Mean Streets with Miriam Bale

[00:00:49] [SPEAKER_04] Blank Check! Wow. I guess this is not a movie with like... Should we all just clap for ourselves?

[00:00:55] [SPEAKER_07] That was really good. That was so good. It was a little scene lit. What? What, David? What?

[00:01:00] [SPEAKER_04] No, I'm thinking about Mean Streets.

[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_03] I'm thinking about how I guess, yeah, it's not... I mean, it has some of the... The inner dialogue is very iconic. But the dialogue is iconic just because it's that. It's all them going like... Like, you know, like they're just all yelling at each other.

[00:01:14] [SPEAKER_07] There's a lot of iconic dialogue. I mean, IMDB, of course, points out a repeated line, What's the matter with you? What's the matter with you? I just like brackets. Hey! Repeated line.

[00:01:24] [SPEAKER_03] That's not even what it's like, yeah. What's the matter with you? Honorable men go with honorable. Honorable podcasters go with honorable podcasters.

[00:01:31] [SPEAKER_07] I don't like this attitude of I picked the wrong thing. This was fun. This was a little act out. Attitude?

[00:01:37] [SPEAKER_03] I'm just looking at the Mean Streets lines. It's funny because they repeat the word over and over again. You know what the Queen said? If I had balls, I'd be king? I don't remember that.

[00:01:45] [SPEAKER_02] This is our first Scorsese session. And I gotta tell you... Yes. Disaster. No. Perfect. I... Watching this movie, it's been a minute. I am feeling so comforted. Bit of a Ben movie. Oh, that we're doing this? It's not just that it's a Ben movie, but it's reminding me of growing up in northern New Jersey. Well, hey. And the characters that I used to know. And I'm just... I'm thrilled to dive back in. Are you telling me Mean Streets is autobiographical to your life?

[00:02:14] [SPEAKER_07] Not at all. I just like that this movie... I was watching some of the special features on the Criterion disc. And there is like a promotional featurette that is... Let me see what the name of it is. It's called Martin Scorsese colon Back on the Block. And it almost feels like a National Geographic documentary. They're like New York City, City of Dreams, or some of the wealthiest live.

[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_07] But it also has little neighborhoods. And one of those little neighborhoods is called Little Italy. And would you believe it? A filmmaker came from there named Martin Scorsese. And now he's back on the block. And it's like Scorsese explaining what his childhood was to create a frame of reference for the movie. You know that like... I hear ya. The marketing of this film was like, this guy came from a place you can't even imagine.

[00:03:11] [SPEAKER_07] These people that he grew up with, you'd never seen them in movies before.

[00:03:15] [SPEAKER_03] That was the vibe, right? Yeah. It's just funny because like, there's lots of neighborhoods in New York that were very, very, very Italian. And some of them were little. Well, only one of them gets to be a Little Italy.

[00:03:26] [SPEAKER_07] It's rude. Yeah. I remember my parents saying Little Italy once and I was like, what do you mean Little Italy? And they're like, it's this neighborhood that's kind of informally called Little Italy. And I was like, why? And they're like, because the Italians live there. And somewhere else I was like, aren't they...

[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_03] You put it that way, it sounds patronizing.

[00:03:43] [SPEAKER_07] Absolutely. I was like, what do you mean the forest of the desert?

[00:03:45] [SPEAKER_03] Right.

[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_07] And they're like, no, but it's where the Italian restaurants are. I'm like, I've been to Italian restaurants in other parts of New York City. But this was a little neighborhood.

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_03] You can talk a friend of the show who's on the show. You can jump in. Guest is the term we usually use.

[00:04:00] [SPEAKER_01] Hey.

[00:04:01] [SPEAKER_02] Nice.

[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_01] Do you like Little Italy? 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.

[00:04:17] [SPEAKER_07] The festival's tough. It's quite annoying. And it's kind of the best part of this movie is its sort of frustration at... Ah, fucking San Gennaro. Yeah.

[00:04:24] [SPEAKER_02] We're talking about the San Gennaro festival. Yeah. Which takes over probably like three, four blocks.

[00:04:30] [SPEAKER_03] It's just, it's really just a couple blocks. Yeah. It's Mulberry and Mott probably between like now and...

[00:04:35] [SPEAKER_07] Well, Little Italy is quite small.

[00:04:36] [SPEAKER_03] Well, Little Italy now is right, is like a historically protected like two to three block thing. Because no Italian, not that many Italians actually live there anymore. It's all Chinatown.

[00:04:46] [SPEAKER_07] Sure.

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_03] And then also like Soho and yeah.

[00:04:49] [SPEAKER_07] And some restaurants.

[00:04:50] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. Yeah. It's just, there's just those couple blocks where there's still the, the, you know, you want to pay a lot of money for red sauce, even though there's a million other places you can get red sauce. Yeah.

[00:04:58] [SPEAKER_02] It feels so touristy these days.

[00:05:01] [SPEAKER_03] But I mean, it's still kind of fun. Sure. Get some what's, you know.

[00:05:06] [SPEAKER_01] Wait, I saw an interview before this with Gersese and he was talking about, he, it was important for him to set it at the festival because it was about the malevolent nature of a celebration.

[00:05:18] [SPEAKER_07] Oh, fuck yeah. See, he gets it. That's also a very New York thing where anytime there's a celebration like that, you're like, this city can't handle this right now. This is getting in the way of too many things. We're not a town that can stop and shut down and be like, today is just about San Gennaro.

[00:05:36] [SPEAKER_04] Didn't you live in an apartment for like a month?

[00:05:38] [SPEAKER_02] This is a friend of the show, Ray Tintori. Yes. When I was going through a breakup, I was couch surfing and our friend Ray was gracious enough to let me stay in his apartment in Little Italy.

[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_07] And it felt like, oh, this is like a miracle. What a nice place to stay. He's going to be out of town working. This is perfect. How I couldn't have a better setup.

[00:05:57] [SPEAKER_02] I realized why he had left town because the festival was quite loud and there just felt like there was a floodlight directly outside of the window where the bed was. Yes. Yeah.

[00:06:10] [SPEAKER_07] There was like a week or two of you coming into records very frazzled. For sure. Yes. This is blank check with Griffin and Dave.

[00:06:18] [SPEAKER_04] Thank you.

[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_07] I'm Griffin. You're welcome. What's your nickname? Come on. What's my nickname? Griff the grip. Oh, we're using my sportscaster nickname for sure. Yeah. Get a new one. Griffey. Griffey Parm. Yeah, sure. My name's Griffey Parm.

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_02] That's actually really good.

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_07] Yeah. I'm here with my co-host David Spaghetti. I feel like we can pass that up. That's actually a little offensive. David Spag. David Gabagool Sims. I think David Spaghetti is really sticky.

[00:06:53] [SPEAKER_02] No, I think it's David Baggs because he's got bags on his side. Oh, that's actually pretty good. What if it's David Baggs-o-Spaghetti?

[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_04] No, I'm not a big spaghetti guy. It's not like it's like, oh, David, he's always eating his spaghetti.

[00:07:05] [SPEAKER_07] He's always slurping up spaghetti. David, what is the matter with you? It's not about what you like. It's about honoring little Italy. Of course. David Baggs. I love David Baggs. What is the matter with David Spaggs? I would say. It's a podcast about filmography. It's 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.

[00:07:35] [SPEAKER_07] I think it's the best title we've ever come up with. Podcast Fellas. Podcast Fellas. One word. Rolls off the tongue trippingly. Do you think we should all just, the cover should just be us?

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:07:45] [SPEAKER_07] Arms crossed.

[00:07:45] [SPEAKER_03] Arms crossed or?

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_07] Yes. It should be all of us back to back to back, arms crossed, but I want to be Ellen Burstyn and Alice doesn't live here anymore. Cool.

[00:07:53] [SPEAKER_03] And I want to be the clockwork thing in Hugo.

[00:07:57] [SPEAKER_07] Yeah. The automaton. Yeah.

[00:07:59] [SPEAKER_03] That's what I want to be.

[00:08:00] [SPEAKER_07] Yeah. And he's writing down the name David Spaghetti. That's what the automaton's doing with its pen.

[00:08:06] [SPEAKER_02] All right. Well, if we're calling it out, then I want to be De Niro and Casino with those big sunglasses. Oh, sure. Sure. Yeah. That'd be good. Maybe I want to be Sharon Stone in Casino.

[00:08:15] [SPEAKER_03] Maybe we should just all be in Casino.

[00:08:17] [SPEAKER_07] Maybe we should just be Casino.

[00:08:18] [SPEAKER_03] Well, I like Pesci in the Casino. When I was a kid and Casino came out and I was nine or yeah, nine, 95. Right? Yeah. And I was like, well, I know Casino has dice. And so I really appreciated that Joe Pesci was holding a pair of dice on the poster. Oh, sure.

[00:08:33] [SPEAKER_07] Because I was like, what's this movie about? Dice? Like they make dice? They roll dice? If I'm paying $8, I better get dice. I don't want to just see cards. I just remember my mom being like, it's really violent. And I'm like, why?

[00:08:45] [SPEAKER_04] Like, aren't they rolling like playing board games?

[00:08:48] [SPEAKER_07] And they win or they lose?

[00:08:49] [SPEAKER_04] And are they playing?

[00:08:50] [SPEAKER_03] Well, he has dice! He's literally holding a pair of fucking dice on the poster.

[00:08:54] [SPEAKER_07] How violent can Gatsy get?

[00:08:56] [SPEAKER_03] Exactly.

[00:08:56] [SPEAKER_07] We'll get to that in some months from now. But watching Casino in 4K is quite an experience because you can see that Joe Pesci's face is literally being pulled back by strings.

[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_03] He looks crazy in that movie.

[00:09:10] [SPEAKER_07] That whole era of Pesci, he like wouldn't get a facelift. No. But would put like cables. Rubber bands. Yes. Yeah. Underneath a wig. And all those movies now, like, my cousin Vinny's the same way. Were you watching? You're like, what the fuck is going on with his face? We were never supposed to see this this clearly. Yeah.

[00:09:30] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. Beautiful. Who's our guest? We have to introduce our guest.

[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_07] Or are we talking about the movie first? We have to say that this is an episode on Mean Streets. Mean Streets! The Guarantur.

[00:09:41] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:09:42] [SPEAKER_07] Yes. A phenomenon I would maybe call the second first film.

[00:09:48] [SPEAKER_03] Uh, sure. You know what I'm saying? Your first real debut. Right. You make other movies, but this is your debut. Like, Cameron with the Terminator or...

[00:09:55] [SPEAKER_07] Yeah. And like Shyamalan with Sixth Sense. Right. Right. Where this is the first... Most people on the street, if you ask them, would say this is the first film. But it's also because this is the movie where everything clicks and the rest of the career is off to the races. We're talking about Mean Streets.

[00:10:08] [SPEAKER_01] Is Boxcar Bertha... It doesn't count. It does. I mean, of course it counts.

[00:10:14] [SPEAKER_03] Boxcar Bertha really counts.

[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah.

[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_03] But like, you know, this is kind of also his debut. You know what I mean?

[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_01] I mean, I think Who's That Knocking is like very him. It is.

[00:10:23] [SPEAKER_03] And... That kind of is the spanner and the wrench.

[00:10:25] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. I mean, some of those... Yeah. The like party scenes and stuff. You know, I would make an argument even more than being the debut of a like Scorsese style. It is. Yeah. I mean, especially with the movement and the music, which we'll get into. But like, I actually, this is a... This is more of a wild take. I'm excited to hear this. But I think this is the debut of De Niro. Yes.

[00:10:52] [SPEAKER_03] Oh, yes. That's the big thing.

[00:10:53] [SPEAKER_01] Because he made a lot of movies before.

[00:10:54] [SPEAKER_03] He's been in stuff, but not right. Not in any significant way.

[00:10:58] [SPEAKER_01] And I think it's almost accidental. Yes. Because like, you know, he was maybe gonna play Charlie or like wanted to. And then the only thing left was playing this role. And it wasn't what he was going towards before. Before that, he was like, you know, in the De Palma movies. And he's just this guy.

[00:11:16] [SPEAKER_07] Which is so experimental. Yeah.

[00:11:18] [SPEAKER_01] But he's also kind of like a cipher. He's always this like weird creep. Yeah. And then all of a sudden he comes and he's this like crazy Italian-American. And that's who he is.

[00:11:27] [SPEAKER_07] 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.

[00:11:37] [SPEAKER_03] 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.

[00:11:44] [SPEAKER_07] It's different. He's gone big before and he's played like charismatic before. But I do think the wild card thing is kind of unique. And it's like off of this Coppola, Kasim and Godfather Part 2. Which is more what we think of. Yeah. It's the focus. It has a turn. Right. There's a scariness, but it's quiet. It's coiled. What's he like? I've never seen the gang who couldn't shoot straight. Okay.

[00:12:07] [SPEAKER_01] I was hoping you would bring that up. Okay. Because I feel like I'm one of 30 people who have seen this. It's like a couple years before.

[00:12:12] [SPEAKER_07] Let's say our guest today is Miriam Bale, maybe breaking the record for longest time in between appearances. He's back. But incredibly excited we could get you on this because I feel like you have a lot of early Scorsese context takes. Sure. This is one of your…

[00:12:28] [SPEAKER_01] My guys? Yeah. Right? You're not supposed to say that here. No. We say that here. We say that proudly. Yeah. I love him. I mean, this was like… I could just get into it. This was… Well, I saw Goodfellas like way too young.

[00:12:44] [SPEAKER_06] Way too young.

[00:12:45] [SPEAKER_01] And like it kind of changed my life in a way. But I saw Mean Streets when I was studying film production. Okay. And this is such a… You're in film school. You love this movie. Yes. It has like blinds and a bar and sheets. You know, it just has all these like accessible things.

[00:13:03] [SPEAKER_07] It also kind of has the story of like this… This is kind of the patron saint movie of just like go out and just make the movie that only you can make. You know, the ethos of what this comes out of and how it does feel like the full emergence of a person. Yeah.

[00:13:20] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. But even more importantly, it's sort of… I mean, it's the personal film. Like the… You know, the Cassavetes personal film. And Cassavetes really encouraged him to make this movie because he'd made Boxcar Bertha and he was like, you've just spent a year of your life. Yeah. He shat all over it. Yeah. Cassavetes is so mean. I know. He said that he gave him a big hug. He always remembered.

[00:13:42] [SPEAKER_03] He came in and gave him a big hug. It's so… It's… I've never forgotten it whenever I've… You know, because it does feel like something you would really, you know, made him make mean streets, right? Yeah. The Cassavetes was like you wasted a year of your life on this shit. Yeah.

[00:13:53] [SPEAKER_07] Ben, the legendary story is that Cassavetes was a mentor of Scorsese's and he shows him Boxcar Bertha, which is like the first movie he does for hire. And he goes, congratulations, you just wasted a year of your life making a piece of shit. Damn. And then… On our own. Basically kind of like grabs him by the lapels and says like, you need to make the movie that only you can make, the personal film, the film about you, the thing that comes from you. And Scorsese says like that, I never would have…

[00:14:23] [SPEAKER_07] It would have been difficult for me to feel emboldened enough to prioritize Mean Streets, which we'll get into. He had spent like seven years kind of drafting and noodling on. Right. Had Cassavetes not said that to him. Yeah. Anyway, sorry.

[00:14:37] [SPEAKER_03] But it is, you know, do you think Scorsese is good? Like, you know, come on. Vinegar Syndrome is going to put out a really nice addition of Boxcar Bertha. This will be interesting. That's right. Yeah.

[00:14:44] [SPEAKER_04] People will watch it and be like, oh, there's stuff here.

[00:14:47] [SPEAKER_03] It's not nothing.

[00:14:48] [SPEAKER_04] Come on, John. Give me a break.

[00:14:49] [SPEAKER_01] I think John said there's stuff here. It's like the actors are good. Yeah. Right.

[00:14:52] [SPEAKER_07] It's a piece of shit. It also feels like Cassavetes, like that's what he was like as a director with actors. Like he was a very keen psychological manipulator of knowing what's the thing I need to say to a person to get what I need out of them. And I think the subtext of that story is he knew that's the way it would fire up Scorsese to actually make the move.

[00:15:14] [SPEAKER_01] Totally. Right.

[00:15:15] [SPEAKER_03] But gang who couldn't shoot straight, the 1971 James Cole.

[00:15:19] [SPEAKER_01] Um, yeah. Oh, wait, I was going to say about this film. Can I finish? Oh, yeah. Right. We were. No, no, it's okay. I can go all the way. 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, the greatest sound mixer. So, I wrote a paper on this and was really interested in like the music and like, and how so much of the movement was cut to music.

[00:15:49] [SPEAKER_01] And I was like, so into that. And unfortunately, or fortunately, no, I think unfortunately, it led me down a path of writing about movies. Sure. Terrible, terrible news. Yeah. And I kept going. And then also, I would say that this film is like a personal film, like we were saying about Cassavetes, but it's also a genre film. It's like, and the combination of that is why this is like, yeah, the films, like this is, this is the urtex for these kind of things.

[00:16:17] [SPEAKER_01] It's like, and that was the next step for me, as you guys might know, as I was here before, just listing off films from the 40s. Hell yeah. This is, I'm going to go back to that. This is like, he, he was really inspired by these, like, you know, these, especially Warner Brothers crime films of the 30s. And, um.

[00:16:35] [SPEAKER_03] He loves the Cagney movies, right? Like Roaring 20s.

[00:16:38] [SPEAKER_07] Yeah.

