De Niro: A Life

by Shawn Levy

  Just two months later, attending the Cannes Film Festival in support of the release of Guilty by Suspicion, he was decorated by Jack Lang, the culture minister of France, with that nation’s Commander of Arts and Letters award, marking his life’s work. A few years later, it was the Deauville Film Festival, which specialized in American cinema, that honored him. And then the citations, ribbons, and awards started coming faster: an honorary doctor of fine arts degree from New York University in 1996 (Steven Spielberg was also honored on the day), a New York State Governor’s Arts Award later that same year, and, the following winter, the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Medal from the Municipal Art Society of New York for his work in preserving the architectural history of lower Manhattan.*4 This busy season of awards was capped in the spring of 1997 when he was in France once again, this time to be knighted as a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, the highest cultural honor that the nation could accord a noncitizen.

  As a citizen of New York City, meanwhile, he did things that only a movie star could do, such as appear in commercials promoting tourism in the city, and things that anyone might do, such as show up for jury duty when summoned, as he was in 1998.*5 He even, in a sense, raced at Belmont Park, where in the summers of 1994 and 1995 a colt named Robert De Niro ran several promising races for owner Peter Brant, a billionaire friend of the human Robert De Niro. The horse won a significant victory in the 1994 Tremont Breeders’ Cup, coming from last to first and claiming a $53,240 stake, but he fared poorly at that summer’s Saratoga Springs meet and in subsequent runs at Belmont, never fulfilling the promise of that earlier start. (A few years later, De Niro had a line in Wag the Dog that sounded the perfect final note on this curious episode: “If Kissinger could win the Peace Prize, I wouldn’t be surprised to wake up and find out I’d won the Preakness.”)

  * * *

  *1 Meir Teper wound up odd man out when it came to publicity for the film, and he resented the role, writing an angry memo to Primus (and cc’ing De Niro and Jaglom) when the first wave of feature stories about the film failed to name him at all. Eventually he’d find a happier way of collaborating with De Niro.

  *2 De Niro would, in fact, provide DiCaprio with his initial introduction to Scorsese.

  *3 He wasn’t a stereotypical lefty, though: in 1992, the NYPD issued him a permit to carry a pistol. Asked why De Niro needed it, his spokesperson responded, “I don’t want to ask him about that.”

  *4 The medal was presented by Onassis’s children Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and John Kennedy Jr., who had, just the previous year, featured a photograph of De Niro on the cover of his magazine, George, wearing a powdered wig and piercing a playing card with a sword.

  *5 He wasn’t empaneled, but he was asked back at year’s end to pose for a photo on Juror Appreciation Day alongside another Manhattanite who’d been plucked at random for jury duty that year: the former courtroom stenographer Harvey Keitel.

  WITH ALL THE YEARS HE’D SPENT IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA, with all the red carpets and talk shows and press conferences and galas and notepads and tape recorders stuck into his face, he still hated interviews, still avoided them at any cost, still sat through them in obvious discomfort, still answered questions tersely and generically, as if being interrogated. As a result, not only was he a difficult interview to get, he was a lousy interview: grudging, stammering, terse, evasive, sometimes adversarial, and almost always obviously itchy to end it.

  Virtually from the time journalists first started seeking him out, he’d been hinky. In his very first interviews he was chary, reticent, almost suspicious. Now and again journalists would demonstrate how uncomfortable he was with interviews by transliterating his pause-filled responses, which could sometimes read like dialogue from a play about stoners. He hated it, and in time he simply did whatever he could to avoid the press altogether. He did almost no interviews in support of Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, or Raging Bull, and the press began to compare him to Greta Garbo and Marlon Brando, who were also well known for their aversion to publicity. Asked by the Chicago Tribune’s Gene Siskel why he was so parsimonious with interviews, he replied, “I know I’m right not to do them. Sometimes there’s really nothing to say.” And not long after that, he sounded off in Parade on the same topic: “I’ve never read anything that’s completely correct. What we’re dealing with here is a one-dimensional portrait. If I say something, that isn’t all of what I said, or it isn’t what I meant to say, or it isn’t something compared to something else I said.”

