The continued embarrassing decline of Robert De Niro.

[kitsofan34]

From this:



to this



Why is one of the greatest American actors of the last 50 years starring in what is for all intents and purposes Rocky 7?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bQSOBJCPQE

Does he just not care anymore? Is he solely interested in picking up the paycheck? Or has old age withered away his immense drive and nack at picking the correct scripts?

It's been roughly twenty years of this now, twenty years of watching someone this talented appear in embarrassing guff. I remain optimistic that his upcoming reunion with Martin Scorsese will finally remove him from his shit-streak slumber.

[El Unicornio, mang]

As much as I love De Niro, I think he got very lucky to pair up with Scorsese. Most of his great performances are films made with him. He had others (The Deer Hunter, and the Godfather II, for example) but he did also make a lot of toss in the 70s and 80s with lesser directors/scripts. Some great actors can bring the level of mediocre films up, but with De Niro I think it really depends on the quality of the material.

I do also think that he doesn't have that crazy enthusiasm that he had in his younger days where he would spend 3 months boxing and putting on 5 stone or a month driving a cab. I think he still likes to work but has other things like his restaurants and family taking up too much time. Could be for money too, though. If Al Pacino is willing to do Sky TV ads, I don't see why not (although Pacino has at least done some good stuff in recent years).

I'm optimistic about him doing one more Scorsese film too though.

[Famous Mortimer]

De Niro and Stallone appeared on SNL as two of the "Three Wise Guys" at the weekend, and the fake donkeys they were riding managed to out-act both of them.

[Queneau]

If someone gave me a fuck load of money to turn up and be myself in a shit film, I'd probably do it.

[VegaLA]

[checkoutgirl]

I remember watching Limitless in t'cinema in 2011 and just enjoying watching De Niro playing a serious character in a fairly straight film. I mean it wasn't a big role or an amazing film (I liked it) but it was just refreshing to see De Niro and not be embarrassed or annoyed with him. I haven't watched him in much lately because I tend to avoid stuff like AnalyzeThisThatandtheOther and MeettheFeckersFockersParentsDeleteAsAppropriate. That one he did with Pacino, The Kill or something looked like drek. Pacino has done similar stuff, Jack and Jill and The Recruit and Oceans Insert Number Here are a haype of shite so nobody gets off scot free. Steve Martin did great stuff in the 1980s and is now an absolute joke in film terms, I still love Steve and he's a great comedian and everything but his roles for the last decde or two have been a fucking travesty. Ditto Marlon Brando after he gave up and so on and so forth. It's not a new thing at all.

People like De Niro and Pacino and Martin are beyond legendary and they secured their fortunes and status by the 1980s. There is no amount of Rocky and Bullwinkles that can erase Taxi Driver. No number of Islands of Dr Moreus that can dissolve Streetcar or Wild One. I suppose you just have do your best to ignore it. Look the other way, whistle and keep walking.

It does puzzle me why extremely wealthy people like De Niro are prepared to do such things at their age and status. Maybe they just really like the work and do it for the fuck of it. It's the only explanation I can come up with.

[Replies From View]

Motion capture or is that his actual costume?

[vrailaine]

Motion capture or is that his actual costume?

Well he has his renowned acting face on...

[kidsick5000]

Grudge Match isn't the most embarrassing thing he's done. Not by a mile. And if he's offered some millions for a cute idea (Raging Bull fights Rocky) no big deal.

Someone will rescue him later. Brando was over and done with long before Godfather. And again just before Apocalypse Now.

That great role will come along again. He's been great in other films but in a very low key way. Silver Linings Playbook  for example

[vrailaine]

Someone will rescue him later. Brando was over and done with long before Godfather. And again just before Apocalypse Now.

In Apocalypse now he was, what? 53 or so? A good deal of his career being in the gutter was because he wasn't bothered acting for large chunks, De Niro's working all the time.


Don't get why his Silver Lining's performance got such praise, it was as if people were praising him for not stinking the place up.

[Tiny Poster]

I read that The Family is supposed to be alright. He must have done something good since Jackie Brown though, right?

Mind you, I did enjoy Meet The Parents the first time I saw it.

[Mini]

You see why he'd take these awful jobs that require no effort for such a huge amount of money. It's just a shame that Robert De Niro's involvement now all but guarantees a bad movie.

[checkoutgirl]

You see why he'd take these awful jobs that require no effort for such a huge amount of money.

