"A friend of ours, Jonathan Elias, brought Robert out," Montiel recalls. "They came to a reading I was doing at Book Soup in Los Angeles, and Downey was like, 'you wanna make a movie outta this?' And we did. Ridiculous, right?"

At first, Downey thought A Guide might be a good project with which to make his debut as a director. "I think he liked the idea of working on something from scratch," Montiel says. But Downey got busy with a flurry of acting projects, like Good Night, and Good Luck, Kiss Miss, Bang Bang, Fur, and A Scanner Darkly. In the meantime, Downey introduced Dito to his friend, producer Trudie Styler, whose Xingu Films banner put together the financing for the movie.

Says Styler, "In Dito's memoirs, I saw the kind of material I tend to respond to, which is material that comes from a place of true passion. I began as a documentary filmmaker, so an autobiographical tale of a young man's real-life journey really made sense to me. The title itself resonated with me on a personal level. I certainly have my own Saints that have guided me through life."

"I think Downey thought of me for Saints because he saw what we did with Guy Ritchie and his first film," Style continues. "He knew I had an interest in first-time filmmakers and thought I was the woman for the job."

Downey concurs: "My first thoughts about making Saints into a movie was, 'I don't want to walk into the office of a quintessential Hollywood producer with this. Dito and I are, first and foremost, friends. There are a lot of creeps in the netherworld between true indies and studio movies and a lot of producers who will give up on a project too easily. Not Trudie. She's a really savvy business woman, but once she sets her mind to do something, she won't stop until she succeeds."

In a development process that took over four years, Montiel, Styler, and Downey worked diligently developing the parallel stories of Dito's youth and his return home. "Downey and I talked a lot and ultimately decided the heart and soul of the movie should be young Dito's coming of age and his return home," Montiel says. He laughs about his wild days in Manhattan: "Who'd want to see that?"

"Trudie really gets story," adds Downey, "and she really kicked our ass to get the right script. She was really diligent. At one stage, she had me, Dito, and her head of development Alex Francis basically locked into a room in her apartment in New York, and she wouldn't let us out until we'd nailed the structure. She was pretty much working on the project when I wasn't, and when I'd come out of an acting gig, we'd go and work together on it some more."

Montiel also worked with a wide range of mentors. He worked on the script at the Sundance Writers Lab with Frank Pierson (Dog Day Afternoon) and the novelist Walter Mosley. Montiel also worked with producers at Original Media and Belladonna Productions, who from their respective projects, The Squid and the Whale and Transamerica, knew how to make movies on the streets of New York on a budget.

Joining the team was ace cinematographer Eric Gautier, who most recently shot The Motorcycle Diaries. With this crew, Montiel shot a richly detailed period film, often in the precise locations where the pivotal events of his youth actually played out. Ironically, he says, it was harder to make his old neighborhood look like the present than it was to get the mid-1980s feel. "The place doesn't change," he says. "That's what I love about it."

Because A Guide was to focus on the director's very specific memories and events of his youth, casting these roles became a challenge for both the filmmaker and his producers. As Montiel puts it: "I was insane about the casting of the film. I'd walk around all night, everywhere, looking for any ragged, under-aged kid out too late, and when I came across one, I'd walk over and say, 'Look, I know this is weird, but I'm gonna give you a number and you should come down and we'll do this thing for a movie." Montiel held seven open casting calls "on his own" in Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan.