Reading a VF article on DeNiro
Dysfunctional all his life. Small wonder he can play dysfunctional roles. It’s in his blood
And for a guy who “Talks about Taxi Driver” there’s this:
federal investigators revealed that he’d been inspired by De Niro’s portrayal in Taxi Driver of the crazed loner Travis Bickle, who stalks a presidential candidate. Eventually the movie was screened as evidence for a jury as it sat in judgment on Hinckley. De Niro was horrified by the controversial worldwide publicity Taxi Driver received in the media (“Can a film drive someone to murder?”). For the first time in his career, De Niro was stopped on the street by fans demanding that he recite Bickle’s infamous line: “Ya talkin’ to me?”
“Don’t they realize I’m not that guy?” De Niro kept asking.
“Do not ever bring up the subject of Taxi Driver with Robert,” director Ulu Grosbard warned me. “He gets extremely upset.”
Michael Douglas is nonplussed at the popularity of his Gordon Gekko character, “Greed is good,” in Wall Street, too. Not everyone, it seems, is anti-capitalist.
A similar thing happened with All in the Family. Archie was not supposed to be popular, but a caricature of leftist fantasies about conservatives. Norman Lear was chagrined.