Not really. Call me an old Trotskyist but when you get to say 100 million, where's the motivation to keep earning at the expense of your reputation? Then again, looking at his filmography on Wiki, there's a lot of decent stuff in there and he did a load of decent and popular films in the 1990s. In the 70s and 80s he did a lot of serious films, some that earned, some that didn't. Then in the 1990s he seemed to do a lot of still decent films that also had popular appeal and earned a lot of money. Then you get into the 2000s and the popular appeal and earning side of it starts to really take over. It's like he gradually got dragged into the business side of it, slowly but surely giving slightly less of a shit about the artistic side of it. Why did that happen? I suppose it's hard to keep the idealism, enthusiasm and passion for great film making when you're 70. I mean he's done 7 films in 2013, that's impressive by any standard. And say he's done 100 films and 10% are great films, that's 10 great films he's given to us.

His highest grossing film ever was Meet The Fockers. I hate that title because Fockers is supposed to suggest fuckers. It's a terrible one note joke but Bobby probably made 20 million out of the motherfucker. I've never had someone roll a wheelbarrow full of money up to me to tempt me to do some piece of shit. You can't fight economics.

[Rolf Lundgren]

On paper a lot of his more recent films seem quite good. Be in a boxing film with Stallone? Crime film with Pacino? Comedies with Ben Stiller, Billy Crystal? Even the real rubbish stuff like Red Lights and Everybody's Fine have good casts. He's probably just wanting to do as much as he can and have fun doing them without having to worry about his career/legacy.

[El Unicornio, mang]

To be fair, there is also the issue of roles for older people being less common. If you're in your 30s and 40s (which is when most actors "make it" and do their best work) you can do pretty much any role. You can even play a teenager if you're younger looking, and use old age makeup to play someone older. If you're 50+, there's definitely less choices.

[Tiny Poster]

Not for the likes of De Niro, though.


I think it's just that thing of actors liking to act in later age, but nothing too taxing that would involve Method shit.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Not for the likes of De Niro, though.

Less choices than he had in the 70s/80s though. He's 70 so he's pretty much relegated to characters who are 65+, which isn't a whole lot of leading roles in films.

[Old Thrashbarg]

Not as the lead maybe, but people of a similar age like Christopher Walken and Bill Murray have managed plenty of decent turns in smaller roles throughout the last decade. Though admittedly Murray's got the good fortune of being in the cast of every film Wes Anderson makes.

[vrailaine]

Walken mostly just plays Christopher Walken, it's a better brand of coasting but coasting nonetheless. He was really good in Catch Me If You Can doing something different though, almost as if he just wanted to show he could.

Didn't Pacino get praise for his performance in Jack and Jill?

I'd guess De Niro's biggest issue might be that he operates exclusively within the confines of major studios. Like, he's not going to get many decent roles for anyone over 50 or so there, especially not leading ones. He seems to rarely take on minor roles as well. Are there any really good roles he turned down?

[Noodle Lizard]

I disagree with whoever implied he only got lucky a few times in the 70s and 80s.  He never made anything below average (to my knowledge) until around '99 with 'Analyze This', and then er ... 'Rocky & Bullwinkle' almost immediately after.  I don't think he's been in anything good since then.  I think acting "greats" work better when they're far more selective.  It's why Daniel Day Lewis gets an Oscar every time he turns up in something, regardless of how mediocre, or why Bill Murray is so mystified and sought after despite his somewhat average acting capabilities.  There has to be a certain level of unattainability, it has to be a "dream come true" to get them to be in your movie.  With De Niro now, you feel like he'd probably turn up to your mad cousin's birthday party if the price was right and food was provided.

I think he's done more shit than he has good at this point.  Given the fact that he's worked with good directors and must know a good script when he sees it, I can only assume he knows he's doing total shite nowadays.   

Apparently he was seen crying at last year's screening of the restored 'Once Upon A Time In America'.  Yeah, take it, dick. 

[Tiny Poster]

He was very canny in his choices throughout the 70s and 80s. There's not really a dud among them, but We're No Angels was his first wobble in 1989, and mawkish sentimentality began creeping in (Awakenings, This Boy's Life, Sleepers, Marvin's Room) amongst your Casinos and Jackie Browns. Then Analyse This happened, and he seemed to fully descend into taking the paycheck/being happy just to be on camera.

Christopher Walken has managed to stay cool with the public despite admitting to taking any acting gig his schedule permits, thanks to his willingness to take the piss out of himself, that Fatboy Slim video, and his numerous Saturday Night Live appearances/hosting slots. He's the only person Lorne Michaels has given an open invitation to host whenever he wants to, other than Alec Baldwin. SNL might not be big over here, but the More Cowbell sketch is what Walken is most recognised for now - and he hates that.

