The “annoying little shits” Robert De Niro wasn’t allowed to beat up on set: “Not that kind of movie”
Having given one of the greatest performances that American cinema has ever seen as Jake LaMotta in Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, the character may have stayed with Robert De Niro for longer than he was willing to admit, or even thought.
Since he’s earned his stripes as one of the method’s most famous practitioners, not that he has to rely on it too much these days when he’s starring in random jobbies like Savage Salvation and Tin Soldier, maybe it’s true that every immersive actor unintentionally absorbs aspects of the role they dedicated months, if not years, of their lives to.
Either that, or he just really wanted to throw hands with some extras. When De Niro dusted off his pugilistic skills for the first time in a long time, he and Sylvester Stallone almost disappeared entirely up their own arses, stopping just shy of winking at the audience every five minutes when they carried their residual cache from Raging Bull and Rocky into the interminable Grudge Match.
That wasn’t the movie that found him itching to buttress some day players across the chops, though, and since it was almost the polar opposite kind of picture, he was quietly reminded that it wouldn’t be in his, the rest of the cast, or the director’s best interests if he was given the leeway to sock some jaws for kicks.
As you’ll no doubt have guessed by now, Nancy Meyers was the filmmaker who told him he wasn’t allowed to batter the extras, and the production was 2015’s The Intern, which is obviously the sort of film where you can envision De Niro’s mild-mannered widower easing himself into the technology-fuelled corporate landscape by busting some heads.
It would have certainly made things more interesting, since the plot is as predictable as they come, elevated only by the unlikely chemistry between the two-time Academy Award-winning icon and Anne Hathaway, which is about the only saving grace of the paint-by-numbers fish out of water workplace caper.
“I’d have liked to have at least beaten up a few of the interns,” De Niro quipped to The Standard. “I asked Nancy if I could do that because they were such annoying little shits at times, but she said, ‘No, it’s not that kind of movie.'” Perhaps it should have been, because the prospect of the star’s Ben Whittaker going tonto is infinitely more interesting than anything that actually happened onscreen.
Sure, it would have been jarring had the light and fluffy comedy suddenly devolved into a quasi-Raging Bull sequel where De Niro channels the spirit of LaMotta and unleashes his animalistic side, battering an office full of hapless interns and leaving their teeth scattered across the office floor while their noses have been transplanted to the back of their heads, but you’d pay to see it.
Sadly, he was shut down, and we’re left to imagine how The Intern would have looked had the veteran been allowed to indulge himself, dust off the skillset that won him a second Oscar, and cause some real fucking chaos.
