American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince (1978)

Steven Prince, who played the gun-dealing babble-mouth "Easy Andy" in the Martin Scorsese classic TAXI DRIVER, has his hour to shine.This, a documentary involving Prince, Scorsese, and actor George Memmoli (the really fat dude in MEAN STREETS and the guy who reluctantly allowed Stallone to ice-skate in ROCKY) sitting around a living room, is really a gloriously-glorified home movie, adding images of the subject as a child while he's bantering - with a more grating voice than Horseshack from WELCOME BACK KOTTER - about gorillas, drugs, bagels, working for Neil Diamond, and his suburban-dwelling parents.Few of the diatribes are interesting and some seem a bit forced. But it's during the last fifteen minutes, as he shares about killing a man in Arizona by shooting his six times, where things pick up.The standout tale of madness involves Prince saving an overdosing girl's life by injecting her in the chest with an adrenaline shot while reading instructions on how to do so. Sound familiar? Neil Young's obscure track "Time Fades Away" envelopes the piece nicely.

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.

From the start of this hour-length documentary/interview/candid profile on road manager and sometimes actor Steven Prince, director Martin Scorsese sets up the show with him and Prince in a hot-tub, followed by a (not too aggressive) fight with Prince and another guy. This shows to not be a typical one-on-one, as the interviewee goes into specifics in anecdotes, incidents, and memories that usually end with a great laugh (Prince is a wonderful, if a little tired out, storyteller), or with something that's very much revealing on his life (in other words, saddening). For myself, I knew very little about the man before the interview (not the least of which that he was road manager for Neil Diamond, got hooked into a particular section of the drug community, and had a good view of life in NYC involving various types), except that he made an unmistakable impression as the traveling salesman in Taxi Driver. But by the end of the (hard to find, most likely it can be found underground or on ebay) interview, with concise, hard, but fascinating questions from Scorsese, American Boy turns out to be just that, a guy who's gone through the good times and bad times of this country's bounties and dis-pleasures. It's even worth watching twice, especially for Scorsese fans (though there isn't a terrible amount of visual flair he can exercise here), in case something flies over one's head in the storytelling. Favorite stories include the Marijuana-Gorilla bit, Jack the Cop, a particular tale of a drug bust, and a certain recollection of a revival of a woman after an OD, later to become the primary influence on the climax of Tarantino's story Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife. Cool Neil Young song too.

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.