In Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film, Taxi Driver, there’s a scene where homicidal Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) has a meeting with an extremely helpful gun dealer.  The dealer’s name is Easy Andy and if you want to buy it, Andy’s got it.  Andy’s the type who not only has every gun imaginable in his attaché case but he’ll also toss in a specially made holster for free.  “Ain’t that a little honey?” Andy asks as Travis aims a gun out a window and imagines what it would be like to shoot a random passerby.

It’s only a 4-minute scene but it’s one of the most memorable moments in a film that’s full of them.  Easy Andy was played by a man named Steven Prince and, for those 4 minutes, Prince easily stole the picture from De Niro.  As soon as Easy Andy shows up on screen and starts taking, you can’t look away from him.  He’s a bit like the chemist that Patrick McDermott played in The French Connection.  He’s sleazy but he’s got an undeniable charm.

Just based on his performance in Taxi Driver, you would think that Steven Prince was one of those 70s character actors who split their time between Scorsese, Altman, and the occasional big studio film.  However, Steven Prince was actually not an actor.  Instead, he was a member of Martin Scorsese’s entourage, a friend who was something of a personal assistant to the director in the 70s.

In 1978, two years after Prince stole 4 minutes of Taxi Driver away from Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese directed a documentary about his friend, American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince.  Essentially a 55-minute conversation between Prince, Scorsese, and actor George Memmoli, American Boy was Scorsese’s homage to Shirley Clarke’s 1967 documentary, Portrait of Jason.  Both documentaries feature a night spent with a New York-based raconteur and both feature plenty of stories about drugs, death, and celebrity.  The main difference is that you watch Portrait of Jason frightened that Jason is on the verge of having a mental breakdown whereas you spend most of American Boy expecting Steven Prince to drop dead at any second.

From the minute that Steven Prince arrives at George Memmoli’s house, he looks like he’s on the verge of collapsing.  He’s painfully thin and his face is skeletal.  His eyes are sunk deep into his head and surrounded by dark circles and his teeth are noticeably brown and rotten.   Prince was only 29 or 30 when American Boy was filmed but one look at his face and you know that he’s lived a lifetime in those three decades.  When he speaks, his voice is a nasal croak.

When Prince first shows up, he and Memmoli get into a wrestling match that seems to go on forever.  Watching the heavy-set Memmoli collapse onto the cadaverous Prince, you find yourself worrying about what’s going to be left of Prince once they’re finished.  (At first, the wrestling seems terrible self-indulgent but actually, it’s classic Scorsese.  His feature films have often dealt with men who, because of their hang-ups, still act like children.  Why should a documentary be any different?)  When the wrestling finally ends and Prince starts to talk about his life, his charisma is evident but you’re still weary.  Prince is the type of story teller who knows how to bring you into his world but, whenever you start to get too close to what’s actually going on inside of him, he pushes you away with a sudden punchline or a sarcastic quip.  It’s appropriate that Prince starts things off by telling a story about getting stoned because he has an addict’s charisma.  He has the charm of a man who has to be charming because, otherwise, he’d probably be dead.

And yet Prince is such a skilled story teller that, despite your better instincts, you do start to let your guard down.  He talks about growing up and how much he loves his family and Scorsese shows us home movies so we can compare the happy child that Steven Prince was to the recovering addict who is now talking to us.  He tells a story about tricking a man into drinking vodka, little realizing that the man was an alcoholic who was trying to stay away from booze.  He tells us about a female friend who OD’d and how he had to use a medical book, a magic marker, and a shot of adrenaline to bring her back to life.  (That story was later recreated in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.)  He talks about the time he spent working for Neil Young and he talks about his own struggle with heroin.

He also talk about the time that he killed a man.  Prince was working at a gas station when he caught a man stealing tires.  Prince ended up shooting the man in self-defense and, for a few brief moments, we see one of the reasons why Scorsese and Memmoli find Prince to be so intriguing.  What they’ve only done in the movies, Steven Prince has done in real life.

Much as with Portrait of Jason, you find yourself wondering how much of American Boy was spontaneous and how much of it was planned out beforehand.   Were Prince and Memmoli really wrestling or were they just following stage directions?  Is Prince really telling us the story of his life because he wants to or because Scorsese keeps asking him questions?  Throughout the film, Scorsese continually reminds us that everyone in the film — including himself — is essentially performing for the cameras.  (Early on, we see and hear Scorsese asking if the camera’s rolling.  At another point, he says that he’ll just edit an awkward moment out of the film.)  And so, we’re left to wonder: are we seeing a true profile of Steven Prince or are we seeing what Scorsese wants us to see of Steven Prince?  Is Steven Prince a real person or is he just another one of Scorsese’s troubled outsiders?

It’s not always an easy film to watch.  Charismatic or not, a little bit of Steven Prince can go a long way.  And yet, it’s still a film that, once you start watching it, you really can’t look away from it.  It’s a bit like Prince himself; imperfect but always intriguing.  And, as unwell as Prince often appears to be in American Boy, he’s still with us.  (In 2009, he even did a follow-up to American Boy, American Prince.)  Steven Prince survives.