De Niro: A Biography

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Summary: Lucid study of a great actor's strengths and weaknesses
Review: For many film fans, Robert DeNiro is still a maverick actor associated with such distinctive films as The Godfather Part II, Mean Streets,1900 and Taxi Driver. Yet as this biography points out, DeNiro has been almost as cavalier with his gifts in recent years as Marlon Brando. There is a surprising amount of new information in this book, especially on DeNiro's relationship with his painter father and the burdens of running his TriBeCa film complex in New York, given the actor's opaque public utterances and avoidance of the press. I am not sure anyone can really work out what motivates DeNiro, but Baxter comes close and does it with his usual elegance and wit.

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Summary: I have to question a lot of what is written in this book
Review: From the start, it is obvious that Baxter is not a fan of DeNiro. He seems to feel that DeNiro has wasted his talents by taking on roles in bad movies or hasn't lived up to his early promise. True, perhaps, in some respects, but if you were to believe Baxter, DeNiro's last great performance was Taxi Driver in 1976! Baxter criticizes DeNiro's acting in Raging Bull, one of the most amazing performances by any actor on film. Aside from his obvious lack of enthusiasm for DeNiro's acting, I have to question a lot of the facts of this book. By the second or third page of the book, when Baxter states that Awakenings was released in 1987 (it came out in 1990) I couldn't help but wonder what other mistakes I would find. There were many, too many to remember. His descriptions of film plots are often wrong, his descriptions of characters in films are often wrong (saying that John Cazale in Dog Day Afternoon was robbing a bank so that his lover could have a sex change operation--it was actually Pacino's character's lover! Anyone who even saw the film ONCE would know this). How can I believe anything Baxter writes about DeNiro's personal life when he can't get basic, easily verified facts about films right? I just hope one day someone will write a biography of this great actor that does justice to his awesome talent.

Rating:
Summary: Pessimistic, negative view of Robert De Niro and his work
Review: I get the impression the author does not like Robert De Niro very much. He finds fault with every film he has made, he seizes on every opportunity to portray and emphasise De Niro as unintellectual, inarticulate and uneducated, and he reports details of his private life with the zeal of tabloid reporting. Some of his recall about characters and scenes in De Niro's film are just wrong and I have to doubt the veracity of some other events he describes, as I have read some of the same source material he has drawn from, and can see how he has misrepresented it. I am sure there are more interesting bios about Robert De Niro. This is one is just mean spirited. Don't give this guy your money.

Rating:
Summary: de Ziro
Review: When a biographer can't even get the most basic facts right, there's good reason to wonder about the rest of his research, too. In addition to a raft of rudimentary errors pointed out by other readers, Baxter also misidentifies the author of Helter Skelter (it's Vincent, not Steven, Bugliosi); refers to the cult film Spider Baby as Spider Boy; confuses Milton Berle with Arthur Godfrey (this incident is so mangled it's impossible to know who Baxter really means) and claims that Mean Streets (released in 1973) got lost in the shuffle because so many other high-profile movies were released that year--including A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Deliverance (1972). But why go on? A real mess.