GLANCE AT MARTIN SCORSESE'S PIVOTAL CLASSIC 'MEAN STREETS'

The tail-end of MEAN STREETS w/ the Warner worm logo YEAR: 1973

Fans of the more bloody and gory, deathly and formidable in-your-face mafia flicks may be let=down by the subtle, more realistic, existential nature  of Martin Scorsese's game-changing MEAN STREETS, which is to mob films what AMERICAN GRAFFITI is to college...

None of these street-wise characters, twenty-somethings hanging around New York City's titular locae, are actually in the mafia (like in director Scorsese’s violently-progressed epic masterpiece GOODFELLAS), but could be on their way including Harvey Keitel as Charlie, working to know just about everyone around town and, with a Mafioso uncle, he only sees the inner-workings like a kid staring through a peephole...

Harvey Keitel, Robert DeNiro and David Proval RATING: *****

And there's David Proval as Tony, Charle's solid, responsible friend who owns the local bar, providing a hangout for the locals and/or anything-you-need clients care of Robert Romanus as Michael, a nickle shyster and the only one with real potential at becoming a full-time player... but there's something, or rather, someone in his way...

Enter first-billed but actually secondary-lead Robert De Niro as freewheeling and troublesome, borderline sociopathic, small-time punk Johnny, who's basically Michael’s antithesis as well as a thesis to past the crime-world test: the longer Johnny owes, the tougher Michael's forced to get: as the only real plot is that Keitel's Charlie will do anything to keep helping Johnny (who is bitterly jealous of his cousin Amy Robinson's Teresa surreptitiously dating Charlie) out of the hole. Yet Johnny likes the hole just fine… leading to an intense climax in one of the greatest indie films of the '70s, and Martin Scorsese’s first real thrust as a groundbreaking filmmaker.

David Proval getting irritated (again and again) by Robert DeNiro's Johnny in MEAN STREETS

Robert DeNiro's Johnny takes nothing seriously including cheating death in MEAN STREETS

GOODFELLAS actor Kevin Corrigan shares what he dug about Scorsese's MEAN STREETS

KEVIN CORRIGAN: "Since I was thirteen, I loved MEAN STREETS, and my favorite characters were always the long haired kids from Riverdale looking to buy fireworks and the gay guys who hitch a ride with Michael after the shoot-out in Tony's bar. Small roles, but great, funny, memorable scenes. So when GOODFELLAS came along, I knew it was my chance to be like those guys. I was very lucky to get that opportunity."

 Ken Konstantin and Jaime Alba as the kids/customers from Riverdale in Martin Scorsese's MEAN STREETS

See our youtube video showing Robert and Richard Romanus selling various contraband to teenage customers

A decade later Richard Romanus as Mike Damone sells Van Halen tickets in Fast Times at Ridgemont High