didn't know at the time. Right. That it's Neapolitan. Yeah. And he is a Sicilian. You know,

the Sicilian's, the Neapolitan's always hated each other and Neapolitan's, you know, Naples.

And like, it was a Neapolitan word for like, allowed mouth Sicilian. I'm a MOOC, like, MOOC, I mean, it is that thing. And I've learned this a couple times unfortunately on Mike on this podcast, but as someone who was raised on like, bugs bunny and like old comedy shit, I was so obsessed with all the slang of mid 20th century guys. And then you unpack it and you're like, nine out of ten are like racially charged. Yeah. Like all these sort of, uh, up yours names that the

wisecrack and characters will throw at people. But you're right, that people don't even understand what they're saying. And it's like throwing these Molotov cocktails and not quite sure what the impact of them are. You brought West Anderson, one of my favorite sort of generic unknown racial epithets is when, um, in royal ten and bombs. And he's like, did you just call me cold train? Yes. I mean, one of the fucking funniest things is in any West Anderson movie ever. It's so good.

It's kind of things we were like, is that racist? The way this happened reacts. It feels pretty racist. Yes. Right. No, it's so great. But I love these sort of like, it's sort of abstract some of the language we use. But I have to say, I did say it was about racism. I do want to do do do 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. And it, uh, was declared extremely offensive, um, for it's black perspective and, uh, because of, of the stripper and the, the policeman who's like, takes. Oh, sure. And like, I, I don't know if I agree with that. I mean, I think I would say, I mean, I, I, I mean, I, again, I really do think it's about these like, you know, these unknown racial epithets is 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. Yeah. That's not must be so far from Marty's understanding at this point. Yeah. I don't think of gay characters and Marty movies. Well, so we should call it. Did Nureau's father was gay?

Did Nureau'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,”

D'Nureau 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 D'Nureau knows about his father at this point, what his father self identifies as and whatever. But his father was a man who 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 laugh in version of that character. Oh, like, wait, side, you know, his mom dated many Farber. No, didn't you know? Yeah. And like when they were just like, you know, bohemians and village and stuff. So I had said that this was like the termite, uh, like to the god father. So that's like many Farbers. One of the great film critics and the whole termite versus white elephant is him. And I guess many Farber came up to, he really liked me streets. I don't know

what point he reviewed it. But he really liked it. At one point he came up to Nureau at a party. And was like, uh, I remember you when you were a kid in like 14th street. And Nureau 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 the regeneration Americans. Theoretically these guys. Yeah. Like, like that there's like their their their grandparents came you're saying their grandparents immigrated. Yeah. Right. They're immigrants immigrated probably with their parents as young adults. Yeah. I mean, well, Marty's parents were what Catherine was born in New York. Yeah, I forget about the dad. Yeah, Charles. Seconder. Yeah. He was born in New York. They're their parents were right. This sense of this

inherited tribalism that isn't even actually motivated by anger and 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 even the kind of like corrupt black hop 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

actually, I'm going to Philly. But the way he swears is just kind of exhausted and 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, they live in like four spots. Right. The way Theresa's character talks about moving up town. It's just leaving the contract. Exactly. Oh, yeah. Of course, as he said, that be the equivalent of a girl telling you she was moving to Ohio.

You're never going to see her again. That's impossible. Right. Can we talk about, I tell you

about what? Yeah. You know what? I mean, I assume we, this is it. We're recording this one. Yeah, a week before. Yes. That knock in his marriage in town. So we talked about Harvey a little bit. Yeah. But Harvey, very important. From this moment on, now that he's discovered De Niro, Kytel becomes more of a stock company player and more often he is presented as a villain or a rival. Like he's in Alice. Yeah. And and taxi driver. But he's right. He's a fucking set up

all-pamp and taxi driver. He's literally Judas. But between taxi driver and last temptation, he doesn't

“work with Martin. Right. And then is there anything between last temptation and Irishman?”

Let's try to remember if there's like one thing. Maybe not. It feels like every time he uses him after that other than Irishman, which feels like a kind of like, isn't this nice to put them all at the same table again? I know. The other ones, it feels like what he's using Kytel to be like, I want to show that this guy has range. Right. I want to, I want to test him and put him in a different light. Obviously like, of course, as he was such a, you know, uh, he loved badly

tenant or what it like he would, he would pump, you know, pray to the other Harvey stuff. And I think they remain very close and still do. I wonder if Harvey's like, fuck you, why am I not, you know, why do I not get to be your dinner row? Like, why does dinner row get to be your star? On my rewatch, I really have that. I'm like, happened to her. Like, what happened to Kytel? She's a great actor. This is what struck me watching it. Right. It's 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 through, or at least a majority of them. And then you look at the filmography and you're like, all of these movies are personal and that they are explorations of the things that clearly scurses he wrestles with constantly. But his movies no longer pass this point really feel like they're about characters that reflect him. They become explorations of his worldview. Yeah. And he, or like, he sounds like a lot, 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, um, age of innocence or maybe like, um, gangster 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 is Johnny Boy and putting a character that sort of exciting that much of a wild card into the mix that he's like, I'm kind of a passive protagonist. I'm a guy who looks at