[chand]

Not really. Call me an old Trotskyist but when you get to say 100 million, where's the motivation to keep earning at the expense of your reputation?

History is not really littered with people who earned a load of money, thought "Cool, that's enough money now", and stopped.

My guess is that by the late 90s he just felt like branching out and doing different kinds of films that he could just turn up for. There was probably a lot of pressure to be fucking incredible and make every film he was in iconic, in a way doing other types of film might have been a good way of taking ownership of his own inevitable decline, rather than spending forever doing similar kind of roles to the ones he became famous for which would inevitably start to disappoint. Then maybe once he started getting paid shitloads of money to lend his name to generic family comedies he enjoyed doing it.  At the same time the offers to lead Big Serious Films will have slowed down. Doubly so once he got older, most people don't want to watch a film about a grizzled Robert De Niro nowadays when we could have that guy who used to be the kid in Third Rock sort-of-handsoming the place right up.

He got nominated for an Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook so I guess there's some value in sort of pissing your career up a wall and then appearing in the odd "Oh, that guy's still got it!" film. It's not like he's shattered his rep anyway, once you reach proper Hollywood A-list status you have to do some serious shit to ruin it. The guy could star in a whole trilogy of terrible Epic Movie parodies where the main joke is that people call him Al Pacino by mistake and a bunch of scenes end up with him in a nappy or looking like he's having sex with a dog for no reason, and he'd still go to his grave remembered as the guy from all those great movies and not "Is he the guy who did that one voice in Shark Tale?".

[Sam]

Jack Nicholson another who's been happy to do shite. Mind you he's done The Pledge and About Schmidt in recent memory, a fuck site more than Bobby's pulled out of his arse.

[Tiny Poster]

De Niro's made six films this year, with an seventh in post-production and filming currently taking place on another. Even Walken only does a couple a year.

[vrailaine]

Hard to see six films in a year as being anything other than picking out the highest paid roles with the fewest days of work.

[Famous Mortimer]

Christopher Walken has managed to stay cool with the public despite admitting to taking any acting gig his schedule permits, thanks to his willingness to take the piss out of himself, that Fatboy Slim video, and his numerous Saturday Night Live appearances/hosting slots. He's the only person Lorne Michaels has given an open invitation to host whenever he wants to, other than Alec Baldwin. SNL might not be big over here, but the More Cowbell sketch is what Walken is most recognised for now - and he hates that.

He was on Jimmy Fallon's show a while back and seemed happy talking about that and other SNL sketches, but he may have just been being polite. And "more cowbell" is top 5 of all time for SNL - I love that people go up to Blue Oyster Cult after gigs and commiserate about the loss of Gene Frenkel. There are many worse things you could be remembered for.

[Tiny Poster]

Will Ferrell said on By The Way that people are always shouting out "More cowbell!" at Walken, who hates it but is very gracious about it.

[checkoutgirl]

Christopher Walken has managed to stay cool with the public despite admitting to taking any acting gig his schedule permits, thanks to his willingness to take the piss out of himself

To be fair to Walken, he's done some reasonable stuff and has made better choices than De Niro in the last decade. Actually I've just checked his filmography and that's bollocks. He's done around 41 films since 2000 and about 3 of them look good. I liked A Late Quartet, Seven Psychopaths was okay and Catch Me If You Can. The rest is a massive pile of who knows what. I think A Late Quartet skewed Walken in my mind to think he made good choices but that was clearly a fluke. With the amount of films Walken's done, I'd expect more decent films to happen just on average.

De Niro has done around 40 films since 2000 and only about 3 of them look any good as well. I think we're being unfair singling out De Niro.

[Lyfjaberg]

If I ruled the world, Walken would be remembered for McBain.



No, not that one.



Yeah, that's the one!

It's shit. The director ended up working in finance. Worra cunt.





http://www.ruthlessreviews.com/1137/mcbain/

McBain and friends are up in a little prop airplane getting ready to invade Columbia. A Columbian military F5 pulls up along side them and orders them to land. They're probably up at around 10,00 feet. McBain pulls out his 9mm handgun, shoots across his pilot's face, through their plane's window–which does not break–through the canopy of the F5 and right into the Columbian pilot's head. You honestly have to see it to believe it. Worth the price of the rental alone.

[Egyptian Feast]

If I ruled the world, Walken would be remembered for McBain.

Ahh, McBain! What a classic! This 'stunt' is probably my favourite bit, though McBain's speech about Woodstock bringing about the downfall of American society is pretty good as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUCJvj-W0uw

The audacious airplane sequence mentioned above. Totally plausible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLUGBujl2-0

Sorry to derail the thread.