Martin Scorsese, super genius

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The only true re-make Scorsese has done to date is Cape Fear, from a pulp novel called The Executioners by John D. MacDonald, previously adapted to film in 1962 by British-born director J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone), starring Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Polly Bergen, Martin Balsam and Telly Savalas. Scorsese was a big fan of the movie, one of the latter Noir classics, so he knew there was no need to re-make it in the same tone and style. His own spin on the material is quite different, though while keeping the same main plot points and conflicts, he paints a more complex morality tale for a more complex time.



The movie is about vengeance, and the inability to outrun past mistakes. Nick Nolte, who previously worked with Scorsese on the short film "Life Lessons" (one segment of the anthology New York Stories), stars as Sam Bowden, a Southern defense attorney who has just moved to a new small town with his wife, played by Jessica Lange, and teenage daughter, played by Juliette Lewis. On the surface everything is perfect, but we quickly learn that Sam is on the flirtatious verge of an adulterous affair with a co-worker (Illeana Douglas), and there is much underlying tension in the marriage because of past infidelities - part of the reason for the move and "new" start. Also, their daughter Danielle, rebellious and just coming into her sexuality though unsure of what it is, was caught with some pot at school and must take a summer school course. Despite the huge house and good job in an idyllic town, the Bowden family is far from perfect. Then enters The Devil, who comes in the form of Max Cady (DeNiro), a hard-as-nails ex-con who has just been released after a long sentence. He's come looking for Sam Bowden, his former attorney, who he blames for his incarceration - for the rape and brutal beating of a young woman. Soon Cady will be wreaking true terror on all three members of the Bowden family, at first with intimidation, building surely to life-threatening peril.



While the basics of ex-con Cady terrorizing the Bowdens are the same, this modernized version is really much, much different than the '62 flick. In the original, Mr. and Mrs. Bowden (Peck and Bergen) had a strong marriage, and their daughter was a good and happy child. Cady (Mitchum) came at them relentlessly, but his anger was really irrational and insane. In the Scorsese version, the Bowdens have all kinds of issues and faults, and Cady's rage - while certainly insane, is justified on some basic level, because we learn that Sam had actually blown the case intentionally, having essentially passed judgement on the horrible crime of his client. Peck's attorney had done his job to the letter, but Mitchum still blamed him anyway. Nolte's lawyer buried evidence that could have either gotten DeNiro's monster off completely or at least severely decreased his sentence. That decision, while understandable on a human level because Cady's crime was so viscious, is of course completely and totally wrong in regards to the ethics of the law and our system of justice. All of these changes make the story more complicated, and for me much more engaging and real (even if the tone often approaches the surreal). The Demon trying to destroy them is one of Sam's own creation, and the weaknesses Cady uses to get at them are further extensions of their own faults and failures, not just a random Hell coming to attack a perfect family.



The visuals, as well as the tone, are very stylized. Scorsese and cinematographer Freddie Francis (The Elephant Man, Glory, The Straight Story) really have fun with the look of the film, and this was Scorsese's first use of a true 2.35:1 widescreen process. It is something he had avoided over his career specifically because he hated seeing scope films butchered with panning and scanning for TV and video distribution, but with the advent of LaserDiscs he knew the proper aspect ratio could now be maintained. He uses every inch of the wide frame - some amazing compositions. The musical score by Elmer Berstein is for the most part a re-arrangement of the original score from Thompson's film, a wonderful theme by the immortal Bernard Herrmann (Citizen Kane, Verigo, Psycho), who's last score was for Marty's Taxi Driver (completed quite literally in the last days of his life). It was a perfect idea, that Scorsese credits to a suggestion from DeNiro. It is a powerful and thunderous piece of music, and perfectly matches the style of the movie - part loving hommage, part winking exaggeration.

Scorsese also has loads of fun with the thriller genre conventions. For me this is his Touch of Evil. Just as Welles was able to add his artistry and perspective to a pulpy Noir tale, so does Scorsese here with material that, even with the added psychological deminsions and character flaws, is still at the roots very much a genre piece and adheres to (while still playing with and commenting upon) those rules and cliches.