the window and watches what's happening, who thinks about it, who will stand a little close to

the danger, but never actually place myself, you know, in real harm's way. And he wants to start to

build movies around characters who are actively moving the plot. Uh, so then Cytel 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, but then he gets locked into a dinner to some mixed stuff, 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 at how do you feel about Harvey, Miriam? I like him. I mean, I was really like, what happened? Like, you know, I was thinking about he's got some great roles. I mean, he's too it, right? Yeah. And that's so there was the whole thing was this like, Polish shoes. Thanks for Russian shoes. Yeah, so he, all right, so he was like, Stanton. Right, Nitch guy.

So first, he was the stand-in for Marty. And then, but I was, you know, just when now we were talking,

like, could Harvey, could I tell I have been in casino? Yeah, totally. Like, in either role. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. Like, Harvey, I tell is a good actor. Yeah. If he's in a movie, it's usually good. Yeah. He's performance. He's in lots of bad movies. Like, I mean, he just was one of those guys who I feel like, sure, five movies a year for 30 years, right? Like, yeah, 80s and 90s. Like, he just says, "Zillian 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, I, there's a part of it. And some of this is conjecture on my part, right? But you look at him in, like, the 70s and the 80s. You look at the stuff he did with toe back, which is very toe back. And, you know, it is that

co-lead of the movie. And sometimes these guys do just get into a place where they're like,

I'm willing to play the dilemma. I'm willing to play the side character or the villain for Marty. But otherwise, I'd rather be the guy. And that's sometimes can dictate the choices. You know, if how weird stuff in the 80s. With, with, with, with Kyle. Yeah. We see, with the, when was piano? Was that the 90s? 93. I love that performance. It's a great performance. We've talked about fair amount of 90s and 2000s kind of, because we don't can't be in. So there's

“multiple, you know, can't be in performances from him. What else have we talked about?”

Well, of course, we did the National Treasure Movies on Patreon. Probably is too finest performances as Guy behind desk. But that's the thing. It's like, what does he do with the Declaration of Independence? I mean, there's like, right, and which is like, that's just like film and Louis, right? Like, it's like, he does film and Louis, and then he'll just like do that every so often ever since. So like, do you want me to play the tired cop like clockers?

Sure. Good in clockers. Yeah. Like, and he's sort of the lead of clockers, but he's not really like, my guy fibers, the lead of clockers. But Harvey's like the face. That's the other thing that's right. Right. Tarantino and Spike Lee and all these other filmmakers using him,

almost in a mix tape. What is so good in reservoir? Yeah, he's incredible. And you've never seen it.

You've never seen, you've never seen, why have you never seen reservoir? Is there an massive avoidance? Or have you just not gotten around to it? Yeah. I don't know. It's just, it's like 90 minutes long. They played in reps and I was constantly and bars and like, yeah. I tell is incredibly good. The whole thing with reservoir, it's like Michael Madsen, I assume you know, is kind of like the character, their pops or whatever. And he's doing the James Bondy kind of

thing. Right. But and Kytel is the lead and he's the center. Super emotional. Yeah. And it's different, but it does feel like Tarantino is casting him because it's like using an impactful pops on, you know, there is, he becomes somewhat representational by the 90s for a lot of filmmakers

“who grew up inspired by the Scorsese movies. And then I think they'll, I don't know, they'll”

rework him in interesting ways. And even the way Wes Anderson uses him is very fascinated. Hey, which one? Well, he says he's fun in Budapest. Yes. And he's also Moonrise Kingdom as like the major contributor at the end. They keep going up the ladder to choose the ultimate troop leader. And then you reveal like old Harvey Kytel and Little Kaki shorts. And Kytel's like, just have to say it. It's not even they as 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 fasting to watch him listen to people because you can't really tell what's going on. And I think similarly when he talks, it sort of feels like a struggle to him, not that it's non-verbal, but that it's really like an effort to get things out. It's funny because I feel like impressed interviews. He's far more

“gregarious that he is not a guy who's like incredibly self-serious or protective about”

sure 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 Kytel's insane body, right? Yeah, I feel like he can also, I mean maybe I'm just misjudging from certain roles, but I feel like there's like a dangerous eroticism to a lot of his performance. But I don't really see with De Niro, like I feel like

