De Niro: A Life (48 page)

He made light of it at that first discussion: “
I had my head shaved
because I was doing ‘Once Upon a Time in America,’ and I took my hat off, and I said to Marty, ‘Do I look like I can play Jesus?’ ” But he knew that the subject matter was very close to Scorsese’s heart: “He’s very much into that,” he said of the strong religious themes of the film. “I got my own problems. I had it, though, through some members of my family—like my grandmother—but not the way Marty must have had it.” The gulf between their visions of the character was, he felt, impossible to cross: “Marty wanted to make him a person and all that, but I still saw him as a guy with long hair and a beard.”

Finally he told Scorsese that he would do it only if he had to do it—that is, only if the film would not get made unless he was cast in the role: “
If you really have a problem, if you really want to do it, and you need me, I’ll do it. If you’re up against the wall and you have no other way, I’ll do it as a friend.” As it happened, the timing was not right for the film with
anyone
in the lead: Paramount had gone through a change of management, and the new team was not terribly excited about making a film that could elicit backlash from the Christian right, the Catholic Church, and who knew who else. When Scorsese finally did make the film, half a decade later, De Niro wasn’t considered for the role of Christ (which went to Willem Dafoe after a long period during which Aidan Quinn was Scorsese’s first choice for the part). By then, De Niro had made
The Mission
, the Christlike themes of which satisfied his modest interest in religious storytelling (“It’s different,” he explained when asked why he was comfortable in that role, “it’s not
Jesus
”). And when he was asked soon after
The Last Temptation of Christ
was released, to mixed reviews and over-the-top controversy, if he had any regrets about not making it, he answered succinctly, “No.”

I
N
J
ANUARY 1984
D
E
N
IRO STAYED AT THE DISCREETLY LUXURIOUS
Blakes Hotel in the Kensington district of London, where he had gone to do something he’d never done before: play a cameo role in a feature film.

The picture in question was
Brazil
, a mammoth, darkly comic fantasy by Terry Gilliam, the American-born member of the Monty Python troupe who’d gone from animating surreal short pieces for the group’s famed TV series to directing features, starting with the beloved
Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Since then, in such films as
Jabberwocky
and
Time Bandits
, Gilliam’s cinematic vision had become grander, more baroque, more mordant. He was making dazzling pictures as big as Steven Spielberg’s, with special effects and massive sets and costumes, but with not one trace of Spielberg’s sentiment or warmth. They were funny, they were eye-popping, they were singular, but they were cool and dark and strange and
very
expensive to make.

Brazil
would be his most ambitious film yet. Based on a script co-written by Gilliam with, among others, Tom Stoppard, it was a dystopian tale of a totalitarian bureaucracy run amok, with a lovelorn functionary named Sam Lowry questioning his role as a cog in the machinery and coming into contact with a group of subversive revolutionaries, one of whom is (literally, in fact) his dream girl. Among the producers of the film (which was first known as
1984-and-a-Half
, in homage to George Orwell and Federico Fellini, both of whose influences can be felt everywhere in it) was Arnon Milchan, who seemed to be everywhere in De Niro’s working life of late. With Gilliam’s blessing, Milchan sent the script to De Niro with a note saying, “Pick your part.”

De Niro loved what he read—“
That
will be remembered in years to come,” he said later of the film, “no matter what you think of it.” He responded to Gilliam and Milchan saying that he was interested in appearing in the film, specifically in the significant supporting role of Jack Lint, Lowry’s old friend, fellow bureaucrat, and, though Lowry doesn’t know it, a torturer for the regime. But that part had already been set aside for Gilliam’s fellow Python Michael Palin, so Gilliam and Milchan steered De Niro the other way entirely, focusing his attention instead on the character of Harry Tuttle, the rogue state operative who leads the resistance and whose name is misspelled on an arrest order, setting off the plot. Tuttle would appear in only two scenes, but he constituted a crucial figure in the story line and in the psyche of Lowry, who sees him as a renegade hero and a father surrogate, a man’s man whose determination to take action sharply contrasts with Lowry’s milquetoast mien. Gilliam was somewhat surprised that De Niro agreed to such a small part: “He had to take what he could get,” he joked. But he soon realized that De Niro “
liked the idea of not having the burden of carrying the starring role in a film for a change.”

In fact, it was the smallest role he’d played on-screen in nearly fifteen years, not that he saw it that way. The part of Tuttle called for just a week of shooting, but that didn’t stop De Niro from preparing for it in his usual thorough fashion. He supplied his own prop tool belt and tools (Tuttle’s rebellion takes the shape, in part, of a willingness to make repairs to the omnipresent government-owned heating ducts without following the protocols of paperwork). He toyed with adopting a British accent (and with constructing it so that it was clear it was a put-on). He determined to give his Tuttle a John Wayne–ish air of confidence, whistling and humming while he worked, even as he entered each encounter with prudent caution. He saw it, in short, as an acting job.

