The making of America

“Ever since I was a child growing up in Lower Manhattan, I was drawn to stories of Old New York,” Scorsese said recently. “Each day, as I explored the neighborhood streets, I slowly uncovered clues to an extraordinary but relatively unknown period in the city and our country’s history. The 1860s seemed to overflow with unbelievable stories of the working classes, of the waves of immigrants who crowded the streets and alleyways, of the corrupt politicians, and of the legends of the underworld who fought to control it all. They are the stories of the testing of America and what the young country stood for. They are the stories of our roots.”
The film, which was shot in 2000 and ’01, was originally slated for release Christmas 2001. Scorsese says the date was pushed back due to the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, as well as difficulties editing the 165-minute film.
The acclaimed director first decided to make a film about the legend and lore that gave rise to the modern American mobster after reading Herbert Asbury’s gritty 1928 chronicle, “Gangs of New York,” more than 30 years ago. A hodgepodge of police reports, journal entries, and sensationalistic news articles, the book served as a source for Jay Cocks’s 1978 screenplay, a 180-page manuscript Scorsese describes as a “beautiful novel.”
Like Scorsese, Cocks, too, has long been intrigued by the criminals and gangs of that period.
“My grandfather was a New York policeman and he kept old copies of the Police Gazette, which were filled with woodcuttings and engravings that illustrated the exploits of the criminals and gangs,” Cocks said. “I found it fascinating because it’s virgin territory in the movies. Most people are unaware of this period in New York’s history. I have always thought about this movie the way Marty once described to me: as a western on Mars.”
Added writer and historian Luc Sante: ” ‘Gangs of New York’ brings to life a time which we know about only through twice-told tales and people who left behind little more than their names. . . . To make history palatable required an act of collective imagination.”

Production
As Scorsese’s vision of the film changed over the next three decades, and both he and the screenwriter worked on other projects, Cocks refined the script with help from award-winning scribes Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan. Zaillian worked mainly on story structure, while Lonergan developed the film’s many characters. The combined effort is a seamless work of storytelling.
Once the script was set, Scorsese re-created the tenements, bordellos and saloons of this lawless era by building them on sound stages in Italy, instead of using computer-generated effects.
Always hoping to make things on screen appear, as the director said, “more than real,” the production team also utilized thousands of artifacts recently uncovered by archaeologists excavating in Lower Manhattan. Sadly, nearly the entire collection was lost when the World Trade Center Building 6 was partially collapsed by falling debris.
Scorsese said in some ways “Gangs” can be considered a prequel to his other New York crime dramas.
“I remember [producer] Michael Ovitz saying this is from what all the others spring, in a way,” he said. “This kind of reflects the foundation of the other films, ‘Mean Streets’ and certainly aspects of ‘Raging Bull,’ although that is more to do with the sports world and organized crime, and, certainly, ‘GoodFellas,’ there is no doubt. And I think that ‘Mean Streets’ depicted worlds in which organized crime was a major force and a major societal structure, as opposed to ‘Gangs of New York,’ where it is more disorganized, but political. ‘Gangs of New York’ deals with a world which is lawless, anarchic, chaotic and out of that comes order, but, unfortunately, it comes through violence.”

The story
“Gangs of New York” is set in the long-buried neighborhood of Five Points, a legendary landscape of crowded tenements and cobblestone streets on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which Asbury refers to in his book as the “Cradle of the Gangs.” During the mid-1800s, hundreds of new Irish immigrants flooded the nearby docks daily in search of the American dream. What greeted them, however, was more boiling cauldron than melting pot. The Irish were largely despised, particularly by the anti-immigrant [nativists] and viewed as outsiders who stole American land and jobs.
“I tried to get as close as possible to show how terrible it was for the Irish immigrants, because they were the first wave of immigration to come into America,” Scorsese said. “They tested the idea of what America is, is supposed to be. And I think, pretty much right away, as soon as they get off the boat you hear voiceover. Leonardo DiCaprio’s character says, ‘They got quite a warm welcome,’ and the next thing you know a woman, an old woman, gets hit in the head with a rock. That kind of tells you right there [about] . . . the extraordinary struggle that the Irish went through. We leave it at the point where the assimilation is about to occur. That’s a whole other story.”
The film focuses on a chain of events sparked by an 1846 battle between the Irish immigrants and the nativist Native Americans over control of the Five Points. During the fight, Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson), the noble chief of the Dead Rabbits gang, is slain by a Nativist named Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis) in front of his young son, Amsterdam, and friends Monk, (Brendan Gleeson) and Happy Jack (John C. Reilly.) With Vallon out of the way, Bill now runs the neighborhood’s criminal underground and allies himself with the infamously corrupt politician Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall (Jim Broadbent.) While most of Vallon’s followers are forced to go to work for Bill, Monk keeps quietly out of his way, hoping someone some day will rise up to take Vallon’s place.
Flash forward 16 years. Amsterdam (Leonardo DiCaprio) is released from an orphanage and returns to the Five Points to avenge his father’s death. The city is even more crime ridden and corrupt than he remembers and he goes to work for Bill the Butcher until he can figure out a way to kill him. When Bill discovers his true identity, he wages war against the son of his former foe and anyone who would stand with him. The story is a mixture of fact and fiction, with many characters composites of real people.

The cast
“Michael Collins” star Neeson has a small but pivotal role as Priest Vallon, whom the actor describes as “a bit of a warrior in the Celtic mythological tradition,” who is a fearless leader but with a sense of justice.” Neeson said the film’s revelation of New York’s hidden history also appealed to him.
“I would describe [New York] as an elastic band,” Neeson said. “It keeps getting turned and turned but never actually snaps. This period in the city’s history definitely reflects that. These boatloads of people from all nations arrived and, though it looked like everything would erupt, they found their niche, and built up from that. They spread their wings and gained confidence. And the country was ready for them.”
For DiCaprio, “Gangs of New York” is a film that will resonate with audiences for years.
“I truly think this is a great film,” he said. “We wanted the audience to be left with the dramatic sweep of history that sort of washes over these people.
“It’s really the plight of the immigrant coming into America and the formation of a democracy and the test that America is, and it is the beginnings of a pluralistic society and how different religions and people learn to survive with each other and the struggles people have to endure in that effort.”
So, how does DiCaprio feel audiences will evaluate his character, Amsterdam?
“Amsterdam is the son of an Irish immigrant whose father came over on the boats from the Famine,” he said. “This is a very specific story about a flashpoint in New York history, but, more importantly, American history. It’s a coming of age story of a young man trying to stake a claim for himself in this new world and find that American dream and that opportunity and fight for his people.”