[00:16:38] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, for sure.

[00:16:39] [SPEAKER_07] But what if you take the plot mechanics out of it? Right. What if it's also a Hangout movie?

[00:16:43] [SPEAKER_01] 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. Yeah. Like, I think like, and a, and a film preservationist, like, I think that that, so soon after this, I watched like the personal journey through American film. The best. Yeah. And then it was just like, my life has changed. Like I was, you know, and so that's my origin story.

[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_07] But no, when, I mean, when I said it's the, the second first film, it's not that I, I, cause I like who's that knocking my door a lot. And I think boxcar birth is interesting, but it's more that thing of like, right. He makes kind of a traditional first film that is like a small personal focused thing. And then he makes an impersonal genre exercise. And then this is the movie where he's like, I figured out the entire thing.

[00:17:31] [SPEAKER_07] I have figured out how I can use genre to make my personal statements. Here's the style. Here's one of my key collaborators, you know, something in it's, it's fascinating to have this be the like, you know, Keitel De Niro two-hander movie. It's not like those two guys don't coexist in the same movie ever again, but it does feel like there's a bit of a baton pass here.

[00:17:55] [SPEAKER_07] He always says like the three actors I had this kind of like final connection with in my career where Keitel De Niro and DiCaprio, the three guys where there's just been the unspoken language and Keitel starts out as like his Antoine Daniel. It's like, this is my representation on screen. This is the prism through which I'm expressing my things.

[00:18:16] [SPEAKER_07] And then, you know, it's, it's one of those moments where an actor enters a movie where a character enters a movie and a star is born definitively inarguably in a moment. De Niro at the bar and jumping jack flash like changes the course of American movies. You see Scorsese watch what's happening on screen and going like there's shit I can do if I have this piece of technology here that I never even considered before.

[00:18:42] [SPEAKER_01] Well, I think his intro is also the, um, the mailbox, the, the, the, you see him and to me it's like, that's like you see him and it's like, like, I mean, let's just take a moment to appreciate how good looking he is. He is so hot in this movie. He is so hot. The haircut. Robert De Niro.

[00:19:00] [SPEAKER_02] Yes, incredible. Oh my God. I was obsessed with it in high school.

[00:19:04] Like the bits.

[00:19:05] [SPEAKER_01] It's like Oasis.

[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_02] You know Oasis. I know Oasis. Entering the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Like, uh, you know, on the sideburns. Yes. It's, and, but it has the, like, the kind of like severe bang. It's so good.

[00:19:17] [SPEAKER_03] That's what I love about it is that it is the haircut of a guy who probably doesn't think that hard about the haircut he's getting, but he still looks like cute. A mod rocker. Yeah, exactly.

[00:19:25] [SPEAKER_01] And a casual. Um. It's great. But he's so, yeah, I would say Robert De Niro, he's sort of the mascot of many black women. We love him. Well, he obviously. Sure, yes.

[00:19:36] [SPEAKER_03] He's got, he's got a type that is, you know.

[00:19:41] [SPEAKER_07] Miriam, do you know the Awakening story?

[00:19:43] No.

[00:19:43] [SPEAKER_07] I think I've told this anecdote like five times on the podcast because I do think it's one of the funniest things to ever happen. Okay. But, you know, Awakenings, where he plays this guy with this medical condition who was, like, frozen in his body. Yeah. Um, uh, basically fully paralyzed for, like, years and years and years. And there was a scene they were shooting where Robin Williams and De Niro were in a cab, uh, or in the back of a car at least. And it was, uh, in the period before he has the Awakening.

[00:20:08] [SPEAKER_07] So here's De Niro, this incredibly focused, famously sort of intense Method-y actor. And he's fully, you know, frozen. And they're just driving around New York City. And this guy on the street corner is yelling stuff out. Oh, hey, Mork! Hey, De Niro! And De Niro is just locked in, you know, unconcerned. Uh, Robin Williams is, like, focused. And then the guy goes, Bobby, you still like that black pussy?

[00:20:37] [SPEAKER_01] Did he break? Yes. That's amazing.

[00:20:40] [SPEAKER_07] Yes. And Robin Williams was, like, it was the only time he ever broke. And he kind of just looked at the guy and, like, nodded.

[00:20:45] [SPEAKER_05] Eh. Spag. He's the best. He's the king.

[00:20:49] [SPEAKER_03] He's my, I mean, I always shout out to his off-menu podcast appearance where they ask him, so what's your favorite appetizer? He's like, oh, I don't know. Whatever they want to give me. And they're like, well, no, you have to pick.

[00:21:00] [SPEAKER_07] The premise of this show is your dream menu. And he's like, I'd ask the chef whatever's good.

[00:21:05] [SPEAKER_04] It's the best thing I've ever made.

[00:21:06] [SPEAKER_07] And they're like, don't you own restaurants? And he's like, yeah, just tell them do whatever they want.

[00:21:10] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah. And they're like, okay, well, what about the food at your restaurant? He's like, yeah, it's good. Yeah, yeah.

[00:21:14] [SPEAKER_01] You guys, this is what I mean. I'm not saying this was the birth of De Niro, like his type. Yeah. I'm saying this is the birth of him as a person. Do you remember this? Because he has zero persons.

[00:21:25] [SPEAKER_03] Yes, Miriam. It's so fascinating. Do you remember the Who's Hotter De Niro-Pachino debate on Twitter? Do you remember that?

[00:21:30] [SPEAKER_01] I don't think, I think I missed it.

[00:21:32] [SPEAKER_03] It was such a war. It was a few years ago. Yeah.

[00:21:35] [SPEAKER_04] And it is just one of those things where it's like, I don't know, like, pick your day. You know, like, you know, like, aren't we who you prefer? They're such different guys. They're both sexy.

[00:21:43] [SPEAKER_03] They're also both kind of odd. Like, they're both like these funny little guys, but they both can also kind of shock you with how, you know, beautiful they are.

[00:21:51] [SPEAKER_07] De Niro was more conventionally handsome. De Niro's a little more handsome. Oh, you think so? I think so. Yeah. I don't know. Because Pacino's so pretty. I think Pacino's more pretty. And Pacino's a little scary, you know? Oh.

[00:22:04] [SPEAKER_01] I prefer De Niro, but I think that Pacino's beautiful. Yeah. He's gorgeous. He's so beautiful. Pacino?

[00:22:11] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. I mean, I guess we're not going to talk about it.

[00:22:15] [SPEAKER_01] Talk about what?

[00:22:16] [SPEAKER_03] We're not going to talk about young Pacino? No young Pacino in Scorsese's career. It's, you know, you got to wait for old Pacino.

[00:22:20] [SPEAKER_07] Ben and I just spent the weekend in Wisconsin with J.J. Birch, our researcher.

[00:22:26] [SPEAKER_05] That's right.

[00:22:26] [SPEAKER_07] And he was saying, I don't know if he made it, made into the dossier because J.J. Vets his information very thoroughly. But he asked me, he was like, had you ever heard this anecdote that Scorsese wanted Pacino to play Johnny Boy and Pacino just straight up turned it down? And then they don't work together, obviously, for like 40 years? I mean, like Pacino had already been in The Godfather.

[00:22:51] [SPEAKER_03] So, like, it would have been like, right. I mean, yes.

[00:22:53] [SPEAKER_01] Well, Pacino was supposed to be in The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight. Oh, that's interesting. And then De Niro got it because he was making The Godfather. But I hadn't heard that about for Mean Streets and Pacino, who he wanted to play, which doesn't make sense at all, Jon Voight.

[00:23:11] [SPEAKER_07] Yes.

[00:23:11] [SPEAKER_01] That's crazy.

[00:23:12] [SPEAKER_07] Yes.

[00:23:13] [SPEAKER_03] That's interesting.

[00:23:13] [SPEAKER_01] Right.

[00:23:14] [SPEAKER_03] But I think that was also a little bit of like, would that appease the studio? Right, right. Exactly. What is De Niro? Jerry Orbach is the star of that. Oh, my God. That's the crazy thing.

[00:23:28] [SPEAKER_01] This is the crazy thing. It's like, it was written for Marcello Mastrioni. That sounds pretty good. Yeah. And then he admitted towards when they were getting close to production that he couldn't speak English.

[00:23:41] [SPEAKER_07] Perfect. Perdone. It's the right time.

[00:23:45] [SPEAKER_01] So they replaced him with Jerry Orbach. Of course. We love.

[00:23:48] [SPEAKER_07] One to one.

[00:23:49] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. I mean, Jerry Orbach makes more sense as like a New York tough. Yeah. He's not Italian, but he was, you know. Yes. He was close enough.

[00:23:57] [SPEAKER_07] Right. It would have been weirder to have Marcello Mastrioni. Yeah. Okay.

[00:24:00] [SPEAKER_01] Well, and De Niro actually plays an Italian. He plays an Italian, like a kleptomaniac Italian.

[00:24:05] [SPEAKER_03] Mario Trantino. Yeah. So is he silly? Like, is he kind of in more of a Christian mode?

[00:24:10] [SPEAKER_01] So this is the weird thing is like, I've interviewed De Niro and I think one of the things he really hates, I mean, you know, he barely says anything in an interview, but I think you can tell he's annoyed with this idea that he started comedy in the 2000s with Analyze This or with like Midnight Run or something because he was doing comedy in the beginning and like he was doing comedy with De Palma and this is like a straight up comedy. Is it good? No, it's not. It's very bad. Right. It's so bad.

[00:24:39] [SPEAKER_01] It's like very, it doesn't work. So they were thinking at first Mean Streets would be kind of like the gangster comedy. Sure. And there was like, oh, like the gang who couldn't shoot straight. But then the gang who couldn't shoot straight didn't work. Right. Like it was a failure. So at first they were like, oh yeah, De Niro will be in like shorts and shooting. And, you know, when we see him, when he walks down that street in the bar, he's like in his boxers.

[00:25:06] [SPEAKER_01] So I think in the beginning he was like doing these kind of zany comedy roles. I mean, this is the thing. He's like, we're talking about Little Italy, but like De Niro's from the village. Right. He's from like his artist parents. Yes. He went to the Little Red School.

[00:25:22] [SPEAKER_03] It's very different.

[00:25:22] [SPEAKER_01] He's like, he's like, it's so, it's like a couple blocks, but it's such a difference. And he talks about it.

[00:25:27] [SPEAKER_03] I didn't know those guys as well. Like in the Marty doc. He had proximity. He understood it. He saw these things. And he's Irish Italian. Right. He's not full Italian. Right.

[00:25:38] [SPEAKER_01] He's Irish. His mom is Irish.

[00:25:39] [SPEAKER_03] His father is Irish Italian. His mother is like a sort of Dutch English. Oh yeah. Like Waspie. And his dad was like a lapsed Catholic. So there was no real like religion in the same way. Like, it's not like, it's not the Marty thing of like, I mean, Marty is just like a child's cartoon of a little Italian American boy. You know, with his vaguely mobbed up dad and his mom just like constantly stirring a big pot of sauce. And him looking out a window with asthma. Right.

[00:26:08] [SPEAKER_03] And them living in a tiny apartment with a bunch of people. And like, you know, like everyone in the neighborhood knows each other and they play stickball and shit.

[00:26:16] [SPEAKER_07] But there's something to De Niro. De Niro's priests. De Niro having like the same reference points without the same lived experiences in a way. Yeah. That I do think gives him this sort of like, this expressive elasticity in what he can put on screen that's different than Scorsese's very like personal experience.

[00:26:35] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Well, I think that they're both kind of outsiders because of the whole asthma thing. So they're both kind of like know the thing, but I don't see either of these guys getting in big stakes, big fights. You know, I think they're there. Yes. They're observers. They're insider outsiders. So that's like where they overlap.

[00:26:51] [SPEAKER_07] It's a thing Scorsese said that while I'm making the movie about my experiences and being this age and growing up with these people and all of this. And then he said, I think years later when he rewatched the movie, he's like, this is actually about like my dad and my uncle. Well, Charlie, that's his dad. Right. He's like, this isn't my lived experience. I said it in the present day. I gave it the milieu of the songs I grew up on and the outfits and the language. But actually in terms of the characters.

[00:27:17] [SPEAKER_03] He didn't have this crisis of like, am I too close to this criminal life and all that? Right. Like in the same way.

[00:27:24] [SPEAKER_07] Right. He was like, am I going to be a priest or a director? He wasn't. He was too little to get in trouble. But it is this thing that is a little lost time. I think you're right, Miriam, which is like those early De Palma movies, because what De Niro and De Palma go on to do separately are so different and loom so large. People forget that those early movies are like closer to like Matt Johnson films, that they're like weird sort of exercises. They're almost like multimedia projects.

[00:27:53] [SPEAKER_07] And they're really kind of using De Niro as like, if not a purely comedic figure, it's like this is a guy who's just like boundless energy pushing boundaries. Um, I said bound fucking twice. Uh, and then, and then, you know, like Mean Streets is harnessing that into a dramatic context. And then Godfather Part Two, like just sets the mold for how he's seen forever. A little bit. I feel like he was like a phenom.

[00:28:23] [SPEAKER_07] There was obviously Panic! And Needle Park happened pretty early. And even when people were like, are audiences ready for this guy as a leading man? There was a type he had established in the way he could sort of hold the center and the focus and this nervy sort of unconventional protagonist that was very different than what De Niro was doing up until this point.

[00:28:44] [SPEAKER_01] You know, I have a question. What do you think is like natural accent is? Because I don't think, I don't think he has one. I mean, I think it's, I think he has a voice. Yeah. And I think like you hear it in those, you know, he talks like this and he has like, he's kind of gravelly and you hear it in the things and it's like great. But I think that he obviously, you know, from his Italian American family, he heard some of this in his neighborhood. But I think it's kind of, I think it's kind of a role.

[00:29:12] [SPEAKER_01] I think he's sort of like, um, you know what you hear about Peter Sellers? Like just kind of a blank.

[00:29:18] [SPEAKER_03] Right. And then like he would just reflect something, you know, but he was right. If there was no real guy that you could find. Yeah.

[00:29:25] [SPEAKER_07] It's interesting. I mean, he is famously one of the worst interviewers, interview subjects alive.

[00:29:28] [SPEAKER_03] Yes. Essentially always, although once in a while you'll see like someone he knows essentially get a little more out of him. Yeah. I mean, and don't ask him about our president Donald Trump, who I support, but De Niro. What does he do? He applauds him. He hands him medals. He has a couple of nitpicks about him. Pats him on the back. My favorite thing about De Niro is just, and it's weird about any of these guys. Yeah. To be clear, I don't support Donald Trump. Um, but like, you know, just like when you're like, he's such an amazing actor. He's got such a long legacy. He's like, uh, I watch MSNBC all day. I think Trump sucks.

[00:29:58] [SPEAKER_03] You know, like they're just so like regular boomer dad about politics.

[00:30:02] [SPEAKER_07] And also every time he gets up and is like, I'm presenting the breakout artist award to Harris Dickinson. Fuck Donald Trump. He does it with an energy as like, maybe this takes him down. Yeah. Right. You're like, you know, man, it might be time to say it. Uh, Trump no good. Yeah.

[00:30:17] [SPEAKER_01] He's so crazy about it. But then maybe he's the only one who's not crazy about it. That's right.

[00:30:21] [SPEAKER_06] I think Bobby's right.

[00:30:22] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. He absolutely is.

[00:30:24] [SPEAKER_07] I was going to say that I have heard people who have worked with De Niro in interviews been like, he's very protective of his process. Totally. That unlike Peter Sellers, where there was this kind of like, there is no me. I am just weirdly like a conduit for these things. I can't talk about this shit. That De Niro, there like is a very specific process, but it's entirely internalized. And that part of it for him is that he feels like it needs to be private.

[00:30:53] [SPEAKER_07] 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.

[00:31:11] [SPEAKER_03] I wouldn't be able to go up to him and be like, would I be able to talk to him about the Mets or something? Like, would I've never like. That's my field.

[00:31:18] [SPEAKER_01] Like, can I get him just chatting? I think like just from like the brief time that I tried to interview him, he's communicating, but it's not in words. It's all in body language, which is really hard to transcribe. Yeah. But he's communicating really well. I just think he's sort of somewhat nonverbal. And so you got this kind of like nonverbal guy who meets motormouth Marty.

[00:31:38] [SPEAKER_07] That's also what's so interesting about him being a motormouth in this. I was struggling to think of another performance where he is this verbal. I mean, like I think of, I don't know. Where he's nonstop, you know?

[00:31:52] [SPEAKER_03] Where is he nonstop? Because there's like stuff in his later career like Silver Linings Playbook where he has like big kind of like yelly speeches and stuff.

[00:32:00] [SPEAKER_07] But that's the De Niro explosion. It's the explosion. It's not. Right. What about the comedian?

[00:32:05] [SPEAKER_03] I haven't seen his set yet. Have you seen Taylor Hackford's The Comedian? No.

[00:32:11] [SPEAKER_01] I missed it. I heard, I remember it.

[00:32:12] [SPEAKER_03] He does a lot of stand up comedy. In my memory, it's De Niro-esque. Sure. But he's still doing, you know.

[00:32:18] [SPEAKER_07] But I was going to say, isn't that like a movie where people go, it feels unnatural to watch you do this?

[00:32:23] [SPEAKER_03] I mean, my brain is erased. It clearly is a trauma response. So yes.

[00:32:27] [SPEAKER_07] That movie is co-written by Jeff Ross.

[00:32:30] [SPEAKER_03] Good.

