The Unnominated: Mean Streets (dir by Martin Scorsese)

Posted on January 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked. Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial. Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released. This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were, for whatever reason, overlooked. These are the Unnominated.

“Honorable men go with honorable men.” — Giovanni Cappa

1973’s Mean Streets is a story about Little Italy. The neighborhood may only be a small part of the sprawling metropolis of New York but, as portrayed in this film, it’s a unique society of its very own, with its own laws and traditions. It’s a place where the old ways uneasily mix with the new world. The neighborhood is governed by old-fashioned mafiosos like Giovanni Cappa (Cesare Danova), who provide “protection” in return for payment. The streets are full of men who are all looking to prove themselves, often in the most pointlessly violent way possible. When a drunk (David Carradine) is shot in the back by a teenage assassin (Robert Carradine), no one bothers to call the police or even questions why the shooting happened. Instead, they discuss how impressed they were with the drunk’s refusal to quickly go down. When a soldier (Harry Northup) is given a party to welcome him home from Vietnam, no one is particularly shocked when the solider turns violent. Violence is a part of everyday life.

Charlie Cappa (Harvey Keitel) is Giovanni’s nephew, a 27 year-old man who still lives at home with his mother and who still feels guilty for having “impure” thoughts. Charlie prays in church and then goes to work as a collector for Giovanni. Giovanni is grooming Charlie to take over a restaurant, not because Charlie is particularly talented at business but just because Charlie is family. Giovanni warns Charlie not to get involved with Teresa (Amy Robinson) because Teresa has epilepsy and is viewed as being cursed. And Giovanni particularly warns Charlie not to hang out with Teresa’s cousin, Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro). Johnny Boy may be charismatic but everyone in the neighborhood knows that he’s out-of-control. His idea of a good time is to blow up mailboxes and shoot out street lamps. Charlie, who is so obsessed with sin and absolution that he regularly holds his hand over an open flame to experience the Hellfire that awaits the unrepentant sinner, finds himself falling in love with Teresa (though it’s debatable whether Charlie truly understands what love is) and trying to save Johnny Boy.

Charlie has other friends as well. Tony (David Proval) runs the bar where everyone likes to hang out and he seems to be the most stable of the characters in Mean Streets. He’s at peace with both the neighborhood and his place in it. Meanwhile, Michael (Robert Romanus) is a loan shark who no one seems to have much respect for, though they’re still willing to spend the afternoon watching a Kung Fu movie with him. Michael knows that his career is dependent on intimidation. He can’t let anyone get away with not paying back their money, even if they are a friend. Johnny Boy owes Michael a lot of money and he hasn’t paid back a single dollar. Johnny Boy always has an excuse for why he can’t pay back Michael but it’s obvious that he just doesn’t want to. Charlie realizes that it’s not safe for Johnny Boy in Little Italy but where else can he go? Brooklyn?

Mean Streets follows Charlie and his friends as they go about their daily lives, laughing, arguing, and often fighting. All of the characters in Mean Streets enjoy a good brawl, despite the fact that none of them are as tough as their heroes. A chaotic fight in a pool hall starts after someone takes offense to the word “mook,” despite the fact that no one can precisely define what a mook is. The fights goes on for several minutes before the police show up to end it and accept a bribe. After the cops leave, the fight starts up again. What’s interesting is that the people fighting don’t really seem to be that angry with each other. Fighting is simply a part of everyday life. Everyone is aggressive. To not fight is to be seen as being weak and no one is willing to risk that.

Mean Streets was Martin Scorsese’s third film (fourth, if you count the scenes he shot before being fired from The Honeymoon Killers) but it’s the first of his movies to feel like a real Scorsese film. Scorsese’s first film, Who’s That Knocking On My Door?, has its moments and feels like a dry run for Mean Streets but it’s still obviously an expanded student film. Boxcar Bertha was a film that Scorsese made for Roger Corman and it’s a film that could have just as easily been directed by Jonathan Demme or any of the other young directors who got their start with Corman. But Mean Streets is clearly a Scorsese film, both thematically and cinematically. Scorsese’s camera moves from scene to scene with an urgent confidence and the scene where Charlie first enters Tony’s bar immediately brings to mind the classic tracking shots from Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, and Casino. One gets the feeling that Pete The Killer is lurking somewhere in the background. The scenes between Keitel and De Niro are riveting. Charlie attempts to keep his friend from further antagonizing Michael while Johnny Boy tells stories that are so long and complicated that he himself can’t keep up with all the details. Charlie hold everything back while Johnny Boy always seems to be on the verge of exploding. De Niro’s performance as Johnny Boy is one that has been duplicated but never quite matched by countless actors since then. He’s the original self-destructive fool, funny, charismatic, and ultimately terrifying with his self-destructive energy.

