How Sergio Leone almost pissed away his chance to work with Robert De Niro
In the 1960s, Italian director Sergio Leone announced himself as the master of the spaghetti western with a series of movies starring Clint Eastwood, later known as The Dollars Trilogy. Eventually, though, Leone handled a very different kind of movie in the shape of Once Upon a Time in the West, for which he recruited the legendary Robert De Niro.
Released in 1984, Leone’s final movie was based on Harry Grey’s novel The Hoods and focuses on two best friends, David ‘Noodles’ Aaronson and Maximilian ‘Max’ Bercovicz, who lead a group of Jewish ghetto youths in New York City to become notorious and powerful criminals in the underworld of the early-to-mid-20th century.
De Niro gave one of his most memorable performances for Leone alongside James Woods. The film was the first that Leone had handled for 13 years and served as a fitting send-off for one of the all-time great directors, a man who had given so much to the cinematic medium for most of his career.
Rather amazingly, there is a story surrounding De Niro and Leone in which the director very nearly prevented the actor from taking on his role in Once Upon a Time in America. The incident took place when the two film icons met in a hotel room at the Mayflower in Washington, and involved a Sergio Leone who was desperate for the toilet.
Leone reportedly came into the room, went straight to the loo and was said to have largely pissed all over the toilet seat. When De Niro went to the bathroom later, he found that his next prospective director was not the most cautious nor accurate urinator of all time, which immediately put him off the project.
However, in an interview with Cigar Aficionado, De Niro explained that the story was somewhat different. “Nah, he didn’t pee on the seat; he kind of let it go all over the porcelain,” the actor said. “It was kind of a sloppy thing.” Still, the truth was that Leone did not know how to use the toilet with the kind of decorum that De Niro would have liked.
According to De Niro, Leone had already asked him to do Once Upon a Time in America several years before they actually set about making. He wanted Gérard Depardieu and myself to do it,” De Niro explained. “It must have been after 1900 [which De Niro and Depardieu both starred in], but I remember him talking about it with us, and I wasn’t that interested at that time.”
Well, that’s one account of the story, but perhaps De Niro was equally put off by the fact of Leone’s pissing mishaps. Eventually, though, Leone hung on to his actor and finally got his man, even though it was one hell of a long wait.
“It turned out to be a year because of this and that, and Sergio was trying to figure out the ending and how to see Manhattan from my character coming back,” De Niro said. “I think in the end, he didn’t want to let go.”
Still, despite the near accident in the bathroom, De Niro had a terrific opinion of Leone and noted, “Sergio was great. I don’t know what to call Sergio, except he had a terrific sense of humour. He was a good guy, very simpatico, and I enjoyed working with him. Sergio has a great sense of humour.”