[00:32:31] [SPEAKER_01] Does he talk a lot in Dirty Grandpa?

[00:32:33] [SPEAKER_03] Let me see your ass. That's what I imagine Dirty Grandpa saying. Yeah. You know, I have seen it. There's the part of Dirty Grandpa where he raps, right? Doing karaoke. Yeah. And he asks the audience if he can say the N-word and they say that he can and then he does. Right? I've seen that clip. Well, I've just seen that clip because people have posted, because the whole thing with De Niro is like he made 200 movies. Yeah. 140 of them are bad. Right. And so you can find these clips where it's like, do you know that De Niro did this? Right.

[00:33:02] [SPEAKER_03] You know, it's like people post Al Pacino doing Don Cuccio. I was going to say. I'm like, give it a break.

[00:33:05] [SPEAKER_07] De Niro has endless that, you know? The stuff that De Niro has done on screen is wild. But I think you're right that when he does something that feels outside of the sort of basic cultural understanding of the De Niro archetype, it basically just gets memory washed. People just don't keep that shit in their head. It doesn't matter.

[00:33:26] [SPEAKER_03] He's still bulletproof. Right.

[00:33:28] [SPEAKER_07] He could make shit for another hundred years and maybe he will. But even when he does it well, like even when he stretches outside of his sort of obvious movie star persona successfully, I feel like within five years, people are still just reducing him to the ten big performers. You've seen Alto Nights. I have.

[00:33:44] [SPEAKER_03] So he's two characters in that.

[00:33:46] [SPEAKER_07] Are either of them big? You know what? Yes.

[00:33:48] [SPEAKER_03] Like one of them is big?

[00:33:49] [SPEAKER_07] I actually think he's very good in Alto Nights. Frank Costello is probably the bigger one or like which of the two guys? One of them he is clearly playing Pesci. One of them he's playing like more the elderly De Niro archetype. Right. And one of them feels like him doing, trying, it looks so fun to be the Joe Pesci guy in a movie. Because I guess that's the other part of it is Pesci starts to be the Johnny boy standing next to De Niro as the strong silent type.

[00:34:19] [SPEAKER_07] Right. As the person who's struggling to communicate with words.

[00:34:22] [SPEAKER_01] That's true actually. Well, so I think like, I think there's some conflicting stuff in as far as biographies I've said, I've read. But I think that they started shooting with Harvey Keitel. 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 in October to do it. So they shot some stuff with Harvey Keitel. And I'm not sure. This is where I'm not sure.

[00:34:52] [SPEAKER_01] But I think he met De Niro, met Scorsese or officially really met at some party at Christmas after that October. And so then he was like, oh, you can play anything, but you can't play Charlie because it's already this. And he was annoyed. Yes.

[00:35:09] [SPEAKER_07] He wanted to play Charlie.

[00:35:10] [SPEAKER_01] He wanted to play Charlie. But then he ran into Harvey Keitel on the street and they were just like, they started laughing. They were just like, oh, OK, you're an actor too. This is going to be fine. But I think, yeah, so he played the Joe Pesci. He played the crazy guy. Right.

[00:35:25] [SPEAKER_07] Right. And that's just something he doesn't get to do much. Alto Knights, he does play the old man version of it. And Alto Knights is as good as Mean Streets, right? No, it's better than Mean Streets.

[00:35:35] [SPEAKER_03] OK, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Marty could never. Do you think Marty saw Alto Knights? Do you think Marty sees everything De Niro makes? Definitely not. Like, De Niro's like, I made a movie with Sebastian Menescal. You got to watch it. And Marty's like, OK.

[00:35:47] [SPEAKER_07] Life is short. I think he watches most of it. No way.

[00:35:51] [SPEAKER_03] Because he watches a lot of movies.

[00:35:52] [SPEAKER_07] Yeah. But it does feel like he's very invested in Bob's career. You know? Like, it does feel like there's a sense of like, I want to keep up with what Bob's doing. I think De Niro hasn't seen all the movies De Niro's done. I'm sure he hasn't. Yeah.

[00:36:09] [SPEAKER_01] Wait, you guys keep saying that there aren't a lot of like wild card roles for De Niro. But what about like Cape Fear and Jackson?

[00:36:17] [SPEAKER_04] But those are all like scary guys, right?

[00:36:19] [SPEAKER_03] Right. And it's like, Cape Fear, he is so, so big. That is so true. But like, by wild card, I mean the kind of jokey, like character in a group of guys where there's the wild card who's kind of like, he might put a fucking firecracker in a mailbox, right?

[00:36:35] [SPEAKER_07] And the guy who's the motor.

[00:36:36] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. Who's just like, you know, and it's like so often, yes, there's stuff like Cape Fear, but like in like Brazil, he's so funny and weird. Yes. But that movie is not a reality based movie.

[00:36:50] [SPEAKER_07] I feel like when he's doing kind of character actor stuff, even Cape Fear where he's like a lead, but he's obviously not the protagonist of the story.

[00:36:58] [SPEAKER_03] But like in the 80s, in the 70s, it's the Godfather 2 stuff. So it's like 1900 and last, right? Like all that. In the 80s, it's the Raging Bull stuff. So I feel like it's like.

[00:37:09] [SPEAKER_07] Transformation.

[00:37:10] [SPEAKER_03] That's true. But also just like, you know, more like intense, scary characters. I want to sort him by chronology here because actually this is. There's so much to talk about. Yeah. I know.

[00:37:21] [SPEAKER_01] We haven't even started.

[00:37:22] [SPEAKER_03] I know. God. I mean, this is all about it. We're talking about De Niro. No, because I think you are right, Miriam. I guess he really didn't make a lot of movies in the air. But like Once Upon a Time in America is like that. The mission is like that. Like Angel Heart. These like stoic characters. And then like the 90s. I've never seen Jackknife. Have you ever seen Jackknife? I've never seen Jackknife. That is a classic. I would pull that off the shelf at Blockbuster or at the video store all the time being like, what is this movie?

[00:37:48] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah.

[00:37:49] [SPEAKER_03] Vietnam Bat movie.

[00:37:50] [SPEAKER_07] And the poster is just a painting of De Niro with a beard and a Boston Red Sox hat. He does have a Red Sox hat.

[00:37:55] [SPEAKER_03] But you know, the 90s of like Goodfellas. Let's put Cape Fear aside. But like Goodfellas, Bronx Tale, you know, Casino Heat, Sleepers. Like these movies, Ronin, where he's just like the impassive guy. Yeah. And he also did do like Jackie Brown and This Boy's Life and Frankenstein. He did a lot of weird shit too. So he's the best. He's so funny. But Jackie Brown, the whole thing is how with Ronin. I know. He's hysterical.

[00:38:19] [SPEAKER_01] And then he breaks. Oh yeah. That's another kind of wild card. But I mean, it's a silent until he breaks.

[00:38:24] [SPEAKER_03] God, the sex scene in that movie makes me laugh so hard.

[00:38:26] [SPEAKER_01] Thank you. It was in, you read my mind. This is his sexiest era. Heat and Jackie Brown. For me. I think this is, I mean, I've thought this before I was middle age.

[00:38:36] [SPEAKER_03] What about Midnight Run? I always will go back for him. He's so hot in Midnight Run. He's so hot in that.

[00:38:42] [SPEAKER_01] Midnight Run is one of his best performances, but I wouldn't say his hottest. I feel like there's something about that a little bit later. Yeah. Just that 90s, like that, that there's, uh, yeah.

[00:38:51] [SPEAKER_07] You like sad mustache De Niro. I love it. Yeah.

[00:38:56] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. I think that it's just, I mean, I just think it's objectively his hottest. I mean, some might say this is Mean Streets. I don't know. Yeah.

[00:39:04] [SPEAKER_07] I guess Wag the Dog is almost him doing something similar.

[00:39:08] [SPEAKER_03] He's fucking great in Wag the Dog. To this. Yeah. Right? I love that performance.

[00:39:12] [SPEAKER_07] Like, it's. He rocks.

[00:39:14] [SPEAKER_04] You know what? De Niro's not so bad. I like that guy. We think De Niro's a good actor.

[00:39:17] [SPEAKER_07] Yeah. That's our official stance on Blank Check. I think what is Miriam is what you're saying that, like, Coppola was mentor to all these guys, right? He watches Mean Streets and is like, fuck, that's my young Corleone. And that's not an obvious move. It was kind of genius to see him and go like, if this guy stops talking, but that energy is still there, it's going to be really captivating to watch. And that's a performance where he doesn't talk that much. And all the talking he does is in Italian. Yeah.

[00:39:45] [SPEAKER_07] And he wins an Oscar basically for physical presence and for how much he's able to communicate just in his body silently. Yeah.

[00:39:53] [SPEAKER_01] Before the gang who couldn't shoot straight, he went to Sicily. So.

[00:39:57] [SPEAKER_03] To learn Italian. To like, to practice Italian.

[00:40:00] [SPEAKER_01] But the character is from Calabria. So I think, like, was he, was he gaming for this? Like, was he? I don't know.

[00:40:07] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah.

[00:40:07] [SPEAKER_04] I think they're going to do a prequel. I'm going to beat Brando.

[00:40:21] [SPEAKER_07] David. Yes. I got myself into a real pickle. Uh-oh. I thought it'd be funny to put on some Groucho Marx glasses. Uh-huh. Very, very funny. Very funny. Classic. Yeah. I've been stuck wearing them for five years because it's such a hassle to replace your glasses that once I made that commitment, now I'm walking around with the big schnoz, the eyebrows, the mustache, all times.

[00:40:41] [SPEAKER_03] I know what you're saying. Glasses cost hundreds of dollars. You know, you just kind of live with whatever you've got. Wait a second. What about Zeni Optical?

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[00:41:53] [SPEAKER_03] All right, I'm going to open the dossier, actually, just so we can stay on track a little bit. So Mean Streets, originally called? The way the world, Miriam, do you know? Season of the witch. Which is fascinating. You know, and they, Marty correctly was like, Cage is going to want that. I assume Nicholas Coppola was what, like five years old? Yes, yes. He was like, we'll save that for Nick Cage. Yes.

[00:42:11] [SPEAKER_02] Is it a reference to the Donovan song?

[00:42:13] [SPEAKER_03] I think it's reference to the song and to the festival, right? And all that, you know, it's like the kind of like, you know, you're playing with the devil. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the way the club is like all red and it's like the underworld or, you know, like Mean Streets is better. Mean Streets is a great title. I don't think Mean Streets can really be beat as a title. This is his long gestating passion project. He works on it with his college classmate, Marty Martin.

[00:42:38] [SPEAKER_07] Sorry, I just want, I want to. He's interrupting me. No, no, I wanted to be correct about this. Because the movie they're watching with Vincent Price.

[00:42:50] [SPEAKER_03] Yes.

[00:42:51] [SPEAKER_07] Is that the Witchfinder General?

[00:42:54] [SPEAKER_03] I mean, that's a classic Vincent Price movie. Yeah. Okay. No. I don't think it would be. No. It looks like a dumber Vincent Price movie.

[00:43:00] [SPEAKER_01] It's a Roger Corman movie. Right. Okay. It's, um, which is it?

[00:43:04] [SPEAKER_03] Witchfinder General is the Vincent Price movie that's like really intense. Yes. And like his performance in it is so magnificent. It's not trashy. Right. But there is the Season of the Witch movie. Well, that is a Romero movie that has two titles. No, it's not. Okay. Okay. It's not a reference to anything. Okay. So, uh, Marnic Martin. So Marnic Martin worked on what? On Who's That Knocking at My Door? On New York, New York? On Raging Bull. You know, like the early Scorsese collaborator.

[00:43:33] [SPEAKER_04] Am I saying it right? This is our first episode. Martin Scorsese? How do I say it? Scorsese.

[00:43:40] [SPEAKER_01] Scorsese. Wait. Miriam, 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 who's kind of like, oh, it's fine. You know what's funny? I saw an old comedian, um, talking, like on the David Letterman show and he was like, Coppola. And he was like, Coppola? He's like, he doesn't know how to pronounce his name. This was in like the early 80s. And he's actually right.

[00:44:03] [SPEAKER_03] It's the classic thing that these Americans don't know how to pronounce their name. I mean, his name is a transcription error. Yeah. The family was Scorsese or with double Z's in Sicily, which means Scottish or something like, you know, in Italian. And it was changed when they, you know, moved. Yeah. Because someone wrote it down wrong or whatever. So it's, you know...

[00:44:24] [SPEAKER_07] I feel like the effort to correct the last 15 years has been towards Scorsese versus Scorsese. Right. Yeah. Right.

[00:44:31] [SPEAKER_03] Everyone used to say Scorsese and that's wrong. Yeah. I think. Yeah. Ben? I've just been saying that the whole time. Yeah. You're wrong! All right. I think. Uh, Scorsese. Okay. So.

[00:44:43] [SPEAKER_01] Do you feel okay? How do you, do you feel familiar enough to say Marty?

[00:44:47] [SPEAKER_07] Can we just call, can we give ourselves permission to call him Marty? Of course. Marty. Yeah. You've worked with him. I have. I called him Marty.

[00:44:53] [SPEAKER_03] I have been in his office and screening room. Sure. But he wasn't there. Yeah. Uh, but I watched Killers of the Flower Moon in his office. I'm sure I'll bring it up a million more times. I was gonna say that's where you saw the Super Mario Galaxy movie. Um, so, uh, 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 meant to be a continuation.

[00:45:19] [SPEAKER_07] A continuation of that. Yeah, an Anton Doaniel style. I'm following this guy, Charlie, will be my analog across stages. Right. In life. And when this movie came out, he said he was going to make a third film of him settling down and having a family that was... Fucking bed and board or whatever. Like, the third. But also, like, Italian-American. Right. Like, I want to represent my family life that I've put into this documentary through this fictional character. That's interesting. Yeah.

[00:45:43] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, I think it was written, but never made.

[00:45:45] [SPEAKER_07] Yeah, it's kind of boring.

[00:45:47] [SPEAKER_01] It's kind of in a fun way. I don't think I read it, but... So, he started this Mean Streets season in The Witch in, like, did you say the date? Like, mid-60s, right?

[00:45:54] [SPEAKER_03] It's like 65 is where he puts it, basically. Maybe 66. Like, and obviously, it's inspired by his life a little bit. But as you guys already said, like, he wasn't in a gang. They didn't really get in fights. They hung out in bars and picked up girls or whatever. But, like, they didn't even smoke pot, he said. Like, really. Like, you know, we were not, like...

[00:46:14] [SPEAKER_07] He's got asthma for God's sake.

[00:46:15] [SPEAKER_03] He's got asthma. Yeah. He didn't really do the hard stuff. No.

[00:46:19] [SPEAKER_07] Years later, Martin Speise would, yes, identify his nose and the possibilities.

[00:46:25] [SPEAKER_03] Ah, my lungs aren't connected. Well, they are, but...

[00:46:29] [SPEAKER_07] It's a less direct route.

[00:46:31] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. Marty has been working... To be clear, was working on Mean Streets for a long time before, like, The Godfather... Yes. ...was ever thought of. Right. Because when this movie comes out, I think it draws comparisons to The Godfather... Yes. ...because, like, press is probably a little, like... Italian-American gangster. 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.

[00:47:00] [SPEAKER_03] You know, so that's a memory that's real. As you said, Miriam, right? One of you two said, like, it's really his father, he realized. Yeah. It's the story. Right. But film screenplay initially was much harder on the religious aspects, to make a story of a modern saint in his own society, but the society happens to be gangsters.

[00:47:20] [SPEAKER_07] But also more reflective of our friend Marty's personal experience, which was like, do I go into the parish or do I make movies? You know, really being pulled between the two as equal forces rather than in this, where it just feels like it's kind of a thing hanging over his head, but not the active tug.

