context ·Mean Streets (1973)

Independence, 1973

Mean Streets was self-produced by two first-timers, shot non-union with a Corman crew, and sold to Warner Bros., who released it for two weeks. A case study in what independence bought and what it cost.

format
formula
context
commerce
new-hollywood
independent
production

The datum

Stefan Sereda's chapter in the Companion calls it "Mean Streets as Cinema of Independence", and the facts support the title:

Mean Streets is therefore self-produced by two first-time producers, and the only film released under the banner, "A Taplin–Perry–Scorsese Production."

— The Companion, smc 372

The producer was Jonathan Taplin, twenty-six, until then road manager for Bob Dylan and The Band (sos 39). His first backer, "a twenty-three-year-old who had just come into an inheritance", pulled out (sos 39). What got the money in the end was a letter: Taplin could raise it "if Roger Corman promised in writing to distribute the film" ([[Mary Pat Kelly — Martin Scorsese: A Journey|Kelly]], unpaged).

How it was made cheap

Corman's crew from Boxcar Bertha; no Teamsters, "to avoid union costs" (smc 372); twenty-six or twenty-seven days; mostly Los Angeles (New York was Los Angeles). Paul Rapp, Corman's man, ran the schedule by lighting direction rather than by scene: "shoot everything that was lit in one direction first, so Mean Streets was all shot backwards, as the master shot would be left until last" (sos 41). Sometimes twenty-four set-ups a day, thirty-six for the pool-hall fight. The handheld camera was an economy too: "if we'd tracked every one of the shots, we'd still have been there shooting! So the economics dictated the style" (sos 47).

The budget figure depends on who you ask, from $300,000 to $750,000; see the hub, Mean Streets (1973).

What it cost

The film was finished independently and then sold to Warner Bros. What happened next is Scorsese's:

But next thing I know, we opened in LA, got nice reviews, did two weeks' business, and that was that. Every other city, the same thing. Warner was our distributor, and The Exorcist was coming in.

— Kelly, unpaged

Independence bought total control of the film and no control over its release. Sereda notes that this arrangement, made outside a studio and distributed by one, now attracts the sneer "dependies" (smc 368). Susan Hayward credits Scorsese with "bringing East Coast film production to the fore (e.g. Taplin-Perry-Scorsese Productions for Mean Streets, 1973)" (ckc 231).

What it bought

A career. The film did little business and made its director. Coppola saw it and recommended him to Ellen Burstyn for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, a studio film with "a budget three times that of Mean Streets" (sos 49). See Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) and The women's picture, 1974.

Why it belongs on the bench

It is a clean Commerce case with every term visible: who paid, what they got, what the distributor decided, and how cost shaped style. Put it next to Corman offered to make it Black for the alternative financing that was refused, and next to The red tint over the bloodbath for what a studio could impose three years later, once Scorsese was inside one.

Films noted here that this context touches: Mean Streets (1973).

Go on, then

film Mean Streets (1973) Four young men in Little Italy, a debt nobody will pay, and a would-be saint who keeps putting his hand in the fire. Scorsese's first film in his own voice, made in Los Angeles for almost nothing.
idea The Craft got better as it got older Mixed reviews, a surprise hit, then three decades of reappraisal that inverted which half of the film people take seriously.
idea Corman offered to make it Black Roger Corman would fund Mean Streets for $150,000 if every character were Black. Scorsese nearly said yes, then couldn't see them in church.
context The Last Temptation collapse, 1983 Paramount cancelled Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ with the sets built and the costumes made. After Hours was the film he made to survive it, and nearly everyone involved reads it as that year turned into a comedy.
scene Mean Streets — the opening A voice in the dark, a man who cannot stay asleep, and a Ronettes record that lands on the downbeat as his head hits the pillow. The film's argument and its method before the first title.
idea The jukebox is the score Mean Streets has no composed score. Every note of music comes from a jukebox, a car radio or a window, and most of it is ten years older than the film.