Towards the beginning of American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince, before the arrival of the eponymous subject, a young Martin Scorsese looks at his cameraman and asks how much film they have left. The answer is roughly two minutes, and Scorsese asks “can we fit a Steven Prince story into two minutes?” and he is met with laughs and confirmations that such a notion was absurd – the audience is not quite sure why they find such an idea funny. Little do we know what Scorsese has in store for us with this remarkable short-subject documentary.

Scorsese is all too often revered as a narrative filmmaker – and it is difficult to blame audiences for celebrating him for his feature films, especially when they consist of masterpieces such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Age of Innocence. However, he is rarely given enough credit as a documentarian, and whether it be in his early short-subject documentaries about ordinary people, or his later work that chronicles a range of larger-than-life figures (normally musicians), Scorsese has a unique talent when it comes to non-fiction filmmaking. Seemingly taking his cue from the films of Shirley Clarke (even going so far as to use the word “portrait” in the title of this film, which evokes ideas of the brilliant Portrait of Jason), as well as his own fascination with the human condition, Scorsese constructs American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince as a fascinating profile of an individual who may be a young man, but has experienced enough life for ten people. It may not be Scorsese’s most well-known documentary, but it is certainly a terrific experiment, and running at a mere 55-minutes, it is a brief and concise piece that never overstays its welcome.

Steven Prince is a man of many pasts – he was a road manager working closely with Neil Diamond and his band, a drug addict, a deliveryman and most importantly, a friend and collaborator of Martin Scorsese, appearing in a minor role in Taxi Driver. Prince is a skilled raconteur, being able to tell a story like no one else can – and anyone who has ever heard Scorsese talk will know what a formidable opponent Prince could be when it comes to spin a tale. In American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince, we are presented with Prince, filmed over a day as he sits on a couch in what we assume to be the home of an acquaintance, as he tells stories about his past experiences, with the occasional interjection from one of the mostly-unseen listeners, and Scorsese, who loosely interviews Prince by fueling some of the main discussion points.

American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince is exactly what the title promises – it is a profile of an ordinary man who represents the complete opposite of the archetypal “American Boy” – while most people in Prince’s position would be ordinary, law-abiding citizens, Prince dared to rebel – and whether entering into the world of organized crime, drug addiction or filmmaking (all three equally as heartless), Prince remained the epitome of unconventional dignity, bringing his own unique style to every situation, or so his testimonies would appear. This is where American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince succeeds – it never tries to be anything more than it should be. Other than Scorsese splicing some footage of Prince taken from home movies, American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince is mainly just an hour of Prince speaking about a variety of topics, which may seem dull, but in the hands of someone like our subject here, and with the deft skill of the director behind the camera, this film turns into a real marvel.

In making American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince, Scorsese does more than just film conversations with his friend. He builds an almost folkloric image of the man before he even enters the film – the scene described in the opening lines of this review are clear evidence to that. Prince is a main heavily revered by those who know him, with his friends seeing him as a sort of counterculture legend, an obscure iconoclast who rebels against the system and gets his way, whatever that may be, even when he finds himself in misfortune. His stories are not merely ruminations on his past, but rather thrilling narratives about his experiences, narrated with vigour, which evoke vivid and clear images of the events being described, most of which are not visually shown but represented through the affecting words of our narrator, who oscillates between endearing arrogance and lovable humility. His stories of his experiences as a child of middle-class, middle-American malaise are so specific, yet oddly universal, and it is not unlikely that some element of his life will resonate. A young Quentin Tarantino even directly lifted one of Prince’s narratives from this film and made it a centrepiece moment in Pulp Fiction. That only goes to show the extraordinary impact something as simple but effective as American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince can be.

American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince has Scorsese experimenting with the rising concept of cinéma vérité and the growing popularity of more narrative-driven non-fiction cinema. It evokes the other great documentary from 1978, Errol Morris’ seminal masterpiece Gates of Heaven, which similarly focused on talking head interviews with regular people telling their own unique stories, framing them in such a way that they are not simply a subject sitting in front of a camera, but rather an active participant in a cinematic menage a trois between the camera, the subject and the director, all of which exist in a symbiotic relationship – the subject benefits from having their story heard and recorded, and the camera benefits by receiving material. The director facilitates the process and eventually transforms the results into the final product, which is an almost-absurd but deeply compelling set of stories about humanity in its most pure, unadulterated form.

I found American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince to be a riveting film and a deeply fascinating portrait about a young man with an eventful life. It isn’t clear in which instances Prince is being honest, and when he is lying. However, regardless of the felicity of his statements, this film is one that is profoundly truthful. His stories may harbour secrets and be deceiving, but the camera catches all the emotional minutiae that his stories just cannot conceal. Some parts are hilarious (an early story about a particularly friendly gorilla is heartwarming), while others are extremely disturbing, such as one of the final stories, where Prince describes the day he murdered another man, with this story being one of the most harrowing narratives committed to film, and we don’t see a single minute of the actual event, with the audience envisioning it using Prince’s engrossing talent for storytelling. Who thought a film about a small-time actor and former drug-addict telling stories for just less than an hour could be so utterly captivating?