CR: When are you going to work with Bobby (De Niro) again?

MS: I hope in Gangs of New York, the next picture.

CR: Oh the next.....tell me about that, only because this is another film you have wanted to make for years and years and years.

MS: That came out of the ground, in a way, out of spending so much time in St. Patrick's old cathedral, which was built I think in 1802, 1812, I'm not sure. But it was the first Catholic cathedral in New York, at a time when there was a lot of hostility against Catholics in New York, particularly by the Anglo-Saxon gangs that were stationed down in the lower part of Manhattan called "The Five Points". There were a lot of Anglo-Saxon gangs that felt that the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant..... and there was enough people in America......stop getting off the boats, we don't want any Catholics, don't want any Jews, don't want any blacks, don't want any Italians... (laughing)

CR: We're full (laughing)

MS: We're really, we're full here now. And it's really good, we've got it working, and we fought in the Revolution too, you didn't fight in the Revolution.......you see, which is true, this is the way they thought. And they thought that the Catholics, the Irish Catholics particularly, were going to be a direct line to the Vatican. And so there was a lot of danger at that time, and a lot of the city politics was, I'd say most of the city politics, was worked out through violence in the streets. And in fact.....

CR: Politics?

MS: Yes, because Tammany Hall got involved and started using the immigrants. They were split......there was one man in Tammany Hall who was pro-Native American, not Indians but native American, white Anglo-Saxon. Boss Tweed understood that the more people getting off the boats and the more he treats them nicely, by giving them soup at the dock......

CR: The more he can compete with.....

MS: Yeah, the more he can compete with the other people and the more he can get more votes. Because this is the idea of America, they're never going to stop coming off the boats, that's America. And they fought, they fought so badly......in fact, the more research we're doing, we realize that the nineteenth century is the most violent century in American history, you know. The Civil War is like a continuation of the Revolution, in a way. And then the film begins in 1846 and ends in 1863 during the Draft Riots in New York which were the worst riots in American history.

CR: When were they, in 18.......?

MS: 1863, yeah. Well, the problem there was that after Gettysburg, I believe, Lincoln needed conscription, he needed to draft people. And he started a draft. And it was announced on 42nd Street.......and the only thing is, if you had $300, you didn't have to go........so who had to go?

CR: You could buy your way out......

MS: Who had to go? The poor people down in the Five Points. The city was up in arms for about four days, five days, the Union troops came in. The film resolves itself around that struggle, you know.

CR: In a sense, that's what happened in Vietnam, in terms of not buying your way out with cash, but you could go to college, you could get all kinds of deferments.

MS: Exactly.

CR: Or because of wealth, you had connections and that kind of thing.

MS: Yeah, yeah.

CR: And so that's why so much of the burden of dying in Vietnam was, so much of it, not all of it, but a lot of it.......same thing, the idea. You know, who's left to fight the war? This has been a long time story though (referring to GONY)........you've wanted, you've been intrigued by this for a while?

MS: Yeah, because going around and living in the lower east side, and living on Mott Street and Elizabeth Street, I saw the buildings were very old and I began to read the tombstones that went back to 1800, 1810, and I was just fascinated by the old history. And I heard that at one point, St. Patrick's old cathedral was defended by Catholics in 1844, I believe against the Know-Nothings, who were a Native-American group. And I wondered what the city was like at that time. So, over the years I've been doing research. And myself and Jay Cocks began working on a script around 1975, and we've taken it up to about, oh '93, 1993, when we decided to rewrite the whole thing. And now, for the past year, we're actually working on a story, the backdrop of which is that period and is that part of Manhattan.

CR: So Jay's the screenwriter on this?

MS: Yeah, Jay and myself, yeah. And we're working on it about nine months now, we have Draft Seven, we're about to go into Draft Eight.

CR: Why is it that screenwriting takes so many drafts?

MS: I think, in this particular case, we needed to find.......it's an ambitious story, an ambitious film..........

CR: Weaving so many themes and so many different groups?

MS: Weaving the politics, weaving in the anthropology of the time too, what these gangs were really like. Pretty much more like, they were actually more aligned with the Anglo-Saxon gangs and Anglo-Saxon tribes. So they had tribal warfare in a way. The Irish Catholics to a certain extent had a culture, to a certain extent had tribal culture also. So that if you look back at what the Anglo-Saxon tribes were like........the Celts, the gods were gods of war, in a way. So I'm also interested in how civilization breaks down, and when it breaks down it becomes a tribe, and smaller than that a clan, and smaller than that a family, the blood unit, you know. And so when everything is taken away, which is what happened downtown, to the extent that it was known around the world......he worst corners, the worst corner in the world was called the Five Points. Even Charles Dickens, when he came here in the 1850's, made a visit to the Five Points and wrote about it in his American Notes, said it's the worst thing, London can't compare, London is Heaven compared to what the Five Points is like. (laughing)

CR: We have nothing like this. (laughing)

MS: Nothing like this. So I'm fascinated by what happens to groups of people stuck in a situation, oppressed politically, economically and how they, what form do they take? A gang is really in a sense a tribe. And what are their standards.......you know, how everything is literally decided through violence, through fighting. And that fighting becomes part of the culture, it's really part of the culture.

CR: What seems central, and this is a giant simplification, but so much of what, it seems to me, your work has to do about is individuals or families caught up in some kind of huge conflict, of which at the end there is either redemption or in fact, death. They fall off the.......

MS: Like Casino. Yeah.

CR: Like Casino, sure. In the end, it's resolved by either death or some coming to terms..........

MS. This is a little tricky, Gangs of New York is a litle tricky because the action, there's a lot of action in it. And it's a pretty traditional story too, young boy has to avenge the death of his father, etc.

CR: Is this Leonardo DiCaprio?

MS: DiCaprio, yeah.

CR: He's in?!!

MS: He's in, definitely in. Yeah, so that's great.......

CR: Oh man, that's........ De Niro, DiCaprio.

MS: (smiling broadly and rubbing his hands together) Yeah, I'm gonna be.......very interesting, you know.

CR: No wonder you want to make it.