Guilt

It’s hard sometimes to remember that Martin Scorcese, the undisputed elder statesman of American cinema and advocate for cinema more generally, was once a scrappy kid trying to cobble together a feature film.

But he definitely was, and that film was Mean Streets, a slice-of-life portrait of what it means to make it in America, specifically as an Italian-American male, and focused on barely grown-up kids struggling with crime, faith, and responsibility.