Gangs of New York script

Gangs of New YorkGangs of New Yorkby Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian, Kenneth Lonergan.3rd Draft (1993).More info about this movie on imdb.com

INT. ROOM OLD BREWERY DAY

Half in shadow, a man named VALLON, dressed in black, fastens a cleanwhite clerical collar around his thick neck. He raises a jagged razor tohis face, RAKES it across his right cheek, drawing BLOOD. He does notflinch.The sharp SCRAPING of the jagged blade against skin is the first SOUND wehear.VALLON cuts himself similarly on the left cheek, then hands the razorceremoniously to a BOY standing beside him. The boy, no more than twelveyears old, looks at VALLON worshipfully, keen eyes shining with fear andexcitement. He starts to wipe the razor blade on the bottom of his jacket.

VALLON

No. Never. The blood stays on the blade, son.He hands the boy a dark red velvet pouch. Very carefully, the boy, knownas AMSTERDAM, wraps the razor up, hands it back to his father.From the shadows, VALLON now raises a long pole with a beautiful goldencrucifix mounted on the end, then holds his free hand out to his son.Amsterdam squeezes tight.VALLON nods toward the door. Amsterdam pulls it open. Outside is a dimhallway. We hear SOUNDS that might be animal or human.MUSIC begins: a steady, driving cadence somewhere between a march and ahymn.

CUT TO2 INT. HALLWAY

VALLON strides in long measured steps. Amsterdam has trouble keeping upwith him.They are walking down a long corridor that's like a tunnel. Patches ofLIGHT stain the darkness. Sometimes Amsterdam glimpses a FACE peering outfrom the gloom. Once or twice he almost stumbles over a BODY stretchedacross his path.

CUT TO3 INT. ROOM

Another room, even smaller. The only decoration is a bizarre rendering ofa Madonna and child painted on the wall.A beefy man picks up a home-made PIKE, its iron tip sharpened to a lethalpoint. He is smiling. The grin is huge, but cockeyed. It occupies onlyhalf of his face. The grotesque, unending grin is the result of facialparalysis, and has given him a nickname: HAPPY JACK MULRANEY.Jack lifts the pike carefully, then takes a candle from the wall and bendsdown over a wooden cage full of rabbits. He slowly moves the candle back

and forth across the cage top. Wax falls on the cage, splattering anunlucky rabbit.Jack thrusts the pike between the wooden bars, impaling the rabbit's body.He pulls the pike from the cage and leaves.

CUT TO4 INT. HALLWAY

Jack falls into step beside VALLON and Amsterdam. He holds the pike withthe dead rabbit high, next to VALLON's cross.

HAPPY JACK

Did you bring the boy for a charm, Priest?

VALLON

No, Jack. For a baptism.Now a WOMAN joins them. She's dressed in man's clothes, her pants held upby suspenders. She wears a set of IRON CLAWS.MUSIC builds, growing more insistent and more ominous.Now a figure looms before them. Over his street clothes, this WARRIORwears a rig of home-made armor made from fracgments of steel, lengths ofchain and bits of leather. He carries a battle-axe as lightly as if itwere a twig.

RABBIT WARRIOR

We'll send a few across the river today, Priest.He joins the procession. Another woman, as tough as the first and halfagain as large, and several more men, all armed with implements ofdestruction, fall in beside him. Their faces are marked with blood, likeVallan's, or covered with ritual markings made with paint and ink.The group grows ever larger and more forbidding. occasionally PEOPLE dartaround them in the tunnel and scamper out of their way like animalsfrightened in a burrow.

CUT TO5 INT. ROOM

Vast and dank, like a cavern. We start CLOSE on...... the body of a dead rat being filled with some pieces of lead.Then a little WIDER to reveal: an eager boy, SHANG DRAPER, about the sameage as Amsterdam. He drops the last few pieces of lead into the mouth ofthe rat, then sews it closed. He hefts the animal by the tail, swinging itas he stands up.He is near a primitive forge where a half-drunk SLACKSMITH hammers crudeweapons into shape and distributes them to OTHER MEN and WOMEN. The flooris covered with bits of lead and steel, which Shang has been using to sewinto his rat.Shang FOLLOWS the crowd of men and women with their weapons. And now wesee this room full. It is huge: the main room of the Old Brewery, crowdedwith families huddled together for warmth and comfort, or out of fear; menand women, together or separately, drunk or passed out. They are like zooanimals in a pit. There are sticks of furniture jammed in corners, or,more often, arranged at angles in the middle of the room to form tiny

enclaves where the ancient brewery machinery forms irregular boundaries.Above Shang's head, VALLON and his gang walk across a plank bridge thatspans the room a hundred feet beneath them. Armed men and women from theBrewery are climbing a rope ladder to join them. Shang SCURRIES up afterthem.The men and women from the Brewery fall in behind VALLON and the others inthe lead. Shang SPOTS someone near his own age toward the front:Amsterdam. He presses through the crowd like a hunting dog.

SHANG

What's the fight?

AMSTERDAM

The Dead Rabbits against the Native Americans, same as ever. But it'll allbe settled today.

SHANG

Are you Native or Rabbit?

AMSTERDAM

(points to rabbit on pike)What do you think?

SHANG

Looks alright. I'll stand by you, then.

CUT TO6 INT. HALLWAY

The group now turns down the last corridor, as dim and long as a tunnel.In the distance, there's a faint glimmer of light and the figure of a MAN(MONK EASTMAN). VALLON stops near the door.

VALLON

I don't know you.

MAN

(lightly)I suppose there's to be a fight.VALLON catches the heavy Celtic inflection in the man's voice.

VALLON

Derry?

MAN

Donnegal. Name's Monk Eastman.

VALLON

And you want to fight, Mr. Eastman?

MONK

lf there's money in it.