The pair might have added Gangs of New York, The Aviator and the recent The Departed had they got their diaries sorted out. The friendship still runs deep. De Niro screened rough cuts of his movie to get Scorsese’s input. They even swapped actors, De Niro surrendering Leonardo DiCaprio, his first choice for The Good Shepherd, and Scorsese trading off by releasing Matt Damon (whom De Niro amusingly refers to, on occasion, as “Matt Dillon”) early from The Departed. The films won’t be going head to head in the awards sweepstakes. “But I hope Marty gets the Oscar, just because he deserves it for the other films, you know. We’ll see, you know.”
De Niro’s own mantelpiece bears Academy Awards for The Godfather: Part II and Raging Bull, which bookend a decade — the 1970s — of outstanding work. Though he continued to make some exceptional films throughout the 1980s — The King of Comedy, Once Upon a Time in America, Midnight Run — his 1990s output was a bit patchy.
It is said De Niro doesn’t like to talk about his old movies. “He was absolutely delightful and deeply gracious,” says Sessions (who never did manage to wrangle De Niro into Stella Street). “But I remember one day when I asked him something about The Mission, and he just looked very uncomfortable. I rather wished I hadn’t.” But does De Niro never sneak a peek at one of his films? “From time to time, yeah. If I catch it on television directly, I’ll watch it,” he says. Is he self-critical? “Well, how could I not be, I guess?” Part of it, he says, is his deep personal involvement in them all: “I remember everything I did.” He admits, however, that some recently unearthed footage for Taxi Driver — “Certain rehearsals Marty and I had done with video tape before shooting, which we incorporated into the script” — had escaped even him.
The 30th anniversary of the release of Taxi Driver has just passed. “Really? That’s right, yeah,” he muses. It’s the one, he says, that follows him around the most, with that classic line they all yell at him, hoping he might just quote it back. Which one would that be? “You know what they do,” he smirks. There was a rumour of a sequel to Taxi Driver, jumping back into the life of Travis Bickle a decade on. “We talked about that,” he says, “[the writer] Paul Schrader and Marty and myself, but we could never somehow come up with what he would be doing those 10 years later.” So, thankfully, the prospect of Meet the Bickles is laid to rest.
It seems an obvious question to ask about his favourites. Maybe there’s a hidden gem he treasures — Jacknife, This Boy’s Life? “Well, I started saying that whatever people like the most, that’s my favourite — if people like Raging Bull or Taxi Driver or Mean Streets. I liked The King of Comedy. I really enjoyed doing that.” Scorsese has always maintained that Rupert Pupkin is De Niro’s finest acting performance. “Really?” he goes again. Certainly, the film seems ahead of its time, foretelling the cultural obsession with celebrity (replicated in less edifying fashion in De Niro’s sports-nerd flick, The Fan).
The one everyone keeps on coming back to, of course, is the critical darling Raging Bull, a film whose “greatness” tends to be confused with the beauty of its cinematography and De Niro’s undeniably consuming performance. Key to it was the physical transformation — athlete to lard- ass — achieved by halting production and his embarking on an eating Tour de France. Until he was outmunched by Vincent D’Onofrio on Full Metal Jacket (and possibly, unwittingly, by Marlon Brando elsewhere), his 60lb bulk-up had stood as something of a method benchmark, convincing a generation of actors and awards panellists that disfigurement is the noblest thespian sacrifice.
I read that the first role De Niro ever played was the Cowardly Lion in a school production of The Wizard of Oz. “That’s right, I was 10, I was 10, yeah,” he enthuses. Did he bring to it the same fabled intensity? He chuckles (honest). “God knows, I don’t know. My mother couldn’t tell.” But really, was all that extreme character absorption necessary? If doing those roles again, would he go to such lengths? “I think, as you get older, you reduce the energy you spend on certain things,” he says. “It’s more a case of what the essentials are for the task at hand.”
Every now and again, there’s a little chink of light, as if the impenetrable persona De Niro has perfected over the years was another character, there to preserve the sanctity of his private self — the loyal pal, the bon vivant, the playful father who’s a little shy. “He loves jokes,” says Sessions. “John Turturro [who plays an agent in the film] is very funny, and there was one day when he was taking the mickey out of a scene, a very heavy scene, and I thought De Niro was going to fall on the floor — he was laughing his head off.”
Perhaps it accounts for his recent rash of comedies — the simple prerogative of a man who has reached a certain age and wants to, well, let it all hang out. “Yeah, and I had fun doing them — could be, you know.” Perversely, while they have not landed him any acting accolades, the early 2000s have marked the most commercially successful period of De Niro’s career. “It’s nice to have both, nice to have everything,” he smiles. “It’s not possible.”
De Niro doesn’t have to do anything at all, for he is now a wealthy man. He reinvigorated a whole New York neighbourhood, TriBeCa, with his film-production offices, downstairs Grill and patronage of a now huge film festival. (Living just a piece of falling masonry from the Twin Towers, he threw open his eaterie as a refuge, credit he is said to have blown by including a 9/11 reference in his American Express commercial.) Then there is his partnership in various restaurants, including Nobu, his patronage of the West End musical We Will Rock You and assorted other ventures. “The restaurant stuff has become very successful, and I did that just because I like good food. It just evolved, it happened.” Recently, he was in negotiations to buy The New York Observer newspaper — a little ironic, given his antipathy towards the press. “Well, exactly,” he grins. “I thought, let’s change, you know. I’ll be fair game, you know, the way it should be, the way it’s meant to be.”
So how the hell did he end up in Extras? “Well, I was doing Stardust a British fantasy film, directed by Matthew Vaughn], and I had a scene with Ricky Gervais. He had asked me before. And I couldn’t do it then. And I liked that movie, so — that was it.” And what did he think of the episode? “They sent me a copy,” he says, “but I haven’t seen it yet.”
De Niro has several films lined up, including The Winter of Frankie Machine (about a retired hit man) and What Just Happened? (about a Tinseltown producer). He mentions the younger actors he admires (DiCaprio and Damon, obviously, and his kindred spirit Sean Penn); how he would still like to do something landmark, such as Seven Up!; all those projects unfulfilled.
He has one particular desire above all: to do two more films with Scorsese. “I just think if we can get those two numbers, make an even 10, I’ll be happy,” he says. “We’ve started some things, but over the years, you get distracted. We’re anxiously waiting to come up with something.” There’s a touch of sadness in the way he says it, as if acknowledging that, wellbeing, fortune and all, the clock is inexorably counting down; that his career is officially entering its twilight. But he’s not going to get too maudlin.
“Hey,” he quips. “You better believe it.”
The Good Shepherd opens on February 23