[00:47:40] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. So I think, like, some of the difference, so I think some of the religious stuff changed, and then also he developed the Teresa character a little more. and then I think I think a big influence on developing the screenplay was Sandy Weintraub was his girlfriend at the time and her dad was a studio exec and she's in the film I think playing Heather Weintraub so she said you gotta put some more of your funny stories in there

[00:48:10] [SPEAKER_01] you know like I think he had his like thing he's like put in the Mook story put in the Firecracker story put in this kind of stuff so I think what do you guys think I mean maybe we're not ready for that but what do you think of the women in this film look

[00:48:24] [SPEAKER_07] 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 eh this guy doesn't really know how to put women on screen like this early on he felt the need to combat that it definitely feels like it's interesting I think Amy Robbins is really fucking good in this movie I also think I think it's interesting that in the way we're talking about this being positioned

[00:48:54] [SPEAKER_07] as an autobiographical film but him acknowledging I didn't actually really live you know walk the walk and talk the talk of these characters I watched these guys that her and her epilepsy does feel oh okay she's Amy Robinson's Teresa yes who is De Niro's cousin right and Charlie's love interest right

[00:49:17] [SPEAKER_01] yeah and she was friends with I think she worked with De Palma so she knew like Margot yeah she worked on sisters

[00:49:23] [SPEAKER_07] and stuff yeah but her epilepsy feels a little bit like an analog for Scorsese's asthma to me maybe yeah this feeling of here is someone in and of this community who's looking to get just a little bit out

[00:49:38] [SPEAKER_03] and one is treated a little like it's not a community that Niro's had to like empathetically deal with someone who has a condition

[00:49:45] [SPEAKER_07] but like you can't be tough you can't be in this action because you're too delicate and everyone being right

[00:49:52] [SPEAKER_03] yeah um 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

[00:49:59] [SPEAKER_01] maybe I mean it's not like who's that knocking straight up sexist just garbage like someone named girl like just

[00:50:06] [SPEAKER_03] 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 so juvenile like not and not in like a humor way or anything it's just like it's just all these ideas bouncing around in his head but yeah I mean like you know look Anna Paquin will be silently sitting for every episode I already made that clear right yes of course she's sitting right there Anna Paquin she won't speak

[00:50:36] [SPEAKER_07] she's a guest on every episode um we don't want to hear you complaining about how rarely we ask her questions uh right so okay uh Scorsese um that's what's interesting to me though is I think he relates a lot to the Teresa character but he's obviously not building the movie around her and she's kind of treated almost like a secret in the film totally yeah he's ashamed of her right or ashamed of the relationship but the movie hides her in a way that's similar to the way that Charlie treats her yes which is a thing you get into

[00:51:06] [SPEAKER_07] with Scorsese it's it's it is the same with the Anna Paquin thing literally will be a running discussion for like decades of his career of if he is sidelining women when is that an oversight or failing of his and when is it a very pointed statement yeah

[00:51:24] [SPEAKER_01] I think like um uh yeah it's something like people will say that about like PTA and I don't agree with it there but with Scorsese it's hard you know it's not his strength I mean he's gotten into it like he's obviously um like more recently Killers of a Flower Moon interesting he's grown

[00:51:45] [SPEAKER_03] into it he's grown

[00:51:46] [SPEAKER_01] he's like done but like for this film it kind of feels like oh you make a movie you gotta have a woman like you know like it's kind of like you make a dish put a little salt in it she's a conflict

[00:51:56] [SPEAKER_03] she's a story element not really

[00:51:58] [SPEAKER_07] a character I think by the way that's why he says yes to Alice it's not an I'll prove them thing it's a I should work on this right like if I want to be an actors director let me figure out different rhythms of actors not just working with like actors of a different gender but also just like here's a different milieu here's a different like cultural type uh I need to have that range at this point he's making films where the women represent what women were when he was growing up

[00:52:28] [SPEAKER_07] which was these men are obsessed and driven by sex but also kind of need to compartmentalize it

[00:52:35] [SPEAKER_01] yeah I don't know it's not as as interested as the the romance if you will but I want to talk about the other woman um who was probably what first drew me to this film in that there's that opening scene where um or it's very early on where Charlie uh Keitel is like watching the woman who's a stripper Jeannie Bell playing Diane I think Diane and um yeah Diane and it's so beautiful and you've got

[00:53:05] [SPEAKER_01] these like really beautiful close-ups that are kind of abstracted and um I love this woman she's so beautiful I looked her up she is a fitness influencer currently yes wow on Instagram she was the world's oldest competitive jump rope skipper yeah she's she was a play at the time she was a playboy model I mean she's just gorgeous and she goes by Annie Judas now you can find her on Instagram but um yeah I think I love her I love her presence in this

[00:53:35] [SPEAKER_01] but you know so there's that scene where he's like well she's really good looking

[00:53:39] [SPEAKER_07] she's black she's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen right

[00:53:42] [SPEAKER_01] but he's like but she's black right like obviously doesn't make a difference and that's that's Scorsese's I'm pretty sure that's his because you know he's interchangeably

[00:53:50] [SPEAKER_07] cutting between Keitel doing voiceover and him doing voiceover yeah

[00:53:54] [SPEAKER_01] this really personal thing he's saying that so I'm gonna say this is my other wild take is like this is a film about race like you know like there's that with like it's in there but then he like he stands her up what is it Moulinion do you know is that it Moulinion it's another it's a slur yeah it's a slur and then he's like and then there's someone who's kissing an n-word and like

[00:54:15] [SPEAKER_03] Moulinion means eggplant like that's the right you know I mean it's a nasty thing

[00:54:21] [SPEAKER_01] it's a nasty thing to say I know so maybe I should have said the M-word I don't know but like I feel like that's part of the religious thing the changing of this Italian-American family you know talking about Francis of Assisi but like what is his real sense of empathy because there's these like dueling ethnic groups I think that's a key theme in this

[00:54:40] [SPEAKER_07] I think it's also going back to the Little Italy talk what confounded me about Little Italy as a child but what I didn't understand is like this is this idea of almost fighting against the melting pot of not just America but New York specifically where that's the great promise but then also it's like but these five blocks it's just us it's just us and we're going to maintain tradition and evolve tradition to figure out what the Italian-American experience is versus the

[00:55:10] [SPEAKER_07] Italian experience but also Italian gets first billing over American and so there's that feeling of like we got to keep everyone at a distance because we can't lose what we are and even if it's not driven by like racial animosity I think there's that protectiveness where even just to make a gangster film a crime film in the 70s and not keeping those things on the sidelines in the same way that you're keeping the women's at the sidelines is like what this movie is

[00:55:40] [SPEAKER_07] really about which is sort of like a masculinity crisis of its time yeah

[00:55:46] [SPEAKER_01] I mean masculinity crisis but so much of identity so I say it's about race but really what I

[00:55:51] [SPEAKER_07] mean is it's about racism it's a really interesting thing about this movie is that he goes and tries to pitch it to Corman to finance and Corman's like yeah I love that can you make it a blaxploitation

[00:56:04] [SPEAKER_01] oh yeah

[00:56:05] [SPEAKER_07] 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 blaxploitation films that he was like that's sellable the italian-american version of this movie doesn't really have a precedent especially before godfather came out but even post godfather it's like well that's tony that's sort of the class of the old mafioso kind of thing you know he says like I said I'd consider

[00:56:35] [SPEAKER_07] 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 him to make this in the first place which is what we're saying like what's the most personal thing I can make what's the thing I understand the most and the blind spots of this movie are I think a self conscious awareness of what he doesn't understand if that makes sense

[00:57:00] [SPEAKER_01] yeah you know like he was um the one of his teachers at NYU or maybe it was just called square university or something but like had said you know make what you know he said there was no one else like him in his classes like there's no one else that was from this like you know from the neighborhood I know and like again a few blocks away

[00:57:22] [SPEAKER_07] right yes yes it was a whole different world

[00:57:24] [SPEAKER_03] yeah uh and NYU was not what we think of it as you know now at all

[00:57:29] [SPEAKER_07] no he also said like he'd be going and like studying like English literature literature and then meeting his childhood friends at clubs that are like the clubs you see in this movie right yeah like they were two completely disconnected worlds even though they were five blocks away from each

[00:57:43] [SPEAKER_01] other yeah he said they're like uh De Niro uh says when he brings the Weintraub girls he's like they're from the village you know like there's this other world

[00:57:51] [SPEAKER_03] yeah so he brings Mean Streets to AFI they are just starting their feature program and he says the outline he'd written was ridiculous there was no female character basically at all it had no characters it had basic elements gets turned down there he takes it to Joe Brenner who's a sex film distributor who's the guy who distributed who's that knocking and he said no 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

[00:58:21] [SPEAKER_03] forget about it so that's like assume not the guy who's encouraging him

[00:58:25] [SPEAKER_07] yeah it's like he's shopping around a genre film that doesn't conform into any of the sellable areas of genre at this point in time

[00:58:32] [SPEAKER_03] totally I mean he invents a kind of movie here he does he does right um so instead he works obviously on Woodstock uh editing Woodstock which is you know a formative Scorsese thing and he enters Roger Corman's orbit uh we talked you know we talked about all that last week I'm sure so uh Boxcar Bertha Jay Cox who's working at the New York Times Cox spelled like the cool way multiple penises right he's the one who shows John Cassavetes who's that knocking at my door

[00:59:02] [SPEAKER_03] and Cassavetes responds to it and says like what's the film you're dying to make and he's like I have this thing but it needs a rewrite and Cassavetes says well rewrite it then right you know like what are you waiting for Cox obviously is a guy who works with Scorsese a bunch yeah you know over the years

[00:59:17] [SPEAKER_07] but but that's also very uh indicative indicative about why Scorsese or why Cassavetes said the like you wasted a year of your life making a piece of shit because he knows the thing he wants to make right totally

[00:59:30] [SPEAKER_03] so Sandy Weintraub 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 mook scene and the firecrackers and all that stuff it ends up in Corman's hands Corman is basically like I've just made the cool breeze which is like it was sort of like a blaxploitation asphalt jungle and so he's the one who's like yeah could we make this a blaxploitation movie essentially like an all black cast and

[00:59:59] [SPEAKER_03] Scorsese is 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

[01:00:12] [SPEAKER_07] Corman crew I mean this is one of those movies where when you get into it it's like the money appears and then disappeared like six times it kept coming together and falling apart but it would happen in quick enough rotations that the movie never fully collapsed Jay Cox was married to Verna Bloom right who I remember best as being Dean Wormser's wife in Animal House my version of the way you're describing Goodfellas Miriam a movie I watched way too many times before I was 10 because my father basically

[01:00:42] [SPEAKER_07] treated it as the Bible yeah but she was the one who I think helped locate the money that freed him from being dependent on Corman it costs about

[01:00:53] [SPEAKER_03] a hundred and fifty thousand dollars I think Jonathan Taplin is also very important who is the touring manager for the band that's why I believe Verna Bloom introduces them right she saw that

[01:01:04] [SPEAKER_07] 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 gonna dilute the movie he actually wants to make so she goes

[01:01:18] [SPEAKER_03] and finds 300 grand 300 grand yeah she finds

[01:01:21] [SPEAKER_07] the money in a way that wouldn't make him have to well constantly justify his

[01:01:27] [SPEAKER_03] decisions you'll make it in Cleveland yeah then the money falls through and then right and then they end up with one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars and they get some other stuff from like CFI labs I don't know you know they scrape money together they obviously he had written Charlie for Harvey Keitel because it was essentially going to be a sequel to who's that knocking like you guys said and then he decides to separate it which is smart right at one point John Voight is involved but

[01:01:56] [SPEAKER_03] then they shoot the festival stuff before they even start doing pre-production and at that point Harvey is basically locked in John had already done midnight cowboy and apparently Voight says to Scorsese like I'm too famous like yeah you need unknowns like you need like this needs to feel real or

[01:02:10] [SPEAKER_07] whatever there's the other thing which is we were talking about it when you came in David and I was watching there's a Q&A discussion between we were watching Linklater interview Linklater and Scorsese Rick and Morty and it was a series called Game Changers that the DGA was curating of like movies that changed the industry and Linklater was like this is the definitive game changer for like filmmakers taking their careers into their own hands

[01:02:39] [SPEAKER_07] 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 this film was shot in Los Angeles right and the New York exterior stuff they did especially San Gennaro is so impactful and then Scorsese finds the right locations in LA without building sets that he can sort of double that you don't question it when you're watching it and Linklater is asking him were you concerned at all about like the

[01:03:08] [SPEAKER_07] concession of needing to move to LA and if you were going to lose some of the authenticity in the character and Scorsese was like well I wasn't concerned because we just didn't have money so

[01:03:16] [SPEAKER_03] right it's like you need to make the movie we just need

[01:03:18] [SPEAKER_07] to make the movie there was like no principle stance that could be taken right but the other thing he said was he kept saying but I got the guys I know that's the whole thing

[01:03:27] [SPEAKER_03] people it's not an act they're New York guys David Proval they find him at this John Voight workshop as with Richard Romanos but they're both Brooklyn New York guys these guys have a shared language

[01:03:39] [SPEAKER_07] from New York if I put them in the same room even if that room's in LA instead of New York they're gonna talk like they're in New York that's what the audience will connect to

[01:03:47] [SPEAKER_03] they shot they did 10 days of rehearsals in New York they shot all the interiors in Los Angeles a fair amount of the exteriors including the big crash at the end too then they did some hallways and the beach in New York and the the weirdest we were talking about this before we recorded the when De Niro shooting the gun on the roof the roof is New York because you can see the Empire State Building but the window is Los Angeles yes and so like there's no establishing

[01:04:15] [SPEAKER_03] shots right there's no like they didn't have time for that they shot the whole movie in about 27 days this movie has so much

[01:04:22] [SPEAKER_07] accidental language like that where there's something that you don't even clock the first time about the fact that it's not giving you those establishing shots that you're just in the places without a feeling of being eased into them that is just a result of them not having the time to shoot establishing shots in New York but it becomes its own language and then the handheld stuff is just like we didn't have time for fucking tracking shots yeah we didn't have money for the equipment to to do anything more complicated and you need longer

[01:04:52] [SPEAKER_07] shots you need scenes playing out longer takes and you need the camera being able to just move really quickly from one focus to the other because that's the only way we're getting our pages done and the DP on this movie remind me his

[01:05:04] [SPEAKER_03] name so the DP on this movie's name is Kent L Wakeford was his first movie he was like a commercial director done

[01:05:12] [SPEAKER_01] documentaries and stuff I think like with the handheld Altman famously thought at or I don't know how famous but saw it at New York Film Festival and said that if he he would have done tracking shots instead of the handheld and and Scorsese was just like well if we had we'd still be shooting right

[01:05:29] [SPEAKER_07] right right the other thing Wakefield said was like there wasn't for Wakeford that there was no intentional strategy but then even when they started watching dailies it was like oh this feels anxious yeah this is a camera language that we've landed on just out of necessity but it actually is reflecting the energy we want so then they lean into it and everything is like that where it's like we're doing it this way because we don't have any other options and then they look at it and they're like this is a miracle this actually is better than we could have planned I don't know how

[01:05:57] [SPEAKER_01] he feels about it now but I think immediately afterwards he kind of thought Scorsese 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 gonna be my wildest take of all but to me I prefer this to the Godfather to me they're very similarly there's such different movies yeah like it this is the the termite Godfather you

[01:06:20] [SPEAKER_03] know it's like the Godfather's like the porterhouse and this is a burger or whatever you know like I mean they're they're so different I've

[01:06:27] [SPEAKER_07] like I love them together I've never loved the Godfather while also never denying its power like I have no complaints about it but it's just not it's pretty it's not my

[01:06:37] [SPEAKER_03] movie it's fine movies yeah it's not that was a big movie for team David I cannot yeah I love the Godfather Godfather

[01:06:44] [SPEAKER_07] is great but I love 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 Safdie's careers are built on can we figure out a way to get back to that

[01:06:57] [SPEAKER_01] feeling wait which I was wondering which Safdie's movie is mean streets is it daddy long lake yeah it's daddy long

[01:07:05] [SPEAKER_07] yeah yeah yeah because that's the personal one that's the yeah it's the

[01:07:08] [SPEAKER_03] personal one and like it's like something like heaven knows what is so about like drugs and like addiction and stuff like that's more fucking you know New York New York where I don't know and that they all weirdly become heaven knows what is their New York New York what am I talking about I sound like an idiot

[01:07:25] [SPEAKER_07] you go go ahead daddy long leg no Marty Supremus they're condemned no I was I was just gonna say that the 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 gonna catch up to Johnny boy but the movie doesn't have the narrative engine of they're getting closer I said this to you

[01:07:51] [SPEAKER_03] when I came in read the Wikipedia synopsis it's four paragraphs the final three paragraphs of the last 15 minutes of the movie there's nothing else right no plot in the movie before

[01:08:00] [SPEAKER_07] them the first paragraph is a bird's eye overview of the table setting of the movie and he's dating this girl and he's

[01:08:07] [SPEAKER_03] got Johnny boy and all and then it's torn between Catholicism and gangsterism and devoted to 15 minutes anyway at the end they try to fucking get some money from Johnny boy and it all pops up like that's all that happens in the movie I also complex structure here like I mean it's just

[01:08:21] [SPEAKER_01] about like the ending that in the end they're banished and I feel like that happens and I like not to bring back the safety's 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 it yeah not a lot happens it's just it is kind of a hangout movie and I

[01:08:37] [SPEAKER_03] think hang out in the club with Johnny boy and the boys hang out with the mob a little bit you have that and then you hang out in the church and you hang out with Teresa in her apartment I was

[01:08:46] [SPEAKER_07] also thinking a lot while watching this of Mikey and Nikki because it's just right it's like here's the one who's a little bit more of a straight arrow

[01:08:54] [SPEAKER_03] can't you fucking stop it right and as

[01:08:57] [SPEAKER_07] much as that's like a one crazy night movie that has hangout elements that movie is also a funereal march that movie has the narrative engine of you know this is going somewhere bad yeah streets even though everyone's kind of saying like you gotta get Johnny boy under control it doesn't feel like it's pushing you towards some obvious outcome

[01:09:17] [SPEAKER_03] in Mikey and Nikki also you're kind of like they've been doing this dance for so long they're older right this is become untenable like yeah it rage mean streets it's a little bright they're young and it's just kind of this like you got to pick your friends moment of like are you really gonna stick with this guy like right you be a grown-up

[01:09:33] [SPEAKER_07] 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

[01:09:44] [SPEAKER_04] is Johnny boy fun do we want to hang

[01:09:46] [SPEAKER_07] out with Johnny boy really fun to watch

[01:09:49] [SPEAKER_02] when I was a younger man I used to just love the chaos yes character like

[01:09:55] [SPEAKER_03] is it I mean this movie is 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 insane like one time right

[01:10:04] [SPEAKER_07] getting a little bored of it one of my best friends in high school was very much a Johnny boy and I was I was very much the Charlie to his side yeah I would gravitate to those types and

[01:10:15] [SPEAKER_02] because they're fun and exciting there

[01:10:16] [SPEAKER_07] was something about the like adjacency to danger sure even if I never was but you're not getting into danger 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

[01:10:39] [SPEAKER_02] extreme yeah I see it now and he's just so sad and clearly suffering

[01:10:43] [SPEAKER_01] Johnny boy yeah yeah it's easy Wow

[01:10:47] [SPEAKER_02] because I think he's suffering because he is stuck I am he has no like position yeah he really he can't get the job right right with Charlie's uncle Charlie keeps denying him because he's too chaotic the mom doesn't want that like they don't want those guys right but he can't be honorable like his friends right

[01:11:10] [SPEAKER_07] sure I might take is slightly different which is that he everyone's looking at him like is this guy fucking dumb doesn't he realize that he's like putting his neck out there right that that he's not playing this that he it's gonna catch up to him eventually and I think for him it's like what's the fucking alternative right what's the end game there's not like none of the options available to me seem interesting so why

[01:11:39] [SPEAKER_07] don't I just do what's fun to me like I think it's less that he's saddened 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

[01:12:04] [SPEAKER_03] when I'm making this movie I just want to say in the Lower East Side the few days that they are people would come up to them and see the title on the clapper and be like the movie nothing wrong with

[01:12:14] [SPEAKER_04] these streets call it nice street yeah these streets aren't so mean yeah what's your fucking problem they get to a fight

[01:12:21] [SPEAKER_02] with them what is the matter with you

[01:12:23] [SPEAKER_03] he sees the title as an homage to like a Cagney you know right like you know like to a Warner Brothers gangster movie or

[01:12:31] [SPEAKER_01] whatever we I think it has a different

[01:12:33] [SPEAKER_07] reference it's a Raymond Chandler essay called the simple art of murder and it has the line but down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean who is neither tarnished nor afraid so it's

[01:12:46] [SPEAKER_01] about it's about it's about Charlie yeah right I mean truth is about like yeah but

[01:12:51] [SPEAKER_03] it also I mean Scorsese is the one saying like I was trying to make a kind of homage to those gangster movies of like you know yeah it's it's a punchy title but Jaycock

[01:12:59] [SPEAKER_07] showed him the essay and said like that's a good fucking title right and it does have that kind of season of the witch but it has that thing like white heat where you're just like those two words are interesting together oh man white heat so normal I love

[01:13:10] [SPEAKER_01] that movie well speaking of can we talk about the gangster movies because 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

[01:13:35] [SPEAKER_03] Edward G. Robbins right Edward G.

