David Bianculli

And when he showed it to his mentor and hero, independent filmmaker John Cassavetes, their reaction was even worse.

And he didn't.

Instead, Martin Scorsese made mean streets with Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro and took all their careers to a higher level.

Mr. Scorsese takes us on that journey, and some of the stops along the way are breathtaking.

The Last Waltz, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino, The Aviator, The Wolf of Wall Street.

There are a few regretful omissions in Mr. Scorsese, but in an overview of this type, that's inevitable and completely acceptable.

This new Apple TV Plus series is self-described as a film portrait by Rebecca Miller.

And as portraits go, it's by no means a hasty sketch.

With its many interviews and film clips, and its exciting use of split-screen comparisons and music by the Rolling Stones, Mr. Scorsese is closer to a patiently painted masterpiece.

This is Fresh Air.

I'm David Bianculli.

The newly released movie Fairyland, produced by Sofia Coppola and directed by Andrew Durham, stars Scoot McNary as a gay single father raising his daughter in San Francisco in the 1970s.

It's based on a memoir of the same name by Alicia Abbott, who wrote about growing up in the early years of the gay rights movement in the capital of gay America, San Francisco.

It's not uncommon now to see children with gay parents, but it was uncommon when she was raised by her gay father in the 1970s and 80s.

Her father, Steve Abbott, was a poet, essayist, and editor.

In 1969, when he married the woman who became Alicia's mother, he described himself as bisexual.

Both of them were graduate students at Emory University in Atlanta.

Alicia writes that while her parents shared a bed and a life, her father helped organize Atlanta's Gay Liberation Front and was the gay lib editor at Atlanta's Alternative Weekly, The Great Speckled Bird.

Two years after Alicia was born, her mother was killed in a car accident.

Soon after, her father decided they would move to San Francisco, and the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood became their home.