Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

A_Minor_Blip 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.

Michael_Elliott 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.

MisterWhiplash 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.

Jeff Dantowitz 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.