The weekends on All Things Considered series Movies I've Seen A Million Times features filmmakers, actors, writers and directors talking about the movies that they never get tired of watching.
For actor-writer-director Jon Favreau, whose credits include Swingers, Rocky Marciano, The Replacements and Iron Man, the movie he could watch a million times is Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
On when he first saw the film
"I first saw Mean Streets when I was young. It must have been a revival-house down in Greenwich Village. I think my dad took me down there. My dad grew up in an Italian community in the Bronx and had a lot of affection for Scorsese's work and passed that love along to me."
On why he loves Mean Streets
"The thing I really love about the film is just the real moments — the human interaction, the humanity of the characters. Both the struggle of Harvey Keitel as he's looking for some sort of context for his Catholic upbringing and the horrible realities of the street."
On how the movie has influenced him as a filmmaker
"It's a great way to see Scorsese's toolbox because he's such a flashy director without ever drawing attention to himself as the filmmaker. You're always seeing it subjectively through the eyes of the characters. You sometimes forget you're watching a film. You don't really marvel at the spectacle of the film; you're experiencing it emotionally, and I think that takes a tremendous amount of restraint and I try to emulate that."
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