Mean Streets was Scorsese’s first box office success and it was also the film that first brought him widespread critical acclaim. However, in a year when the totally forgotten A Touch of Class was nominated for Best Picture, Mean Streets did not receive a single Oscar nomination, not even for De Niro’s performance. Fortunately, by the time Mean Streets was released, De Niro had already started work on another film about the Mafia and Little Italy, The Godfather Part II.

Previous entries in The Unnominated:

Film Review: American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince (dir by Martin Scorsese)

Posted on February 13, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film, Taxi Driver, there’s a scene where homicidal Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) has a meeting with an extremely helpful gun dealer. The dealer’s name is Easy Andy and if you want to buy it, Andy’s got it. Andy’s the type who not only has every gun imaginable in his attaché case but he’ll also toss in a specially made holster for free. “Ain’t that a little honey?” Andy asks as Travis aims a gun out a window and imagines what it would be like to shoot a random passerby.

It’s only a 4-minute scene but it’s one of the most memorable moments in a film that’s full of them. Easy Andy was played by a man named Steven Prince and, for those 4 minutes, Prince easily stole the picture from De Niro. As soon as Easy Andy shows up on screen and starts taking, you can’t look away from him. He’s a bit like the chemist that Patrick McDermott played in The French Connection. He’s sleazy but he’s got an undeniable charm.

Just based on his performance in Taxi Driver, you would think that Steven Prince was one of those 70s character actors who split their time between Scorsese, Altman, and the occasional big studio film. However, Steven Prince was actually not an actor. Instead, he was a member of Martin Scorsese’s entourage, a friend who was something of a personal assistant to the director in the 70s.

In 1978, two years after Prince stole 4 minutes of Taxi Driver away from Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese directed a documentary about his friend, American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince. Essentially a 55-minute conversation between Prince, Scorsese, and actor George Memmoli, American Boy was Scorsese’s homage to Shirley Clarke’s 1967 documentary, Portrait of Jason. Both documentaries feature a night spent with a New York-based raconteur and both feature plenty of stories about drugs, death, and celebrity. The main difference is that you watch Portrait of Jason frightened that Jason is on the verge of having a mental breakdown whereas you spend most of American Boy expecting Steven Prince to drop dead at any second.

From the minute that Steven Prince arrives at George Memmoli’s house, he looks like he’s on the verge of collapsing. He’s painfully thin and his face is skeletal. His eyes are sunk deep into his head and surrounded by dark circles and his teeth are noticeably brown and rotten. Prince was only 29 or 30 when American Boy was filmed but one look at his face and you know that he’s lived a lifetime in those three decades. When he speaks, his voice is a nasal croak.

When Prince first shows up, he and Memmoli get into a wrestling match that seems to go on forever. Watching the heavy-set Memmoli collapse onto the cadaverous Prince, you find yourself worrying about what’s going to be left of Prince once they’re finished. (At first, the wrestling seems terrible self-indulgent but actually, it’s classic Scorsese. His feature films have often dealt with men who, because of their hang-ups, still act like children. Why should a documentary be any different?) When the wrestling finally ends and Prince starts to talk about his life, his charisma is evident but you’re still weary. Prince is the type of story teller who knows how to bring you into his world but, whenever you start to get too close to what’s actually going on inside of him, he pushes you away with a sudden punchline or a sarcastic quip. It’s appropriate that Prince starts things off by telling a story about getting stoned because he has an addict’s charisma. He has the charm of a man who has to be charming because, otherwise, he’d probably be dead.

