Thursday, August 4, 2011
Film Da Art of Storytelling: Scorsese's ItalianAmerican and American Boy Screen Tonight
Posted by Elina Mishuris on Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 8:55 AM
Rarely have talking heads been more compelling, not just to listen to but to watch. Both American Boy, throughout its nearly hour-long running time, and ItalianAmerican, minutes shorter, have less in common with their dry-as-dust History Channel cousins than they do with more immediate relatives: the rest of Scorsese’s filmography. The 70s documentaries bracket the break-out Taxi Driver at two-year distances, and in American Boy’s case, borrow Driver’s frenetic gun merchant, Easy Andy, to set him up in a living room with a few friends and some unobtrusive klieg lights—where, after an impromptu wrestling match, he performs admirably as Steve Prince, a role he’s played since birth. In his bag-eyed late twenties, Prince has already gigged as heroin addict, roadie for Neil Diamond and killer-in-self-defense, and his storytelling—both natural and perched at the apogee of comic timing, perfected in presumable scores of retellings—is on par with any in the great of American tradition of the self-made, self-undone man.
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