[01:13:36] [SPEAKER_01] Robbins said so that's Mervyn Leroy and then and then public enemy is William Wellman so this was the other person who's really important for this movie and for Scorsese is Andrew Sarris and the and the cinema guy the auteurist because when these guys were coming up it was Andrew Sarris and these French guys were appreciating all these like movies that they grew up with they were like

[01:14:01] [SPEAKER_03] junkie movies like movies that at the time were not seen yeah like they were being just on TV crime movies westerns

[01:14:07] [SPEAKER_01] totally they're yeah they were like and so like and so he was figuring out the ones that he liked and the ones he didn't and so he was gonna you know no offense to Mervyn Leroy but he was not a Mervyn Leroy guy he was like a William Wellman guy he was a fuller guy he was a Hawks and Ford guy like that and so that that's really important to figuring out the films that these same films that all feel junkie but some of them are really good and some of them are not and he was specifically a public enemy was about

[01:14:37] [SPEAKER_01] Irish people but he was like we can still relate with us like even though it's about Irish gangsters right because that's

[01:14:42] [SPEAKER_03] Cagney public enemy is like young Cagney

[01:14:44] [SPEAKER_01] public 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 Kaplan but yeah Jonathan Kaplan probably also helped get

[01:15:13] [SPEAKER_01] all this movie music he totally was the

[01:15:15] [SPEAKER_07] music supervisor right this was the soundtrack he wanted for who's that knocking at my door he was always like my movies are gonna 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

[01:15:36] [SPEAKER_03] Rolling Stones 30 yeah the Stones was 15 each and they have both Jumpin Jack Flash and Tell Me yeah they have Be My Baby which is the most important one yeah and I they have various other you know but like Be My Baby was the one that he was like that obviously was the song like we needed that one yeah those female singing roots right before the Beatles like that's his music

[01:15:57] [SPEAKER_07] Linklater said a thing in that DJ talk I thought was really interesting where he was like there's there are things like Easy Rider that come before this that have famous soundtracks and contemporary soundtracks he was like every other music movie that used popular songs up until this point it felt like the soundtrack was above the movie right and Mean Streets to me feels like the first movie where the music is coming out of the film yeah and Scorsese said like yeah it's it was

[01:16:27] [SPEAKER_07] important that it's like you're seeing even when it's not supposed to be diegetic within a scene that you get the sense that it could be and that often enough you point at this is coming from a jukebox or whatever it does invent this

[01:16:40] [SPEAKER_01] shit it does you can hear the pop in the hiss he said yes for actually his records right like with with with bringing a baby which is a huge difference right it's not

[01:16:50] [SPEAKER_03] bringing a baby the music thing I just it's I was saying it to my wife last night I'm like I was just like I know this sounds so boring but like no one had ever done this before no it's so true like it's and it seems like the most like what do you mean no one had ever like put pop music in a movie before but it's like kind of no one

[01:17:12] [SPEAKER_01] really done that yet not this way not in this sort of but the thing is it's hard to watch this movie and not see all the people who ripped it off like Sam Levinson all the terrible copies that we've gotten we've gotten so far all the

[01:17:28] [SPEAKER_03] all the Sam Levinson is one of our great returns he just released a magnificent new season of his great show euphoria

[01:17:34] [SPEAKER_01] right we've got like we've and the you know the horror movies with the ironic pop music you know and like this and every

[01:17:41] [SPEAKER_03] trailer would like the slowed down like

[01:17:43] [SPEAKER_07] song or whatever someone's definitely done that right and then the film flickers and then a knife cuts I think it's pretty good

[01:17:54] [SPEAKER_01] I haven't seen it but I think it's in like barbarian or something right I think maybe is there a big there's a lot of baby stuff in that movie it would make sense

[01:18:01] [SPEAKER_04] yeah it's in barbarian yeah okay yeah and

[01:18:04] [SPEAKER_01] so um but like the thing that's interesting is that like and then all the guys the better than Sam Levinson I feel like all the um the Gen X guys all these like mixtape guys you know all these like

[01:18:17] [SPEAKER_07] thinking while watching this it is crazy how much of this movie is in the DNA of the early Wes Anderson stuff yeah Wes

[01:18:23] [SPEAKER_01] Anderson PTA honestly Tarantino also Sofia Coppola like these are people who wrote to mixes to like pop mixes but the thing is those were from all over those were like all over you know that was they were from all eras and it really was like a mixtape or something yeah it was like and they would they would write in the same way Scorsese would to like write this the scenes to these songs but the thing that's different about Mainstreet is it's capturing a specific era it's like present

[01:18:53] [SPEAKER_01] tense it's capturing the 60s in the early 70s yeah and like those songs Bill Spector and those stones have been used in these like other kind of mixtape things but this is something we've gotten away from which is like it's a voting

[01:19:09] [SPEAKER_07] specific specific era I mean that's what like Linklater does with days and confused you know it makes sense that he talks about how much that soundtrack felt like eye-opening to him but you know Scorsese won our Mark Madness thing Marty it almost came down to him and Wes Anderson true and there was a nerd part of me that really wanted to see that matchup happen for the final two because there's that article I'm obsessed with that I think

[01:19:35] [SPEAKER_07] Esquire magazine did in 1999 that was who's the next Scorsese we've decided I know Scorsese is the definitive filmmaker of the last 50 years you know the second half of the 20th century after bottle

[01:19:48] [SPEAKER_03] rock they had like a bunch it was like the Wachowskis were people made their case

[01:19:52] [SPEAKER_07] they asked like a bunch of different film scholars and critics and then they asked Scorsese and he said Wes Anderson he said Wes Anderson off a bottle rocket and Rushmore and when I can you know shall I tell

[01:20:03] [SPEAKER_03] you all the nominees because it's crazy yes I

[01:20:05] [SPEAKER_07] know Andrew Saris nominated Kevin Smith yes which his essay is fascinating because he's like I know this one sounds crazy right it's basically on the strength of chasing Amy and if he pursues this yeah kind of far from

[01:20:20] [SPEAKER_03] paradise yeah Kevin Turan nominated David O Russell which is interesting because David O Russell 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 uh Tom Carson nominated Alexander Payne sure although I don't really see that in Payne's work at all but okay Elvis Mitchell nominated Wachowskis which I think is a fun pick by Elvis and then Martin E says Wes and he you know after Gene Siskel dies

[01:20:49] [SPEAKER_07] Scorsese does the best of the decade episode with Ebert yes that I've watched it

[01:20:58] [SPEAKER_03] a thousand times it's so good but he puts

[01:21:00] [SPEAKER_07] bottle rocket on his like top 10 of the 90s he was like one of the early champions and I think versus a lot of these filmmakers who were more clearly influenced by Scorsese in the type of film they were making in the subject matter uh he saw like this guy is making movies about his own life in his own worldview that is more analogous to what I did and also the way he is experimenting with form form and language and this movie is it's obviously

[01:21:28] [SPEAKER_07] not symmetrical but like bottle rocket and Rushmore are a lot rougher around the edges than everything becomes from world town bombs on and even just like the colors of the bar and the energy of the characters in their costumes yes it's like so much of of Wes Anderson starts here weirdly you know I've

[01:21:49] [SPEAKER_03] never seen the horse thief I haven't either you know that the on that list and he's like my number one is this like Tibetan movie called the horse thief and I'm like I've always like I gotta watch that what else did he have on that the puppet master heat uh he's got a Malcolm X Fargo crash uh bottle rocket breaking the waves bad lieutenant eyes wide shot uh thin red line borrowed life and the horse thief borrowed life is a is a Chinese or Taiwanese

[01:22:11] [SPEAKER_03] movie that I've also never seen David yes it's got back

[01:22:23] [SPEAKER_07] from Spain okay lovely and I'm feeling it what are you feeling too much Hamon too much siesta but it's the the year of it's the summer of Hamon Griffin well I'm ready for the fall of less Hamon is what I need to say I'm I'm ready to get my nutrition into gear and you know what I I'm gonna thank in advance the fine folks at Huel because Huel is a complete food not

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[01:25:17] [SPEAKER_01] let's talk about let's well like back to the what you were saying about us about Wes Anderson and about this as being a very personal thing I mean I think they're both also big fans they're big supporters of like classic films you see those references there but they're also just like finding like a color and movement to express emotion and biography right and that's kind of what

[01:25:45] [SPEAKER_01] Scorsese has said about this and like the you know the commentary for the criterion I think from the old commentary when I first saw it in like 2004 or something he says it's hard for describe this as a film he feels like instead it's like the final culmination of everything I was to do and who I am yeah yeah

[01:26:04] [SPEAKER_07] there's that synthesizing of personal experience and all the films he had studied and even you talking about him trying to study and figure out which gangster films dug in on him and which ones bounced off of him it's like well there's two silos it feels like there are the people where he's recognizing the craft he's recognizing the formalism of what they're doing and how they're able to express contradictory things through the language of the filmmaking

[01:26:31] [SPEAKER_07] and then there's the people like Fuller where it's like what's going on with this guy you know there's like some psychology that's seeping into the movie of a personality that you cannot get out of the their system even if they're doing for higher work for sure but for Fuller was also

[01:26:46] [SPEAKER_01] specifically the movement and that's when we're talking about this film and we're talking about the difference between like who's that knocking this film moves it has like this like dynamic and I think he called it like an involved camera and obviously we talked about it's like handheld we've got that weird he's got Harvey Keitel like on a dolly and in some yeah where he's going through but he's drunk it's yeah that's so fun yeah I love that yeah like before there was steady cam

[01:27:12] [SPEAKER_01] they invented it like this thing but he said he was really inspired by Fuller specifically like shock corridor and like park row because there's all this like movement park yes are you kidding

[01:27:23] [SPEAKER_07] me I've never seen it I've seen shock corridor I've never seen park master oh my god it's a

[01:27:28] [SPEAKER_03] masterpiece I'm not a huge fuller like not not I like Fuller a lot but I'm not an expert on

[01:27:32] [SPEAKER_07] I feel like I've seen like three or four Fuller movies I want to hit some more of those

[01:27:36] [SPEAKER_03] thriller blind spots before Shutter Island I mean I've seen like shock corridor naked kiss obviously I've seen you know um big red one and you know the later ones but um okay so park row like park row is an early one I mean I love park row I used to work on park row yeah it's a newspaper

[01:27:51] [SPEAKER_01] movie it's totally a newspaper movie it's like the newspaper movie it also has okay we'll do another thing in there it also has like I I would like to do a review of that film just listing all the classic cocktails oh interesting anyway it's a great movie yeah so it was again like um for Fuller

[01:28:09] [SPEAKER_07] it was like the movement but hiring a documentary DP and Scorsese also having come off of being a cameraman himself on Woodstock where he's holding a camera and feeling that urgency of fuck something's happening here can we catch it in time yeah it feels like the movie has that energy despite being a scripted film yeah yeah camera being worried it's not going to catch the thing yeah I mean he was

[01:28:36] [SPEAKER_01] editing docs the Scorsese was so it totally makes sense that that combination of that but it's interesting because this guy I don't know his he I saw an interview and he was talking they were asking him about like the lighting setups and stuff 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 um in the bar and he's like that's just what it seemed like to me I'm like like how you liar I this is totally Marty this is this is this is

[01:29:05] [SPEAKER_01] duel in the sun this is the red shoes this is like gone with the wind this is Marty I do also agree with

[01:29:11] [SPEAKER_07] him that that's how bars feel if you take a picture in a bar it might not look like this yeah but that's what it feels to be inside a bar no it's true it's also there the movement and the energy of the movie feels like versus Altman who's like you know a god for me but what I love about the Altman tracking shots is they do feel like a god telling you this is the interesting thing this you might not

[01:29:39] [SPEAKER_07] 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

[01:29:57] [SPEAKER_03] alienated from or is it so increasingly alienated from his his only world which is these bars and these these streets these yes mean streets and like I think it's just like shots like the dolly shot just is so good at making him feel a little alienated or separate in a way like it's so yeah and the just then the calm of the church like you I I would hang out of the fucking church like if I was like if I had to grow up in mulberry it looks nice sure it's quiet yeah right it's just like okay

[01:30:26] [SPEAKER_07] finally I can like read a book and sit down well so Scorsese is like a kid where the asthma is so bad that it's like if I get in a fight I might die you know like if someone punches me the wrong way it's not it takes a while for someone to pull my body up like it's in the dock and it's in all you

[01:30:41] [SPEAKER_03] know it's like they they he was born in flushing right and they lived in Queens and then they were kicked out of Queens because his dad like got in a fight with the local like mob and in the dock he's like that felt like being kicked out of paradise yeah and like you can like you feel it in this movie

[01:30:54] [SPEAKER_04] you're just like I just want the wide open streets of flushing it's like how do I still an urban

[01:30:59] [SPEAKER_03] environment but I just why long for like the relatively open skies yeah I mean and you know that's not a plot in this movie but like the way he makes New York feel in the like the San Gennaro like shots and all that just like it's it's alive and it's cool and I'm watching it being like ah fuck it yeah New York this rocks but like it's it's overwhelming but he also I mean I saw him

[01:31:21] [SPEAKER_07] say an interview maybe it was in the link later thing as well that like the entire social life was built around these after hours clubs yeah where ostensibly what was driving you was the pursuit of women right but women were rarely at these places why would they fucking go you were hoping that one might show up almost by accident rolling rock with degenerates right so he's like more often you're there with degenerates and you're either recounting your victories with women in the past which are

[01:31:47] [SPEAKER_07] probably bullshit right or you're telling people your aspirations of what you want to do with women someday yeah or you're just like getting in a fight over pool right he said all these people still basically live with their parents because even though they were driven by sex it was like if you're living on your own that's an admission that you're living in sin right it's like the only reason you would have your own apartment is so you could have sex there which is a thing you like sounds pretty cool do even if you're talking about it all the time you can't be that visible

[01:32:16] [SPEAKER_07] about it and like he was like the guys who moved moved around the corner you know like the idea of

[01:32:23] [SPEAKER_03] moving to the village it's the old joke like you you bid your mother good tearful goodbye give her a big hug and then you moved downstairs right you moved to the apartment downstairs and the implication is

[01:32:33] [SPEAKER_07] you need your own space you know and maybe it's more you need private space because the work you're doing is violent and unseemly and you need to hide that from your parents but also they're close enough that your mom's gonna fucking come over and make your bed and do your laundry you're still basically

[01:32:47] [SPEAKER_03] it's like living in their garage you know does johnny boy just need money because he's a gambler like that's where he's blowing his money yeah i think so it's mostly just that right like it's just

[01:32:56] [SPEAKER_07] like on the horses or whatever because he's always trying to get ahead i know but there's no end goal like it's important that right johnny doesn't want to like open a barber shop right he's not you know what my dream is to someday make enough money that i can move to boise you know but he doesn't

[01:33:12] [SPEAKER_02] there's a farm i want to buy because he just doesn't see any path forward his friend's a business owner right yeah the other one's working for his uncle the other one is like i guess making his way up as far as being a maid guy and he's just kind of stuck he's the loser of the group the caridine bar fight

