01/30/2003 Entry:
"Early Short Films By Martin Scorsese"

I've been pretty busy lately between work and other projects, not to mention I've been managing to see lots of movies, most of them pretty great, although there was one in the last week or two that was pretty dull. Look at the list and try to guess! One of the more noteworthy things was a Martin Scorsese series at Music Box, which paired one of his more famous films with one of his earlier/less acclaimed films. Of particular note was their screening of American Boy, unavailable on video, which I of course missed. This hour-long interview with Steven Prince (who played the gun store owner in Taxi Driver) is supposed to be pretty rich as well as showing him telling a story which Tarantino ripped for the overdose scene in Pulp Fiction. Alas, opportunities lost. Still, this presentation of his earlier short works (paired with Mean Streets which I skipped out on) was pretty interesting as well.

First was It's Not Just You, Murray which was probably my favorite of the four films shown. At a trim 15 minutes, this student film was oddly enough the most obviously Scorsese-ish of all the films shown. Particularly the ending, when Murray is talking in voiceover as Joe is yelling and berating him. It has the kind of humorous yet bitterweeet tone that comes up a lot in his later work. There's lots of activity, jumping from place to place in a moment, it is very much alive. Nice nod to 8 1/2 in the final scene too. I'm curious if the poor voice synch was Scorsese or the print. This is available on DVD as a part of the compilation First Works which also contains early films by Spike Lee, John Carpenter, Oliver Stone and many others as well as various interviews and such. Seems pretty interesting.

Next was What's A Nice Girl Like You Doing In A Place Like This, which was the one I liked the least. It just seemed the most forced and clunky, especially the continuing jump outs to the old man repeating parts of the narration. This was made just a year before Murray, and it is fairly amazing to see the progress between the two. This appears to be unavailable on video anywhere.

Third was The Big Shave, a fairly gruesome yet amusing short showing a man repeatedly shaving. The final shot as the blood pours from his neck was alternately hilarious and disgusting. Scorsese knew how to combine humor and gore even this far back. Simple yet effective, also the first of these in color.

Finally was Italianamerican, a 45 minute-long interview Scorses conducted with his parents at their apartment in New York. Hardcore Scorsese fans should recognize his mom from her numerous appearances in his films, most notably as Joe Pesci's mom in Goodfellas. His dad actually also had a cameo in that film, as the voice on the phone who tells DeNiro "there was nothing we could do" after Pesci gets whacked. Amazingly I kept thinking of that scene during Italianamerican because his father's accent and speech patterns atre pretty disctinctive. Anyways, this is pretty great, you can feel his love and caring for his parents coming through. Its completely simply shot, obviously just some frineds hanging around. His parents talk about their life growing up in the Italian neighborhoods, what life is like there now, their visits to Italy, mom's pasta sauce. Its fun and touching and amusing, and its nice to see someone wanting to not only connect with their heritage and history, but want to document it permanently. Shooting it in their appartment really adds to show their personality and lifestyle. This is available on VHS, paired with The Big Shave, although it seems to be out of print. Man, expensive on Ebay too!

Apparently this set has shown up in various places over the years, so don't miss it when it comes to you. Now who has that bootleg of American Boy for me?