The late Barry Norman interviewed Robert De Niro back in 1990, for the film Goodfellas. It would be fair to say it didn’t go well. I’m one of a generation of film fans who grew up watching and loving the work of the late Barry Norman. His Film programme was a staple part of my ... When Barry Norman fell out with Robert De Niro
The late Barry Norman interviewed Robert De Niro back in 1990, for the film Goodfellas. It would be fair to say it didn’t go well.
I’m one of a generation of film fans who grew up watching and loving the work of the late Barry Norman. His Film programme was a staple part of my youth, and I sorely miss a weekly curated television show of its ilk.
The programme ran, with Norman ultimately in the chair, for over 25 years. He was succeed by Jonathan Ross, and he was then followed by a strange setup with Claudia Winkleman and a revolving door of guests. But for me, the Norman years were the special ones. I doubt I’d have had the life I’d have had if he hadn’t help spark my own love for cinema.
Of course, from our side of the fence, we never got to see just what went into making the programme itself. But over time, Norman pulled back the curtain a little to give us some insights. Not least the time he nearly came to blows with Robert De Niro.
Norman devoted chapter 26 of his hugely entertaining memoir – And Why Not? – to tales of movie stars being late for press interviews. Francis Ford Coppola, for instance, was initially a no-show when Norman and his producer, Bruce Thompson, flew to Los Angeles to interview him for The Godfather Part III. Turns out he was babysitting his granddaughter at the allotted time for the interview. In the end, Norman went to Coppola’s house and did the interview there.
“It was simply a ploy,” mused Norman, “to prove to everyone – not least I suspect themselves – that they, not the interviewers, are the important ones.”
Norman added that “I have no quarrel with that … if they would only arrive punctually, I’d be perfectly happy to have them announce in a loud, clear voice ‘I am more important than you are.’
Warren Beatty then, on a separate occasion, kept Norman waiting for an hour and a half. When he did arrive, Beatty’s publicist insisted that it was a veiled compliment: “you should feel very flattered. This is the least late he has ever been.”
Yet it was Robert De Niro where things came to a head. He was a huge admirer of De Niro the actor, rating him as pretty much the best on the planet come the turn of the 1990s.
The pair were due to meet at the Savoy Hotel in London, as part of the promotion for 1990’s Goodfellas. It wasn’t an interview that Barry Norman and his team had chased, but Warner Bros (the studio behind the film) called up to say that De Niro was to be in town for one day, and would give one UK TV interview. The lucky recipient was Barry Norman’s Film programme.
Norman went into the interview knowing that De Niro may be an astounding actor, but he was rarely a good interviewee. Simply because it’s not in De Niro’s comfort zone, and he was renowned at the time, less so now, for being monosyllabic in his interviews.
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Thus, Barry Norman hadn’t been too keen, but reasoning that they’d approached him rather than the other way round, he assumed, incorrectly, that De Niro had something particular he wanted to talk about.
Producer Bruce Thompson and Barry Norman thus got to the suite at the Savoy in good time, and were ready to go. And then they waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. De Niro was staying in the same hotel, and they knew he was only one floor away.
I always loved Norman’s dry style in presenting his Film programme, and it’s very much present in his writing as well. As the wait went on, he wrote that he enquired of the publicity rep “whether De Niro had perhaps got lost on the hazardous journey down one flight of stairs.”
After a frantic phone call or two, it was reported back that De Niro was waiting for a shirt to come back from the laundry, and then he’d be down.
This did not go down well.
“Now if someone had asked me how many shirts I thought Robert De Niro owned, I would certainly have said ‘more than one.’” Then, when he did eventually arrive, his sartorial choice didn’t impress Norman either, who described it as “the sort of shirt I wouldn’t wish to wear even on a deserted beach.”
Still, Robert De Niro was in the room, although he ignored the crew before settling down for the interview, which went as had been feared.
Right up until the point when Barry Norman made Robert De Niro angry.
The cause of this ire was a question about the Penny Marshall movie Big, for which Tom Hanks had earned his first Oscar nomination a year or so before. De Niro would eventually work with Penny Marshall on Awakenings, but Norman had read a story that he’d pitched for the role on Big that eventually went to Hanks.
De Niro answered the question. The version Norman had read suggested that the actor had approached the Big producers, but was turned away because his box office clout wasn’t big enough. De Niro explained that the approach came from the producers to him, but eventually they couldn’t agree on the finer details, and thus he walked away.
The interview concluded shortly thereafter, and it’d been the finest work of nobody involved. Norman though recalled that De Niro refused to shake his hand, and said “you hadda get that one in, didn’t you?” as he got up to leave.
I’d love to have been in the room for the next bit. Or the corridor.
Because Barry Norman snapped. Already irritated at how long he’d been waiting, he bit back at De Niro, asking what he was talking about. When De Niro left the room, Norman followed him into the corridor, asking “what is your problem?”
This, friends, doesn’t usually happen at press junkets.
‘We were standing very close, almost nose to nose, snarling at each other’, Norman wrote, realising that things might actually get violent if things continued, and the odds were not forever in his favour. De Niro clearly hadn’t enjoyed the Big question, complaining that he’d been told Barry Norman was a ‘straight up guy’, and yet he was trying to ‘make trouble.’
The temperature cooled when Norman explained that if it meant that much to De Niro, they wouldn’t use that part of the interview. Only then did he get his handshake.
The interview duly went out in October 1990, and with thanks to the excellent VHS Video Vault, the parts of the interview that were used, and Robert De Niro’s shirt, can be seen here…
Many years later, when he left the BBC, Norman would reflect that he regarded Robert De Niro as the rudest man he’d ever met. But he gave the actor, and the film, a rave review, and rightly so. What he never did again – at least to my knowledge – was seek an audience with him…
