American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince is a 1978 documentary directed by Martin Scorsese. Its subject is Scorsese's friend Steven Prince, known for his small role as Easy Andy, the gun salesman in Taxi Driver. Prince is a raconteur who tells stories about various events in his life. The Neil Young song "Time Fades Away" is featured in the film. A sequel, American Prince, was released in 2009 and was directed by Tommy Pallotta.

Synopsis

Martin Scorsese and a small group of friends gather in a living room in Los Angeles with the charismatic Steven Prince. Over the course of the evening, Scorsese films Prince talking about various events in his life with a mixture of humor and gravitas. Prince recalls stories such as being a former drug addict, a road manager for Neil Diamond, and a traumatic event in which he witnessed a boy die by accidental electrocution. Scorsese intersperses home movies of Prince as a child as he talks about his family. When talking of his years as a heroin addict, he recalls Neil Diamond offering to help Prince get clean, but he refused. Later, however, Prince goes through recovery and remembers being shocked to learn he had a green ceiling in his home. He never noticed before because his eyelids had always been half-closed as an effect of the heroin. Prince recalls injecting adrenaline into the heart of a woman who overdosed, with the help of a medical dictionary and a Magic Marker. This story was re-enacted by Quentin Tarantino in his screenplay for Pulp Fiction. Prince also tells a story about his days working at a gas station, and having to shoot a man he caught stealing tires, after the man pulled out a knife and tried to attack him. This story was retold in the Richard Linklater film Waking Life.

Cast