title: AMERICAN BOY: A PROFILE OF STEVEN PRINCE
year: 1978
cast: Steven Prince, George Memmoli, Martin Scorsese, Mardik Martin
rating: ***1/2
Steven Prince, who played the gun-dealing babblemouth "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, inserting images of the subject as a child between his bantering - with a more grating voice than Horseshack from WELCOME BACK KOTTER - about drugs, bagels, family members, working for Neil Diamond, and a lice-seeking gorilla. 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.
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