“How dare they do that?” asked Robert De Niro, stunned. Present in New York on Monday for the 33rd edition of the Gotham Awards, the 80-year-old actor expressed his annoyance when he discovered, once on stage, that a passage of his text had been censored on the teleprompters. “The beginning of my speech was modified, cut. I didn’t know it and I want to read it,” explains the American actor, before taking out his phone and imposing, as few can afford to do, his text in full. Guest of honor for his latest role in Killers of The Flower Moon by Martin Scorsese, Robert de Niro took advantage of this platform to send a very committed message against disinformation, particularly regarding the first nations of America (at the heart of the latest film by Martin Scorsese).
“History is no longer history. The truth is no longer truth. Even facts are replaced by alternative facts, driven by conspiracy and ugly theories. (…) The industry is not spared from this poison. “The Duke,” John Wayne, famously said about the American Indians: “I don’t think we were wrong to take this great country from them. Many people needed new land and the Indians selfishly tried to keep it for themselves.
This parenthesis against disinformation allowed him to slip in a few words about a master in the matter, former American President Donald Trump, whom Robert de Niro is far from holding in his heart. “Lies have become a new tool in the arsenal of charlatans. The former president lied to us nearly 30,000 times in four years in office and continues to do so in his revenge campaign. But with all his lies, he can’t hide his soul. He attacks the weak, destroys the gifts of nature, and shows disrespect by using, for example, Pocahontas as an insult.
“This is where I was before seeing that they (the producers, Apple, editor’s note) had cut all that,” explained Robert de Niro to the applause of the room, before continuing, annoyed, the rest of his speech . “I’m going to thank Apple, Gotham, blah blah blah. But I don’t want to thank them after what they did. How dare they?”
The Gotham Awards ceremony notably crowned French cinema with the Gotham for Best International Film and the Gotham for Best Screenplay for Anatomy of a Fall by Justine Triet.