On the set, he drove Gilliam daft. Gilliam had been dealing in caricature, grotesquerie, and cartoonishness since before his Python days; there was to be humanity and pathos in
Brazil
, but it would be centered in Lowry (who was being played by Jonathan Pryce, for whom Gilliam had conceived the role). De Niro, however, prodded his director, as was his wont, for insight into his character, for take after take after take
until, as Gilliam later said, he “wanted to strangle him.” The week that had been blocked out for De Niro’s work became two, adding to the film’s overlong production schedule and helping to push it over its $15 million budget (contrary to its later reputation,
Brazil
wasn’t nearly as costly as it looked).

Despite the brevity of his involvement and any on-set frustration that he may have caused, De Niro became a strong ally of Gilliam’s in late 1985, when Universal Pictures refused to release the film in the United States in the director’s cut, particularly with the downbeat ending that he’d written. Although
Brazil
had been playing profitably for months in Europe and elsewhere, although it was warmly received at the Cannes Film Festival, Universal, which had put up roughly two-thirds of the budget, refused to show it to the American film press or schedule a firm opening date. Gilliam bought full-page ads in the Hollywood trade papers, bordered in black like funeral notices, addressed to the Universal production chief who was his main antagonist: “Dear Sid Sheinberg, when are you going to release my film?” Gilliam showed the film at universities, which his contract permitted, and invited members of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association to see it. They rallied around him by naming
Brazil
the best film of 1985—even without a theatrical release.

Still Universal remained obdurate. In another gambit, Gilliam showed up on ABC’s
Good Morning America
to state his case, and he achieved a considerable coup by bringing De Niro along with him as a star and advocate of the film. De Niro barely spoke, and only in niceties and commonplaces, but his heft as a respected megastar surely played some part in getting Universal to finally release Gilliam’s cut of the film—albeit in the most cynical way possible, at once trying to capitalize on the Los Angeles Film Critics prize as a potential Oscar lure and keeping bookings and advertising to an absolute minimum. It didn’t matter that Gilliam had produced a visionary classic;
Brazil
, and the battle to get it onto American screens, would mark him as a profligate and a nuisance for the rest of his career.

I
N THE SPRING
, De Niro was in New York doing something else he hadn’t ever done before: playing the leading role in a romance,
Falling in Love.
There were little love stories in
The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight
,
1900
,
The Last Tycoon
,
The Deer Hunter
, and
Raging Bull
, but none of those could truly be said to be romantic films, let alone full-fledged melodramas. (Told by Gene Siskel in an interview a few years later that he had never said “I love you” on-screen before, De Niro was taken aback: “Didn’t I say ‘I love you’ to the girl in ‘Once Upon a Time in America’? No, ah, I guess I didn’t say it quite that way. I guess I’ve never said it before that directly. That’s interesting.”)

But, as indicated by the title of the new movie, which was written by Michael Cristofer, the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright of
The Shadow Box
, this was first and foremost a love story. It would be something of an old-home week as well. It would pair De Niro with Meryl Streep for the first time since The Deer Hunter, and feature Harvey Keitel as his character’s pal and confidante; Ulu Grosbard would direct. And it would be filmed in and around New York, which, increasingly, was a matter of genuine import in De Niro’s choice of projects. “I was tired,” he explained. “This script came along. It was a nice story, set here in New York.”

That didn’t exactly speak of an obsessive need to play the part. In fact, De Niro’s notes for the film were scantier than any he had ever made in a film in which he had a significant role. (It’s interesting, too, to note that on the two occasions he chose to work with Grosbard, he did so partly, by his own confession, so that he could commit himself less to his work than ordinarily.) His choice of props was minimal—a watch, a wallet, a ring, a shopping list. He wore the most workaday clothes as wardrobe. Remarkably, he didn’t figure out what his character did for a living. “
We weren’t even sure if this guy was an engineer or a construction worker,” he confessed. “I
still
don’t know. That isn’t what mattered.”

To be fair, he did put effort into calculating the nuances of the progress his character, Frank Raftis, was making from an ordinary life to the verge of a passionate extramarital affair. In his first scenes, his notes reminded him to remain oblivious to the goings-on around him
that had nothing to do with him, to adopt an air, as he put it, of a non-actor caught on the reality TV prank show series
Candid Camera
, “totally unaware of anyone watching me.” He later indicates that he’ll note his character’s movement from interest in his new acquaintance to romantic feelings: “
There’s got to be that look
,
that imperceptible look!
” And he spells out with precision his character’s frame of mind during the climactic confession of his feelings: “Telling her is more important than anything, precedes and supersedes anything, and not only do I love her but she loves me and she knows it. She might not want to see me and might not think we ought to see each other, but she can’t say she doesn’t feel the same way about me.”