New York remains the main operating center of Robert De Niro (1943). It is the city where he was born and raised, where he met directors like Brian de Palma and Martin Scorsese, and where he filmed Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1975), Goodfellas (1990) and so many other films that make up the backbone of his excellent filmography.
Also, it is the city where he founded his own film festival –in 2002– and where he treasures many of the best memories of his 83 years of life and a career written in golden letters. That is where he still resides today, a short distance from the home of his good friend Scorsese, as he confirms in this interview with Culto.
Hours before entering the iconic Paris Theatre in New York to participate in the world premiere of the film They Whisper Your Name and join its director and cast on the red carpet, the legendary actor appears on the other side of the camera, this time to talk with Culto. An unusual opportunity, considering his stature in the firmament of Hollywood’s great stars and how selective he usually is when choosing his appearances in promotional activities.
The film he is promoting is his third collaboration as an actor with Netflix. After starring in The Irishman (2019) –his ninth feature with Scorsese– and the miniseries Zero Day –where he played a fictional former president of the United States–, he has just arrived on the streaming service with a drama tinged with thriller elements that appeals to parents’ worst fears. The kind of production that platform subscribers devour and recommend to exhaustion, although it benefits from performances and tension management that place it above average.
Based on a novel by British author Alex North, the film revolves around Tom Kennedy (Adam Scott), a suspense novel writer who returns to his hometown after the death of his wife. His father, Pete Willis (De Niro), still lives there, a detective who years ago successfully solved the case of Frank Carter (Michael Keaton), a serial killer and child sexual predator who lured his young victims through whispers. The outcome of that case made him a hero, but all the wear severely impacted his family well-being, forever destroying the relationship with his offspring.
The reunion occurs due to an extreme situation: Jake (Acston Luca Porto), Tom’s son, apparently disappears at the hands of a psychopath who would be imitating Frank’s modus operandi, who is serving a sentence in a high-security prison. As the search in the area intensifies –and the tenacious detective Amanda Beck (Michelle Monaghan) enters the scene– Pete and Tom meet, but there is no time or mood to catch up: the writer emphasizes that the only thing he needs from him is to use all his contacts and return to action after 25 years retired. “You were a shitty father, but a good detective,” he tells him when they face each other again.
With restrained gestures, De Niro composes a character that bears some resemblance to the protagonist of The Irishman, Frank Sheeran, the criminal who regretted not being able to repair the bond with his daughter. “There is a similarity, of course,” agrees the Oscar winner via Zoom.
“Well, fathers regret what they have done. Sometimes even what they haven’t done, but still feel guilty or bad about it,” he reflects.
-Your performance in They Whisper Your Name is contained, almost economical. Over the years, is there something you have learned that has been useful when portraying this type of character?
Well, in a way I learned from them, but I also learned from my own experience. That allowed me to understand the situation Adam (Scott) and my character live, our relationship, the dynamic. It’s not my case, but I can definitely understand the dynamic of our relationship.
This film is about what parents pass on to their children and how children incorporate that legacy into their own lives as adults. What attracts you most about that idea?
The legacy from a father to a son?
-Yes.
Well, I think sometimes you can’t… No matter how you think you’re doing things, the child who grows up is who they are and becomes increasingly independent in some aspects, whether in their way of thinking or whatever. And you have no control over that. Even if you did, you are part of the reason they do what they do. You just did the best you could. And I know, from my own experience growing up, that there was nothing my parents could have done. In some things they could have and didn’t, and what they did influenced my behavior, my perspective on life, and everything else. I don’t know if that answers the question.
Son of a painter and writer mother and an abstract expressionist painter father who was gay –to whom he dedicated the documentary Remembering the artist: Robert De Niro, Sr., released in 2014 on HBO–, the actor is father to seven children. The youngest of the group is a girl born in 2023, who made him a dad at 79 years old.
In fiction, the world he is most interested in talking about, De Niro’s last child is Adam Scott, the actor from the series Parks and Recreation and Severance, with whom he had never worked before.