Nolte is very good and controlled as Sam, and Lange is his equal as the very tough but almost at her breaking point Leigh. Juliette Lewis was an amazing find (her biggest role to that time was as Audrey in Christmas Vacation), and she was rightly Oscar nominated for her pitch perfect work as the curious teen who's budding sexuality leads straight to Hell and terror. The creepy nature of her relationship with Cady is another ingredient absent from the original, as you'd expect. And of course, yet again, DeNiro (also Oscar nominated) goes through another physical and karmic transformation to become the super-muscular, overly-tattooed monster with a thick Southern drawl and a head full of vengeance and Bible quotations. His performance is pitched at the same stylized level as the visuals and tone, and while certainly over-the-top, it is an intentional camp that still manages to be credibly horrifying and believable while also cartoonish and broad, a real multi-dimensional character and a parody at the same time.

The supporting cast includes Joe Don Baker (Charley Varrick, Walking Tall) as a private investigator Sam hires to help steer Cady clear of his family, good ol' Fred Dalton Thompson (The Hunt for Red October, Die Hard 2) as Bowden's boss, and in three wonderful cameos as a cop, a lawyer and a judge respectively, Bob Mitchum, Gregory Peck and Martin Balsam - the stars of the '62 film.


"Maybe I'm the Big Bad Wolf?"

Because some of the thriller conventions are so silly out of context, and because the entire movie is stylized so over-the-top, building to a fantastic if unlikely crescendo of a finale, Cape Fear is probably easily dismissed by many as nothing more than a slick and ridiculous thriller, which on one level it is. But there is much more to the movie than those simple surface elements, and it makes for one of Scorsese's most fun and accessible works (though definitely adult and grisly).



An interesting trvia note: Cape Fear was originally supposed to be made by Steven Spielberg, and Schindler's List by Scorsese. They essentially traded projects, when Marty thought a Jewish director might bring something he couldn't to the material. The Cape Fear screenwriter, Wesley Strick (Arachnophobia, Wolf), had adapted the original with Spielberg in mind, and as you'd imagine the movie was far less dark and not as morally murky. When he learned Scorsese was helming the project, he gleefully excised the perfect family for the troubled group and demonic terror. Scorsese was rewarded with the most commercially successful movie of his career, and Spielberg with dozens of awards. But, oh, to imagine Schindler in the hands of Martin Scorsese...!



Cape Fear was released as a special edition R1 DVD in 2001 (as was the 1962 original version), including deleted scenes and an excellent retrospective documentary. No commentary track though (again, too busy with Gangs of New York).

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Question, Pikey. You say, "Oh to imagine Schindler in the hands of Martin Scorsese..." and I wonder what you mean. No doubt you believe it would be an amazing film, but I ask you, what do you think Schindler's List would have been like if helmed by Marty?
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Spielberg's Schindler's List is a powerful, earnest and important film, with strong performances by Neeson and Kingsley and a great turn by Finnes. It deserves all the attention, Oscars and whatever other accolades it receives. BUT, having said that, it is flawed for me, and the flaw has to do with Spielberg as a filmmaker. For all the inherent power and emotion of the movie, I find Spielberg undercuts it at the end. Not the CODA with the survivors, which is both sobering and haunting, but the end of the narrative itself, the tearful speech Schindler makes. It's melodramatic, overly theatrical and unnecessary. It smacks of Spielberg's sentimentality, which is fine I suppose, and I know most audiences accept that scene completely and are probably even moved by it. But I find it inconcruous with the body of the movie, and again, unncecessary and even cheap. That isn't a scene I can imagine Scorsese having ever filmed.

I don't really know how else the movie may have differed specifically (if anyone could predict what Scorsese'd do, he wouldn't be the filmmaker he is), but it certainly would have been interesting to see Scorsese tackle the Holocaust as a subject matter. I also wonder how he would have cast it. His choice of Willem Dafoe for example as Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ was so unusual but so intuitively on-target. Who would have been Scorsese's Oskar Schindler? Can you imagine Daniel Day-Lewis in the role perhaps? I don't believe Marty had reached the stage of casting yet, but who knows which actors may have filled the roles?

Anyway, Spielberg made an important movie, and except for that one key scene and a couple other little sentimental false notes here and there, I have no qualms with it as is - it's a success for sure. But Scorsese's is such a different artist and sensibility than Spielberg's, the differences surely would have been interesting to see. Most probably would have been subtle, but others likely disperate.

And on an awards level, no matter how different Scorsese's Schindler's List might have been, I think the end result would have been exactly the same: armfulls of awards, including the elusive Oscar.


As another sidetrack, it's a also a shame that the success of Schindler's List stopped Kubrick's own long-researched Holocaust project from ever going into production. His was certainly another sensibilty and genius I would have liked to see address the subject. But alas...



