In 1977, Martin Scorsese made a short film about his friend Steven Prince. American Boy is a remarkably simple movie. There’s a scene of Scorsese and Prince goofing around in a hot tub at the very beginning of the film. There’s a few home movies of Prince as a little boy that are interspersed throughout the film. There’s a sudden and inexplicable brawl between the diminutive Prince and portly character actor George Memmoli because Scorsese loves nothing better than pandering to the ladies. But for most of the film’s 55 minutes, Prince just hangs out in a living room full of friends (including Scorsese) and tells his wildly entertaining stories. American Boy was not easy to find in the days before the Internet, but now, of course, the whole thing is available on YouTube.
American Prince is a sequel of sorts. Most of this movie consists of Prince sitting in someone’s living room, telling stories about his life. At one point near the end of the movie, Prince establishes that they’ve been filming for about five hours, and it’s clear that the bulk of the movie was taken from that same interview. In American Prince, Steven Prince reveals why he walked away from the movie business (a close call with a famous Hollywood murder), what he’s doing now (contractor and co-owner of a medical marijuana clinic in California), and how much he enjoyed sharing a house with Scorsese and Robbie Robertson of The Band in the late 70s (that would be lots and lots and lots). He talks about how two of the stories from American Boy have cropped up in other films. He himself retold one story in Richard Linklater’s Waking Life (and American Prince’s director Tommy Pallotta was a producer of that movie). Another story, in which he had to resuscitate a woman who had overdosed by sticking a needle full of adrenalin straight into her heart, appeared mostly untouched in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. You remember it, I’m sure. It’s hard to forget the image of Uma Thurman with a needle sticking out of her chest.
Steven Prince is a fun guy to spend time with. His stories, and the way he tells them, are fascinating and funny and full of truth. It’s easy to see why both Scorsese and Pallotta thought that a feature film could be made of what is essentially one man’s monologue. The downside of Pallotta’s movie, though, is the camerawork. Scorsese is smart enough to keep his camera at a steady middle distance from Prince so that the viewer can get the full experience of his expressive body language. For some unknown reason, Pallotta frames his picture in close to Prince, way too close, and then he can’t stay still for a second. The camera is jittery, jumping around Prince face, in tight on his mouth, leaping over to a shoulder, sometimes partially obscured by someone in front of it. For a short, couple-minute interview, it would be okay, a little intimate and woozy maybe, but leaving the viewer with the feeling of being there. For nearly an hour, however (the film runs 52 minutes), it’s a dizzingly bad choice. I like Prince, but being that close to him gave me vertigo. In the hot tub scene at the beginning of American Boy, Scorsese sends Prince back over to his own side when he encroaches too much on Marty’s space. Pallotta should have taken note; it’s easier to feel close to someone if you aren't smothered.
The camerawork aside (actually, one more comment, just to make sure that I’m being clear: it’s not bad camerawork, but it’s not right for this picture), American Prince has a lot going for it. It’s entertaining, smart material, and by all rights, it should bring Steven Prince to a new audience.