  In 1987, Vanity Fair decided to profile him on its cover, and the job was assigned to the biographer Patricia Bosworth, like De Niro a life member of the Actors Studio. Through his publicist, Stan Rosenfield, his manager, Jay Julien, and his personal assistant/secretary, Trixie Bourne, De Niro repeatedly rebuffed her efforts to get a sit-down interview. She continued to ask. Finally Bourne broke the news to her bluntly: “Mr. De Niro will probably never talk to you, but he is giving you permission to talk to his friends.”

  Bosworth did just that, getting some time with unnamed acquaintances of his parents, colleagues from his early stage and theater days, collaborators on his film work, and such key names in De Niro’s story as Martin Scorsese, Shelley Winters, Burt Young, Sally Kirkland, Brian De Palma, Barry Primus, and Art Linson. But, of course, not De Niro.

  It was a thorough profile, and credible, but Bosworth’s editors, perhaps peeved that their icon of the month should spurn them, splashed the headline “How Weirdo Is De Niro?” on the cover and entitled the story “The Shadow King” inside, asking in a subhead, “Is he pulling a Brando? Or is the secret that he has no secret?” No matter how even-handed the story, this was far from a flattering way to frame it.

  Not coincidentally, De Niro fired back the following year, explaining in an interview in Rolling Stone, “There was a mixed signal. People were asking me if they should do it, and I said, ‘Do what you want.’ ” As he saw it, “People were telling me that they liked the article—well, fine, that was okay. Certain things that people said were totally crazy. Not totally crazy, but just off.” And he explained that his refusal to participate was based on principles, not on fear. “I didn’t want to do it; I just sort of stayed out of it. I didn’t want to be—not that they were doing that—but I didn’t want to be shaken down: ‘We’re writing an article about you. If you talk to us, you’ll only set the record straight.’ Well, who cares about setting the record straight?”

  But at the same time, almost as if dragged by the ear like a truant schoolboy, he was making a concerted effort to set the record straight. He consented to sit for a Playboy Q&A, one of the most thoroughgoing experiences in all of celebrity journalism. Lawrence Grobel, a contributing editor to the magazine, spoke with him throughout the year—eight sessions on two coasts over the span of seven months, resulting in a published article of nearly fifteen thousand words. It was the result of some real struggle: the published version recounts that De Niro turned off Grobel’s tape recorder eleven times (“If I don’t turn it off,” he explained, “I may say it’s off the record, but it’s still on your tape”), looked at his watch in obvious impatience constantly, and outright declared that he wanted to leave five times.

  And he wasn’t shy about voicing his discomfort: “I’m feeling angry about this,” he told Grobel. “I’m being pressured into doing an interview, and I resent that. I don’t like the feeling. Why should I have to put myself in a position that makes me feel this way?” Prodded to explain his reluctance, he added, “I’m not good at editing how I feel. And those personal things that I feel … are not something that I care to let anybody know about. That’s my own personal thing.” Grobel, diplomatically, let the matter drop.

  That wasn’t enough, though. Whether counseled, coerced, or contractually obligated, he continued to meet, painfully, with the press. In 1989, he agreed to a major sit-down with American Film magazine, which, published under the aegis of the American Film Institute, had a more sedate, less tabloid vibe to it. The wri
ter, Barry Paris, reported no incidents of tape recorders being turned off.

  But by then, seeking an interview with De Niro and then writing up how frustrating the experience was had become its own trope of magazine journalism. And the tenor had shifted from amusement with a fellow who seemed to struggle with words offscreen to a mystery about a reclusive movie star to waves of thinly veiled hostility toward and superiority over someone whom most of the authors seemed to feel wasn’t the great icon that fortune had made him out to be. “Don’t talk about world politics, sports, fine wines or clothing. He doesn’t know a lot about those things, which is why he comes off terribly in interviews,” an “associate” told one such writer, who went on to quote a “friend” of De Niro’s as saying, “His mother is quiet. His father is inarticulate. Bob is both of them.”

