“America Was Born In The Streets.”

Character: Jenny Everdeane
Released: December 20, 2002

Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Written by: Martin Scorsese, Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian
Genre: Drama / Epic

Co-Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Liam Neeson. (click here for additional cast)

In 1846, as waves of Irish immigrants poured into the New York neighborhood of Five Points, a number of citizens of British and Dutch heritage who were born in the United States began making an open display of their resentment toward the new arrivals. William Cutting, better known as “Bill the Butcher” for his vocation and deadly skill with a knife, bands his fellow “Native Americans” into a gang to take on the Irish immigrants; the immigrants in turn form a gang of their own, “The Dead Rabbits,” organized by Priest Vallon. After an especially bloody clash between the Natives and the Rabbits leaves Vallon dead, his son goes missing; the boy ends up in a brutal reform school before returning to the Five Points in 1862 as Amsterdam Vallon.

Now a strapping adult who has learned how to fight, Amsterdam has come to seek vengeance against Bill the Butcher, whose underworld control of the Five Points through violence and intimidation dovetails with the open corruption of New York politician “Boss” Tweed. Amsterdam gradually penetrates Bill the Butcher’s inner circle, and he soon becomes his trusted assistant. Amsterdam also finds himself falling for Jenny Everdeane, a beautiful but street-smart thief who was once involved with Bill. Amsterdam is learning a great deal from Bill, but before he can turn the tables on the man who killed his father, Amsterdam’s true identity is exposed, even though he has concealed it from nearly everyone, including Jenny.

Gangs of New York Gallery

Movie Trivia

• Heather Graham, Monica Potter, Mena Suvari, Melanie Lynskey, Vinessa Shaw, Christina Ricci and Claire Forlani all auditioned for the role of Jenny.
• Martin Scorsese hired “The Magician”, an Italian man famous for a 30-year career as a pickpocket, to teach Cameron Diaz about the art of picking pockets.
• The movie was originally planned for Christmas 2001 release. In June 2001, trailers were released in theaters along with posters being displayed with “Christmas 2001” and “December” listed on them. At the last moment the film was pulled off the release schedule. It was released unchanged for Christmas 2002.
• The film was conceived in 1978 and originally intended to be produced sometime in 1980 or 1981, but the box office failure of “Heaven’s Gate” made studios wary of expensively ambitious historical dramas and the idea was shelved.
• The original cut of the film ran an hour longer.
• Martin Scorsese ends the film with a shot of the New York skyline which includes the World Trade Center Towers, even though the film was finished after the buildings were destroyed in the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Scorsese chose to end on that shot rather then continue with a skyline without the WTC because the movie is supposed to be about the people who build New York, not those who tried to destroy it.
• Many of the characters portrayed in the movie are actually buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. The view of the skyline shown at the end of the movie would not be visible from this location, but rather from the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.
• In the scene where Amsterdam takes his medal back from Jenny, for the second half of the scene after she opens her collar the blood on her neck is digitally added.
• The original budget was $83 million, but Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio both took salary reductions in order to pay for the budget, which was passing limits.
• 19th-century New York was recreated on the lot of Cinecitta studios in Rome. When George Lucas visited the massive set, he reportedly turned to Martin Scorsese and said that sets like that can be done with computers now.

Movie Quotes

Bill: Anything in your pockets?
Jenny: I ain’t started working yet.

Jenny: When I was twelve years old, my mother was dead, and I was livin’ in a doorway. He took me in. Took care of me, in his way. After they cut out the baby… well, he doesn’t fancy girls that’s scarred up. But you might as well know in your own mind that he never laid a hand on me until I asked him to.

Amsterdam Vallon: I give you my word, this all will be finished tomorrow.
Jenny: No, it won’t.

Cast and Crew Quotes

On auditioning for Martin Scorsese
“I didn’t care if I got the job – I got to read for Marty Scorsese. I just didn’t want to make a total ass out of myself.”

On Leonardo DiCaprio
“He’s not a little kid anymore. The way people have viewed him in the past is going to be all blown away.”

On Daniel Day-Lewis
“The whole time he was Bill. Never Daniel. Always Bill.”