Many of your favorite performances had actors doing things like this. I don't know what you are scoffing at. Name your top twenty performances, and I will bet the farm most of them prepared in a similar way.
Sometimes the Trivia Section may be inaccurate, and maybe he didn't spend exactly 15 hour days every day for a full month. What's important is not the hours or overtime he clocked, but what he did to help entrench him in that role.
If you simply had to memorize your lines with no other preparation needed, that would mean everyone would excel at acting like De Niro. It's all memorization, and a few twitches and mannerisms! Why bother maturing and learning as you get older? You can act like De Niro/Streep out of acting school! Everything you need to know about acting in the next 40 years of your life were already contained in those class exercises! If you can't tell, I'm being extremely sarcastic right now.
If I were an actor and wanted to do a serious role justice, any added research is always a good thing. War novelists will often give you incredible (and often painfully vivid) details of military life, because they lived it. You appreciate the details and really get a better sense of being there.
We all have preconceived notions of how people act, such as with pilots, firemen, doctors, etc. And sometimes it's best for an actor to dispel a lot of those ideas and really learn what doctors, pilots and firemen really go through on a daily basis, rather than guessing their actual behavior based on TV shows and movies. That's where prep work comes in. It's not mandatory but it really doesn't hurt, especially with actors like De Niro.
Maybe he also had typical preconceived ideas of taxi drivers, and felt a role so seldom and prominently shown in movies deserved a more serious take.
Perhaps De Niro had different versions of Travis Bickle playing in his head prior to his preparation - a more talkative Bickle, a jokier one, an angrier one, and a loose cannon with over the top mannerisms. His final version that we saw was very effective and unforgettable to me. Maybe because Travis just felt real, and looked liked he lived in those streets and in that small apartment. The awkwardness, depression, rage, loneliness and frustration. The downcast eyes, the hands in the pocket, the turning of the head in disbelief, and the struggle for words sometimes. These are mannerisms you learn by preparing the way De Niro did. These are the same mannerisms people imitate when doing impressions of Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle (see the latest example in the comedy movie Neighbors). It's an iconic performance, if you ask me, and very few would do it as well. Ask other people to make a movie about a taxi driver and they'll bring back TV cliches and rote results. De Niro's Bickle was a wounded, unconnected man in an urban landscape, not too far from the drifter in Westerns who no longer sees the world the same way as others do.
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InherentlyYours
9 years ago
miss,
I didn't even get through that thesis you wrote. Or if you read through all the posts which may have covered things (did you?) You needed to "defend" Mr. Deniro that much. You said "if you were an actor", but you're not an actor. If I referenced 10 great actors/directors who disagreed, then what shall we say. I don't think Ellen Burtsyn practiced for days putting plates on restaurant tables to prepare for ALICE, to get into the "feel" of it.
I also catched your comment about our greatest actors. So, when an actor who is an unknown gives a great unequaled performance in a low-budget film with a 3-week shoot, he/she didn't have time to "prepare" in such a specific way. But, then you would say that an unknown in a low-budget-film could not equal Deniro's talent. (yet, if Suzanne Somers drove cabs to prepare for a role, she would be called dizzy and silly.)
Then if I said that our greatest actors from 1940 (or 5000 B.C.) did not go through these unnecessary pretentious motions, you'd say that doesn't count. And so on, and so on.
All it boils down to is star-admiration/worship. It's that easy. Even your thesis (metaphor) on his role was pretentious: "an urban man in western landscape"...he was a damn lonely socially-awkward ex-Vietnam vet with psychosis and inner-rage. These actors are getting a free ride with the over-praise,
Up next: Al Pacino actually jumping on a passing firetruck because he was lost in "character". If Pacino/DeNiro had to face a daytime soap with it's fast timing and heavy dramatics with no ad-libs, they'd be in over their heads.
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atomicstuffing
9 years ago
I never said all actors must live the profession. Where did I say this, and who else says this in this thread? Use some logic.