  Those comments came from a January 1991 cover story in GQ, which would inspire a small pile of imitators. Billed as “15 Mumbling Minutes with Robert De Niro,” it “reported” what it was like for its author, Alan Richman, to prepare for a chat with De Niro, only to be left standing at the altar—in this case, a hotel bar in Manhattan. Their encounter wasn’t technically an interview. It was rather an audition for the interview, a little tête-à-tête to see if De Niro would feel sufficiently comfortable with Richman to conduct a full-scale conversation at some other time. De Niro arrived late, and the pair had barely started conversing when Richman sensed De Niro starting to hold back. And then De Niro surprised Richman by asking him what his first five questions would be if they did in fact schedule a proper interview. Richman stammered, and De Niro changed the deal: the first two questions would do. So Richman, feeling the opportunity slip away, asked him flat out why he’d consented to the meeting if he didn’t want to do it. “I guess … ummm … because … the ummm … the ummm … a lot of free clothes. It’s GQ … umm, but I want it to be more interesting. Frankly, if there was no interview I’d be just as happy, but I have to justify getting the clothes. It’s a way to justify the whole process and help the film to a degree, though I’d rather not do it, the movie will fly by itself whether I do an interview or not, not that it matters … No reason for me to do it except ultimately all the wrong reasons.” And with that, the interview ended.*1

  BUT WITHIN A matter of years, the situation had reversed itself. De Niro suddenly found himself in need of publicity, seeking the press. In 1992, Tribeca Productions released its first home-grown picture, Mistress, and he did a fair number of interviews for it—albeit short and finely focused on the subject of the film. Then in the fall of 1993, he did even more, a veritable ocean of publicity by his stingy standards, and all of it with a more expansive attitude toward being interviewed, scrutinized, analyzed, and exposed. In the span of some six weeks, major profiles of him, written with his cooperation, appeared in Interview, Vogue, and the New York Times Magazine, and he sat down with journalists for perhaps a dozen or more shorter stories. He had directed a film, his first, and he was beating the drum for it as much and as loudly as he could stand to.

  The film was called A Bronx Tale, and it had followed a roundabout path to the screen. It was adapted from a play—an elaborate monologue, really—written and performed by an actor named Chazz Palminteri who based it on the childhood experience of seeing a man shot to death right in front of his Bronx home. It was a gangland killing, and despite the horror of it, Palminteri (whose given name was Calogero) grew up looking upon the local gangsters as heroes, a fancy discouraged by his father, Lorenzo, who drove a city bus and consistently told his son, “The workingman is the tough guy, not the guy who pulls the trigger.”

  In his play, which started out as a brief reminiscence and then grew over time to a one-man show in which he acted all the parts, Palminteri explored the push-pull of his youthful self: the dazzlement with the gangster’s style and aura and seeming nobility, the filial devotion to the honest, true, and caring father. An important subplot concerned an interracial romance between the adolescent Palminteri and a neighborhood girl of mixed heritage.

  He mounted the show first in LA in 1989 with $6,000 given him by the actor Dan Lauria, who had gone to acting school with Palminteri and then hit stardom on the TV sitcom The Wonder Years. A slicker but still bare-bones production followed at Theatre West, financed by nightclub impresario Peter Gatien, for whom Palminteri had worked as a doorman. Word got around about the quality of the show, particularly the movielike tenor that Palminteri had achieved, and studio acquisitions people started showing up at performances, hoping to scoop up the rights from a hungry actor willing to make a quick deal.

  But Palminteri, in his late thirties, was too savvy to go for the first big check that was dangled in front of him. Regarding the sale of his hot property, he remembered, “I had three conditions: I play Sonny [the gangster]; I write the script; and my friend Peter Gatien, who put up the money to produce the play, is the executive producer.” The studios thought they needed a movie star as the gangster, though, and they were chary of dealing with a journeyman actor who sought to transform himself into a bigshot screenwriter and movie star. So they took what they assumed was the easiest way to get what they wanted. “In Hollywood,” said Palminteri, “when you say ‘No,’ they think it means, ‘He wants more money.’ So they kept raising the money, until it got to seven figures and over.” He held firm: “I wanted to write it and I wanted to star in it. So even though I only had $173 in the bank, I turned the offer down.”

  Among the people who saw A Bronx Tale onstage in LA was De Niro’s personal trainer, Dan Harvey, who strongly recommended the show to De Niro, who in turn asked Jane Rosenthal to have a look at it. She, too, was favorably impressed and urged De Niro to see it. He did, more than once, and he believed that he could make a film of it that did justice to the material. “What I liked about it was, it was very specific,” he recalled. “With that, you’re ahead of the game right away. You’re not doing somebody’s idea about that world. You’re doing the world.”