And now, back to Scorsese!



Of Scorsese's post-GoodFellas movies, it is probably fair to say that Bringing Out The Dead is both the least known, and the most underrated. It tells the delirious and detached tale of a haunted man in a haunted world – Nicolas Cage driving the streets of a vice ridden mid-90s Manhattan, accompanied by three remote partners, on three nights, with the image of a dead girl lingering ever on his mind.



To say that I had no idea that Bringing Out The Dead was a Scorsese film is an understatement. I had no idea, at all, in Hell that this was a Scorsese picture until I read the Ebert review – and then I was all like, "oh, my God, I gotta see that!" I knew it was at my video store. I knew it was on DVD. And now I had reason – why had I never hired it before? It really didn't appeal to me from a distance. The title rang bells, but not enough, for me to register anything. Bringing Out The Dead is a film so under known that the title meant nothing to me – and while I may not have see enough Scorsese films, it isn't like I didn't know that they existed. Why is it that this was the Scorsese picture that I didn't even know Scorsese made? This marks Bringing Out The Dead in my opinion; no one really knows about it, and to be dead honest, it is a crying shame.

With some amazing technical flourishes [the shot that rotates imagery of an ambulance driving down a busy city street by ninety degrees still blows my mind], and a visual palette that reminds me of [and as Holden compares After Hours to the following film, I note this quite interestingly] Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Nothing is subdued about Bringing Out The Dead in terms of visuals – it is blaring, it burns at the eyes and at the mind. Juxtaposed against the silent desperation of the characters, Scorsese, Shoonmaker and Richardson create a loud and intensely paranoid schizophrenic visual landscape that, much like Eyes Wide Shut, seems to be coked up to the gills. It is definitely one of the most visually inspiring films I have seen in terms of atmosphere in my next screenplay, Beautiful Story.

The performance of Nicolas Cage is probably a lot like his role in Leaving Los Vegas [which once again is a film that employs a very colourful nightmarish city as its backdrop] in terms of the impending doom that seems to mark his character. It is a wonderful role and perfectly executed for much of the film, but it is important to note that the character is less about moving the thin traces of a story, but simply about bearing testament to it – he becomes our eyes. His role as our collective eye is much like that of Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby in some ways, and it is important that he is not the focal point of Schrader's screenplay, but simply a vehicle through which we are able to experience this world. As a result it is fair to say that Cage does a bang up job, but it is fairer to say that it is the characters around him that steal the show, especially Ving Rhames as the evangelistic Marcus – a tour de force of sorts, and this is how supporting roles should be played, dammit.

I posted my initial thoughts on Bringing Out The Dead on the FIRST PAGE of this thread [go read them], and so much else of what I could now say would be redundant, other than that this is one film that is totally undeserving of its obscurity – it is without doubt one of the better films of 1999, and indeed, the latter nineties period. I'm not sure about R1 DVD, but the R4 version has just been released down here, with a pretty standard PR piece of crap attached. That said, even without a swag of extras, Bringing Out The Dead is a literal must have, not only because it is a Scorsese film, but because it is a wonderful Scorsese film to boot.





Bringing Out the Dead was certainly underrated, misunderstood and even generally ignored during its U.S. release in 1999, but you could hardly call it unknown. It was promoted very heavily, and Scorsese and Cage are both high-profile names. That few went to see it, and that those audiences that did were largely unimpressed, has nothing to do with its marquee value. If Eyes Wide Shut hadn't been released earlier that year, I'd say Bringing Out the Dead was probably the most misunderstood movie of the year - but as usual Kubrick won that prize...sadly this time posthumously.

A return to the mean streets, this time Hell's Kitchen via the busy night shift of an ambulance crew. Frank Pierce (Nic Cage) is burned out which is manifesting as insomnia, depression, and probably some job-related PTSD, and of late he is starting to see visions. Are these simple hallucinations brought on by his lack of sleep and mental duress, or are they ghosts walking through the same chaotic nights he is working in? Frank has a series of partners, played by Vingh Rhames, John Goodman, and Tom Sizemore who all deal with the stress of the job in their own ways - Marcus (Rhames) is an almost evangelical preacher, Larry is trying his best just to focus on the job and get through a shift, and Tom (Sizemore) seems as high-strung as the junkies they encounter nightly. Mary (Patricia Arquette) is the daughter of a recent patient and may be a rope Frank can cling to in the swimming nightmare to tether him back to the land of the living.



