During a 2022 discussion at Film at Lincoln Center, Martin Scorsese detailed his introduction to the New York Dolls and how their music impacted the making of Mean Streets (1973): "My thing was, I heard this song, 'Personality Crisis', and the rhythm and blues basis of it, of course, but the ENERGY of it, and already the sense of humor of it. Particularly when he sings 'Yeah, yeah yeah' and then the band answers, 'No, no, no'. I said, 'Ok. We're in'. And I would play it for the guys and I'd showed them the cover of the album, 'What IS this?' You know, it really, it generated the energy of the whole movie. Yeah I have The Ronettes in there and stuff like that, but the Dolls, when that film was made, was not played in those bars. The film takes place around '63, '64 in reality. But it was something."
In a 2023 interview with Elements of Madness, David Tedeschi spoke about the challenges of uniquely capturing the feel of a live performance and, in particular, the approach of director of photography Ellen Kuras: "There were only 4 cameras over 2 nights. 4 cameras each night. But she's such a wonderful DP that she would walk around and find things. You know, with a 40-lb camera on her shoulder. She'd be on her knees, or she'd be on a chair, or she would be close, or she would be far. And then there were 3 others, a team, a total of 4 people. And that's really the challenge, is 'How are you able to capture the feeling of the musicality of a performance?'. And it's all about the angle, but there's also an intangible. There's something intangible about capturing the musical essence during a performance."