idea ·Mean Streets (1973)

Nobody agrees whether Johnny Boy dies

A gunman played by Scorsese empties a pistol into the car. Critics have him killing Johnny Boy, sparing him, or leaving it open. The film doesn't say.

structure
character
conflict
chronology
atomic
ending
dispute

Michael sends a gunman after the car. The gunman is played by Scorsese, credited as "Shorty, Michael's hired killer" (sos 221). The car crashes; Johnny Boy staggers off holding his neck; Teresa is hurt in the wreck; Charlie kneels in the street, bleeding. The film cuts away to the others, watching television, washing their hands, and never comes back to tell us who lives.

The critics in the library disagree:

Dies. David Sterritt has Scorsese playing "the shooter who kills Johnny Boy" (smc 107). Anthony Cavaluzzi says Michael leaves "Johnny the victim of a gunshot" (smc 301).
Survives. Mary Pat Kelly: "Johnny Boy and Charlie survive, dazed and bloody" (Kelly, unpaged).
Open. Stefan Sereda: "it is unclear whether any of them will die from bullet wounds or the ensuing crash" (smc 379).

Sereda has the film right. The ending is built so that death doesn't matter; what matters is that Charlie's plan has failed. He tried to save Johnny Boy as penance, putting off every confrontation, in Scorsese's words, "until everything explodes. It's the worst thing you can do" (Kelly, unpaged). The kneeling is the image, not the body count.

Where it came from. A real night. Scorsese and his friend Joey were in the back of a wise guy's red convertible at three in the morning; the wise guy flashed a gun at another driver, who caught up with them a few blocks later and opened fire. "The teenage kid was hit in the eye, though he lived. It could very easily have been us" (sos 9).

How it was made. It was shot first. "The first day in LA, the first night? The end of the picture" (Scorsese by Ebert, unpaged). Robert Casillo notices a detail: the gunman "kisses his pistol just before shooting his victim, as if it were a crucifix" (smc 144). The director, as the agent of the film's judgement, performing a sacrament.

A case for Structure. Compare Schrader and Scorsese disagree about the ending: three years later, another Scorsese ending the people who made it describe differently.

Go on, then

idea Killing the protagonist at minute 47 Psycho spends its first act building a protagonist by the book, then murders her at the mid-point of act two.
scene Mean Streets — the back room Charlie tells Johnny Boy he has to pay. Johnny Boy tells him a story about a poker game, a raid and a man called Joey Clams, and loses the thread himself. Everyone agrees it's the heart of the film. Nobody agrees who wrote it.
scene After Hours — back at work A plaster statue falls out of a burglars' van at dawn, cracks open, and the man inside walks through the gates of his office and sits down at his terminal. Rescue or sentence? The film was shot without an ending, and it shows the seams on purpose.
idea Paul was nearly born on the West Side Highway One planned ending had Paul climb inside June to hide from the mob and be born again, naked, on a Manhattan street. David Geffen, who was paying, asked if they had lost their minds.
idea Schrader and Scorsese disagree about the ending Ritual suicide or tabloid item? The writer and the director give incompatible accounts of the same scene, and the film supports both.
scene Alice — the prologue Ninety seconds of counterfeit 1940s Hollywood, built at real 1940s expense, existing to be destroyed by one cut.