[01:33:29] [SPEAKER_07] right that basically plays out without dialogue largely and is like brother actors and caridine violence action david and robert yes yes yes um and that's what these guys recently dead died robert right r.i.p yes yes but that's what these guys are witnessing and it's like so right at any fucking moment a guy can just walk in here drunk with some petty grievance and shoot you and

[01:33:55] [SPEAKER_07] it's over like what's the fucking point there is that like even if you're trying to stay clean out of this stuff and you're not becoming a made man or working it your your adjacency to these things puts you on like the battlefront to a certain degree and scorsese said that that scene is based off of a thing that happened at one of those clubs in his 20s and he was like and we went to the other club that night but it was like a coin flip there were two places that we went back and forth to

[01:34:24] [SPEAKER_07] and we picked the other one and then heard the next day did you hear some guy just came in he got drunk and he was upset and he shot that dude and that guy's dead and it's like that's it could have been us by the difference of like which block we walked down are we in trouble are

[01:34:40] [SPEAKER_03] we off course no this is what this podcast is also like what other big scenes should we be talking about because again this is not a film with a very very you know let's talk about let's talk about just how

[01:34:51] [SPEAKER_01] personal it is like from the very beginning we have like a scene about german lenses and jap adapters like you know we've got we've got super eight footage we've got you know it's so about marty um i just yeah i love the i love the mooc scene uh the mooc scene uh there's the a fight that he

[01:35:09] [SPEAKER_03] witnesses at a bar which is what happens in the movie and it starts with the bartender called you a mooc called me a mooc and everyone starts fighting and then someone says what's a mooc and the guy's

[01:35:19] [SPEAKER_01] like i don't know yeah what's a mooc you know i looked it up like what is it it means big mouth

[01:35:24] [SPEAKER_03] big is it yeah it's like neapolitan like sort of slang for like talking too much big mouth

[01:35:30] [SPEAKER_01] interesting yeah there's a reddit thread that is like every possible iteration of like they're like did did scorsese invent it or where did it come from and it's it obviously goes somewhere but it's

[01:35:43] [SPEAKER_03] it's um according to marty he later realized he didn't know at the time right that it's neapolitan yeah and he is a sicilian you know the sicilians the neapolitans always hated each other and neapolitans you know naples and like uh it was a neapolitan word for like a loudmouth sicilian a

[01:35:59] [SPEAKER_07] 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 like so obsessed with all the slang of mid 20th century guys and then you unpack it and you're like nine out of ten are like racially charged yeah like all these sort of uh up yours names that the wise cracking characters will throw at people but you're right that people don't even understand what they're

[01:36:27] [SPEAKER_07] saying and it's like they're throwing these molotov cocktails and not quite sure what the impact of

[01:36:33] [SPEAKER_01] them are right you brought west sanderson one of my favorite sort of generic unknown racial epitaph is when um in royal tenenbaums when he's like did you just call me coltrane yes and one of the

[01:36:44] [SPEAKER_03] fucking funniest things is in any west sanderson movie ever it's so good those kind of things where

[01:36:50] [SPEAKER_01] you're like is that racist the way that hackman reacts it feels pretty racist yes no it's so great though but i love these sort of like funny 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 my due due diligence and say that mean streets was the first film to be rated by core the congressional um congress on racial equity

[01:37:15] [SPEAKER_01] um yeah it was the first one um and it uh was declared extremely offensive uh from for its black perspective and uh because of of the stripper and the the policeman who's like takes oh sure and like i don't know if i agree with that i mean i think i would think i would say i mean i again i really do think it's about these like you know these unknown racial epitaphs it's about it's about racism it's

[01:37:40] [SPEAKER_01] about like that with morality but i will say what i do find really offensive is the gay couple that's

[01:37:46] [SPEAKER_03] just oh sure that's i mean like that must be so far from marty's understanding at this point yeah i don't think of gay characters in marty movies also we should call it de niro's father was gay

[01:37:56] [SPEAKER_07] de niro'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 de niro does have a model in his life and obviously he was married to a woman at one point he was out later in his life although it was sort of more quietly who knows what de niro knows about his father at this point what his father self-identifies as and whatever but his father was a man he lived with who was a more realistic

[01:38:23] [SPEAKER_07] 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 totally wait

[01:38:38] [SPEAKER_01] sidetrack do you know his mom dated manny farber no de niro's mom yeah and like when they were just like you know bohemians in the village and stuff so i had said that this was like the termite uh like to the godfather so that's like manny farber is one of the great film critics and the whole termite versus white elephant is him and i guess manny farber came up to he he really liked mean streets i don't know what point he reviewed it but he really liked it at one point he came up to de niro at a

[01:39:06] [SPEAKER_01] party and was like oh i remember you when you were a kid in like 14th street and de niro just ran away

[01:39:12] [SPEAKER_07] wow yeah because i guess his parents split up pretty early yeah yeah i think there's something too of like what i guess these guys would be like third generation americans theoretically these guys yeah

[01:39:26] [SPEAKER_01] like like that they're like their their grandparents came you're saying their grandparents immigrated

[01:39:31] [SPEAKER_07] yeah right i know what you mean their grandparents immigrated probably with their parents as young

[01:39:36] [SPEAKER_03] adults yeah i mean well marty's parents were well katherine was born in new york yeah i forget about the dad uh charles second or third yeah he was born in new york their parents were right this sense of

[01:39:46] [SPEAKER_07] this inherited tribalism that isn't even actually motivated by anger in talking about like the racial dynamics of this movie that it feels more like they're just worried about i don't understand what's going on outside of these three blocks these totally the 10 people i know you know it feels

[01:40:06] [SPEAKER_01] deliberate yeah it feels like really this changing like you were saying like this time period and and

[01:40:10] [SPEAKER_07] even the kind of like corrupt black cop character it feels like what is driving him is just like i just don't even want to have to deal with you guys i love that guy the way he like accepts the bribery is just like can you please just make it easy for me to disengage from this yeah i want to just let this be

[01:40:27] [SPEAKER_02] whatever the fuck it is so funny he's like yeah i'm going to jersey you know actually i'm going to

[01:40:32] [SPEAKER_07] philly right but the way he's sort of 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 that they they live in like forced blocks right the way um

[01:40:54] [SPEAKER_02] theresa's character talks about moving uptown it's leaving the country exactly like i mean

[01:40:59] [SPEAKER_07] yeah scorsese said that'd be the equivalent of a girl telling you she was moving to ohio you're never going to see her again that's impossible right can we talk about kytel a bit

[01:41:09] [SPEAKER_03] yeah you know what i mean i assume we this is we're recording this one a week before yeah that knocking because miriam's in town soon we talked about harvey a little there but harvey very

[01:41:19] [SPEAKER_07] 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 rival like he's in alice yeah and and taxi driver but he's right he's a fucking pedophile pimp and taxi driver he's literally judas but between taxi driver and last temptation he doesn't work with martin right and then is there anything

[01:41:42] [SPEAKER_07] between last temptation and irishman i was trying to remember if there was like one thing maybe not it feels like every time he uses him after that other than irishman which feels like a kind of like isn't this nice to put them all at the same table again i know the other ones it feels like what he's using kytel to be like i want to show that this guy has range right i want to i want to test him

[01:42:05] [SPEAKER_03] and put him in a different light obviously like scorsese was such a you know um he loved bad lieutenant or whatever like he would he would pump you know praise other harvey stuff and i think they remain very close i wonder though i wonder if harvey's like fuck you why am i not you know why do i not get to be your de niro like why does de niro get to be your star on my rewatch i really had that i'm like

[01:42:29] [SPEAKER_01] happened to her like what happened to kytel he's a great actor this is what struck me watching it

[01:42:34] [SPEAKER_07] right is like it's interesting that he had this guy who was so much the stand-in for him and then he picks this other guy who was so different from him who becomes the driving force of his movies going forward or at least a majority of them and then you look at the filmography and you're like all of these movies are personal and that they are explorations of the things that clearly scorsese wrestles with constantly but his movies no longer past this

[01:42:58] [SPEAKER_07] point really feel like they're about characters that reflect him they become explorations of his

[01:43:04] [SPEAKER_03] worldview yeah and or like some cyclot but like and also right he doesn't write as many movies no when when he does write it's often adaptation you know like something like um age of innocence or

[01:43:17] [SPEAKER_07] you know like um gangsta new york but i wonder if part of that is him recognizing in the sort of like the forcefulness of what de niro is able to do as johnny boy and putting a character that sort of exciting that much of a wild card into the mix that he's like i'm kind of a passive protagonist i'm a guy who looks at the window and watches what's happening who thinks about it who will stand

[01:43:43] [SPEAKER_07] 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 kytel becomes sort of an odd duck you know in a way that maybe his association with him was too strong at the beginning yeah maybe you don't want to get locked into it but then he gets locked into it with nero to some extent which is why he then from that point on is like harvey i'm gonna ask you to play

[01:44:10] [SPEAKER_07] all sorts of wild different things yeah you're just an actor i'm like throwing interesting challenges at

[01:44:15] [SPEAKER_01] how do you feel about harvey miriam i i like him i mean i was really like what happened like you know i was thinking about he's got some great roles i mean he's jewish right yeah and that so that was the whole thing it was this like polish jews his parents were russian jews yeah so he or so he was like brighton beach guy so first he was the stand-in for marty and then but i was you know just when now we're talking i'm like could harvey kytel have been in casino yeah totally like 100 in either role

[01:44:42] [SPEAKER_03] yes yeah i mean it's interesting like harvey kytel is a good actor yeah if he's in a movie it's usually good yeah i mean his performance he's in lots of bad movies like i mean he just was one of those guys who i feel like sure five movies a year for 30 years right like yeah 80s and 90s like he just says a zillion credits and he can do big yeah or he can do restrained like you know he doesn't

[01:45:08] [SPEAKER_03] feel like an egotistical actor to me i i i there's a part of it and some of this is conjecture on my

[01:45:16] [SPEAKER_07] part right but you look at him in like the 70s and the 80s you look at the stuff he did with tobac which is very tobaccan you know yes it is that he for a while i would say until the 90s really wants to be the leader the co-lead of the movie and sometimes these guys do just get into a place where they're like i'm willing to play the dilemma i'm willing to play the side character of the villain

[01:45:43] [SPEAKER_07] for marty but otherwise i'd rather be the guy and that sometimes can dictate the choices you know

[01:45:51] [SPEAKER_01] it's a lot of weird stuff in the 80s with with kytel yeah was he was like when was piano was that

[01:45:58] [SPEAKER_03] the 90s 93 i love that performance it's a great performance we've talked about a fair amount of 90s and 2000s kytel because we've done campion so there's multiple you know campion performances

[01:46:08] [SPEAKER_07] from him what else have we talked about well of course we did the national treasure movies on patreon probably his two finest performances as guy behind desk but that's the thing it's like what's he doing

[01:46:18] [SPEAKER_03] the declaration of independence i mean there's like right and which is like that's just like thelma and louise right like it's like he does thelma and louise and then he'll just like do that every so often ever since i'm like do you want me to play the tired cop like clockers sure good in clockers yeah like and he's sort of the lead of clockers but he's not really like mechai pfeiffer is the lead of clockers but harvey's like the face that's the other thing that's

[01:46:41] [SPEAKER_07] like right tarantino and spike lee and all these other filmmakers using him almost in a mixtape way he is so good in reservoir dog yeah he's incredible and i've never seen it you've never seen why have you never seen reservoir dog is there an is there an active avoidance or have you just not gotten

[01:47:00] [SPEAKER_04] around to it yeah i don't know it's just it's like 90 minutes long they play it in rep cinemas

[01:47:07] [SPEAKER_03] constantly and bars and like yeah um kytel is incredibly good the whole thing with reservoir dogs like michael madsen i assume you know is kind of like the character that pops or whatever and she's doing the james d kind of thing right you know but and kytel is the lead and it's the

[01:47:25] [SPEAKER_07] super emotional role and he's so good and it's it's different but it does feel like tarantino is casting him because it's like using an an impactful pop song 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 even the way wes anderson uses

[01:47:52] [SPEAKER_07] him is very fascinating hey which one wes anderson is fun in budapest yes and he's also in moonrise kingdom as like the major troop leader at the end they keep going up the ladder to who's the ultimate troop leader and then you reveal like old harvey kytel and little khaki shorts and kytel's like just have to say it it's not even that he has a great face he has one of the most fascinating skulls

[01:48:17] [SPEAKER_07] in history where you're just like who has a head like this right he just doesn't look like anybody else and it's it's hard to read him it's really kind of fascinating to watch him listen to people because you can't really tell what's going on and i think similarly when he talks it sort of feels like a

[01:48:40] [SPEAKER_07] struggle to him not that it's non-verbal but that it's really like an effort to get things out it's funny because i feel like in press interviews he's far more gregarious that he is not a guy who's like incredibly self-serious or protective about 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

[01:49:08] [SPEAKER_07] he wants to say out of his system and also so much of that is just like kytel's insane body right yeah

[01:49:13] [SPEAKER_01] i feel like he can also i mean maybe i'm just misjudging from certain roles but i feel like there's like a dangerous eroticism to a lot of his performance that i don't really see with de niro like i feel like de niro and de niro's like i'm sure a sexy guy but there's not like a real

[01:49:28] [SPEAKER_07] sexuality with weirdly sexual and feels transgressive and he also moves towards that right like in the but he's got this fucking pitbull thing you know he's got this kind of like perma frown yeah i love his walk and this furrowed brow and he's so kind of weirdly like he's compressed yeah he's like stockier although i don't know if he was really stocky like because they're all little guys this is all just how things read i know it's how it reads on camera but he's just a guy where you're

[01:49:55] [SPEAKER_07] 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

[01:50:12] [SPEAKER_01] to show his penis i've never within the context of art harvey cartels bodies as much well like if you

[01:50:18] [SPEAKER_03] think i like bad lieutenant this sort of iconic yeah like you know when he's like yeah you know it's on the you know he has a fun and then the piano and as marie would yeah would call out

[01:50:27] [SPEAKER_07] a very deep v too i feel like those movies like bad lieutenant and the piano where he's getting naked he's got he's got the v okay he's got like a tiny little ripped he's got the dv miriam is covering her mouth in shock and shame as she should i'm blushing 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

[01:50:54] [SPEAKER_07] myers cut and then just kept calling out the deep v hytel obviously doesn't have the austin powers chest hair oh okay other scenes we should talk

[01:51:05] [SPEAKER_02] about how about the vietnam vet party that feels significant yeah is that speaks to the time that it's at i mean it's still we're still in v yeah what was that what sorry but then he gets

[01:51:16] [SPEAKER_01] drunk is that where he gets drunk and he walks and he's like blessing i think he's like he's uh baptizing people he's like yeah going around with water and like baptizing people but you were thinking specifically of the the of the vietnam thing of of the era of what and the vet is clearly

[01:51:32] [SPEAKER_02] suffering from yeah you know his experience there and he attacks that woman and then kytel has that moment where he dances with her in the closet oh yeah i forgot about that oh that's weird it's so

[01:51:45] [SPEAKER_03] weird i don't know what to read from it yeah it feels like another story like that you know scorsese remembered or whatever and it like makes so much sense obviously if we threw a party for a vietnam vet and we're like let's set off a bunch of loud noises and streamers and shit that it was like

[01:52:01] [SPEAKER_07] obviously like could be very traumatic for them yeah i mean the literal opening of this movie is him lighting the candles in church right is that the opening shot uh yeah i mean the the opening is the monologue and the narration which is scorsese's voice is you don't make up for your sins in church you do it in the streets you do it at home the rest is bullshit and you know it rather than it being a movie where the pull is is this guy going to follow faith the movie's telling you up front while the guy

[01:52:29] [SPEAKER_07] is going through the motions and the rituals that this is kind of all not that it's bullshit but that it can't overpower the rest it's it's actually like an impossible battle that you've already lost it's

[01:52:40] [SPEAKER_01] 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

[01:52:53] [SPEAKER_07] to happen here in a theoretical space it's going to happen in your actions outside in the world yeah

[01:52:58] [SPEAKER_01] 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 would do like little sessions then add into the script but there is one like improv scene and it's like right after the trash can yeah yes oh no yeah that might be but i was thinking about when they go into the back room so when de niro first walks in it's the it's the stones and you know it's the slow motion and we're really in a scorsese movie and then they go into the back

[01:53:25] [SPEAKER_01] room and that's when they're like they're like the tuesday after the tuesday after this tuesday or you know and they're doing all this wordplay and talking about joey clams no joey scallop no they're the same person yeah and like this whole thing that was all improvised and that was something that um scorsese said he was really feel like he needed something there and he needed something to set the tone in the comedy and he was really influenced by like abbott and costello and who's on first right

[01:53:50] [SPEAKER_01] but also like the road movies and bob hope and and um ben crosby and this like you know someone always trying to get one over but i think the wordplay is really key in the one i love that the line

[01:54:02] [SPEAKER_02] where he he's like which girl he's like my left or your left we were sitting we were on the same

[01:54:07] [SPEAKER_07] side my left or your left it's so good the same shit it's like it's rock music and it's like old vaudeville comedy dynamics and it's the language of how people fight with each other verbally you know it's all rhythm shit it's rhythm and word selection which i feel like are always the thing like the metronome that his movies go off of um david denby when this came out said that scorsese has used improvisation better than anyone in american movies so far which is an interesting line to me

[01:54:37] [SPEAKER_07] 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 an improv exercise they would transcribe it and tighten it and just writing a lot of times when there are these fucking famous moments in movies where people go like and do you know that was actually improvised it's like that was improvised when they did the blocking rehearsal yeah and then they wrote it into the sides and then they did it 80 times and they refined it