It was a Scorsese return to New York nights with screenwriter Paul Schrader, who adapted the novel by Joe Connelly. While Taxi Driver may present a hopeless character, Frank - as far gone as he is - can still be saved. The fevered nightmare of lower Manhattan at night is different than Taxi Driver or After Hours, but just as palpable.







The post-GoodFellas movie that is truly unknown and hardly many would think of as Scorsese attached to is Kundun (1997). The story of the Dalai Lama being discovered then exiled by the Communist Chinese, with not one American or English actor appearing in it, set entirely in Tibet and China. THAT is a tough sell, marketing wise, against Adam Sandler and Steven Segal movies. At least the other Dalai Lama movie from about the same time, Seven Years in Tibet, had Brad Pitt to help sell it (not that it helped much).

And I'd say The Age of Innocence (1993), too, is probably less known than Bringing Out the Dead, though it did manage to get five Oscar nominations (and even a win, for Gabriella Pescuicci's costumes). Certainly, the genre of literary costume drama is less obviously "Scorsese-like" than Bringing Out the Dead, which is another nighttime odyssey on the streets of Manhattan (see also Taxi Driver and After Hours). Anyway, most of Scorsese's works, apart from the three touchstones in Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and GoodFellas, are underknown and underappreciated on one or more levels. And remember, even the least-popular Adam Sandler vehicle is seemingly more widely popular than even those three films, so it's all about perspective.



Well, I knew about Kundun and The Age Of Innocence.

But then I guess that even if I was unaware of Bringing Out The Dead being a Scorsese picture, I'm still more cinematically educated than your run of the mill moron.



"A love story is like a song: it's beautiful while it lasts..."


New York, New York (1977) is far and away Scorsese's least liked and most universally derided film. It was a huge critical and financial disappointment upon its release in 1977. Today, even with it being a Scorsese/DeNiro collaboration, it is so little known that few probably even realize the song "New York, New York" (properly titled "Theme from New York, New York") is from this film (you know, "These little town blues, are leaving today, I'll make a brand new start of it...", etc.). Its reputation is so bad that I don't think anyone even gives it a chance. But while far from his masterpieces, New York, New York is an interesting movie, and has strong points to recommend.



The story opens with the crowded happy streets in the middle of Manhattan on V-J Day, 1945. Through the celebratory crowd the camera finds Jimmy Doyle (DeNiro), a fast-talking overly-confident schemer in a loud shirt. While trying to score from gal to gal in their post-war euphoria, he comes up against Francine Evans (Liza Minnelli), a WAC sitting alone because one of Jimmy's pals has escorted her friend away to the dance floor (and later a hotel room). Jimmy tries half-heartedly to pick Francine up, but she's not the least bit interested. So naturally Jimmy tries harder, until he won't leave her alone unless she agrees to give him a chance. Francine isn't just being coy, she instantly sees through Doyle's horsesh!t. This both angers and intrigues him.



The next day they somehow wind up in a cab together and she learns he's a musician, a saxophonist. She accompanies him to an audition where he's trying to be the house bandleader in a mid-sized club. When it starts going badly and Jimmy is just about to be thrown out for his temper and unwillingness to compromise, Francine stands up and starts crooning - turns out she's an aspiring singer in her own right. The club owner loves them as a double act, and they're thrown in together. Jimmy is not only a first-rate sax player, but also a gifted composer, though his tastes run more toward the burgeoning BeBop movement up in Harlem, not the popular music of the day. Francine on the other hand is perfectly suited for the mainstream, a star waiting to happen. She's attracted to Jimmy's talent and artistry, so against her better judgment they become lovers as well as co-workers.

And that's the central conflict and background of New York, New York. It sounds like any number of Musicals from the '30s or '40s, and of course that is intentional. It's even a very loose re-working of a 1946 Raoul Walsh flick called The Man I Love, which starred Ida Lupino. But it could just as well have used any number of those Musical melodramas as a blueprint. Scorsese is a fan of that time period and those types of films, so in many ways his New York, New York is an hommage. But Marty also tried to add something of his own time and experience, and it's an experiment with mixed results.