De Niro, I'm De Niro's like I'm sure a sexy guy, but there's not like a real funny reality with that. When he was more sexual and feels transgressive, and he also, and he was going to move towards that, right? Like in the real estate, he's got this fucking triple thing. You know, he's got this kind of like perma frown. Yeah, I love this one. And this for a brow, and he's so kind of weirdly like he's impressed. Yeah, he's like stocky, or although I don't know if he's really stocky,

like this is all just how things really know, right? But he's just a guy where you're just like it's just fucking shoulders and biceps at a time where people in American movies aren't really

built, you know? And it's not like he's like a jacked bodybuilder, but he always just had kind of like

a weird spilling of muscles in his upper body. He's a funny body. And he shows it off a lot. He likes to show his penis. I've never, within the context of art. Harvey Cartel's body this much. Well, like if you think of like bad lieutenant, this sort of iconic kid, like, you know, when he's like, yeah, you know, they did something, you know, he has a fun end of the piano and stuff. And Marie would would call out a very deep V too. I feel like those movies like bad lieutenant,

ripped from the deep, Miriam is covering her mouth in shock and shit. And she should.

And bless you. Miriam, on the desk there, we have a postcard of Austin Powers frozen in ice because when we watch that movie, Marie Barty said is Mike Myers cut and then just kept calling out the deep V. I tell 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's to the time? That is said. Is that still worth selling? Yeah, what was I what started? But then he gets drunk.

“Is that where he gets drunk? And he's like blessing. I think he's like, he's a baptizing people.”

He's like, yeah, going around with water and like baptizing people. But you were thinking specifically of the Vietnam thing of the era of what? Like the vet is clearly suffering from you know, his experience there and he attacks that woman and then Kytel has that moment where he dances with her and the closet. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Oh, that's weird. That's so weird. I don't know what to read from it. It feels like another story like that, you know,

score says he 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. Then it would like obviously like, could be very dramatic for them. Yeah. I mean, the literal opening of this movie is him lighting the candles and church, right? Is that the opening shot? Uh, yeah. I mean, the opening is the minor. And the narration, which is score says these voices,

you don't make up for your sins and church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit, and you know it. Rather than it being a movie where the poll is, is this guy going to follow faith, the movies telling you upfront 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 watched. It's not that it's bullshit.

It's just that you have like all these opportunities for like 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 the world. Yeah. One scene that we didn't talk about is most of this is the scripted, but they would do like kind of like you know, they do like little sessions that 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 Daniel first walks in, it's the, it's the stones,

and you know, it's the slow motion and we're really in a scorsizing movie. And then they go into the back room. And that's when they're like, they're like, the Tuesday after the Tuesday after this Tuesday or you know, and they're doing all this wordplay and talking about Joey Climbs, no Joey Skellett, no, they're the same person. Yeah. And like this whole thing, that was all improvised. And that was something that, um, scorsizes, he said he was really feel like he needed something there, and he

did something to set the tone in the comedy, and he was really influenced by like Abbot and Kostello, and who's on first. Right. But also like the road movies, and Bob open and um, Ben Crosby,

“and this like, you know, someone always trying to get one over, but I think the wordplay is really”

keen. The one that's the line where he's like, which girl? He's like, my left, your left, we were sitting, we were on the same side. I left you your left. 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 of how people fight with each other verbally. You know, it's all rhythm shit. It's rhythm and word selection,

which I feel like are always the thing, like the metronome that his movies go off of.

David Denby, when this came out, said that Scorsese has used improvisation better than anyone in American movies so far, which is an interesting line to me, because A, less of this movie is improvised than people think. It's really those two big moments, but a lot of what you said, there was a really solid script, then they would do rehearsals, and then if they came up with something good and improv exercise, they would transcribe it and tighten it and just writing. A lot of times

when they're these fucking famous moments in movies where people go like, and do you know that was actually improvised? It's like, that was improvised when they did the blocking rehearsals. Yeah, and then they wrote it into the sides, and then they did it 80 times, and they refined it. It's not like the moment you're watching is the one time that happened, and this is one where

“the improvisation is happening developmentally, but I think what they're getting at, and even just”

the way Denby words that, it's like they're talking about improvisation, like it's 3D or something, like there's this new technology in movies, and people are like, is this a gimmick? Do you make whole movies out of improv? Is this something that you can use as part of the language? It's been going, it was going on for so long, like Gregory LeCava. Right. Right. Like it's so interesting when

they're always like, was that improvised? It's fucking fun. It's so annoying. It's just

improvised. If you're a camera's role, you know? But the answer is always, if people see

something that sounds natural, it sounds like real dialogue, they want to believe, it's improv, and you know, movies you do fucking a thousand takes of everything. Things are like iterative, you know? It's rarely like improv in the way you think of seeing a fucking improv show where

“two people are making up a scene from the get go. But I think versus a lot of these other things”

we're talking about where improv was used as like, this is like an interesting formal experiment. Scorsese kind of figured out a way to harness the energy of improv into more conventional seasoning. Well, lightning in a bottle. That's the opposite. That's the opposite. Yeah. If you're like Casavetti's or 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 Casavetti's movies, he does mean in full 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 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 are you guys all the Charlie in your bromance? Yes. Yeah. Or I'm not even sure. Ben, I'm like

either Charlie. Are you the Charlie in your little fight with these people? Or maybe you're