[01:55:06] [SPEAKER_07] 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 right it's been going it was going

[01:55:32] [SPEAKER_01] on for so long like gregory lakava was doing it like it's so interesting when people like people are i mean you know if you guys have ever been to an awful q a yeah they're always like was that improv

[01:55:42] [SPEAKER_07] it's fucking first question it's so annoying just let the cameras roll you know but the answer is always if people see something that sounds natural it sounds to them like real dialogue they want to believe it's improv and you know movies you do fucking a thousand takes of everything things are like iterative you know it's rarely like improv in the way you think of seeing a fucking improv show

[01:56:06] [SPEAKER_07] 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

[01:56:25] [SPEAKER_01] lightning in a bottle the whole thing is that's the other part of it de niro right if you're like

[01:56:30] [SPEAKER_07] cassavetes where those films are less improvised than people think yeah but they have the energy of the main purpose of the camera here is to capture what the actors are doing rather than say something with the camera themselves i think in later cassavetes movies he does meaningful things visually but it's really like serving the performances first and foremost and to have a movie that has improv energy

[01:56:54] [SPEAKER_07] in it but also has complicated camera moves you know has like three minute traveling shots through an apartment and things like that is where people start to feel like oh improv isn't an either or thing it 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

[01:57:23] [SPEAKER_07] really visually static because they need three cameras running at the same time to get what actually is a real improv riff david yes red alert oh there's been an outbreak biohazard of a new patreon series

[01:57:50] [SPEAKER_07] it's contagious oh that's so true it's it's uh it's been cooked up in the lab for your pleasure from the fine folks at the umbrella corporation we are covering resident evil the film franchise yes we've

[01:58:06] [SPEAKER_03] got the first franchise six movies yes that beautiful second franchise how many six seven it's got uh the one oh it's got the one we'll be covering all of them on patreon uh doing commentaries on yes

[01:58:19] [SPEAKER_04] the resident evil apocalypse extinction afterlife retribution the final chapter welcome to record

[01:58:24] [SPEAKER_07] in Sydney this is an exciting time uh zach craig are a friend of the podcast yes resident evil coming out and we thought this was a good opportunity to revisit the history of resident evil movie why not

[01:58:35] [SPEAKER_03] why not why can't we why can't we we can check in for that august 1st and it's gonna be running all the way through november 1st followed by your march madness winner dracula dracula himself that's so fun

[01:58:51] [SPEAKER_07] so that's great that's great thank you thank you so much so are you guys all the charlie in your

[01:59:08] [SPEAKER_01] romance yes yeah or i'm i'm not even charlie i'm like hi the charlie are you the charlie and yeah i don't want to go out with these people or maybe you're i feel like you might you have a little johnny

[01:59:19] [SPEAKER_07] boy sympathy i think i'm amy robinson you're johnny boy david's charlie yeah i mean i definitely i always

[01:59:29] [SPEAKER_03] uh had less tolerance for the the guy who is like let's throw a firecracker in a mailbox i'd be like i'm i'm going home um i find this movie invigorating because i love like new york movies i love how marty tells any story or whatever this has never been like my favorite marty because i don't relate to it very much um but i do i don't love this movie though i gotta beef with this movie this is a big movie for my mom my mom loves this movie why does your mom love it she's new york girl like you know

[01:59:58] [SPEAKER_03] i don't know she i think it was probably she what this is 73 so she was 22 yeah like you know she saw it at the right time and it was thundercrack kind of movie for her like the later marty's are too fucked up i think stuff like taxi driver like she's seen taxi driver right people like she's like oh but those are so dark like and those are so violent mean streets is sort of the appropriate amount of

[02:00:18] [SPEAKER_07] it is fascinating too where it is a movie where even living 50 years past its release date in in a media landscape that is like permanently influenced by what this movie does you feel like you're watching the big bang it doesn't you understand that what you're seeing is all of these things starting to crystallize for the first time everything he's synthesizing together and what he'll do in the rest of his career and how other people will be influenced by

[02:00:47] [SPEAKER_07] it like bonnie and clyde feels that way to me too where even if you've seen all the movies that come after it when you watch bonnie and clyde for the first time you're like i can tell this is them breaking the sound barrier in certain areas totally you're right and there's stuff like mash which for how much i love robert altman that's a movie that i think like you cannot watch without context of what it was coming out of and actually fully understand it because so much

[02:01:11] [SPEAKER_07] of what people like my father who saw it in 1970 and were like this is just no one talked like this stories weren't structured like this when you watch it now it just feels kind of sloppy and there's stuff in mash that i think is incredible there's stuff in mash that is beyond retrograde sure um i haven't seen mash but there's also a lot of it that's just kind of mushy and you're actually almost well david five profundity points but at the time every single thing people were seeing was

[02:01:38] [SPEAKER_07] 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

[02:01:48] [SPEAKER_01] everything it's influenced yeah after yeah it also i feel like you know your mom was the right age like 2022 or whatever like it's just so captures the like in jokes and language of a friendship group and you're like late teens and early 20s you know doesn't it of course and though i never

[02:02:07] [SPEAKER_03] worked for the mob nor hung out at italian american social club say that again let's make sure i never worked for the mob yet my phone number is one two three four five six i never yet is a funny sentence structure they want to call me and offer me a job i have never and i mean never i would like one of those jobs and i may be telling tales at a school here where you do not show up to it and get the

[02:02:31] [SPEAKER_03] money anyway a no show job if they give me one of those one of those please like a mob desk job no you know no show job like the like the whole thing the mob does where they're like you know we run this union now and you're gonna have five extra salaries oh i wonder if the mob is in on podcasting yet all right what i'm in the audio business what do you want from me

[02:02:51] [SPEAKER_07] legitimate business hey i talk to my friends what do you want from me i make audio go boom i turn heads into gum oh boy wow i was looking up uh letterbox logs for this movie and there was uh one from paul schrader from 2019 the before times uh where he just wrote all caps mean streets watched it tonight for the first time in almost 50 years i'd first seen it rough

[02:03:18] [SPEAKER_07] cut what struck me most was how well i remembered it line for line scene for scene needle drop for needle drop and how in place marty's aesthetic was i was tempted to think quote this director's been watching a lot of scorsese films way back then i knew it was very good i fancied myself a film critic after all but i didn't realize it was a fucking roman candle perfect the roman candle thing really

[02:03:41] [SPEAKER_03] stuck with me because it is not you know a movie with like this very clear direction to it it is firing

[02:03:46] [SPEAKER_07] off in all directions and he wasn't seeing it for what it was at the time because also he was part

[02:03:52] [SPEAKER_03] of the movement that it was coming out it's so funny happening i know it is so funny the trader and him find and scorsese like start working together because like scorsese's like the catholic thing versus the calvinist thing like very different approaches to religious sort of guilt and fervor and yeah yeah uh

[02:04:10] [SPEAKER_01] they've made some good movies together but speaking of schrader do you think that like

[02:04:15] [SPEAKER_03] i mean because obviously do you think that his ai facebook posts are good of course i think they're

[02:04:19] [SPEAKER_01] hilarious yeah um we love them but do you think scorsese like obviously i don't think his screenplays are his strengths and i actually think this is one of his strongest screenplays even though you're

[02:04:30] [SPEAKER_03] right it doesn't do anything so much yeah the language the most incredible screenplay and at the same like in the same way of where you're like is this just improvised like all these guys talking like did scorsese really write this down yeah um i mean what are his other screenplays

[02:04:46] [SPEAKER_07] now i want to look but this is when departed came out i feel like he kept making the joke of like it took me 40 years but i finally made a movie with a plot yeah that he always was this guy who you know and he's very self-effacing about it but he talks about it like it's not even that i don't find that stuff interesting i'm not good at it right i don't know how to do it i feel like i've told this story before okay but on the set of vinyl there was this point i was i was in the worst thing

[02:05:12] [SPEAKER_07] scorsese ever directed miriam and let's wait to see shine a light okay let's wait to watch there was a moment the pilot where there was a boardroom scene with like 15 speaking roles which is the worst fucking thing in the world to shoot it's stagnant everyone's at chairs you have to get so much cross coverage and then the angles are like fuck he delivers most of his lines to this guy at one end of the table but one line to the other end of the table so we need to get coverage from

[02:05:38] [SPEAKER_07] the other side as well just for that one line and he comes in and they're like marty what should we get next and he stands there and he's sort of muttering to himself and he's like pointing and doing directions and he's trying to figure out the math on like what coverage are we still owed what do i need what would help me and he just looks up and he goes i've just never been good at

[02:05:57] [SPEAKER_03] this stuff right okay so his scripts are mean streets goodfellas wow no no screenplay credit between those two movies yeah age of innocence casino yeah yeah it's like you know and then like uh silence killers of the flower moon like more recently it's also obviously very hands-on with

[02:06:17] [SPEAKER_07] his writers are his closest friends his closest collaborators he works with the same people often jay cox it's years and years of development um cannavale was like marty what the fuck are you talking about you're martin scorsese you know what coverage you need and he was like i really i just don't have a head for that and 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

[02:06:44] [SPEAKER_07] 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 gonna go to the stuff i feel like i can do better than anyone else and i think similarly he's like i'm not a tight plot construction guy yeah you know and i can do it when i need to and when he does it it's usually the things that are more conventional genre riffs like cape fear or shutter island where he's playing in the tradition of a type of movie and

[02:07:11] [SPEAKER_07] then what he's doing is having fun stylistically or making the performances unconventional within it but left to his own devices it's like what he likes is finding a world what he likes is like digging into the corners what he likes is exploring every little sub dynamic but he's not someone who is

[02:07:28] [SPEAKER_01] 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 um he had drawn everything so he had done a fucking artist so he's had done so but as far as like the actual coverage he brought in the boxcar bertha corman team to be like okay how do we do this like efficiently and stuff but

[02:07:53] [SPEAKER_01] yeah so he had drawn like every every scene and so he had a version in his head of what his perfect

[02:07:59] [SPEAKER_07] movie would look like yeah but then the reason you bring in the corman people is they are like the a team they are like the weirdos who know how to just like fuck well actually if we only have five minutes here's the way to do it like they exceed under pressure right also i want to say the different

[02:08:18] [SPEAKER_01] like what makes this film a little different than the rest is he edited it he edited this and right

[02:08:26] [SPEAKER_03] he's not credited because of guild rules but he says the original editor who is credited he's got a

[02:08:31] [SPEAKER_07] co-credit but there was a guild rule that you couldn't be the sole editor of your own movie he's credited he's not credited like an additional editing or something i don't think he was credited

[02:08:40] [SPEAKER_01] but he did he said he edited it but you couldn't take credit yeah so the original edit was terrible by whoever gets credit so this is like so so shoemaker felma shoemaker did um did his first one um who's that knocking but and then so and this one is is like is marty without felma yes right well

[02:08:59] [SPEAKER_07] she's also like working on woodstock for years yeah uh but no but woodstock comes out in 70 okay

[02:09:06] [SPEAKER_03] which he worked on too obviously but she is sort of what i mean that's where they reconnect or yeah but she doesn't come back to him until raging bull yeah which is crazy uh like taxi driver is edited by somebody else i forget uh yeah marsh lucas uh and todd rolf oh i forgot i actually have some

[02:09:21] [SPEAKER_07] interesting points about marsh lucas i'm gonna make in the next episode what were you gonna say maria

[02:09:25] [SPEAKER_01] well you can edit this out because it's probably you're gonna get to it but is new york new york

[02:09:29] [SPEAKER_07] very bounced oh yes oh yes new york new york is the first bounce this is a classic i mean this is interesting an arc of but the way we used to when the show started and things were more narrow and we were like we need people who fit into these very classic tight arcs the first 10 years of his career

[02:09:53] [SPEAKER_07] 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 gonna let you elevate to taxi driver which is the crazy breakthrough and then he cashes that in on new york new york where people are like

[02:10:11] [SPEAKER_03] you're fucking done and new york new york is just the classic bounce of like he spent too much money on a movie that didn't need to be expensive and he had like right a whole artistic idea of like how to present this story and do a musical differently it's very thin everyone's like ah it's very similar

[02:10:25] [SPEAKER_07] 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 there's a little bit of cocaine and then raging bull is the like i gotta show people i can just like focus it up again but like king of comedy is a bounce i mean he's got a lot of bounces i'm saying just that no i know you're i i agree with you because who who's that knocking is 69 or 70 67 so it's 67 to and then raging bull is 80 yeah that's where

[02:10:55] [SPEAKER_07] there's a real tight like sort of this is how a career develops grows crashes rebounds and then the

[02:11:01] [SPEAKER_03] 80s are up and down you disagree david i see i no i don't disagree i the 80s are more up i mean like last temptation nominally made money yeah like it did ruin things for him a little bit yeah and like his other big bombs are king of comedy that's a huge bomb yes like that makes no money and was framed as an embarrassment like people were like shame on you yeah right yeah and bringing out the dead was like honestly like a really big bomb yeah because that movie is also pretty expensive and

[02:11:30] [SPEAKER_03] that was i feel like bringing out the dead is another kind of low point for him career wise of like why should studios keep giving you money you know like when we were talking about after that he's been

[02:11:41] [SPEAKER_07] able to do whatever we were talking about because the series is so long did we like split it in half and do we do a little short series in between so that there's a little bit of a break in marty and every time probably not gonna do it feels like there's enough new releases coming out the end of this year in the beginning of next so that will kind of naturally happen yeah it's fine but when we talked about it i was always adamant the only place to break it up is 1999 to 2001 right because like

[02:12:05] [SPEAKER_07] what happens between the 20th century and the 21st century is leo unlocks everything and it feels like from gangs of new york on he's working with bigger budgets than he's ever worked with yes he's got this hot young star who will do anything for him and everyone is like it's time when's he getting the fucking oscar and then after he gets the oscar it's like he gets to do whatever he wants and bringing out the dead feels like the last time there is like an attempt at doing a classic

[02:12:32] [SPEAKER_07] scorsese movie that doesn't work for people a movie i love and think it's a masterpiece yes but his otter films in the 21st century are him going way outside of his wheelhouse miriam are there movies

[02:12:47] [SPEAKER_03] you don't like or love good are there marty's you sort of respect or stick up for what i do not like

[02:12:53] [SPEAKER_01] the aviator but that might be partly because i'm too loyal to the source material i do not like seeing a katherine heffern invitation i need to see it again i but also i'm very curious i'm excited

[02:13:04] [SPEAKER_07] to also haven't seen it since it's never been a favorite release i've seen it since release but

[02:13:08] [SPEAKER_03] it does so many bananas visual things that i bet i will enjoy on rewatch i think i would too and

[02:13:14] [SPEAKER_01] it's like early leo like you were saying that transition and i was like um let's see wait is there anything i i don't remember loving bringing uh bringing out the dead but and possibly worth a rewatch yeah and then but and so i think the only one i haven't seen is the color of money color money rocks yeah i bet movie right i never think of it as a real scorsese but i know it is

[02:13:36] [SPEAKER_07] i know his 80s are so weird because that's kind of like a commercial play of like you got to get back in the good graces of the studio and it's a big hit and he gets newman an oscar but there was a little bit of like scorsese sold out right and then after hours is him trying to be like i can be responsible i can make a low budget thing i can like get on base but it's like a comedy it's not seen as like a major work it's it's fascinating how up and down he was there yeah and yeah i like

[02:14:04] [SPEAKER_01] but the rest i love i love i love i was i was saying if i didn't do this i would do shutter island love that yeah i love shutter island so much that's gonna be a fun app i love you guys i'm in good company oh miriam we love you too i can't wait to see who's gonna do kundun we have we have we

[02:14:21] [SPEAKER_07] guess lining up around the block well let's let's just say the dalai lama is a blankie i don't know if we can get him because you know we ask people to be in person we don't want to do

[02:14:31] [SPEAKER_01] a zoom episode but yeah kundun famously filmed in the same place as ishtar really yeah same studio in Morocco that that fucking i've visited the kundun set it's amazing and and kundun the soundtrack

[02:14:43] [SPEAKER_07] is mostly rogers and clark right they use mostly their yeah that's the director's cut um i i've never seen kundun before and i've never seen last temptation i'm very eager to see you've never seen

[02:14:54] [SPEAKER_03] last temptation is amazing best i just re-watched it which caused our fans to go insane being like they're recording out of order i was like nope right we watched it not because of the podcast yeah let us let us watch movies let me watch my movies please let us watch movies let's do the box office game for mean streets which came out i i should actually before i do the box office game i should just note its release it premiered kind of a surprising choice here at the new york film

[02:15:21] [SPEAKER_03] festival huh i don't know why they picked that one interesting uh no yeah so um it premieres in fall of 73 at the new york film festival um warner brothers had you know it does end up distributing it they get shopped around and they pick it up um and you know what in that link later

[02:15:41] [SPEAKER_07] things was saying they showed it to columbia maybe and they passed on it they showed to a different studio paramount paramount thank you and then they went over to warner brothers and he was like we're there with all the warner brothers execs and they're getting their sandwiches delivered we're screening the movie for the second time in two days the first day they were like this is well-made kid but there's no money here right right and he's like i'm i'm spooling my movie up it's starting and the guys are

[02:16:08] [SPEAKER_07] arguing over like is that the corned beef i got the corned beef and he was like i'm losing them and then de niro came on screen right and one of the guys looked up and went like oh this guy's interesting and then they all started looking and they all started engaging with the movie and they bought it you have to imagine that's a moment that changes his entire life where he's like huh this guy unlocks doors for me yeah there's something here that is undeniable that translates

