De Niro and Pacino Smackdown

"I thought Francis Ford Coppola was being cranky last fall when he badmouthed Al Pacino and Robert De Niro -- the stars of Coppola's immortal Godfather films -- for taking parts for the money and losing their passion for doing great work. 'I met both Pacino and De Niro when they were really on the come,' Coppola told GQ magazine. 'Now Pacino is very rich, maybe because he never spends any money; he just puts it in his mattress.... They all live off the fat of the land.'"

With all the hoopla surrounding the Tribeca Film Festival, I have to wonder at the timing of an LA Times article by Paul Goldstein eviscerating two of New York's iconic movie stars, one of whom, namely Robert De Niro, also happens to be the founder of the festival which appears to be growing in importance as Hollywood's movie industry continues to sink into the sunset. The other iconic New York movie star is Al Pacino. The article describes how the two are only in it for the money, no longer willing or able to deliver the kinds of electrifying performances -- Taxi Driver, Godfather to name two -- that made their reputations.

Jack Nicholson, on the other hand, a noted Angelino and fixture at LA Lakers games is held up as an example of an actor who has aged gracefully, continuing to work with better directors while De Niro and Pacino schlock along. Again, Los Angerles aging actors are given high marks for not acting -- like Warren Beatty -- while our New York heroes get the smack down. I don't totally agree with the evaluation of De Niro -- reinventing himself as a comedian in two movies I enjoyed, Meet the Frockers and Analyze This, is no small feat -- but I feel the back story here is that the folks in LA are sweating it that New York is coming up as a movie Mecca.

Here's another hot quote from the article by Patrick Goldstein:

"De Niro's most recent film, What Just Happened?, an inside-the-movie-biz comedy, got such an abysmal reception at Sundance that it limped out of the festival without a sale (it's expected to close the Cannes Film Festival this year). De Niro cut his longtime ties with CAA last week, defecting to Endeavor, inspiring a venomous response purportedly from one CAA agent that was e-mailed all over town. Claiming that De Niro asks for a $1-million production fee on his pictures to help fund his Tribeca empire in New York, it minces few words, saying, "Bobby held us responsible for his own greed, his own avarice and his own megalomania. And it's just like the studios now ask us: Why should we pay this guy -- who doesn't open a movie -- the payoff to his production company, just so he can add his name as a producer?"