Untitled Document
Copyright 2002 National Public Radio (R). All rights reserved.
SHOW: All Things Considered (9:00 PM ET) - NPR
December 23, 2002 Monday
LENGTH: 1385 words
HEADLINE: Tyler Anbinder discusses the historical accuracy of Martin Scorsese's
new film "Gangs of New York"
ANCHORS: ROBERT SIEGEL
BODY:
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
Friday marked the opening of Martin Scorsese's epic film of mid-19th century
street fighting. The movie takes its title from Herbert Asbury's 1927 non-fiction
book "The Gangs of New York." Scorsese says he got the idea for this
film 30 years ago when he read Asbury's book about the old-fashioned gang wars
and the neighborhood where so many of them played out, Lower Manhattan's Five
Points. The movies that he made first, he says, in a publicity soundbite for
"The Gangs of New York," lead back this story.
(Soundbite of interview)
Mr. MARTIN SCORSESE (Director, "Gangs of New York"): This film sort
of represents the foundation upon which all my other movies are based in a way.
It sort of creates a world in which the worlds I depict in "Mean Streets"
and "GoodFellas" and "Raging Bull," to a certain extent,
"Taxi Driver," it's the foundation from which those worlds emerged.
And, yes, there's no doubt. This is based on history. There's no doubt about
it. But it is still a film that is more of an opera than history. SIEGEL: Well,
operatic or not, "The Gangs of New York" is likely to fix our images
of New York in the 1840s through the 1860s like nothing else. So we have asked
historian Tyler Anbinder, who's the author of the book "Five Points,"
to help set the record straight.
Welcome once again.
Professor TYLER ANBINDER (American History, George Washington University; Author):
Thanks for having me.
SIEGEL: First, in general, what has Martin Scorsese gotten right in the way
of history?
Prof. ANBINDER: Certainly in terms of the visual images of the period, he's
gotten that just right. The Five Points as depicted in the movie, 19th-century
New York as visually depicted in the movie, he couldn't have done much better
than that.
He also does a fabulous job of recreating the sense that the Irish and immigrants,
in general, when they came to the United States in the 19th century did feel
persecuted and were very much discriminated against, and he gets that theme
very much right, too.
SIEGEL: Well, the story--the film begins with a huge gang fight which is set
in 1846 in the Five Points. It's between an Irish Catholic gang and a native
American gang; that is, people who were not actually born in the United States.
That gang is led by Bill the Butcher, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, who in the
movie years later recalls his Catholic rival.
(Soundbite of "Gangs of New York")
Mr. DANIEL DAY-LEWIS: (As Bill the Butcher) That was the finest beating I ever
took. My face was pulp, my guts was pierced and my ribs was all messed up. And
when he came to finish me, I couldn't look him in the eye.
SIEGEL: We'll spare you what happens to the eye. But suffice it to say, Tyler
Anbinder, there's a tremendous amount of bloodshed in this movie. That riot
at the beginning, reasonably true to history or not?
Prof. ANBINDER: Reasonably true to history with the exception of the amount
of the carnage involved. I mean, Scorsese has overdramatized the amount of bloodshed
and death there would have been in a pre-Civil War riot. There were a couple
of riots very much like that one depicted in the movie between native-born Americans,
Protestants and Catholics in the neighborhood, but at most, they resulted in
a death or two, not the huge carnage you see in that scene.
SIEGEL: Not the streets flowing with rivers of blood.
Prof. ANBINDER: Not the streets flowing with rivers of blood, no.
SIEGEL: The movie concludes with a depiction of a very famous historical episode
in New York: the draft riots, Civil War-era draft riots. How well does he do,
do you think, in showing us what that was all about?
Prof. ANBINDER: In showing what that was all about, he does a pretty good job.
New Yorkers were very much ambivalent about fighting the war by 1863, especially
because by then it had become a war not only to save the union, but to free
the slaves. And New Yorkers were not very enthusiastic about fighting for African-Americans.
So he does a very good job showing the rage of the mob; their animosity towards
the fact that for $300 you could get out of the draft; their animosity towards
African-Americans; how they took out their vengeance on the city's black population.
But again, in terms of the specifics, you don't want to rely on the movie.
There were no gunships in the harbor firing artillery upon the city. And again,
the amount of bloodshed was less than shown in the movie.
SIEGEL: The riots feel like they're in midwinter somehow in the movie. Actually,
they're in July.
Prof. ANBINDER: Right, the middle of July, which was the typical time in the
19th century for people to riot, when it was hot and people were angry. The
summer was the time of rioting in the 19th century.
SIEGEL: As in the 20th century, in fact.
Prof. ANBINDER: Absolutely.
SIEGEL: There are some historical figures depicted in this movie, including
the famous leader of Tammany Hall, the old Democratic machine in Manhattan,
Boss Tweed. Having written a lot about Boss Tweed, did you feel you finally
saw this guy gotten right in a movie?
Prof. ANBINDER: Scorsese did a very good job depicting Boss Tweed, and particularly
he shows how Tweed is somewhat ambivalent about the immigrants themselves, but
decides very early on these are the people who represent the wave of the future
in terms of the electorate.
Yet at the same time, Scorsese shows that Tweed is not exactly a friend of
the immigrant. He didn't want to give immigrants places of power within New
York City politics. He mostly wanted their votes.
SIEGEL: There are a lot of Chinese immigrants in this movie. They appear quite
a bit. True to life?
Prof. ANBINDER: There were only a tiny handful of Chinese immigrants in New
York City in the 1850s and '60s; certainly, not the numbers of prostitutes and
women, just a tiny handful of mostly sailors at this point.
SIEGEL: Yeah. You told me there were actually almost no Chinese women in New
York at that time.
Prof. ANBINDER: Right. Maybe one or two before the Civil War. And when one
would arrive in the city, it made headline news.
SIEGEL: That was literally. A Chinese woman arrives in New York City?
Prof. ANBINDER: Chinese woman living in New York about to get married. When
she had a baby, there were literally headlines in the papers talking about the
first Chinese-born baby in America.
SIEGEL: There's a general image of Five Points, of the neighborhood that you
wrote the book about and where so much of this happened, of a place where, you
know, you walk out your door and somebody either picks your pocket or knocks
you over the head. Everybody's bleeding half the time. You know, fair or not?
Prof. ANBINDER: In its early days, it was certainly a dangerous place. The
muggings, though, decreased. By the time you get to the Civil War, the Irish
in Five Points have already started to do better and have started to get better
jobs, earn more money, and the neighborhood was not seen as a particularly dangerous
place by the Civil War, and so it had changed. The Irish had started moving
up the economic ladder, in a sense.
SIEGEL: Some detail. On the eve of the draft riots during the Civil War, it
said that people in Five Points were putting candles in their windows. It's
sort of a poll to see if you're game to be part of this riot. True?
Prof. ANBINDER: Not during the draft riots. There was a famous incident in
Five Points about 30 years earlier, an anti-black riot, in which those in the
city who opposed the abolitionist movement went to Five Points because Five
Points had a lot of African-American residents.
SIEGEL: So it's historically misplaced.
So you're the professor. Overall grade here for history?
Prof. ANBINDER: For the specifics, it would get a C. But for the overall theme
that the Irish were persecuted and literally had to fight to get their fair
share of the American pie, I would give it an A.
SIEGEL: Well, Tyler Anbinder, thanks for talking with us.
Prof. ANBINDER: Oh, it was my pleasure to be here.
SIEGEL: Tyler Anbinder is a professor of American history at the George Washington
University and the author of the book "Five Points."
by Editor on December 24, 2002 at 2:26 PM