The film""s title "Mean Streets" referenced screenwriter Raymond Chandler""s literary-critique essay "The Simple Art of Murder" (1944 and 1950) that quoted:." She screamed back: "I""m sorry now!"She recalled mischievously, with Mr.Dean, as they gazed at a painting of the palace crowded with dozens of concubines (bathing and lounging), about how the previous experiment with monks (at the palace when it was transformed into a monastery) had been a short-lived disaster, lasting only five months.It also contains a few of their most famous sequences:the lemonade seller confrontationthe mirror pantomime sequenceThe mirror routine, contributed by McCarey, had been used by Charlie Chaplin inThe Floorwalker (1916)and by Max Linder inSeven Year""s Bad Luck (1921).You can""t photograph people like that.He refused, and in one of the most crucial dialogues in the film as they argued together, he defended his career of watching and capturing reality by taking objective photographs.Three Months LaterIn the next scene, three months later on Christmas Eve in a fancy restaurant, Dorothy danced with her fiancee Tommy and expressed how worried she was that she hadn""t heard from her father, who had promised he would return by then.