[02:16:36] [SPEAKER_07] 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

[02:16:47] [SPEAKER_01] totally that's a that's so true and such a good story but also i think what was happening then is that the guys were like these warner brothers guys were like oh i know a guy like that i know what's that mean like he's just like a guy from back home and that was also the thing for scorsese he was like yes like if this works for if this if this is familiar to people then this works people

[02:17:07] [SPEAKER_07] don't want to watch a movie about a guy like me they want to watch a movie about the guys i know yeah and the movies can still be personal but yes if i can put those guys on screen i really have

[02:17:17] [SPEAKER_03] something um so the release strategy scorsese was not very happy with um you know uh warner brothers didn't really know what to do and was against them opening in new york because i think new york film festival was not really as glitzy back then maybe no um and they had no idea how to sell the picture i mean it's funny because the poster's so iconic but don't you think i mean like yeah it's

[02:17:42] [SPEAKER_03] such a famous poster yeah but they don't have stars yet no yeah um the exorcist is coming out around the same time although it is not in the top five so that's not a spoiler thank god okay and warner brothers is more worried about that they don't really care about mean streets um so the film comes out it gets nice reviews it makes three million dollars domestically but it maybe doesn't it's not like a huge hit and it was interesting in that link later combo we watched where link later

[02:18:11] [SPEAKER_03] they were talking about how it got no oscar nominations it got de niro got a couple critics

[02:18:15] [SPEAKER_07] he got like the new york and national yes he got national society and new york film critics circle supporting actor and it got a wga nom um but like the oscars ignored it but marty was like nobody saw

[02:18:26] [SPEAKER_03] it like it was just not like a widely seen movie the academy was different but also just it wasn't

[02:18:30] [SPEAKER_07] like really out there very it didn't feel like we were in the conversation he wasn't surprised it

[02:18:34] [SPEAKER_03] didn't get the nominations uh right so when this film was coming out number one at the box office this is crazy is i believe i think it's a double feature the way i'm reading this chart um i think it's a double well i don't think that this chart is trying to tell me it's a tie i think that these were double features because the first is like an erotic comedy okay uh you know i think a bit of a

[02:19:00] [SPEAKER_03] fun sexy movie for you to go see i'm gonna hum and a hum and then the other is an animated film that is famously raunchy and i imagine they were being presented okay so fritz the cat fritz the cat is the first is the animated film the first one the 1972 you know the back she fritz the cat and then it was on a double bill with yeah i doubt you've heard the other it's a sex comedy directed by paul glickler uh you i don't know why i'm trying to give you guys clues it's called the cheerleaders

[02:19:26] [SPEAKER_03] oh my god i was gonna say paul glicker was at the cheerleaders okay i was wondering miriam i was a patronizer 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

[02:19:41] [SPEAKER_01] later ah that's pretty good though the cheerleaders they're pretty fucking good these great softcore films that hey that they made like i think three of them and all these like experimental filmmakers

[02:19:51] [SPEAKER_03] like worked on yes the swinging cheerleaders in 74 and then uh cheerleaders wild weekend at one point i don't know there's a bunch of them abstract tna love these films it's just cheerleaders uh having fun so that was the same week that so this is the right that is number one at the box so that is number one number two is a martial arts film probably the most famous martial arts

[02:20:15] [SPEAKER_07] film ever made i'm sorry i'm on the cheerleaders wikipedia page right up at the top uh this article needs additional citations for verifications july 2013 someone flagged this 13 years ago and has not followed up on it but also there's a section at the bottom that says streaming media and then it just says the film is often available at licensed streaming movie sites with two citations oh interesting feels like a real abandoned wiki page yes sorry number two at the box office what's the most

[02:20:45] [SPEAKER_07] famous martial arts movie ever made enter the dragon so that's number two australis right correct uh and

[02:20:52] [SPEAKER_03] that's been in the box office for three months at this point and it's a huge hit that's another

[02:20:56] [SPEAKER_07] example though of like his other films had been you know kind of cult successes and it was like he's finally ceded into the consciousness enough that everyone's ready for the big mainstream breakthrough warner brothers makes a bruce lee movie and then he dies and it becomes a phenomenon because it's like fuck this is the final object um do you like enter the dragon i haven't seen it i need to do a double

[02:21:20] [SPEAKER_03] feature with fucking awesome with uh reservoir dogs yeah number three at the box office is a porn film so like i think cheerleaders is more like softcore but like this is like a classic like golden age of porn movie um is a green door not behind the green door um uh misty beethoven not misty beethoven not deep throat it's not emmanuel not no it's not it's not the horny ellis in wonderland no no uh

[02:21:48] [SPEAKER_03] devil and miss jones i knew i knew just like name the big ones yeah the devil in miss jones the gerard uh damiano is that his name right who's the guy that who also did characters basically

[02:22:01] [SPEAKER_07] based on right uh who also made a movie uh i apologize in advance to all of our listeners and our guests uh let my puppets come wow gerard damiano made a puppet porn film wow that was not presented as like this is like a parody of porn it was like do people want to jerk off to puppets and so the parody

[02:22:25] [SPEAKER_07] if the title is a parody of let let my people come and instead it's just horny puppets i'd like an apology as well i own it on vinegar syndrome blu-ray um 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 notes free friedkin

[02:22:52] [SPEAKER_03] calls devil really good essay in the book says devil miss jones is the best like porn movie of those of

[02:22:57] [SPEAKER_01] that era because it like has a plot i saw it at bologna at this film festival for restorations it was so it was weird to watch a film with like you know all these like academics and stuff it is right

[02:23:12] [SPEAKER_03] it was it was weird but no it's it's what i've seen it she she kills herself and then like the devil right is like or the innate like an angel or is basically like there's like an you can earn your place in hell by being a horny lady on earth something i think something like that there's

[02:23:29] [SPEAKER_01] sort of a celestial element to it yeah the cheerleaders has a better plot where like if you want to win the football game you have to like out fuck the other team right i mean look we love a

[02:23:40] [SPEAKER_07] good uh let my puppets come has a plot uh owning owing a mob boss half a million dollars that must be paid within 24 hours a group of executives come up with ideas foreign films a pornographic movie but the characters are puppets it's kind of it's i i i watch the movie for the story of course that's what

[02:23:59] [SPEAKER_03] i watch it for number four the box office this is a crazy box office because it's all kind of like you know undergroundy kind of movies is like uh a chinese um action movie starring the female bruce lee

[02:24:15] [SPEAKER_07] as she was built oh um uh is this

[02:24:23] [SPEAKER_03] fuck sorry tell me the actor is called judy lee yes the film is called queen boxer okay yep uh and i've never seen it but she's like a kickboxer who's taking revenge or whatever yes and uh yeah uh that's number four that's new this week and then number five is well it's a film that uh you just told me that um the director wanted marty to be in uh let my puppets come this was another thing revealed

[02:24:51] [SPEAKER_07] in the link later thing that uh american graffiti is basically filming the same time as uh mean streets and that george lucas wanted scorsese as an actor in the film to be the leader of the pharaohs he said in american graffiti which of course is one of the biggest hits of 73 and he said george i i i don't even

[02:25:09] [SPEAKER_03] drive i'm from new york i'm not a california we should note of course that marty is in mean streets and does shoot robert de niro in the neck with a gun yeah nice work if you could get we didn't really talk about the ending but the ending is so fucking insane like it really i love that you just don't know what happens to johnny boy or really to any of them you know that they're making

[02:25:27] [SPEAKER_07] it to the hospital it's the other part that was making me think of mikey and nicky that it just like the the big dramatic burst of violence happens and the movie ends like immediately and then you get

[02:25:36] [SPEAKER_01] 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 um and weird music that's such a crazy ending what were you gonna say ben when

[02:25:48] [SPEAKER_02] they're on their way to brooklyn i wrote down this really funny quote from kytel do i know brooklyn do i know the jungle and i just love that at that time brooklyn all the outer boroughs were truly just

[02:26:00] [SPEAKER_07] like no man's land for people in manhattan it's not even that it's just you don't leave your place sure you got your spot this is your neighborhood this is where your people are you know they filmed it

[02:26:12] [SPEAKER_01] in brooklyn i mean it was it took place in brooklyn so they could film it in la yeah i think david

[02:26:16] [SPEAKER_03] already talked about that yeah uh yes um so how long has american graffiti been out at this point american graffiti's been out for 11 weeks so you know uh three months so other films uh a reissue of clockwork orange is number six okay that's obviously a couple years old at this point a reissue of camelot the musical is at number seven and a reissue of the last of sheila oh sure with richard benjamin is number eight yeah then you have electro glide in blue at number

[02:26:42] [SPEAKER_03] 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 with robert post-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 blaxploitation but it's like a sort of like all

[02:27:07] [SPEAKER_03] black cast action thriller uh from paramount like a big sort of actiony movie um with billy d

[02:27:14] [SPEAKER_01] williams and a young richard pryor i just remember that when we were talking about the soundtrack i wanted to um mention uh michael schultz's cooley high which was two years later yes and that used all these motown songs and that he said recently he said like it was dirt cheap to get those songs then and then just like right after this and that then they went yeah they were everywhere i'm sorry

[02:27:36] [SPEAKER_07] what were you gonna say no i was just gonna say scorsese in in that dga thing said um badlands was the closing night film at new york film festival the same year yeah i guess that makes sense 73 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 heat and the

[02:28:01] [SPEAKER_07] 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 released in 74 i believe but it was the closing film of the

[02:28:16] [SPEAKER_03] 73 new york film festival yeah yeah the big 73 movie is obviously exorcist yeah well i don't know what wins best picture that year um uh for 73 it's not the godfather i'll tell you that much that was 72 it is the sting yeah it's the sting which you know was a giant hit that everybody loved but also is

[02:28:37] [SPEAKER_07] is a very old-fashioned movie not just in being a period piece but well they play the piano like 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 10 years we keep swinging back and forth and then mean

[02:29:01] [SPEAKER_01] streets plays directors fortnight at can right and that's like you still see it if you guys go like they do this like kind of screensaver sort of like iphone kind of collage of all the films that have played and they always play mean streets and sean dillman so it's it's an iconic directors

[02:29:19] [SPEAKER_07] fortnight that's also so funny because it must have been like six months after the movie came out in the

[02:29:23] [SPEAKER_03] states right um yeah but back then no no yeah yeah so the film obviously holds a special place in party's heart because it's so personal but he says he's never really sat down and watched it from beginning to end because it's too close and indeed he wanted to make a sequel about charlie living on staten island with a couple kids again i am kind of like and what is the story of this film like it

[02:29:49] [SPEAKER_03] can't just be charlie hanging out yeah like this johnny boy come back when he's dead you're talking robo johnny boy well you don't know that he's dead you don't you don't know what happened yeah like you see he gets shot he's bleeding out and he like runs into the street you assume johnny boy is

[02:30:03] [SPEAKER_01] probably not making it but like i've heard him say that nobody dies but that they can never go back and like that's how he reads it is that they don't die or maybe we don't know but if he survives he

[02:30:14] [SPEAKER_07] needs people basically to think that he's dead at the very least they just can't go back and so they're exiled yeah that's that's interesting yeah uh instead instead uh warner brothers who had released this film and found him very promising right uh through him alice doesn't live here

[02:30:30] [SPEAKER_03] anymore as a challenge right which comes out basically like one year later like so it's like he goes right to that and whereas i assume taxi driver well but that's schrader's thing so like i don't even know that he's like nursing tax like it's like i don't think after this of course says he's like okay and now no new york new york that was his i guess that's the next i saw an

[02:30:49] [SPEAKER_01] interview i read an interview and he's like the next thing on his mind is new york new york i need again it's another genre i did the gangster film now i do the musical he knows it's going to take

[02:30:57] [SPEAKER_07] a lot of money and a lot of production resources to put that movie together he needs to play the studio game right to be able to be entrusted because it's the only game back then yeah and

[02:31:06] [SPEAKER_03] like it's funny because it's like all right so jaws is what 75 yeah and american graffiti is 73 depalma's like sisters is what 72 like what's depalma doing depalma's probably in the weirdest

[02:31:19] [SPEAKER_07] place yeah because what carrie's not until 78 carrie's 76 76 okay but so you know all these guys

[02:31:25] [SPEAKER_03] are trying shit and doing exciting stuff right um but they're not quite you know they're not quite atop the hollywood pile yet whereas coppola is like immediately atop the hollywood pile after he does

[02:31:35] [SPEAKER_07] he was also older than all of them 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

[02:31:50] [SPEAKER_03] things my 73 list is i mean like my favorite movies that year don't look now and long goodbye and the exorcist and spirit of the beehive and shit like that which you know like the great fucking rules period of beehives pretty cool yeah that guy rocks i don't know if you've seen any of his other films actually they're all good i mean i mean like three yeah do you like victor

[02:32:10] [SPEAKER_03] riche yeah like riche riche um also a great band spirit of the beehive really yeah uh let's be done

[02:32:20] [SPEAKER_07] let's stop talking about are there any other sort of uh general overarching uh scorsese uh takes or thoughts in your relationship with him and his work that you want to throw out as we start this journey

[02:32:31] [SPEAKER_01] for months i think i've i've i've drained the scorsese love for now but i i i love him forever yeah i mean he's the best he's like 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 departed is is is amazing like now that i've seen more hong kong movies i'm like this movie

[02:32:57] [SPEAKER_01] fucking rocks it's also it's it's just so watchable when will he work with mark with mark walberg

[02:33:04] [SPEAKER_07] it's crazy because nice for him to rescue walberg 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 thing 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 monaghan wrote a

[02:33:30] [SPEAKER_07] departed sequel to star walbert yes and that was in pre-production was on board to direct it and warner brothers said we don't believe that walberg can carry this movie okay it was gonna be

[02:33:43] [SPEAKER_01] de niro was the only one nominated in that film that's crazy although that is also crazy that that

[02:33:49] [SPEAKER_07] happened but de niro was going to play it was gonna be the fucking rat in congress right like the final shot de niro was gonna play like a corrupt congressman i just died yeah and it was gonna be walberg all this i'm not saying anything prior to but i know it'd be funny though if like him

[02:34:05] [SPEAKER_03] what's like the stupidest thing like turns out martin sheen didn't die he's just like in traction i'm trying to think of like the worst departed sequel sure like you know what else happened

[02:34:13] [SPEAKER_07] but he was i think it was at the rap party and he was like holding court with a bunch of us youngins and he was like i i was ready to make it the film won best picture it was a big hit i had mark walberg he's a movie star they went they wouldn't do it is it martin you don't see the vision sure well i mean that's funny he he was like i've given up on it i spent five years trying i i'm not it's over miriam is there anything you want to plug um no i'm just uh you're vibing

[02:34:38] [SPEAKER_03] 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

[02:34:42] [SPEAKER_07] the show again it's so nice and far too long it's uh yeah years long project there have been other episodes we've circled and then trips change i mean no i'm sorry no no there's one i would have love to do which like vamps oh yeah that's right yeah which now we've both said i fucking love vamps vamps yeah i told you i hosted a vamp screening in la i think that movie's awesome yeah um anyway it's

[02:35:07] [SPEAKER_01] such an honor to be on this episode for this series and nice to have you so glad it worked out

[02:35:13] [SPEAKER_07] um and thank you all for listening please remember to rate review and subscribe uh as we go through five

[02:35:20] [SPEAKER_03] more months of martin scorsese yes next week will be alice doesn't live here anymore another gangster

[02:35:27] [SPEAKER_07] picture oh god oh the same thing every week why don't you try silence we are going to try on

[02:35:35] [SPEAKER_03] burst yeah right she once told griffin to shut the fuck up in a nice way well it wasn't nice but in a

[02:35:41] [SPEAKER_07] in a polite way the way she said it was griffin try silence who said that ellen burston academy award winner ellen burston oh my god devastating things that has ever happened to anyone i think to anyone it was incredible i wear it as a badge of honor but uh and then you went on to become a professional

[02:35:57] [SPEAKER_02] talker yeah you know what you know what ellen you know what ellen and it's good that you didn't

[02:36:03] [SPEAKER_07] anyway tune in next week tune in next week as against her wishes we talk extensively about ellen 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 for film history ben sure and there's

[02:36:28] [SPEAKER_07] some good puppetry in it i don't endorse what the puppets are doing i don't like it they can do it if

[02:36:36] [SPEAKER_02] they want i'm not telling them they can't do it blank check with griffin and david is hosted by griffin newman and david sims our executive producer is me ben hosley our creative producer is marie bardi salinas and our associate producer is aj mckeon this show is mixed and edited by aj mckeon and alan smithy research by jj birch our theme song is by lane montgomery in the great american novel with additional music by alex mitchell artwork by joe bowen ollie moss and pat reynolds

[02:37:06] [SPEAKER_02] our production assistant is minick special thanks to david choe jordan fish and nate patterson for their production help head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all the real nerdy shit join our patreon blank check special features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes follow us on social at blank check pod subscribe to our weekly newsletter checkbook on substack this podcast is created and produced by blank check production

[02:37:35] [SPEAKER_00] hey it's ryan reynolds here for mint mobile now i was looking for fun ways to tell you that mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for 15 a month is back so i thought it would be fun if we made 15 bills but it turns out that's very illegal uh so there goes my big idea for the commercial give it a

[02:37:54] [SPEAKER_04] try at mint mobile.com slash switch up front payment of 45 for three months 90 for six months or 180 for 12 month plan required 15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy see terms