A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

2006 film by Dito Montiel

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is a 2006 American drama film based on a 2001 memoir of the same name by author, director, and musician Dito Montiel, which describes his youth in Astoria, New York during the 1980s. Montiel wrote and directed the film adaptation, which was released in the United States in September 2006 and in Europe in March 2007. The film stars Robert Downey Jr. as Montiel with Shia LaBeouf as a younger Montiel. The film's narrative jumps frequently between 2005 and flashbacks from 1986 (filmed largely with shaky camera with short shots) with characters occasionally addressing the viewer.

This film was Montiel's directorial debut. Initially, Montiel refused to see LaBeouf for the part, having only seen him as the "Disney guy." Once he got to audition for the role, he "fucked his office up," putting a "hole through the wall" and went as "crazy" as he could in order to change the image Montiel had of him to land the part.

Montiel states that all the characters in the film are a combination of at least three people and sometimes six or seven, although some characters are given the names of people from real life. Listed below are some of the main differences between four characters and their real life counterparts.

Montiel said that he made the film because “I wanted to walk down those streets again and fall in love with Laurie again, it would have been nice to have had that moment at the end of the film where Dito met Laurie, reconnecting as adults."

Montiel states that Antonio is a composite of three people. The real Mike O'Shea is Irish, alive, married, and living in Essex, England. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 67 out of 100, based on 25 reviews.