Departed

At the start of the Oscar winning film ‘The Departed’, directed by Martin Scorsese, the Frank Costello character played by Jack Nicholson says:

“I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.”

I doubt whether Scorsese was trying to portray Frank Costello as a gangster with a keen interest in the place making agendas of South Boston. What he was doing was making a strong connection between the place people live in and who they are – and vice versa.

It is this conversation between people and places that helps create the nature of both. Martin Scorsese recognised that working on one without the other will always create unconvincing stories.