Gangs of New York

INT. ROOM OLD BREWERY DAY

Half in shadow, a man named VALLON, dressed in black, fastens a clean

white clerical collar around his thick neck. He raises a jagged razor to

his face, RAKES it across his right cheek, drawing BLOOD. He does not

flinch.

The sharp SCRAPING of the jagged blade against skin is the first SOUND we

hear.

VALLON cuts himself similarly on the left cheek, then hands the razor

ceremoniously to a BOY standing beside him. The boy, no more than twelve

years old, looks at VALLON worshipfully, keen eyes shining with fear and

excitement. 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, known

as AMSTERDAM, wraps the razor up, hands it back to his father.

From the shadows, VALLON now raises a long pole with a beautiful golden

crucifix 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 dim

hallway. We hear SOUNDS that might be animal or human.

MUSIC begins:
a steady, driving cadence somewhere between a march and a

hymn.

CUT TO:

2 INT. HALLWAY

VALLON strides in long measured steps. Amsterdam has trouble keeping up

with him.

They are walking down a long corridor that's like a tunnel. Patches of

LIGHT stain the darkness. Sometimes Amsterdam glimpses a FACE peering out

from the gloom. Once or twice he almost stumbles over a BODY stretched

across his path.

CUT TO:

3 INT. ROOM

Another room, even smaller. The only decoration is a bizarre rendering of

a Madonna and child painted on the wall.

A beefy man picks up a home-made PIKE, its iron tip sharpened to a lethal

point. He is smiling. The grin is huge, but cockeyed. It occupies only

half of his face. The grotesque, unending grin is the result of facial

paralysis, and has given him a nickname: HAPPY JACK MULRANEY.

Jack lifts the pike carefully, then takes a candle from the wall and bends

down 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 an

unlucky rabbit.

Jack thrusts the pike between the wooden bars, impaling the rabbit's body.

He pulls the pike from the cage and leaves.

CUT TO:

4 INT. HALLWAY

Jack falls into step beside VALLON and Amsterdam. He holds the pike with

the 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 up

by 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 WARRIOR

wears a rig of home-made armor made from fracgments of steel, lengths of

chain and bits of leather. He carries a battle-axe as lightly as if it

were 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 half

again as large, and several more men, all armed with implements of

destruction, fall in beside him. Their faces are marked with blood, like

Vallan's, or covered with ritual markings made with paint and ink.

The group grows ever larger and more forbidding. occasionally PEOPLE dart

around them in the tunnel and scamper out of their way like animals

frightened in a burrow.

CUT TO:

5 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 same

age as Amsterdam. He drops the last few pieces of lead into the mouth of

the rat, then sews it closed. He hefts the animal by the tail, swinging it

as he stands up.

He is near a primitive forge where a half-drunk SLACKSMITH hammers crude

weapons into shape and distributes them to OTHER MEN and WOMEN. The floor

is covered with bits of lead and steel, which Shang has been using to sew

into his rat.

Shang FOLLOWS the crowd of men and women with their weapons. And now we

see this room full. It is huge: the main room of the Old Brewery, crowded

with families huddled together for warmth and comfort, or out of fear; men

and women, together or separately, drunk or passed out. They are like zoo

animals 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 that

spans the room a hundred feet beneath them. Armed men and women from the

Brewery are climbing a rope ladder to join them. Shang SCURRIES up after

them.

The men and women from the Brewery fall in behind VALLON and the others in

the 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 all

be 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 TO:

6 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.

VALLON:

Fight for the Natives. They have a proper war chest.

MONK:

Well, I might at that. But I thought I'd ask you first, seeing as how I'm

not quite a Native American myself.

VALLON:

Let's see your skills, and we'll talk of payment later.

MONK:

Fine. But if you like what you see, pay me double.

Monk turns to the door with the grace of a dancer and delivers a

SHATTERING kick, sending it flying off its hinges. Clear white LIGHT

streams in, and we see Monk Eastman plain for the first time: a huge man,

in stature and girth, wearing a small DERBY that intentionally makes his

head look even bigger.

VALLON:

(as the door splinters settle)

Stand with us then.

CUT TO:

7 EXT. STREET DAY (WINTER)

WINTER WIND blows across a scene as strange and bleak as an alien planet.

VALLON, carrying his cross high, steps through the doorway. The OTHERS

slowly follow VALLON out of the building, which is three stories high and

maybe a block long. A dilapidated sign identifies it as the 5 Paints

Brewery.

It is the tallest structure in the midst of low, squalid SHACKS, winding

ALLEYS as narrow as a snakels back, and DIRT STREETS filled with ruts, mud

and filthy snow. A few PIGS wander forlornly about, rooting for garbage.

WASH hangs stiff, in the middle of the square, from a peculiar monument

erected to some forgotten war hero.

The Brewery occupies one side of a SQUARE surrounded by some storefronts

and a couple of collapsed wooden sidewalks. If this place resembles

anything at all, it's a horrible hybrid of London's Limehouse and a

pioneer town in the American West whose best days have long passed--or

never came at all.

VALLON stands still, staring across the square past the monument. His

battalion of irregulars waits for his signal.

Now... very, very slowly...from around both sides of the monument comes

ANOTHER GANG, in size the same as VALLON's, men and women both, armed like

Visigoths with HOMEMADE WEAPONS: knives, pitchforks, building blocks and

bricks, boards with sharp nails protruding from the ends. Every member of

this second group is dressed in a long DUSTER which reaches to the ankles.

Several MEN in front of the group sport dusters made of leather.

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