From director Martin Scorsese, cinema’s premiere poet of violence and reverting male insecurity into brutality as recourse, came in 1974… this women’s picture?
Ellen Burstyn was on a string of successes, so when Warner Bros. head John Calley asked her what project she’d like to do and with what director, Burstyn only had one script in mind by Robert Getchell but no director. Francis Coppola recommended Marty as a director; Burstyn saw “Mean Streets” immediately, was impressed but it had no women in it. Marty came in wound-up and nervous for the studio meeting, and there Burstyn asked him what he knew about women? “Nothing, but I’d like to learn.”
Scorsese opens up with a homage to “The Wizard of…