Shawn Levy Shares Surprises About Robert De Niro in New Biography
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
In the book Levy shares many rare and interesting surprises about the actor including the fact that he has a familial connection to both French royalty and Oregon.
But the fact that "Bob" (as he referred to by only his closest friends) didn't participate in the project though shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
De Niro is a very busy—and very private—individual.
The actor, who has starred in nearly 100 films and has at least four new releases in the new year, is involved in numerous film productions and films festivals and is part owner of several restaurants. Hell, he's even co-created his own line of vodka called VDKA 6100.
As public as his profile may be, De Niro rarely, if ever, talks to the press, and is one to purposely shun the celebrity spotlight, especially if that spotlight is shining brightly on him.
That didn't stop Shawn. The Oregonian's primary film critic—from 1997 to 2012—Levy is the author of several celebrity-centric biographies on diverse, dynamic (and equally as private) public figures such as as Jerry Lewis, Paul Newman, "The Last Playboy" Porfirio Rubirosa and members of "The Rat Pack" that included Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.
De Niro proved equally as challenging as previous subjects, maybe more so (Levy did not complete the book until a year after his original deadline).
GoLocalPDX had a chance to speak to Levy about De Niro prior to his Tuesday reading at Powell's Books, the first of a series of local appearances Levy will make in connection with its publication. Here is what he had to say:
What was the biggest difference working on the De Niro book than the previous books you've worked on?
De Niro is still very vital and alive and busy at age 71, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were yet more chapters and twists in his career and life to come, so I had to leave my storytelling and even some of my critical judgments slightly open-ended. Also, being that he's kind of tireless, there was a lot of material to get through; his research and production archives at the University of Texas, which I went through scrupulously, took a pair of 18-wheelers to deliver when he first donated them. It was an embarrassment of material.
Tell our readers two things readers might be surprised to find out about Robert De Niro from the book.
1. He's only one-quarter Italian; he's also one-quarter Irish; both of those on the same side; and his mother, of Dutch-English-French-German, could trace her roots to medieval French royalty and was born in The Dalles, Oregon.
2. He grew up not in Little Italy but in Greenwich Village. His parents, who split when he was two, were well-regarded young painters; his dad had a solo exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim's gallery on (New York's) 57th Street when he was just 24 (and De Niro was 2); his mom has paintings in important museums in New York and Europe and was Anais Nin's typist for a spell, transcribing her famous diaries.
Did Mr. De Niro give you his blessing on writing this book?
Not even a little bit. He's always been very taciturn with the press and his spokesman never responded to my entreaties. That's okay. His public life (and the public faces of his private life) makes for plenty of material for a whole biography.
Why did you decide to pick Robert De Niro as a subject for your book?
There's a whole story to tell there: the bohemian boy of no special qualities becomes the great "Method Actor" of a generation and a bona fide movie star, with nearly a quarter-century of quality work to back up his reputation. Then he changes gears entirely and becomes consumed with business and with movies that seem more like busy-work than the sorts of things that helped build his reputation. He worked with geniuses: Scorsese (8 times), Coppola, De Palma, Elia Kazan, Michael Mann, Tarantino, Sergio Leone, Terry Gilliam, John Frankenheimer, Alfonso Cuaron. His private life was tumultuous at times—he was with John Belushi in the early hours of the day he died—but he has settled in as a "paterfamilias." He's a cunning investor: he owns part of more than two dozen Nobu restaurants, as well as other fine dining places and some hotels. He helped define and then rebuild a big chunk of Lower Manhattan. And he's something of a personal hero of mine whose early work, in particular, helped turn me into a lifelong movie buff. So I knew there was an entire book in him. Plus there wasn't a really comprehensive or particularly insightful book on him yet. And then I found the archive and my publisher was willing, so voila.
You are a prolific writer and critic but this particular book project seemed to take you longer than your previous projects. Why was that?
I signed to do the book in late 2009 and had projected at that time that I'd be done approximately one year ago. But in the time I wrote it, just about every aspect of my private and professional life changed, some of it quite disorientingly, and that made focusing on work harder than it had been on previous books. Now I'm back to a quicker production schedule. My next book, with the working title "Dolce Vita Confidential," will deal with the high life of Rome in the '50s and '60s and will be published in approximately two years.
You are a loyal Portland Timbers fan. Two questions: Which gobbled up more of your time in the last few years: the Timbers or Robert De Niro? Also if Robert De Niro was a Timbers what kind of Timbers would he be?
The actual business of attending and watching Timbers matches isn't really THAT time-consuming. But I serve on the board of directors of Operation Pitch Invasion, a charity formed by the Timbers Army to build, restore and maintain soccer fields in the parks and schools around the area, and that HAS been a time-eater. But it has been SO worth it: We have improved or kept-up fields at a couple dozen sites around town, and this year we finished our first from-scractch project when we cut the ribbon on Bless Field, an artificial turf field in the New Columbia neighborhood that sits next to a Boys & Girls Club and an elementary school and has been a huge hit with the kids in the community—which happens to be the most diverse neighborhood in the whole state of Oregon. That was a very proud experience for me, my fellow board members, the Timbers Army, and, really, all of the community that supports soccer so avidly in this amazing city. So spending time in THAT way doesn't feel like work at all.
Shawn Levy
What is your favorite De Niro film and why?
The most fun to watch might be "Goodfellas" or "The King of Comedy" or "The Untouchables" or "Jackie Brown." But "Taxi Driver" has had more influence on me in my decades of movie-watching than anything else he has done. I saw it for the first time when I was about 14 (crazy, right?) and it was new, and I had my mind utterly blown by the acting, the storytelling, and the filmmaking, none of which was like anything that I or anyone else at that time had ever seen. I walked around with a green fatigue jacket for a few years after that, and I used 'Bickle' as an online name in the first days of Internet message boards. It's tough to watch, of course, but it is obviously six kinds of masterpiece.
Shawn Levy will read and sign copies of "De Niro: A Life" at 7:30 p.m. Tues., Nov. 11 at Powell's City of Books, 1005 W. Burnside St. Free. Levy will also be talking and signing copies of his book at screenings of "Raging Bull" at 7 p.m. Sun., Nov. 16 at the Northwest Film Center (click here for tickets) and "Bang the Drum Slowly" on Fri. Dec. 8 at the Hollywood Theatre.
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