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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/may/15/robert-de-niro-on-battling-age-apathy-and-trump>
"On the opening night of the Cannes film festival, Robert De Niro takes the
stage to accept an honorary Palme d’Or. He embraces Leonardo DiCaprio, turns to
the mic and lets fly: celebrating the event as a haven for art, democratic,
inclusive and therefore a threat to autocrats and fascists. His speech is fiery
and combative, but the adoring response leaves him shaken: he has to blink and
regroup. At one point, I think, he might have even welled up. “Yeah, I got
sentimental,” he admits the next morning. “How could I not be?”
We’re upstairs at the Cannes Palais des Festivals, with the windows thrown open
and sunlight on the walls. The hosts rush to provide him with a hot cup of
coffee and then – when he leaves that untouched – swoop back to furnish him
with another. His voice is still hoarse from the night before and risks being
drowned out by the cheering masses outside. Tom Cruise, it transpires, has just
appeared on the terrace. “Different type of actor,” De Niro says ruefully.
“
Mission: Impossible, that’s a franchise. But I understand that. I’ve done
franchises myself.”
The man’s bulging CV bears him out. He’s been in
Meet the Parents and its
sequels, and
Analyze This and
That. You might say
The Godfather Part II
is part of a franchise of sorts. And yet when we think of De Niro’s key roles,
we’re more likely to picture him behind a taxi-cab wheel, or wielding a
baseball bat as bullish Al Capone, or bounding on stage as wheedling Rupert
Pupkin. These, one assumes, are the roles that Cannes loves him for, and his
relationship with the festival is now in its sixth decade. De Niro has starred
in two Palme d’Or winners (1976’s
Taxi Driver and 1986’s
The Mission) and
was last at the festival with
Killers of the Flower Moon two years ago. But
he’s now made so many movies that they all start to blur. “
Midnight Run,” he
says vaguely. “That was a fun one to make.”
Cannes, he explains, is especially important at the moment. The situation in
the US is so parlous, it feels like an overseas antidote, a return to core
principles. The man hates Donald Trump and mourns the America he once knew. He
says: “We have to stop what’s going on, it’s insane. We can’t have apathy and
silence. You have to speak up and risk being harassed.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