“I feel like you might, you have a little Johnny Boy sympathy. I think I made me want this and you're”

Johnny Boy. I love this. Yeah. I mean, I definitely, I always 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. I find this movie invigorating because I love like New York movies. I love how Marty tells any story or whatever. This has never been like my favorite Marty because I don't relate to it very much. But I do love this movie though. I've got to be for this movie. This is a big move for my mom. My mom loves this movie. Why does your mom love it? Because she's New York girl. Like,

you know, I don't know. I think it was probably what this is 73. So she was 22. Yeah. Like, you know, she saw it at the right time. And it was thundercrack kind of movie for her. Like, the later Marty's or two fucked up, I think, stuff like taxi driver. Like, she's seen taxi driver. Right. She's like, oh, but those are so dark. Like, and those are so violent. It means streets are sort of the appropriate amount of violent. It is fastening to where it is a

movie where even living 50 years past, it's really stayed 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, or 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. I'm so nervous. 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 we're like, this is just no one talked like this. Stories weren't structured like this. When you watch it, now it just feels kind of sloppy. And there's stuff in mash that I think is incredible. There's stuff in mash that is beyond retrograde. Sure. But there's also a lot of it that's just kind of mushy and you're actually almost David, five for fun to

be points. But at the time, every single thing people were seeing was that's never been on screen

before. Nothing's ever felt like this. It's never sounded like this. It's never looked like this. And Mean Street still has all of that power even though we've seen everything it's influenced after. It also, I feel like your mom was the right age, like 2022 or whatever. It's just so captures the like in jokes and language of a friendship group and you're like late teens

door hung out at Italian American social club. And say that again. Let's make sure you have that on the

for the mob. Yet my phone number is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I never yet is a funny sentence structure.

They want to call me an offer me a job. I have never. And I mean never. I would like for the mob. Yes. And maybe Tom tells us a school here where you do not show up to it and get the money anyway. I know show job. If they give me one of those. One of those, please. Like a mob desktop. No, you know, no show job. Like the 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 salary. Oh, I wonder if the

“mob is in a podcasting yet. Well, I mean the audio business. What do you want from me?”

The legitimate business. I mean, I talked to my friends. What do you want from me? I make audio go boom. I turn heads into gum. Oh boy. Wow. I was looking up a letterbox logs for this movie. And there was one from Paul Schraider 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 lying for lying,

seen for seeing 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's not, you know, a movie with like this very clear direction to it is firing off

in all directions. And he wasn't seeing it for what it was at the time because also he was part of the movement that it was coming out. It's so funny happening. I know it is so funny that Trader and him find end scorsese like start working together because like scorsese is like the Catholic thing versus the Calvinist thing, like very different approaches to religious sort of guilt and fervor and yeah. They've made some good movies together. But speaking of Schrader,

“do you think that like, I mean, because obviously, do you think that his AI Facebook posts are good?”

Of course they think they're hilarious. We love him. But do you think scorsese like, I don't think his green plays are his strengths? And I actually think this is one of his strongest green plays. Even though you're right, it just shouldn't be doing some tricks. Yeah. The most incredible screen play and at the same way where you're like, is this just improvised like, all these guys talking like this course, that's really right this down. I mean, what are his other screen plays? Now I want to look.

But this is when deported 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 the 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. I don't know how to do it. I mean, like I told this story before. Okay. But on the set of vinyl, there was this point. I was in the worst thing. Scorsese ever directed, Maryam. And it's way to see shine a light. Okay. But it's way to watch. I know there was a moment of pilot with 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 next? And he stands there. And he's sort of muttering himself. And he's

like cleaning and doing directions. And he's trying to figure out the math on like what coverage are we still owed? What do I need? What would help me? And he just looks up. And he goes,

I've just never been good at this stuff. Right. Okay. So his scripts are being streets good fellows.

Wow. No screenplay credit between those two movies. Yeah. Age of innocence. casino. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, and then like silence kills the fire moon, like more recently. So also obviously, very hands on with his writers or his closest friends, his closest collaborators. He works with the same people often in Junkarx. It's years and years of development. Can't of all it was like, Marty, what the fuck are you talking about? Your martins were

says it. You know what coverage you need. And he was like, I really, I just don't have a head for that. And 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

of a type of movie, and then what he's doing is having fun stylistically or making the performances on conventional within it, but left 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 and he had drawn everything. He had done a full fucking art. So he's had done shot. So but as far as like the actual coverage, he brought in the boxcard berth, the tormenting team to be like, okay, how do we do this? Like efficiently. Right stuff. But yeah, so he had drawn like every every scene. And so he had a version in his head of what his perfect

