American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince

American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince is a 1978 documentary directed by Martin Scorsese. Its subject is Scorsese's friend Steven Prince, best known for his small role as Easy Andy, the gun salesman in Taxi Driver. Prince is a raconteur telling stories about his life as an ex-drug addict and a road manager for Neil Diamond. Scorsese intersperses home movies of Prince as a child as he talks about his family. When talking of his years as a heroin addict, Prince tells a story about 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.

The Neil Young song "Time Fades Away" is featured during the film's closing credits.

A sequel, American Prince, was released in 2009 and was directed by Tommy Pallotta.

Famous quotes containing the words american, profile and/or prince:

    Property as compared with humanity, as compared with the red blood in the American people, must take second place, not first place.
    Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)

    Expecting rain, the profile of a day
    Wears its soul like a hat....
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)

    I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king—and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which, rather than any dishonour should grow by me, I myself will take up arms—I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.
    Elizabeth I (1533–1603)