Ragazzo americano

American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince (1978)

*** (out of 4)

Sandwiched between New York, New York and The Last Waltz, director Martin Scorsese decided to make a short documentary on the life of Steven Prince. Don't know who Prince is? He's not wildly known but fans of Scorsese will recognize him as the gun salesman from Taxi Driver. Scorsese just puts the camera on Prince and lets him tell a variety of stories ranging from his heroin use to his early days growing up in New York with his parents. Scorsese is often times in the camera frame just listening, having fun and constantly laughing at the stories being told. This is a rather hard film to judge but it does only run 55-minutes so at least it doesn't go on too long. It's hard to judge because Prince is such a strange character that you can't help but keep watching him just to see what he's going to say next but at the same time I must admit that I didn't care too much for him. He certainly knows how to tell a story as his body movements are always moving along with the stories but I wondered how much of this was due to drugs. There's not too much visual style going on as Scorsese just keeps the camera on Prince and lets him do his thing. The interviews are well constructed but again, this is for fans of Scorsese who must see everything he's done. The film has gained a lot of attention over the past several years since Prince tells a story about an adrenaline shot that was pretty much lifted word for word by Tarantino in Pulp Fiction.

This one was often called the "lost Scorsese movie" but thanks the joys of DVD and YouTube, we can finally check it out. This is one of Scorsese's verite documentaries, this time focusing on the guy who played the gun-dealing "Easy Andy" in 'Taxi Driver'. Steven Prince was Scorsese's roommate for a while, and was also a music promoter (mostly for Neil Diamond) and drug addict before he turned to acting. American BOY catches up with him a couple of years after 'Taxi Driver', with Prince relating tales from his storied life.

The verite style of the documentary doesn't add too much to 'American Boy'. Scorsese pops up at the start, as the cameras start to roll. He looks high (this is from Scorsese's coke years), but who cares? Equally, there's an annoying guy in the background who keeps goading Prince to open up. But these are minor, short irritations. The joy of 'American Boy' is just Steven Prince sat there, telling his stories in a pretty masterful way. He has a good idea of pacing, drawing the audience in and out. You'd happily read a book of this guy's short stories.

What's also nice about 'American Boy' is that Prince doesn't fall into the pitfalls of the vast majority of drug literature. Half of the many tedious drug books are whines about how terrible it is to be an addict. The other half tediously aggrandise how insightful it is to be an addict. In doing this, taking drugs become the focus of the tales, and are therefore mechanical and repetitive.

The drugs in Prince's life are only the background to his interesting tales. He's high, but the drugs aren't the story... genuine events are. Accidentally frying a kid with wires from his TV van. Cops busting in on him and his dealer, but managing to escape arrest by bursting out crying. Shooting an armed robber as he works in a lousy job at a petrol station.

Prince is likable and consistently interesting, and the 50 or so minutes of 'American Boy' pass very quickly and pleasingly. There was another documentary made about Prince made in 2009 called, fittingly, 'American Prince'. Here's hoping 'American Prince' is as interesting as this one. And, of course, it's great to hear Prince is still alive.

At the end of 'American Boy', he relates the story of talking to his dying father. Prince's father - despite all of his son's mistakes - was impressed by his ability to survive. At first Prince glosses over the magnitude of it, but Scorsese eventually draws out the truth. It's a touching and positive way to end a documentary about an interesting and likable guy.

Although the movie is simply a document of an interview with Stephen Prince, the film becomes so much more. Scorsese truly gives the viewer an in depth view into the man's life; mostly due to Prince's wonderful role as a story teller. Some of the tales he tells are fascinating, some silly, some so outlandish you have to doubt their sincerity. Extremely entertaining, and a prerequisite for any Tarantino fan -- see the film and you'll see what I mean.

Peripherally, American Boy is about Martin Scorsese and his crew populating sporadic bit role player and sometime music groupie Steven Prince's living room while he recounts various stories from his life. Centrally, I don't know what it's about. I think it's about Steven Prince, and how the stories he tells may or may not inform the person he apparently is when Scorsese and his crew show up at his place to film him. The reason I watched all 55 minutes is not because I wasn't able to justify turning off a film directed by one of American cinema's greatest living assets, but because these anecdotes are very engrossing. That, and that alone, is the appeal of this piece. You want to hear a guy tell a story? Look here.

The way I felt when I was watching American Boy was anticipatory, expectant of some sort of culmination. Well, the anecdotes are increasingly personal, more and more poignant and evidently felt by the titular teller. End of movie. What I think Scorsese's intention was, aside from being determined to stay busy, involved embracing the slightest, most minute and everyday thing. The charm of the film is that we always expect much more out of a film, even the subtle and slight ones. But think about how many themes and meanings are buried within some of the most fleeting shots of a given Scorsese feature. Think about how much he can say in such a short breath, both with his films and in person.

He wants nothing more from us than to look and listen here. That's all. This guy, not a celebrity or a scholar or a notorious figure, just a dude. What's the situation? He's having his friend Marty over and Marty brought some of his own friends, and they have a camera and sound stuff. Martin Scorsese understands very clearly, much clearer than a lot of modern filmmakers, that a movie is exactly what it shows you, nothing more and nothing less.

If this documentary (which is hard to find on home video but I was lucky enough to watch on YouTube) does not seem like a Scorsese film, that is understandable; he generally aims for certain themes, and I don't want to pigeonhole this national treasure... but let's face it, there are certain elements you expect from him: character studies, the mob, loners, criminals, doomed lovers, rock soundtracks. That's just a small list. His forays into nonfiction film are sporadic, although he is great at those: "The Last Waltz" holds its own with scripted material from that (or any) time, his Dylan doc is compelling, and I'm sure the one about George Harrison will be also. Yet this is as stripped-down as anything that Martin has done.

I love that fact that while the lion's share of AB is Steven Prince talking, the few cinematic flourishes are carefully chosen, such as the home movies; even the parcellization of his many adult adventures (which eventually settle around his long battle with the needle) feels like it moves like a conventional cinematic story. It was interesting to me to watch some of Scorsese's gems from the period like "Raging Bull" and "Taxi Driver" and then this - to me, his portraits of Gotham losers make infinitely much more sense after watching this! Certainly, there are bits of him borrowed for those fictional films (and I could make a case for much of his later career's pictures as well). It doesn't hurt that Prince himself is a great storyteller and comfortable in front of the camera. MS himself is a constant but, thankfully, at the end of the day an unobtrusive presence. The material either makes or breaks with Steven Prince and, luckily, it all works.

This is not the first "one man band" film I've seen that is impressive - "Tyson" and "Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary" come to mind as great films that focus primarily one one individual being interviewed. I'm not going to put "American Boy" up there with those, but I would happily recommend it to someone who thinks they have seen it all when it comes to the work of Martin Scorsese.