movie would look like. Yeah. But then the reason he bring in the torment people is they are like the 18, 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 he's not credited because of gold 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 movie. He's not credited. He's not credited. He's not credited. He's not credited. 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 take credit. Yeah. So like you know, it was terrible. So if I whoever gets credit. So this is like, so

so Schumaker, film a Schumaker did, um, did his first one, um, who's not knocking, but and then

so and this one is like, is Marty without film a. Yes. Right. Well, she's also like working on woodstock for years. Yeah. Well, number of woodstock comes out in 70. Okay. Oh, it she worked on too, obviously, but she is sort of what it been. That's where they reconnect or yeah, but she doesn't come back to him until raging fall. Yeah, which is crazy. Uh, like taxi drivers edited by somebody also forget, uh, yeah, Marsal Lucas, uh, and top roll. Oh, I forgot. I actually have some interesting

“points on Marsal Lucas. I'm going to make him the next episode. What were you going to say, Mary?”

Well, you can edit this out because it's probably you're going to get to it, but isn't New York, New York very bounced. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. New York is the first bounce. This is a classic, I mean, this is interesting and 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 down to 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 caches that in on New York,

New York where people are like, you're fucking done. And New York is just the classic bounce of like he spent too much money on a movie that didn't need to be expensive. And he had like right a whole artistic idea of like how to present this story and do a musical differently. It's very thin everyone's like, it's very similar to Spielberg with 1941 where it's like overloaded with ideas and passion and you're like, you have overthought this movie. And cocaine. Yes, okay. And this is a little bit

of cocaine. And then raging bull is the like, I got to show people. I can just like focus it up again. But like king of comedies of bounce. I mean, he's got a lot of bounces. I'm saying just that boy. No, you're, I agree. Because who's that knocking is 69 or 70? 67. So it's 67 to and then raging bulls 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. It's just a great day that I see. No, I don't disagree.

The 80s are more up. I mean, like last temptation, not only made money. Like it did ruin things for him a little bit. Yeah. And like his other big bombs are king of comedy. That's a huge bomb. Like that makes no money. And was framed as an embarrassment. Like people were like shame on you.

“Yeah. And bringing up the dead was like honestly like a really big bomb. Yeah. Because that”

movie is also pretty expensive. And that was, I feel like bringing up 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 after that, he's been able to do it every week. We were talking about because the series is so long. Do 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 problem I do. It feels like there's

enough new releases coming out the end of this year in the beginning and next. So that will kind of

naturally happen. 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

things ever worked with. He's got this hot young star who will do anything for him. And everyone is like it's time when he's 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 square says movie that doesn't work for people. A movie I love and there's a masterpiece. Yes. But his utter films in the 21st century are him going way

outside of his wheelhouse. Mary, are there movies you don't like or love good? Are there Marty's you sort of respect your stick up for what I do not like the aviator. But that might be partly because I'm too loyal to the source material. I'm not like seeing a Catherine Hepburn invitation. I need to say it again. I'm very curious where you want to say it. I also haven't seen

it since it's never been a fake 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 think that transition. And it's like, let's see, is there anything I don't remember loving bringing, bringing up the dead? Possibly we were three watch. Yeah. And then, and so I think the only one I haven't seen is the color of money. Color money works. Yeah. My bad. Ruby, right. I never think of it as a real screasy, but I know it is. I know it is. I know it is. 80s are so new because that's kind of like a commercial play of like you got to get back in

the good graces of the studio. And it's a big hit and he gets Newman and Oscar, but there was a little bit of like a crazy sold out. Right. And then after hours, it's 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. Yeah, but the rest I love. I love I love I was I was saying if I didn't do this,

“would you shut her island love. Yeah. I'm so much that's going to be a fun out. I love you, guys.”

I mean, good company. Oh, very much. I can't wait to see who's going to do condoon. Where are you? Where are you flying up? I'm on the block. Well, let's let's just say, the dolly llama is a blanket. 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. Yeah. Condoon famously filmed in the same place as his char. Really? Yeah. Same studio and we're on that. That fuck.

This is the condoon set. It's amazing. And condoon, the soundtrack is mostly Rogers and Clark. Right. Thank you's mostly there. Yeah. That's the director's game. I've never seen condoon before. And I've never seen condoon before. And I've never seen a recitation. I'm very eager to see all.

I've never seen less than ever seen a new intention is amazing. That's best. I've 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, that is watch movies. Please let us watch movies. Let's see the box of this game for a mean street, which came out. I should actually before I do the box of this game, I should just notice release. It premiered kind of a surprising choice here at the New York Film Festival. Oh, how did they pick that one? No, yeah. So it premieres in

fall of 73 at the New York Film Festival. Warner Brothers had, you know, it does end up distributing a pick-and-shop round and they pick it up. And you know what? In that link later, things were say they were saying they showed it to Columbia, maybe, and they passed on it. They showed to a different studio for us. Paramount, thank you. And then they went over to Warner Brothers. And he was like, we're there with all the Warner Brothers exacts. 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 corn beef? I got the corn beef. And he was like, I'm losing them. And then the new row 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 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 a guy like, like, he's like, let's just like a guy from time to time. And that was also the thing for skis that 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

those guys on screen, I really have something. So the release strategy scurses he was not very happy with, you know, Warner Brothers didn't really know what to do and was against them opening

“in New York because I think New York from festival was not really as glitzy back then maybe.”

