Midweek Mention... Mean Streets

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Mean streets. Mean streets. The quote is the quote that you put in the group. You don't make up your sins in church. Yeah. You do it on the street. Well, this is the thing. And I was slightly confused because I've definitely seen this before, but I barely remember. And what I I said to you this morning, what I do remember is Bobby's haircut. Because he's got a trim on him. Yeah, it's not his absolute debut. De Niro, is it? But this is like breakthrough kind of role for him. 1975.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

1973, actually. It's a 73. Again, not his debut, but right, you know, put him on the map, yeah. Yeah. Harvey Kaitel. Yeah, it starts off Harvey Kaitel, it's the voiceover of that line. You don't make up your sins in church. He's lying in bed in his sort of crummy little apartment. And then the music kicks in, and you're getting like Goodfellas DNA, like straight away. It's like you can see the genesis of that in here. Because this is sort of low-level gangstery kind of stuff going on in here.

SPEAKER_03 1:17

And I love Kaitel. I mean, he just he looks so young here, like you know, and and knowing the career that he then went on to have, and obviously the the collaborations they they went to have, but this was also for De Niro and for Harvey, like, you know, big deal. W working in the these this kind of film and it was. Well, they'll do a lead role, right? Yeah, well it it blew up their careers as well. Yeah.

unknown 1:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

So Harvey Cartel's playing Charlie Kappa. Yeah. Yeah, kind of small time. But he's got the uncle who looks like he's a made man. Uncle Giovanni. Yeah, Uncle Giovanni. And he's trying to make his way whilst also being kind of haunted by his religious sort of thing.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

Yeah, he's Catholic kind of he's a Catholic good boy. And yeah, the whole throughout the whole film he's he's kind of got this conflict, hasn't he, between the the church and what he knows to be right in the way that the Catholic guilt, basically. Yeah. And and being a big thing.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

And you can see him putting the hand on the on the candles to to s basically that like you say, he's to to influentializing me that I just go into s say ten Hill Marys, ten this, ten that, and that's it. Doesn't sit right with me. That doesn't He wants to feel the fire of hell, doesn't he?

SPEAKER_03 2:34

He wants to feel like where he feels that he might be heading towards in in some way, shape, or for one day. So they just yeah, playing on that. He's Charlie is 'cause it's quite a small neighbourhood.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

This is what I was gonna say, is it's a very close place where they where all the action happens.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

And everyone knows each other, and the mafia obviously there, and people having to pay pay their protection money and all that. And there's a couple of people get a bit fucking annoyed by that, and people owe money, but you know, everyone knows everyone's business. And then you got Johnny Boy, that's De Niro's character. He seems to owe money to fucking everyone. He's so loose, just completely reckless and almost like self-well, he is. He's a human hand grenade, he's just walking around. He's got no respect for anyone. No, he's just he's playing with fire. And Charlie then He's like Reeds after a few drinks. Yeah. Yeah. Loose cancer. He's absolutely loose cannot. And Charlie's sort of taking it on himself to kind of look after him.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Maybe partly because he's also shagging Johnny Boy's cousin Teresa, who's really hot in this. Yeah. And he does say to someone, to Michael, because that he that's the one that kind of three is a re recurring theme, that he keeps coming back to Johnny Boy for the money he's old. Yeah. And he's like, Well, you know Charlie says to him, he's like, you know, it's family, but he's not family, but he's family. Yeah. You know how it is. So so there's either he knew the dad or there was a something there, plus the cousin, and that's all they're and they live together sometimes and they're best mates, really.

SPEAKER_02 4:12

It's also the fact that he owes the money and he's not he's not forthcoming with the payment, even he has got no means to be paid. He's in he's in over. But to them it's not well he also doesn't make an effort. No, and he's told at certain points like meet us here, you know, with the money or we're gonna come find you. And it's not necessarily the fact that he doesn't have the money, it's that he doesn't give a fuck, and there's no zero respects, and that is almost worse than the fact that he doesn't want to be paid. Yeah. So Charlie's having to sort of counsel him and say, you know, this is fucking serious shit, you need to, you know, step up here. And he's so erratic at one point he's just on the like roof of the apartment building, just shooting. With a gun with a gun. Just shooting random things. He's trying to shoot the light off the Empire State Building or what? Which is 15 miles away. Just about see it. And then he just shoots into someone's apartment and he's like, Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to do that. He's just completely like reckless. Yeah. And so he is given, he's basically given this ultimatum by Michael, I think. By Michael, say, You're meeting us at this bar. This guy, it's a big fat dude in one of the bars, but he's he just refuses. They've got this. I hadn't heard this term before.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

And I've only ever Yeah, movie says it says I'm not paying That's the only thing I remember about this movie was mook. You're a mook.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

You don't call me a mook, and then you're a fucking mook. What was a mook? Yeah, me.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

They have a kickoff, don't they, in that bar as he refuses to pay a mook. And they're like, Would you call me? And then they have this sort of fight.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

That's the s only scene I remember from the whole movie.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

And then so the the policeman comes down and he's just so brazenly in front of all of them, just takes a bribe to just go off. It's just like uh and he just just you know He's like, Well, halfway are you gonna drive New Jersey?

