Robert De Niro Piles On Donald Trump At NY Premiere, With Backup From Spike Lee: “He Cannot Hold Anything Together”
Wonder what the Orange Troll will tweet this time.
https://deadline.com/2024/09/robert-de-niro-donald-trump-spike-lee-megalopolis-francis-ford-coppola-premiere-1236097327/
Robert De Niro posed a hypothetical that made the audience bust out laughing even as the actor remained utterly stone-faced.
“Just imagine Donald Trump directing this film,” he said at Monday’s New York premiere of Francis Ford Coppola‘s Megalopolis. “It’ll never go anywhere, from total craziness. He cannot do anything. He cannot hold anything together … He wants to destroy the country. And he could not do this movie. He could not do anything that has a structure.”
De Niro, Spike Lee and Coppola appeared together in a half-hour Q&A before the screening presented by the New York Film Festival at the AMC Lincoln Square Imax. The Q&A was beamed out to 65 North American locations via the Imax Live network and followed a red carpet featuring cast members including Aubrey Plaza, Dustin Hoffman and Giancarlo Esposito.
Asked about his view on the future of cinema, De Niro instead took things in a political direction, motivated by Coppola’s ruminations on the decline of civilizations and the rise of dictators. “I’m worried,” De Niro said. “I see the things in Francis’ film about that, the parallels and so on. To me, it’s not over ’till it’s over and we have to go at this wholeheartedly to beat the Republicans – those Republicans, they’re not real Republicans – and beat Trump. It’s that simple. We cannot have that type of person. Everybody has to get out there and vote.”
Lee didn’t hesitate to agree. “As my sister says, forward not backward,” he said. “It’s simple: Register to vote and show up. …. This election is going to be very, very close. I’m a big sports fan and, the expression you used, it’s not over ’till it’s over. We cannot just think that the game is over when it’s not.”