How would Viggo Mortensen live the life of someone like Aragorn, and how would Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford spend time with real Jedi Knights and space smugglers? Did the Ghostbusters spend time moonlighting as real ghost trappers?
If you've actually followed actors, they all have different methods, and quite a few Oscar winners did do what De Niro did in Taxi Driver. It's not unheard of, and it's not a ridiculous method. Obsess less on how many hours he spent (these Trivia tidbits can wildly inflate numbers), and just understand that some great actors believe in getting as much information and inspiration as possible. Film directors (yes, even your favorite ones) constantly do this too, checking out huge volumes of books from the library, and just soaking into the non-fiction material to prepare for the fictional one. James Cameron does it all the time with science textbooks, even for his sci-fi films. From a more fertile field of knowledge & experience they now have more ideas (and gritty details) to draw upon. To them, the comfort of knowledge and preparation is worth it, and any additional mental advantage means a lot to them. Who are you to say it's a complete waste of time? No one said they have to use every minute of those experiences, or put every page from their researched books into the movie. You use what you feel enhances the film or role. You are acting as if De Niro broke a sacred code among actors.
If you were to write a novel about Jamaica or Scotland, would it be better to spend some time living there, or just guess on what Jamaica and Scotland are like based on your TV and movie experiences? You sound like you're suggesting it's a bad waste of time to visit Scotland if you're going to tell a story that takes place in within the heart of it. But wouldn't spending time there help one get a feel for true Scotlandish details, like the crampedness of certain streets, or the smell of the air, and the food and local color of particular sites?
Details are invigorating for some people. Your insistence that actors should never do more research for their role is absurd.
There's more examples of actors doing this but I'm getting tired talking to you. Your protestation (and strange hostility) towards De Niro's methods is in itself a pretentious claim, because you limit a wide range of actors and tell them reciting lines in a hotel room is all you need. And my defense of De Niro's acting and preparatory methods isn't about blind star worship either, because his acting and roles lately are nothing more than cash-grabs, and he's nothing like he used to be (although I'm interested in his comeback with Scorsese in The Irishman). But his method of "living the profession" would not work well if the actor wasn't talented or experienced to begin with either, so this is not to say spending 50 hours with doctors, cab drivers and chefs will automatically make Zac Efron and Jean Claude Van Damme Oscar-caliber actors. But what De Niro did in Taxi Driver was remarkable, and I would say his role and the entire movie stands out -- and still does today -- because of that dedication and strenuous research (be it from books or life). You don't get a great movie from being a lazy person and making guesses and clumsy stabs in the dark.
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wrfarley
9 years ago
As an actual New York City taxi driver I can tell you, he most probably didn't drive 15 hours a day. The TLC limits drivers to twelve hour shifts (5am-5pm; 5pm-5am). While I don't doubt he drove a cab to "prepare" for the role, I'm not sure how much he got out of it. The techniques he would have acquired wouldn't do him much good in the film. Things like never driving in a herd, or that certain neighborhoods in Manhattan are busy at certain times (Upper East Side from 8-10, Midtown during rush hour and the Village has the most activity on weekends and late nights). As far as the driving aspect, the key is to pace yourself and adopt a Zen-like attitude. You can't get upset when somebody cuts you off, because it happens a dozen times every shift. Learning where key green lights are to cut minutes off of your trip is something you learn through trial and error. When a passenger says they are in a hurry, start the ride at a fast clip then slow to your regular speed because it's the first impression that counts. These are some of the things I've learned from years of driving for a living. Almost none of it would benefit me if I got the leading role of a cab driver in a movie tomorrow. OK, maybe one, but I didn't see him do this in the movie either: counting his money while steering with his elbows at 30 mph. We do that a lot.
Now excuse me while I go to bed. I just drove a 10 hour shift, and I'm very tired of driving and writing about taxis.
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