No, um, and they had no idea how to sell the picture. I mean, it's funny because the posters so iconic. But don't you think? Yeah, yeah, it's such a famous poster, but they don't have stars. Yeah. Yeah. Um, the exercises coming around around the same time, although it is not in the top five. So that's not a spoiler thing. Okay. And Warner Brothers is more worried about that. They don't really care about mean streets. So the film comes out. It gets nice reviews. It makes

$3 million domestically, but it may be doesn't. It's not like a huge hit. And it was interesting

in that link later combo we watched. We're link later. They were talking about how it got no Oscar nominations. It got, De Niro got a couple critics. You got like the good connection. Yeah, he got national society and New York film critics serve also part of actor. And it got a WGA now. 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. 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 was coming out, number one of the box office.

“This is crazy. Mm. Is I believe, I think it's a double feature. The way I'm reading this chart.”

Um, it gets a double feature. Well, I don't think they're, they're trying to tell me it's a tie.

I think that these were double features. Because the first is like an erotic comedy. Okay.

Well, uh, you know, I think a bit of a fun sexy movie for you to go see. Oh, no. Oh, no. And then the other is an animated film that is famously launching. And I imagine they were reading presented together. Okay. So for it's the cat. So for it's the cat is the first is the animated film. The first one, the 1972, you know, back. She frets the cat. And then it was on a double bill. Yes. I doubt you've heard the, 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 going to say Paul Glickler was at the cheerleaders. I was wondering. Miriam, I was like, did Nary, no, but I didn't want to patronize. 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.

Ah, that's pretty good though. The cheerleaders. They're like, "Fucking good." These great soft core films that hate that they'd made, like, I think three of them in all of these, like, experimental filmmakers, like worked on. Yes. The swing cheerleaders and some four and then cheerleaders wild weekend at one point. I don't know. That's a bunch of them. Abstract DNA, love these films. It's just cheerleaders having fun. So that was the same week that

I'm sure he's kicking out. So this is the right. That is number one at the box. So that's going about to come down. So that is number one. Number two is a martial arts film. Probably the most famous martial arts film ever made. I'm sorry. I'm on the cheerleaders Wikipedia page right up at the top. This article needs additional citations for verification July 2013. Someone flagged this 13 years ago and has not followed up on it. But also there's a section at the bottom that says

streaming media and then it just says the film is often available at licensed streaming movie sites with two citations. Interesting. It feels like a real abandoned Wikipedia page. Yes. Sorry. Number two at the box. I'm not the most famous martial arts movie ever. Enter the dragon. So that's number two. Correct. Yeah. 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 enough that everyone's ready for the

big mainstream breakthrough. Warner Brothers makes a Bruce Lee movie and then he dies and it becomes

a phenomenon because it's like fuck this is the final object. Do you like him to the dragon?

“I haven't seen it. I mean, you should do a double feature. What a fucking awesome with”

a reservoir does. Yeah. Number three at the box office is a porn film. So like I think cheerleaders is more like soft core. But like this is like a classic like golden age of porn. Is it green door? Not behind the green door. And a new Steve Beethoven? No. Misty Beethoven not deep throat. It's not a manual. No. No. It's not worse. It's not the horny Alice in Wonderland. No. No. Devil in Miss Jim. I mean, there we go. It's just like name the big one. Yeah. The Devil is Jim.

He's not Miss Jim. Yeah. The Gerard Domiano's that is named. Right. He's the guy that who also directed characters basically based on who also made a movie. I apologize and advanced all of our listeners in our guest. Let my puppets come. Wow. Gerard Domiano made a puppet

do people not jerk off the puppets? Yeah. And so the parody, it the titles a parody of let

“let my people come. And like it's just horny puppets. I like it apologies. Wow. Okay,”

own it on vinegar syndrome, Blu-ray. Didn't get the slip cover. It's just to speak my truth. You own it. This movie made an interesting artifact of film history. I'm not saying I get my rocks off watching it. I don't look at puppets that way. He bought it for the liner. No. Freed King calls Devil really good. It says Devil Miss Jim's is the best like porn movie of this of that era because it like has a plot. I saw it at Ballonia at this film festival for restoration. So it was

weird to watch a film with like you know all these like academics and stuff. It is. It was weird, but you know it's a it's a it's a well I've seen it. She kills herself and then like the devil

right is like or the an angel or is basically like you can earn your place to hell by being

a horny lady on earth. Something. Something like that. There's sort of a celestial element to it.