“I thought the father-son relationship, both in the book and the script, between Bob’s character and mine, was beautifully portrayed and gave us a lot of material to work with. That was the main reason I wanted to do the film, without a doubt,” Scott says in an interview with Culto.
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The actor now calls De Niro “Bob,” as his closest friends and colleagues do, but he does not deny that at the start of filming he felt somewhat uneasy about the experience of sharing scenes with the figure at the center of Raging Bull (1980) and Heat (1995).
“I was very nervous the first day of work, meeting Bob and working with him,” he admits. “But we spent time going over the script and reading scenes together and those things. I really think it was great for the characters, to feel comfortable with the language and with each other. But it also relaxed me a bit because, yes, at first I was nervous about working with this guy, for obvious reasons.”
The Tribeca Festival is one of Robert De Niro’s great prides. Co-founded by De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff to “revitalize the spirit” of the city after the September 11, 2001 attacks, it is the event where highly anticipated American and worldwide films premiere annually (this year, for example, the new feature by Alicia Scherson, Summer War, based on Robert Bolaño’s The Third Reich, was selected) and where activities related to or surrounding the world of cinema are periodically held.
“It was the Tribeca Film Festival, now it’s the Tribeca Festival,” De Niro corrects about the name change implemented in 2021, so that its renewed identity would more coherently dialogue with a program that now also considers disciplines beyond the big screen (series, video games, and new technologies).
In any case, the New York event remains the meeting where anniversaries of films registered among the most select of this art are celebrated. In 2017, thanks to the management of De Niro and his partner Jane Rosenthal, the cast of The Godfather (1972) reunited for the 45th anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece. The event brought together Coppola himself with De Niro (who had a starring role in the 1974 sequel), Al Pacino, Talia Shire, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall, and James Caan. The reunion was appreciated at the time, but over the years it has gained even more value, especially after the painful passing of Keaton, Duvall, and Caan.
This year, in another gesture of similar characteristics, Tribeca hosted the reunion around the 50th anniversary of Taxi Driver. An opportunity in which the main creators of the 1975 classic shared the same room again: Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Robert De Niro, and Jodie Foster.
In conversation with Culto, De Niro particularly highlights the anecdotes told by the actress who was immortalized as the precocious Iris. At a time when she was just a 12-year-old girl (she had started working in show business at three years old), Foster was protected and mentored by her colleague. The actress recalled that it was common for him to pick her up at the hotel and invite her to eat at a diner, where they talked about the script and their characters. In those off-set spaces, he taught her what improvisation was, a tool that until then was completely foreign to her. “I told my mom: I think I’d like to be an actress,” she said.
“It was nice to see Jodie and just listen to her talk. She was very good in the interview we had,” De Niro tells this outlet.
By the way, he was not bad at all that day in Tribeca. The actor showed his more relaxed side and granted the moderator’s request to repeat the most iconic phrase he uttered as Travis Bickle. “Are you talking to me?” he said, eliciting applause from the attendees. Then he rounded off the moment with the next line his character says in the film: “I’m the only one here.”
The event had it all, but strictly speaking it was not a reunion with Scorsese. Actor and director not only worked together relatively recently (in The Killers of the Flower Moon, which earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination), but maintain fluid communication and see each other frequently. Besides collaborators, they are neighbors and friends. That is, companions on the road for half a century.
“It was nice to meet with them, although I see Marty (Scorsese) from time to time. We’re always close, we live very close to each other and see each other when we need to,” he details.
Both have declared on more than one occasion that they dream of doing a couple more projects together and continuing to extend a now legendary working relationship. That, at least for De Niro, probably excites him more than continuing to remember the cinematic works they made 50, 40, or 30 years ago (in 2027 the half-century of the musical New York, New York will be celebrated and it wouldn’t be surprising if something special is planned).
True to his style, the actor sums up his experience celebrating Taxi Driver at home in one concept: “It was nice.”
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