American Boy: A Profile of: Steven Prince

Uh, forget what we were doing. This is really good.

Oh, Christ.

Whew.

Uh, listen - - a bar of soap?

This is better than - this is good.

- Oh, yeah. Yeah. - This is good.

- Not bad. - Not at all.

Could you go over there to that side, please?

Oh, certainly.

Whoo!

I'm guilty, huh?

We're all guilty, god knows.

J fourteen junkies too weak to work &

jd one sells diamonds for what they're worth &

& down on pain street &

j disappointment lurks j

j; Son, don't be home too late &

j try to get back by eight &

j son, don't wait till the break of day &

j 'cause you know how time fades &

j time fades away j

j you know how time fades away &

How are we doing?

We're ready anytime you want. Let's roll it.

Roll it, I guess.

Now, we're gonna roll. There should be some silence.

U h, ma yes? Y?

- Do you want us to roll now? - Certainly.

- We're rolling. Quiet, please. - Sure, why not?

We're rolling now.

- Are we rolling now? - We have been for some time.

We have been rolling for some time.

As I suspected. You thought I didn't know.

I could see you knew from the way you were acting.

What I want to get to - how much film do we have left in that?

Why don't you tell a story?

Uh, how much film - first, tell me the story about the film.

- Two minutes left. - Two minutes left.

It'll never work for two minutes. George, you think it'll work for two minutes?

- Huh? - Think we'll get the story in two minutes?

- No, no. No, no. - I doubt it. I doubt it very much.

No. No way. No way.

How could you tell a Steven prince story in two minutes?

Two minutes. I don't know.

- I lost $17 in Vegas. - You lost $17 in - what is that, $17?

Hello.

Who the hell is that? “Who is that?

George, you get it. You get it. Everybody sit down, please.

We already got the pizza, right?

We got the pizza. What is this?

On.

Let's see what he has to drink!

Do you give up?

Do you give up?

Yes.

Okay.

- I give up. I give up. - Do you give up?

- All right. - I give up.

Who is he?

Who is he? Who is he?

I think that's the pizza man.

You give up? Yeah.

It's the Italian crab.

- You give up? - All right, I give up.

- You give up? - I give up.

All right, Steve. You fuck.

You fuck.

Oh, you bastard.

Well, now that he's finally arrived -

Steve? Is this your quarter?

Oh, Jesus, we dropped this. We dropped the Pepsi-cola.

Well, sit down.

Hello, Steve.

- Now we can eat. - All right, give me a kiss.

Just a big, wet one.

Oh, careful. Careful.

Just a second. Move the sofa over here. That's better.

- That's better. - Let's make some room over here.

- Make a little room this way. That's fine. - You give up?

- You give up? - Yeah, I give up.

Whew. Steven, you son of a bitch.

You! Scorsese!

What? 'What?

Well, I think now that both of you are here, we can tell some stories.

And, uh, I had a couple of friends

who had a ranch.

And we all went down there,

and we got ourselves... Some really great, great grass.

- I mean, great. - It was good, huh?

- It was fantastic. - It was good.

And it must've been about, uh, 11 or 12 of us in a room,

something like this.

And we're sitting in there and we're smoking and we're smoking.

And I, uh -

right where this would be was a hallway,

and it was from one room leading into the kitchen.

It was like from the dining room leading into the kitchen.

It was just, you know, like, a little space there.

And I'm sitting there and I'm just smoking away.

And all of a sudden I see this black thing go by like that.

And I turned to the guy and I said, "Charlie, uh, you got a monkey here."

And he says, "no, there's no monkeys here."

And I said, "yeah, I just saw a monkey. I just saw it walk by there."

And he said, "no, no, that's bubba." And I said, "that's bubba?"

He said, "yeah, that's bubba." He says, "bubba, come in here!"

Bubba comes in.

Bubba is a fully-grown silverback gorilla.

Nine hundred pounds, four-and-a-half feet tall.

Right? Comes walking in. He's got a straw hat on.

- And he's wearing short pants. - No!

Okay? All right?

Really. Really. He was toilet-trained.

He was toilet-trained.

And when you would go -

when you would say to him, "I'm right, aren't I, bubba?"

He would shake his head "yes."

You'd say, "that's wrong, isn't it, bubba?"

He'd grunt, shake his head "no."

And it was like the old story, you know.

"Where does the gorilla sleep? Anywhere he wants to."

You know, who's gonna bother him? Who's gonna bother him?

And...

He just - he was very frightening,

because he was just so human-like, you know.

But he's big and strong. H-he -

he showed us one of his tricks.

He took a Cadillac tire and turned it inside-out with his hands.

That was a cute trick, I thought. A steel-belted radial tire.

Ba-dum! Ba-dum!

Just with the hands. Oh, god -

- he was - he was taught that? Yeah. Yeah.

He also was taught to straighten out a horseshoe. Straight.

And gorillas have a thing that they're very clean

and they like to go through hair and take the ticks out, right?

And he sticks his hand -

this girl's talking, she didn't know where he was.

He sticks his hand through her hair and starts looking for ticks.

She went 40 feet in the air, screaming, running out of the house.

Yeah. They're never seen - they're never seen again.

Once I remember - once on a Thanksgiving dinner,

uh, we got a telephone call from Texas.

And they had built a brand-new 16-inch Cannon.

Sixteen-inch - took a 16-inch shell, you know?

And they had built it,

and they had put a round in the chamber,

closed the chamber and fired it, and it didn't go off.

And they didn't know what to do.

And they called him up.

And this is Thanksgiving meal and he's sitting there on the phone,

and he said, "well, let me - did you try this? Did you try that?

You tried all those things, huh? You got a newspaper there?

Okay. Open the, uh, breach door.

Stuff newspaper in around the breach door.

Slam the breach door closed.

Get yourself about 200 yards of rope.

Tie it on to the - to the cord.

Move way back and pull it."

They moved way back and pulled it. You could hear it through the phone.

You know, like that.

What it was, was they designed it,

and it was, like, the breach door didn't close a 32nd of an inch off.

So the firing pin was missing by a 32nd of an inch.

So when you put the newspaper in, it made perfect contact.

They would call him up for little things like that.

And, uh...

My mother, without a doubt,

cooks the most bland food in the world.

No taste at all.

No taste!

- This man is saying that about his mother. - Right.

She was - she was really terrific.

And she was a very strong lady.

Uh, I can remember one -

one -

one winter, a blizzard -

she had planted the tree when we first moved into this house.

And now the tree was, like, you know, 20 years old.

And, uh, it was just a beautiful tree.

And this blizzard was just ripping it up by the roots.

And my father, my brother Ronnie, my brother Jeffrey and myself

are looking out the window at the hurricane

and watching the tree being torn up, and it was just terrible.

And, uh, my brother Ronnie looks out the window and he says,

"look at that. There's somebody out there.

Who's that asshole with their back holding the tree up?”

And my father said, "that's no asshole. That's your mother.

Get out there! Get out there!"

"Get a block and tackle! Get some rope! Go down the street!"

Then my father went out and stood in the middle of the hurricane, and he was,

"put a line on that! Get a line over there!

Get some boards up under that!"

My uncle, uh, he's Abe lastfogel.

He owns the William Morris agency.

And his older sister, bessie, is my grandmother.

And, uh, she used to, uh -

she used to -

what kind of woman?

She was just a real Russian Jew.

She used to teach advanced ball-busting 302

and, uh, phd ball-busting.