SPEAKER_01 5:53

And he gives him like a twenty.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

He's like, Okay, no. It's a bit more. And then he's told, Johnny was told, No, you have to be at this place at eight, and if you're not there, we'll come find you. And he's not there. He hasn't got any money. Charlie lends him or just gives him I think it's like thirty dollars to try and just like take the edge off what is gonna happen. Which he spumps loaded out on booze at the bar when he does turn up. He's an hour late, I think, to for the meeting. After he's basically they find him and drag him down there, and the the guy's Michael's you know applying some fucking pretty serious.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Well initially he just smiles and rightly so, because the Nero kind of goes and gives him ten. Yeah. And Harvey Kart is there looking at him like, I just gave you thirty twenty minutes ago. Sorry, you're late.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

I was waiting so much. I had to buy drinks for these guys. I had to. So the gu Michael just screws up the ten dollar, throws it at him, and he says, Well, you're too good for this ten. This is this is to do us with goodness, but like it he's sort of almost over the top in in quite a lot of his role, because he's that much of a fucking loony. Yeah. And this bit he's he gets angry and he he unscrews it up and says, Well, you're too good for this ten dollars, and then he pulls the gun on him, and the guy's like, You haven't got the fucking paws.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

And then obviously, when the guy leaves, they take the gun off him and he's like, it's not loaded, there's no bullets in this gun.

SPEAKER_02 7:20

And the the bar owner's like, listen, you guys better take off because you've just fucking.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Yeah, you know what's coming. This guy's a main man. You owe him three grand, was down to two grand, you didn't want to pay any of that. Now he's gonna come after you.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

We're a main man. Yeah, you don't literally you don't fit in the mains. Charlie Teresa and Johnny Boyd take off. They're a very nice car. He says at one point, it says there isn't initially, let's just go to the movies. I think you need to go a bit further afield than just the four movies. So they drive off and they get drive-by. I'd forg I'd comp I'd seen this once before, but I'd forgotten how it ended. So Michael, and I think it's Scorsese that actually pulls the trigger. I can't remember it looks like him by the time. His mother's in it as well.

SPEAKER_03 8:05

His friends pulled into the movie, it's not like he had you know the name of artist or the Irishman. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:13

Because Theresa at one point has a seizure, doesn't she? And it's that's definitely Scorsese. That's Scorsese's mum, because she looks exactly the same in the like she hasn't recognized a day between the two movies. So they drive off, and yeah, this car pulls up next to them and they shoot Johnny Boy through the neck, I think. So erratic still.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

But when and you can see, I think Hiber Kaito gets shot in the arm, and then Theresa are the same in in the room. I'm not sure if she was here or she was just in shock, yeah, or not, because you can see the arm through the through the windshield at the end.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

He Charlie crashes the car over a fire hydrant sort of into a wall, and it's sort of left. We're not entirely sure. Is Johnny Boyd dead? I don't even know. I think he's bleeding out.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

No, he's because the ambulance comes and he's already out, and he's just kind of stumbling on the pavement on the sidewalk. So maybe it just went into his shoulder, but it did seem like it was properly like spraying out. Spray out of his jugular.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

Yeah. So he was in a bad way anyway. Uh that was just kind of how it ends.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

And Charlie's sort of picked up and put in the ambulance. Yeah, Charlie's four times in the ambulance. And there's it's at the end, there's a nice shot of all the characters in the film, that the ones that like the guy in the bar, the bar owner who kind of sits there and it's like, well, he hasn't got any more mates now. There's the black girl with the boobs that does the dancing. She sits in the cafe by herself, kind of still waiting for a date that never comes. There's the Michael with driving away with the gunman in the back. So they're all this kind of pfft what everyone is. He's in the ambulance, she's going in the ambulance, he's gonna get taken to hospital, and then the movie ends. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Yeah, it's got so much you can see Scorsese's DNA, you know, in it the the way that the music, it's so reminiscent of it's like if we visited it with God with good fellas and just like done it. Done it. You know, with all his new experience and taking it to the next level. But it's got all this this like Catholicism stuff in there, the the gangster.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Well, it's the Catholicism, the Jewish girl at the bar.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

Yeah, it's still quite a small community. Yeah. It's got all of that in there. It's got a great shot, which I think he inverted course might have invented this, but they strap the camera to Harvey Kinson, he's getting pissed. Yeah. And so you get this effect of him walking around and the camera moves directly with wherever he moves, and it's really disorientating, and it's a great effect for having someone look like really drunk. Yeah. And I think that was the first time that was done in this in this movie. Oh, that's cool, yeah. It's really good.