“Yeah, the Shirley just has a better plot where like if you want to win the football game,”

you have to like outfuck the other team. Right. I mean like we love a good plot. Let my puppets come has a plot owning owning a mob boss half a million dollars that must be paid within 24 hours a group of executives come up with ideas for in films, a pornographic movie, but the characters are puppets. It's kind of it. I love watch the movie for the story or that's what I watch it for. Number four in the box office. This is a crazy box office because it's all kind of like you know

undergroundy kind of movies is like a Chinese action movie starring the female Bruce Lee as she was built. Oh. Is this. Sorry, tell me. The actor is called Judy Lee. Yes. The film is called Queen

Boxer. Okay. Yep. And I've never seen it, but she's like a kickboxer who's taking revenge or

whatever. Yes. And yeah. That's number four. That's new this week. And the number five is, well, it's a film that you just told me that the director wanted Marty to be in. Let my puppets come. This was another thing revealed in the link later thing that American graffiti is basically filming the same time as mean streets and that George Lucas wanted. Scorsese is an actor in the film to be the leader of the Pharaohs. He said in the American graffiti, which of course is one of the

biggest hits of 73. And he said George, I don't even drive him from New York. I'm not a California. We should note, of course, that Marty is in Mean Streets and does shoot Robert De Niro in the neck with gun. Yeah. Nice work. If we didn't really talk about the ending with 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 the big dramatic burst of violence happens in a movie and it's 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 we are music. That's such a crazy ending. What are we going to say Ben?”

When they're on their way to Brooklyn, I wrote down this really funny quote from Kytel. Do I know Brooklyn? Do I know the jungle? And I just love that at that time. Oakland, all of the outer burrows were truly just like no man's land and for people in Manhattan. And that it's just you don't leave your place. Sure. You got your spot. This is your neighborhood. This is where your people are. You know, they filmed it in Brooklyn. I mean, it took place in

Brooklyn so they could film it in LA. Yeah. I think David or touch about that. Yeah. Uh, yes. Um, so how long is American graffiti been out at this point? American graffiti's been out for 11 weeks. Wow. Yeah. Uh, three months. Yeah. So other films. A reissue of Clockwork Carnage is number six. Okay. That's obviously a couple years old at this point. A reissue of Camelot, the musical. He's at number seven. And a reissue of the last of Sheila. Oh, sure. With Richard Benjamin is number eight.

Yeah. Then you have electric glide in blue at number nine, uh, which is, um, I want to just double check. You know, this movie. Uh, that's like yeah. The, um, sort of biker movie, but it's like a sort of spoof of biker movies. A little bit. Yeah. Okay. We were able to replace modern. Yeah. And then there's the movie hit with Billy D. Williams, the Sydney Fury movie. Okay. That's like, uh, you know,

it's maybe not even black exploitation, but it's like a sort of like all black cast action thriller, uh, from Paramount, like a big sort of action movie, um, uh, with Billy D. Williams and a younger

I wanted to, um, mention, uh, Michael Schultz's "Kooly High," which was two years later, and that used all these motown songs, and that he said recently, he said, like, it was dirt cheap to get those songs that. And then just like right after this and that. Then they went, you know, everywhere. I'm sorry. What were you going to say? No, I was just going to say Scorsese in, 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. And those two guys being roughly the same age, feeling like putting on the board new methods of, like, film language, uh, for American artists. And he was like, that was the one that had all 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. Okay. But it was the closing film of the '73 year film festival. Yeah. The big '73 movie is obviously "Exorcist." Yeah.

“Well, I don't know what one's best picture that year, um, uh, for '73?”

Yeah, it, it, it, it, it, it's not the godfather. I'll tell you that. Well, yeah, that was '72. It is the sting. Yeah, it's the sting. Well, you know, it was a giant pit that everybody loved. But also is, is a very old fashion movie, not just in being a period piece. 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 and expensive costumes pull off cons. Right. We've been going through that in the last two years too. Right. We keep swinging back and forth. And then Mean Treats plays director's Fortnite. It can, right? And that's like you still see it. If you guys go like they do this like kind of screen saver sort of like iPhone kind of collage

of all the films that have played and they always play Mean Treats and Jean-Dillon.

And so it's, it's an iconic director's Fortnite fans. 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, yeah, yeah. 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 of 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, this Johnny Boy come back. What is that? Dead. You type Robo Johnny Boy? Well, you don't know that he's dead.

You don't, you don't know what happened. Like, you see, 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

“does, but they can never go back. And like, that's what he reads it. Is that they don't die or maybe”

we don't know, but they can't go back. They can't go back to people basically to think that he's dead.

