"Martin Scorsese: It’s kind of difficult to talk about how and why [Mean Streets] was made. When I think about the film and think about the time in my life having made the film and having been, in a sense, a part of the way of life that is depicted in the film, it seems to, in my mind, be the final culmination of everything of what I was to do and who I am. In my mind, it’s not really a film — it’s a declaration or a statement of who I am and how I was living; those thoughts and dilemmas and conflicts were very much a part of my life up to that point in time. They couldn’t be expressed in any other way [other than] resulting in this movie.There is no message. It’s something that came out of me organically. The only way to express it was: camera and dialog and actors and color and music. In my mind it was a representation of who I was, my friends, and where I came from. The genesis was my life."