Scorsese's central idea was to use the frame of that genre as well as its visual style and signature - such as big sets and a patterend Technicolor look, but the new wrinkle added would be the characterizations and the pacing, which would be more akin to Cassavetes, with lots of improvisation and a frankness in dealing with subject matter that in the 1940s would have been unsavory or off-limits. There are times this unlikely combination works perfectly, perhaps the best example being the scene where Jimmy and Francine meet and argue back and forth on V-J Day. The freshness is clearly due to improvisation, and it melds seemlessly with the stylized look at sets. But there are other instances, especially in the last third of the movie, where this combo falls flat. The acting and character work, while true and convincing in the context of the particular scene, is simply out of place against the backdrop and doesn't link up well with what is before or after it. There is a lack of coherence in the idea by the end parts of the flick.

So that's both the essential strength and the fatal flaw of the project: it tries for something ambitious and new, and when it works it's marvelous, but when it doesn't it's awkward. Todd Haynes tried something similar with last year's Far From Heaven, using the tone, style, visual fabric and plot conventions from the '50s melodramas of Douglas Sirk, but with subject matter and performances from a more modern perspective. For me personally, I think New York, New York is more ambitious and more successful in this regard, but judging by critics and audience response, most would say exactly the opposite. Whichever you prefer, the experiment is very similar. Both also offer more levels to the viewer who is more familiar with the genres and films being used as reference points. If you know A Star is Born and The Best Years of Our Lives, the more you'll likely appreciate the attention to textual detail in New York, New York. Likewise, if you've seen All That Heaven Allows and Magnificent Obsession, you can marvel at the loving recreations and parallels in Far From Hevean.

I think Scorsese's idea mostly works, and the wonderful moments in New York, New York outweigh the hollow ones. But I can also see why critics and audiences would focus on the false notes.



The performances of DeNiro and Minnelli in the leads also echo the stradling of two styles. Bobby D. has the look of a '50 leading man here, but his harshness and cruelty are definitely modern. His petty and jealous egomaniac who can't possibly give another person love is a darker and more complex version of the archetype from the '40s and '50s, an artist who uses his art as an excuse to treat the people around him like crap. And true to his Method, DeNiro learned how to play the saxophone before filming began - quite well, apparently. Minnelli, who had won the Best Actress Oscar only a few years before for Cabaret, is obviously used by Scorsese more than partially to echo her Mother and her Father's body of work - singing movie star Judy Garland being her mother, and director Vincente Minnelli - one of Marty's favorites - who helmed such classics as An American in Paris, Father of the Bride, Meet Me in St. Louis and The Bad & the Beautiful, being her Pop. Her singing and look automatically harken back to yesteryear, but she also gives an emotionally raw and layered performance seldom seen in that age.



The rest of the cast includes Barry Primus, Lionel Stander and Mary Kay Place, but for all the minor characters and hundreds of extras, this is very much a two character movie.

The film ran nearly three hours on first release, and was later cut by about twenty minutes. Both versions were deemed too long for an experimental Musical by most who saw it. Years later in 1981, after the theme song had quickly become a standard (thanks in large part to Frank Sinatra's rendition) and Scorsese was a darling again after the critical success of Raging Bull, an even longer version was released, including an elabroate production number near the end that was filmed before but never used, "Happy Endings", similar in size and complexity to the "Broadway Melody" showpiece at the center of Singin' in the Rain. Again the movie was deemed unweildy and a failure by the majority.

But I think it's worth taking a chance on and discovering for yourself. It definitely has a strong love-it/hate-it thing going on. Those who love it tend to overlook the flaws and are wowed by the brilliance and execution of such a tricky idea. Those who hate it see the flaws more vividly than anything else, so the pacing and length become a torture and the mix incongruous. At least it's not a viewing experience you're likely to come away from with no opinion at all, and perhaps that's reason enough to recommend it. Plus the music is terrific (shockingly, "New York, New York" was not even nominated for best original song at that year's Oscars, where Debbie Boone's sappy "You Light Up My Life" somehow beat out Carly Simon's Bond tune "Nobody Does it Better").




"These vagabond shoes, are longing to stray..."



Great news. Over the holidays a local film buff is getting a heap of his own private stash of films to me. King Of Comedy, Taxi Driver, possibly After Hours. Plus a heap of Kurosawa, Renoir, Melville, Kubrick, De Sica, Sirk...

I will let you know what I think of them all. I'm starting on them first chance I get tomorrow, most probably with King Of Comedy, after all the discussion here.



In 1978, Scorsese decided to get together with a few friends and make a film record of some of Steven Prince's autobiographical stories. The resulting movie, American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince, is a simple project, but actually falls right in line with themes and interests common in much of his work.



