In the 1990s, Robert De Niro did not give many interviews. He allegedly did not like them and felt uncomfortable. But today, on the “first” day of the De Niro Con in Tribeca, the actor Jackie Brown Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino unleashed the Method Actor at the SVA Theater.
During the question and answer session after a 35MM print screening of Jackie Brown, How Tarantino’s collaboration with the two-time Oscar winner was just one aspect of their 30-minute-plus dialogue.
Because what really bothered Tarantino: Why, oh, why was De Niro fired by Mike Nichols from what would later become Neil Simon’s team? The Farewell Girl; which was originally Bogart slept here? The film was eventually directed by Herbert Ross and the lead role of unsuccessful actor Elliot Garfield went to Richard Dreyfus, who won Best Actor for this role at the 1978 Oscars.
De Niro said he got the role at a stage of work after he had already won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather – Part II, including Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900, Martin Scorsese’s taxi driver and Elia Kazan’s The last tycoon. In fact, De Niro had to Last Tycoon much to the grumbling of the filmmaker.
It was during rehearsals at Warner Bros when neither Nichols nor De Niro were feeling it. “I blame myself,” says De Niro, “I didn’t know certain things, it was a certain kind of comedy – Neil Simon – the timing had to be a certain way, I wasn’t excited about it.” De Niro even overheard someone saying as they left rehearsals, “He’s just not that funny.”
“It didn’t work,” says the actor. “I shot for about two weeks. I’ve had about three experiences in my life with a director where we couldn’t satisfy him – and this was one of those moments.”
“I was sitting in my RV and I felt this fear,” he continued.
“I wanted to offer my salary so we could rehearse for another week,” De Niro said. A meeting was called with Nichols and “he said, ‘I think we need to end it. He felt terrible. He was really upset.'”
The school was eventually rebuilt by Simon and became The Goodbye Girl.
Kazan heard this and was overjoyed because he saw De Niro on the Last tycoon.
“It was a no-brainer. I had heard of Kazan and met him a few times. Everyone knew his reputation and how important it was to work with him. So I was very lucky to go from there to Kazan, who loves actors. (Nichols) just had a different way of working. Kazan was exactly what I was told he was,” De Niro added.
“He didn’t know how to work with me at the time,” De Niro said. The actor eventually met Nichols again at a dinner party, where he apologized to De Niro.
“I thought, ‘I’m fine,’ I did well. No problem. Part of me was overjoyed not to be in a bind with him, it didn’t work out, these things happen,” the actor continued.
However, the actor’s approach to working with directors of different personalities and actors with different approaches is largely to just go with it.
“Once I’m in, I’m in the middle of it. Everyone respects everyone, that’s how it is with me,” says the actor.
The film will find its way: “You give your input, I’ll throw something in, sometimes we disagree.”
Tarantino asked De Niro how he copes with younger actors, British actors and actors like Tony Curtis before Brando, who all have different acting styles. For De Niro, such moments were not rocket science: “Part of acting is reacting.”
“You have to make it, that’s why I like working with children and even animals – they are unpredictable, but that’s OK,” added the Wild Bull Star.
Everett Collection
In relation to Jackie Brown, Tarantino confessed to De Niro during the conversation: “I felt like I had betrayed you in some way; (your character) Louis doesn’t have much dialogue.” In the film, De Niro plays a quiet guy who has just been released from prison and hangs out at the Hermosa Beach apartment of gun runner Ordell Robbie, smoking weed and having sex with Bridget Fonda’s surfer girl Melanie. The story arc builds to an exciting job for the ex-convict with unexpected twists.
“It was about attitude, mannerisms and details,” Tarantino says of the role. “I think you’re the best actor in the world in that respect.”
“I described this attitude as if it were a pile of dirty clothes,” says the filmmaker about his third cinema release after Reservoir Dogs And Pulp Fiction, the screenplay is based on the novel by Elmore Leonard Rum punch. After sitting through the screening, Tarantino was speechless, as point Jackie Brown In 1995, we felt it all, from crowded shopping malls to a shortage of mobile phones.
Tarantino then told the audience how to direct De Niro, joking: “With Robert, shut up… if I don’t say anything, he’ll say, ‘What were you thinking?'”
Tarantino recounted how, on a day when the actors were picking out Louis’ watch, the director/screenwriter quickly picked one for De Niro. “You’re like, ‘Whoa, whoa,’ that’s too fast, we should look at all of them and then we can talk about it.”
It was just part of Tarantino’s excitement: “I’m doing Jackie Brown and as a director I’m a shaken can of lemonade and I have to have an answer (to things), but it doesn’t have to be the right answer.”
However, Tarantino says he prepared for De Niro’s methodology on the advice of a theater director at the Sundance Institute, Ulu Grosbard, who gave Tarantino advice on Reservoir Dog Pages that say the aspiring director needs to “delve deeper into the characters” and not focus on “the bigger picture.”
But there was another axiom that Grobard gave Tarantino: “Look, once Bobby (De Niro) figures out what shoes the character wants, that’s a big part of the characterization.”
Tarantino continued, “So Bobby looks at me and says, what kind of shoes does Louis wear? Well, I had an answer!” Basically, they were worn-out tennis shoes with one toe bent from being kept in prison for years while the character was incarcerated.
De Niro said: “That’s a good answer.”