And yet Prince is such a skilled story teller that, despite your better instincts, you do start to let your guard down. He talks about growing up and how much he loves his family and Scorsese shows us home movies so we can compare the happy child that Steven Prince was to the recovering addict who is now talking to us. He tells a story about tricking a man into drinking vodka, little realizing that the man was an alcoholic who was trying to stay away from booze. He tells us about a female friend who OD’d and how he had to use a medical book, a magic marker, and a shot of adrenaline to bring her back to life. (That story was later recreated in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.) He talks about the time he spent working for Neil Young and he talks about his own struggle with heroin.

He also talk about the time that he killed a man. Prince was working at a gas station when he caught a man stealing tires. Prince ended up shooting the man in self-defense and, for a few brief moments, we see one of the reasons why Scorsese and Memmoli find Prince to be so intriguing. What they’ve only done in the movies, Steven Prince has done in real life.

Much as with Portrait of Jason, you find yourself wondering how much of American Boy was spontaneous and how much of it was planned out beforehand. Were Prince and Memmoli really wrestling or were they just following stage directions? Is Prince really telling us the story of his life because he wants to or because Scorsese keeps asking him questions? Throughout the film, Scorsese continually reminds us that everyone in the film — including himself — is essentially performing for the cameras. (Early on, we see and hear Scorsese asking if the camera’s rolling. At another point, he says that he’ll just edit an awkward moment out of the film.) And so, we’re left to wonder: are we seeing a true profile of Steven Prince or are we seeing what Scorsese wants us to see of Steven Prince? Is Steven Prince a real person or is he just another one of Scorsese’s troubled outsiders?

It’s not always an easy film to watch. Charismatic or not, a little bit of Steven Prince can go a long way. And yet, it’s still a film that, once you start watching it, you really can’t look away from it. It’s a bit like Prince himself; imperfect but always intriguing. And, as unwell as Prince often appears to be in American Boy, he’s still with us. (In 2009, he even did a follow-up to American Boy, American Prince.) Steven Prince survives.

A Movie A Day #153: Blue Collar (1978, directed by Paul Schrader)

Posted on June 10, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Three Detroit auto workers (played by Harvey Keitel, Yaphet Kotto, and Richard Pryor) are fed up.

It’s not just that management is constantly overworking them and trying to cheat them out of their money. That’s what management does, after all. What really upsets them is that their union is not doing anything to help. While the head of the union is getting rich off of their dues and spending time at the White House, Keitel is struggling to pay for his daughter’s braces, Kotto is in debt to a loan shark, and Pryor is lying to the IRS about the number of children that he has. (When a social worker shows up unexpectedly, Pryor’s wife recruits neighborhood children to pretend to be their’s.) Kotto, Pryor, and Keitel plot to rob the union but instead, they just discover evidence of the union’s ties to the mob. The union bosses will do anything to keep that information from being revealed, from trying to turn the friends against one another to committing murder.

Blue Collar was the directorial debut of screenwriter Paul Schrader. Schrader has said that the three main cast members did not get along during the filming, with Richard Pryor apparently bringing a gun to the set and announcing that there was no way he was going to do more than three takes of any scene. The tension between the lead actors is visible in the film, with all three of them giving edgy and angry performances. That anger is appropriate because Blue Collar is one of the few films to try to honestly tackle what it’s like to be a member of the “working class” in America. While management is presented as being a bunch of clowns, Blue Collar reserves its greatest fury for the corrupt union bosses who claim to represent the workers but who, instead, are just exploiting them. The characters in Blue Collar are pissed off because they know that nobody’s got their back. To both management and the union, the workers are worth less than the cars that they spend all day putting together and the money that can be subtracted from all their already meager pay checks.

Since it’s a Paul Schrader film from 1978, the action in Blue Collar does come to a halt, 40 minutes in, for a cocaine-fueled orgy that feels out of place. While Keitel and especially Kotto give believable performances, Pryor sometimes seems to be struggling to keep up. Still, flaws and all, Blue Collar has a raw and authentic feel to it, something that few other movies about the working class have been able to capture. Perhaps because it never sentimentalizes its characters or their situation, Blue Collar was not a box office success but it has stood the test of time better than many of the other films that were released that same year. Sadly overlooked, Blue Collar is a classic American movie.