Steven Prince is a face (he's kind of like a taller Steve Buscemi type - you know, funny lookin') you might remember from Taxi Driver, where he played "Anytime" Andy, the shady speed-freak who sells Travis the guns he will later use as an avenging angel. He also has a brief role in New York, New York as the producer in the recording booth when Minnelli is cutting a song. But Prince's brief career as a walk-on actor in small parts of Scorsese movies is nothing compared to the tales he tells of his life.

Some of the more memorable episodes Prince recalls are from his days as a Rock & Roll roadie for Neil Diamond and others, an attempted robbery while he was working nights at a secluded gas station, and plenty from his years as an addict. The most noteable for many viewers will be one of the drug stories, that goes exactly like this...

STEVEN PRINCE: We had a lot of close calls. I managed to get a lot of medical supplies, medical equipment that you wouldn't normally have. Like we had oxygen, we had an electonic stethoscope that gave a tape read-out so you could tell how many heartbeats, we had adrenaline shots, we had all kinds of stuff, these kind of shots to bring you through when you O.D.'d.

And this girl once, O.D.'d on us. And she is OUT, man. And it was myself and her boyfriend, and he said - Her heartbeat was droppin' down, and we got everything out, oxygen, and nothing was working. And he looked at me and he says, "Well, you're gonna have to give her an adrenaline shot." I said, "What are you talkin' about?" I said. "You give it to her." He said, "I can't, it's like a doctor working on someone in his own family." I said, "BULLSH!T, you've known her TWO DAYS, what the fu*k is that?!?" And he said, "No, I can't do it."

So we had the medical dictionary. You know how to give an adrenaline shot? OK, an adrenaline needle is about T-H-I-S big, and you gotta give it into the heart. And you have to put it in in a stabbing motion, and then plunge down on the thing. I got the medical dictionary, looked it up, got a magic marker, made a magic marker of where her heart was, measured down like two or three ribs and measured in between them. And I just stood there and I went *HUH*, and *RRRRRRRR*, *snap*, she came back like that. She just came right back, *SNAP*, like that.
Of course many will very quickly recognize that as one of the most memorable and heralded scenes from Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994), where Travolta's Vincent and Eric Stoltz's Lance desperately work to revive the O.D.'d Mrs. Marsellus Wallace (Uma Thurman). Quentin freely admits American Boy is the source of that scene (how could he do otherwise?), and of course Tarantino realizes it brilliantly and adds the character points and such of his own, but basically it is taken almost word for word from Prince's description. Since Scorsese's documentary is fairly obscure - even to many Scorsese fans, few Pulp Fiction audiences will recognize the hommage, and may even be shocked when that segment of American Boy comes up. I saw this at a revival screening in San Francisco, where fully half of the audience started gasping "Hey!" and "No fu*king way" and "Isn't that...?" etc. during that piece of the movie.

Fans of a more recent movie, Linklater's Waking Life (2001), will also recognize the story of Prince using deadly force to defend himself against a drug-crazed would-be robber at a gas station. But Linklater has the current day (and animated, naturally) Prince tell the story himself all over again. It hasn't changed much, though the version in American Boy is longer and more detailed, and actually seeing Steven's eyes as he tells about killing a man is sad and fascinating.



Scorsese does nothing flashy editorially with American Boy, and the majority of the film is simply Prince on a couch in a room full of friends talking, sometimes prompted by Marty or one of the others, including George Memmoli. He's another familiar face from a couple Scorsese flicks, most prominently as the fat fella in the poolhall who starts the brawl with Charlie and Johnny Boy by calling them "mooks". It is actually his California house where the documentary is being filmed. Anyway, the only real editorial addition Marty makes is the use of Neil Young's "Time Fades Away" over the opening and closing credits, and some bits of old Prince family home movies featuring Steven as a toddler and young boy. The juxtaposition of these completely innocent childhood moments with the wild and often sordid details of the same man's later life is an easy but effective observation. Prince started out as an average middle class kid in suburbia, full of smiles and dreams of being a cowboy. He wound up with heroin needles in his arm and a dead man at the end of a gun.

This dissolution of the American dream into corrupt horrors - though often seemingly good-natured ones on some level at least in this film, as Prince the survivor is a funny and compelling storyteller - is right at home along side Henry Hill's story in GoodFellas, Travis Bickle's in Taxi Driver, Charlie's in Mean Streets or Alice Hyatt's in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. It's also clear after seeing American Boy why Scorsese was confident to cast non-actor Steven as Andy in Taxi Driver. It's practically type-casting.