  He arranged to meet with Palminteri at the bar at the Bel-Air Hotel, where he put his own personal pitch to him. At first De Niro offered the idea that he would take on the role of Sonny, but when he saw how determined Palminteri was to play it, he backed off. In fact, he offered Palminteri everything he sought in a partner. As Palminteri recalled, “He looked me in the eye and said, ‘You will play the part of Sonny, and no one else will touch the script.’ ”

  Still, Palminteri didn’t let go of his golden goose right away. He brought A Bronx Tale to New York, where it was staged at Playhouse 91 to yet more acclaim and yet more interest from movie people. But the promises De Niro had made stuck with him, and in July 1991 they reached a deal. Universal Pictures acquired the script for $1.5 million, with De Niro set to direct and to appear as the father of the protagonist, Palminteri writing the script and playing the role of the gangster, and Tribeca Productions on board to produce De Niro’s directorial debut—one of the key reasons the company had been founded in the first place.

  Initially, Universal imagined that the film would cost $15 million, but the budget soon spiraled upward, often because of De Niro’s demands and preferences. He would be paid $4 million to appear, he would only make the movie in New York with a union crew, and he refused to guarantee cost overruns with his salary. Sensing the budget inching over $20 million, Universal agreed to let Tribeca go elsewhere to find new partners. (“We thought it would be an inexpensive movie,” a studio executive said. “We were wrong. [De Niro] doesn’t come from a guerilla filmmaking school.”) Tribeca’s white knight came in the form of the newly established Savoy Pictures, a production and distribution entity founded with $100 million of Wall Street money. Savoy bought the project with financial support from Penta International, an Italian-based company that would handle foreign distribution rights. They jointly agreed to a budget of $21 million, and an August 1992 start date was set for production.

  De Niro finished work on This Boy’s Life in May and immediately buckled down on A Bronx Tale.
Only then did his obsession with the most minute details of the production emerge. Casting was always going to be an issue, and he’d charged his casting director, Ellen Chenoweth, with a mission long before he’d need his actors. “I said, ‘It’s not going to be the usual way of casting a movie. You have to hit the streets now, a year before we start shooting. You gotta get out there and look. I know the people we want are out there.’ ” Chenoweth scouted throughout New York, Philly, Chicago, and Boston for people with faces that didn’t scream “movie actor” but who could still play the roles assigned them. She used local theater directors, such as Marco Greco of the Belmont Italian-American Playhouse in the Bronx, as scouts. De Niro was exacting. Insisting on approving every face on-screen, he looked at a pool of fifty potential extras and singled out one man who he felt didn’t give off the proper vibe. It turned out that he had identified the only Irishman in a room full of Italian Americans.

  They went to extraordinary lengths to fill the gaps in the cast. As De Niro remembered, “I read some actors to play [the character named] Eddie Mush. They were good, but then I said, ‘This has got to be unique.’ So then we looked at some neighborhood guys who weren’t actors, and they were very interesting, so we were getting closer. Then I said to Chazz, ‘Maybe Eddie’s around. Where is he now? Can we find him?’ And eventually Eddie came in. He read once. I said, ‘We don’t have to look any further. Where are we going to find someone else like that? Never in a million years.’ ”

  The most crucial missing piece, though, was the adolescent protagonist, Calogero, the young Palminteri figure who would vacillate between fascination with Sonny the gangster and respect for Lorenzo, his bus-driving father. The summer was already upon them and they still hadn’t identified the ideal actor to play their leading man. One day, one of Chenoweth’s assistants was out at Jones Beach looking for faces when he saw a young man who he thought resembled De Niro. The kid responded, “You don’t want me, you want my brother,” and he ran toward the water shouting for his older brother to come and talk to the guy with the video camera. The boy, a sixteen-year-old from Yonkers named Lillo Brancato, mugged for the casting agent, doing impressions of De Niro from Cape Fear and Raging Bull and Goodfellas, and throwing in a little Joe Pesci for good measure. The guy with the camera fell into stitches. Brancato had grown up on De Niro, and the next day he got to meet his idol. Chenoweth called Brancato and asked him to visit De Niro’s office in the Tribeca Film Center. A few meetings, a screen test, and, boom: he was hired, almost literally on the eve of production.