Saturday, December 25, 2010

Robert DeNiro "What I've Learned" Esquire magazine

Interview by Cal Fussman, October 26, 2010

> Those who say don't know. Those who know don't say. That holds up over time.
> So does: If you don't go, you'll never know.
> Ten years seems only a few years ago.
> If it's the right chair, it doesn't take too long to get comfortable in it.
> Italy has changed. But Rome is Rome.
> We made a rubber wall for the jail scene in Raging Bull. It was hard rubber foam. Smashing your head into a real wall wouldn't have been possible. You've got to do it till you're happy.
> I'd like to look at all of my movies once just to do it - just to see what it makes me think, to see what the pattern was. But with all the movies I've been in, that would mean watching two or three a day for a month. I don't know where I'd get the time.
> If Marty wanted me to do something, I would consider it very seriously even if I wasn't interested.
> My definition of a good hotel is a place I'd stay at.
> If I remember correctly, there were not many sequels at the time. The Godfather was one of the first. So we didn't think about sequels the way we do now. I remember seeing the entire street between Avenue A and Avenue B converted into the early twentieth century. The storefronts, the insides of the stores. The size of it was incredible. You knew what you were doing was ambitious.
> I'll always be indebted to Francis.
> When I did The Deer Hunter, I thought, Thailand is such an interesting place. I'll be back soon. But I didn't get back for something like eighteen years.
> Everybody can criticize. But at the end of the day, you know Obama's intentions are in the right place.
> You should've done this. You should stand up for this more than that. The president's got to deal with that every moment.

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