Or they can't release it. Or they can't go back. And so they're exiled, but that's interesting. Yeah. Instead, instead, Warner Bros. who had released this film and found him very promising, through him Alice doesn't live here anymore. Which comes out, right, which comes out basically like one year later. Like, so it's like, he goes right to that. And where is I assume taxi driver? Well, but that's traitors thing. So like, I don't even know that he's like nursing tax. Like it's like,

I don't think after this, of course, as he's like, okay, and now. No, York, New York. That was his idea. I think that's the same thing in you. I read an interview and he's like the next thing on his mind is New York, New York. I mean, again, it's another genre. I think the gangster film, now I didn't musical. He knows it's going to take a lot of money and a lot of production resources to put that movie together. He needs to play the studio game to be able to be

interested. Because it's the only game back then. Yeah. And like, it's funny because it's like, right, so jaws is what 75. Yeah. And American graffiti is 73. Depom is like, sisters is what 72. Like, what's diploma doing? Depom is probably in the weirdest place. Yeah. Because what carries it's not until 78. He carries 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 a top of Hollywood

pile. Yeah. Whereas Copa is like immediately atop the Hollywood pile after he does golf. He was also older than all of that. And he's in San Francisco and he's like doing his own. 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 you don't look now and long goodbye

and the exercises and spirit of the beehive and shit like that, which, you know, like, did great her or, like in the roles. Period of the beehive is pretty cool. Yeah. Like I rocks. I don't know if

“you name his other films. I think they're all good. I mean, I mean, like three. Yeah. Do you like”

Victor, Rie J? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Like, Rie J. Also a great band. Spirit of the beehive? Really? Yeah.

overarching, uh, scratchy, uh, takes or thoughts in your relationship with him and his worthy

“went through up as we start this journey for months. I think I've, I've, I've drained the screws”

as he left for now. But I, I love him forever. Yeah. I mean, he's the best. He's like, uh, uh, 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 part it is,

is, is amazing. Like now they see more Hong Kong movies. I'm like, yes, it's very fucking rocks.

It's also, it's, it's just so watchable. When will he work with, uh, my, with, uh, Mark Wahlberg again? It's crazy because he's framed to rescue Wahlberg. Yeah. 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, this is another, I remember sorry, just, but, uh, this was public knowledge, but at the time we were shooting vinyl, it was pretty recent that he William Monahan wrote a

departed sequel to Star Wahlberg. Yes. Wow. And so it was a pre-production. We're now in board to direct it. And Warner Bros. said, we don't believe that Wahlberg can carry this movie. Okay.

It was going to be, De Niro was only one nominated and filmed. That's crazy. Well, that is also

crazy that that happened. But De Niro was going to play, it was going to be the fucking rat and Congress, right? Like the, the final shot. De Niro was going to play like a corrupt congressman. I just died. Yeah. And it was going to be Wahlberg. All this, I'm not saying anything part of it, but I don't know if you're funny though, it's like, yep, it's like the stupidest thing at, like, turns out Martin Sheen didn't die. He's just like in traction. I'm trying to think of

“like the worst departed sequel. Sure. Like, you know, what else happened? But he was, I think it was”

at the rap party. And he was like holding court with a bunch of us young ends. And he was like, I was ready to make it. The phone one best picture was a big hit. I had Mark Wahlberg. He's a movie start. They went, they went, they wouldn't do it. They said, Martin, you don't see the vision. I 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, uh, 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. It's so nice to be back. It's, uh, yeah. Yearsland project. There've been other episodes. We've circled and then trips changed. I mean, yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, there's one. I would have loved to do. Which, like, fans. Vamps. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, which now we've both, I fucking love Vamps. Vamps. Yeah, I told you. I was in a Vamps screening in L.A.

I think it movies awesome. Yeah. Um, anyway, it's such an honor to be on this episode for the series. And to have you. Yeah, that's it. Um, and thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate review and subscribe. Uh, 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. Uh, the same thing every week. Why don't you try silence? We are going to start in person. Yeah. Right. Do you want to

tell the definition of a fuck up in a nice way? Well, it wasn't nice, but in a, in a more polite way, the way she said it was Griffin, Trice Island. Who said that? Elinversed in Academy of and Relle and Burston. Oh, my God. Devasting things that has ever happened to anyone. I'd be dead anyway. It was incredible. I wear it as a badge of honor, but uh, and then you went on to become a professional talker. Yeah. You know what, you know what, Elin? You know what, Elin. And it's good that you

did it. Anyway, tune in next week. tune in next week. As against her wishes, we talk extensively

about Elin Burston. 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. It's a film history”

band. Sure. And there's some good puppetry in. I don't endorse what the puppets are doing. I don't like it. Uh, they can do it if they want. I'm not telling them they can do it. Like check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hossley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas and our associate producers, AJ McKean. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKean and Alan Smithy. Research

by JJ Burst. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American novel with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Our work by Joe Bowen, Holly Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is minic. 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

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