Scorsese on trusting Cassavetes and not turning Mean Street into an exploitation flick

Great interview with Martin Scorsese talking about the making of Mean Streets (1973). Scorsese talks interestingly about many things, including the impact of John Cassavetes’ Shadows on Mean Streets; how Cassavetes gave Scorsese work on Minnie and Moskowitz; and advised the younger man to keep his distance from Roger Corman, for whom Scorsese had made Boxcar Bertha, and who wanted Scorsese to work on exploitation flicks (Corman even suggested that Scorsese make Mean Streets with a black cast to cash in on the blaxploitation fad). Richard Romanus who plays Michael in Mean Streets (and also played  Richard LaPenna in The Sopranos, a series indebted to Scorsese but whose gangsters, Scorsese reveals, he doesn’t understand) now lives on Skiathos and has written about relocating from Hollywood to Greece as well as penning a novel set during the Greek civil war.