Robert De Niroposed 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 Mondays New York premiere ofFrancis Ford CoppolasMegalopolis.
Itll never go anywhere, from total craziness.
Robert De Niro and, from left: Dustin Hoffman, Aubrey Plaza, Francis Ford Coppola, Nathalie Emmanuel and Giancarlo EspositoGetty Images
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.
Im worried, De Niro said.
I see the things in Francis film about that, the parallels and so on.
We cannot have that bang out of person.
Everybody has to get out there and vote.
Lee didnt hesitate to agree.
As my sister says, forward not backward, he said.
Its simple: Register to vote and show up.
This election is going to be very, very close.
Im a big sports fan and, the expression you used, its not over till its over.
We cannot just think that the game is over when its not.
Coppola interjected to note that he had deliberately cast actors who are voting another way.
His profane fervor eventripped the censor buttonat CBS in 2018 during the networks live broadcast of the Tony Awards.
He later met Coppola when the filmmaker spoke to his class of graduate students at NYU.
Others pronounced it a solipsistic head-scratcher or even an outright disaster, withThe Guardiandismissing it as megabloated and megaboring.