SPEAKER_03 10:35

Yeah, 73. I mean, they're still finding, you know, new ways in in which to to shoot films like this, which is a really gritty film. It's it's obviously a lower budget kind of movie as well, but with these big stars in it who went on to become, you know, huge household names and everything, yeah, it's it's mean streets, you know. It's it was never gonna with a name like that, it was never gonna finish nicely. So having blood and sort of sirens and a taxi driver about it as well.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

And there's no redemption for anyone in it. No. You know, it's just like this cycle of you know, this is just like crime, it's just endless, these people are just gonna carry on. No one there's no sort of redemption for anyone, really. You can see that Charlie's kind of got this conflict going on and he's sort of got a good heart, but also he's just tied up in this city Catholic kind, you know, he's got a guilt.

SPEAKER_03 11:26

Yeah. You know, he he he's kind of scared for his soul as much as anything else, and and trying to obviously if you're grown up in a where you're going to church all the time and you're told you're going to hell if you do the bad things that he gets caught up into doing, then that's why he's burning his hand over candles and and feeling the the flames of hell or or you know, and he doesn't feel like saying a few Hell Marys is anywhere near enough for the the guilt he's feeling and the things that he's doing, it's too cheap a a way out for him. So But yeah, and I imagine, you know, Scorsese's He's growing up, his his his own kind of life is just he's seen these characters around, you know, he's seen these kind of people, he's seen these accidents, he's seen these stories and things, and then mixed them all in to make this massive, massive coat fiend at this period of his life as well.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

In the 70s he was like an asset. The film actually is quite loose in terms of its structure and the way it's you can see his deck. He kind of jumps from one. Yeah, he tightens that up as he as he goes through. But this is I don't know if this was his first feature length, or it was certainly the one that got him a lot of recognition. And you can kind of recognise people that we know in joining board. If there's people that just seem to be fucking causing, or if there's trouble, it seems to find them. Do you know what I mean? Like we played with people at football that you know, you go out and you know, sort of think there's always something happening with them.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Anything could happen and it probably will. Yeah. Um I have to say though, the the one thing that I I found really, really interesting is that, or funny at the same time, is because obviously I worked in hospitality for so long is when he goes in the kitchen because there's this Yeah, he always says kitchen scenes. There's this restaurant uh guy that he owes money to his uncle, and that he's led to believe that if that guy doesn't pay, he's gonna take over the restaurant. He's like, he should make a custom to yourself with how it is here, just go and have a look around, have a look. So I've been here a million times. Like go and have a look inside because it's gonna be your place. And he's like, Alright, okay, son, goes in the kitchen. The guy makes some food, massive Siggy, just throws a few pieces. Honestly, the kitchen looks like a bomb exploded in there.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Yeah, it's like one of the worst episodes of Gordon's like.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Yeah, minus not even getting a star.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

So you know it's like in those they they do that in Goodverse, aren't they? They take over the bar and they just set fire to it, just take the insurance money and they don't need all that shit in their life. Yeah. So yeah, this was this was real good to watch again.

SPEAKER_03 13:51

A a lot of it was shot in LA rather than That means Los Angeles. Yeah. Oh really? Okay. So those those of you who are regular listeners, you might already know that would bring out those gems every now and again. But again, budget-wise, he couldn't afford to go out there. So that a lot of the wizardry around the shooting and everything was invented out of necessity rather than because they Right, they didn't want to do it. They had the budget to do everything, you know. But yeah, it it is a classic. It kind of kicked off a whole host of other gangster films as well as you know, gave De Niro and Kaitel, you know, that kind of stereotypical character they could just put out any time.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

It got De Niro the recognition to then go on and fucking do what he did, which is he was 30 when this movie came on.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Bobby. Yeah. Bobby. It's got a great do. Oh yeah, he looks a bit like Oasis, like the the Well, Noel Gallagher or Liam.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

I say more Noel.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Both the same.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

1973 sideburns content must have been off the charts, I would imagine.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

And the perm, the perm with Italians. The costumes are great though. The way they dress and all that. Silk shirts. Yeah, and you can see when he gets that shirt with the C B or whatever on it, then he just kind of almost like caresses it before he wears it. It's amazing. But yeah, strong recommend. It's very strong. Very strong. Yeah. On prime, just under two hours. It's it's it's strong. Yeah.