Word: dicaprios
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...DiCAPRIO: What I really loved was the tidal wave: the bounce between history and the characters. You realize that, eventually, the tidal wave of time and the transformation of the country will overwhelm these people until they almost become fossils...
...DiCAPRIO: That's absolutely how I feel too. But you know this was the port city. And the arrival of all these immigrants was basically a volcanic eruption, and the ashes changed the global climate. Irish people poured into the Five Points [section of Lower Manhattan], and they became a large part of this criminal underclass. They were just waiting for this flashpoint of civil riot to express their rights and loot the city...
...DiCAPRIO: He was a composite character, a representative of the Irish immigrant forming a gang, trying to best adapt his surroundings and survive in this underbelly of society. We wanted to maintain this historical significance, not to make a bald statement about the time but to give a picture of what it would be like. On the other side you have this coming-of-age story, the transition of this young man whose ultimate goal is to avenge his father's death. So, we wanted him to represent the plight of the Irish immigrant, and what it was like...
...DiCAPRIO Bill the Butcher and Amsterdam both have their own politics. But it's played out on a primal, street level. Both of them you can understand. You can sympathize with each man's views on America and democracy - that was so interesting and complex to me. Bill was based on Bill Poole, a great leader of the Nativists, somebody who almost became a folk hero. There were definite changes as it was adapted into a screenplay; it's not entirely specific. But it gives you a feel of what it would be like to be immersed in the Five...
...DiCAPRIO: Yeah, but eventually both gangs are slaughtered indiscriminantly by these explosions. The Nativists and these "foreign hordes," they die side by side in this democracy, as Americans. Their deaths need no distinctions...