Prince of Broadway: Out on the Streets

Baker often relies on the expertise of nonprofessionals who can grant him access to their worlds. Take Out unexpectedly emerged out of conversations with immigrant Chinese deliverymen Baker met in the stairwell of an apartment he lived in with codirector Shih-Ching Tsou, whose fluent Mandarin facilitated these connections. Baker’s approach on Prince of Broadway was more deliberate; he and research partner Victoria Tate (who also stars in the film and served as its associate producer) spent time exploring Manhattan’s wholesale district and interviewing people they met there—a process that led them to Adu, an aspiring actor who was working as a security guard in the area. Adu quickly made a proposition to Baker: he promised that if the director cast him as the star of this film, he would help him tell an authentic story about an African immigrant in New York and find locations and other participants.

Another important collaborator on Prince of Broadway was Darren Dean, whose friendship with Baker began during their time working at a market-research firm, where they learned they had a shared passion for cinema. Dean helped punch up the comic aspects of the film, and his experience as a cowriter and producer on this project inspired him to make a career change; he has since produced Baker’s Tangerine (2015), as well as other indies like Rashaad Ernesto Green’s Premature (2019). Karagulian—who has appeared in every Baker movie since the director’s debut, Four Letter Words (2000)—was another indispensable member of the team. In Prince of Broadway, the actor isn’t just a source of insight into the cultural specificities of New York City’s Armenian Lebanese community; his remarkably naturalistic performance also makes us feel compassion for Levon, a man whose irritability and insecurities sometimes get the better of him.

This empathy proves vital because, at its heart, Prince of Broadway is the story of Lucky and Levon’s friendship, which exceeds the kind of casual respect often shared by immigrants who find themselves on the dark side of the American dream. Lucky begins the film with a great deal of self-assurance, but he soon becomes aware of how much he needs his employer’s fellowship. In the wake of Lucky’s discovery that he may have fathered a child, it is Levon who immediately offers his assistance, handing him some cash and quickly instructing him on the basics of parenting.

Baker highlights the unlikely nature of the men’s bond by contrasting their domestic lives. Levon drives to work from his spacious apartment in Queens, where he lives with his emotionally detached twenty-six-year-old wife, Nadia (Tate), who accuses him of marrying her for a green card. Baker’s pans and wide-angle frames emphasize the relative luxury of their apartment, with its wine-red walls, hanging plants, and wood-paneled kitchen. Lucky’s life is notably different: he takes the train to and from his tiny, sparsely furnished room in a shabby Bronx apartment, and has a loving girlfriend named Karina (a poised Keyali Mayaga), who initially lends a hand in taking care of Prince but grows increasingly exasperated with Lucky’s immaturity.

The underground economy depicted in Prince of Broadway is a place where distinct cultural worlds collide, and where communities that may at first seem to have little in common form surprising alliances. Baker’s focus on the wholesale district (whose shops and counterfeit merchandise have since moved down south to Chinatown) is informed by his passion for documenting neighborhoods that are on the verge of disappearing. A native of Somerset County, New Jersey, the director fell in love with New York City as a child when he accompanied his father, an attorney, on his trips there. In Prince of Broadway, Baker’s observational eye locates the unexpected energy of an urban community marked by poverty and gentrification, while also capturing the anxiety of a livelihood that faces constant threats and scrutiny from police.

As he would later do in The Florida Project (2017), Baker often grounds Prince of Broadway’s view of urban economic neglect within a child’s point of view, lending a playfulness to the film’s improvisational style. Baker periodically places the camera at a low angle, at the feet of the adult characters, to emphasize Prince’s perspective—a choice that yields a comic effect. In one scene shot at Prince’s eye level, Lucky explains his house rules to the infant as though he were a grown-up roommate, as the child responds to the instructions with a reserved naturalness that heightens the scene’s absurdity. Scenes like this blend lighthearted comedy and stark economics in a way that calls to mind Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid. Like Chaplin’s Tramp, Lucky initially hopes to dodge his parental responsibilities, but his haplessness and frustration soon give way to an embrace of fatherhood—he buys a new stroller and crib, learns how to feed and clothe Prince, and begins to express his affection for him. Also like the Tramp, Lucky starts to include the child in his hustling, carrying Prince around while hawking Louis Vuitton knockoffs on the street.

As Lucky’s connection to Prince deepens, so does his friendship with Levon. Toward the end of the film, Lucky—who, in earlier scenes, repeatedly denies the child is his by pointing to the lightness of the boy’s complexion—receives the results of a paternity test. He chooses to have Levon read the news to him at the Manhattan shop, which has recently been raided by police. Lucky’s decision to share this life-altering moment with his boss shows the extent to which Levon has been an abiding presence throughout Lucky’s ordeal and has even built his own rapport with Prince.

Like Take Out before it, Prince of Broadway took a long time to reach an audience. Three years after it was shot, the movie opened in theaters thanks to the support of filmmaker Lee Daniels, who also helped it land a home-video release. It remains an underappreciated gem of independent cinema, but as Baker’s career has continued to evolve in ever more ambitious directions, it stands as an important early-career example of his gifts as a filmmaker: his deep curiosity about and understanding of the lives of ordinary people; his sense of the complicated relationship between place and economics; and his nimble, inquisitive camera work. In Prince of Broadway, Baker developed an aesthetic sensibility that would enable him to create stories around other marginalized communities in different corners of the country, including the Los Angeles sex workers in Tangerine and the unhoused mother-daughter pair living on the outskirts of Disney World in The Florida Project. And like many of Baker’s later works, Prince of Broadway is a testament to the director’s brilliant mix of hardscrabble social realism and mischievous humor, a combination that infuses even the film’s darkest moments with the hope of transformation.