American Boy only runs about an hour, but it's an entertaining and reavealing look at one man's troubled journey. It's a must as a curio for Pulp Fiction devotees so they can see one of Tarantino's many sources, but beyond that it's compelling and interesting as a whole. Take a look, if'n you can find a copy.

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A novel adaptation.
Jesus, I had no idea.
I am actually and literally leaving to scour the video stores of my town right... now.
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Anybody caught the new American Express television commercial starring Scorsese? It's a brilliant, hilarious little skit. Marty is at a drugstore picking up snapshots he's taken, of a child's birthday party. He flips through them disgusted with himself, chastising his own work ("I should have gotten the bigger pony, because it doesn't read....How could I have done this? I have lost the narrative thread"), muttering to the teenage clerk. It ends with Scorsese deciding he must re-shoot, and the last line as he's walking out is on his cell phone: "Yeah, Timmy? It's your Uncle Marty. How'd you like to turn five again?". 'American Express, the card of perfectionists', is the campaign.

Very funny. I saw it for the first time Saturday morning, and then I was lucky enough to catch it again and even tape it. Great stuff. Gotta find out who wrote it.




oh yeah.........he is a super genius...........

but........

is he ...............gib........


hmmmmmmmmm.........shows how immature or NUTZ.......I really am.......
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"I'm your hell, I'm your dream.......I'm nothing in between.......You know you wouldn't want it any other way".........

"Listen, when I slap you, you'll take it and like it"..........Humphrey Bogart..........Maltese Falcon.......

Graze on my lips and if those hills be dry, stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie...........William Shakespeare.......



Originally posted by Holden Pike
Anybody caught the new American Express television commercial starring Scorsese? It's a brilliant, hilarious little skit.

... The first time I saw it, it took a second for it to dawn on me what was going on… but I love it...
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You never know what is enough, until you know what is more than enough.
~William Blake ~

AiSv Nv wa do hi ya do...
(Walk in Peace)




I love the look he gives the clerk after he says, "It's pretty". Rich, very rich.
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"Today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."



Just determining my favourites again...

01. GoodFellas A+++
02. Raging Bull A+++
03. Taxi Driver A+++
04. After Hours A++
05. The King Of Comedy A+
06. Bringing Out The Dead A
07. Gangs Of New York B+
08. Casino B

And the two documentaries are both wonderful too.



I must become Caligari..!
Martin Scorsese - King Missile

This one' called Martin Scorsese
He makes the best ****ing films
He makes the best ****ing films
If I ever meet him I'm gonna grab his ****in' neck and just shake him
And say thank you thank you for makin' such excellent ****in' movies
Then I'd twist his nose all the way the **** around
And the rip off one of his ears and throw it
Like a like a like a ****in' frisbee
I wanna chew his ****in' lips off and grab his head and suck out one of his
eyes and chew on it and spit it out in his face
And thank you thank you for all of your ****in' films
Then I'd pick him up by the hair swing him over my head a few times
And throw him across the room and kick all his ****in' teeth in and then
stomp on his face 40 or 50 times
Cuz he makes the best ****ing films he makes the best ****ing films
I've ever seen in my life
I ****in love him
I ****in love him
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It's a god-awful small affair, To the girl with, the mousy hair, But her mummy is yelling "No", and her daddy has told her to go, But her friend is nowhere to be seen, Now she walks through her sunken dream, To the seat with the clearest view, And she's hooked to the silver screen, But the film is a saddening bore, For she's lived it ten times or more...



****ed up poem dude....

My Personal Five Favorite Scorsese Flicks:

1.Goodfellas

2.Gangs of New York

3.Cape Fear

4.Taxi Driver

5.Casino

all just frankly (in my opinion) breathtaking works of cinema
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The world is spinning, but no one feels it move...you look up to the sky..and one day a spark...and the whole sky is on fire -Leonardo Dicaprio (Gangs of New York)

We're no longer called Sonic Death Monkey. We're on the verge of becoming Kathleen Turner Overdrive, but just for tonight, we are Barry Jive and his Uptown Five. -Jack Black (High Fidelity)



I must become Caligari..!
Originally Posted by marlowe203
****ed up poem dude....
Its not a poem its a song by the fabulos King Missile. Listen to it some time. The video clip is also very good