At Tribeca: Robert De Niro Talks Scorsese Reunion, SNL Hosting and the GOP's 'Big Hustle'

He's a hoarder -- sort of.

Asked why he recently supplied the De Niro Archives to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, the actor deadpanned, "They were the only people who would take it. "And you know, hanging on to all that stuff after a while gets expensive. You have to store it, you have to take care of it. I did that because I noticed, like, when I did Godfather II, I was in a big costume house in L.A. And they gave me these shoes -- I thought they were the shoes that Warren Beatty wore in Bonnie and Clyde. And they were just there. I have my own experience of thing sort of disappearing. Wardrobe, props, other stuff. So I thought I'd just like to hold my stuff -- hold as much as I can, and put it in my contract. I just had it, and eventually the University of Texas wanted to take everything. And they took everything. It's a good place for it so it's not dispersed, destroyed, you know... All over the place."

He's plugged in -- sort of.

He doesn't spend a lot of time on the Web -- "I don't Twitter" -- but he does enjoy his "convenient" iPhone and has quite taken to his iPad as well. "I read scripts on it. It's fast. It's good to read scripts. I force myself to read them more quickly because you're not [dealing with] pages and all that. It just goes quicker."

Contemporary politics have him as frustrated as everybody else.

De Niro was perhaps never more animated and expressive than when asked about the current political climate in the United States. "I think of the possibility of the government being shut down, and I say, 'How did we get to this point?'" he said. "I remember it happened years ago. And I just say, 'How did we ever get to that point?' Because the people who suffer are the one who have jobs where every week, they've gotta make these payments. How did we get there? What is this about? This is crazy. And I know Obama was trying to bridge the gap. His intentions are really good. Maybe some things are not as good as we all would like, but his intentions were right. A lot of these guys, their intentions are not even good. They're just playing the game. And they're playing with people's lives."

"A lot of people believe that this is as far apart as the two ideological sides of our country have been," Williams said. "We keep saying that, and then a month later, they break their own pledge, and they get even further apart. Do you ever see it coming together? As I like to put it to people, if 9/11 didn't do it -- if 9/11 didn't leave us more unified -- what would?"

"Well, we're unified in certain ways in this country, and in certain ways we're not, to me," De Niro responded, particularly baffled by certain Republicans in Washington and elsewhere who speak "a lot of nonsense." "I won't mention names, but certain people in the news the last couple weeks, just, what are they doing? It's crazy. They're making statements about people that they don't even back up. Go get the facts before you start saying things about people. It's like a big hustle. It's like being a car salesman. Don't go out there and say things unless you can back them up. How dare you? That's awful to do. To just go out and speak and say these terrible things? Unless you just wanna get over and get the job. It's crazy."

Speaking of which, IMDB needs to make a correction.

Arguably the highlight of the whole discussion occurred in Williams's sign-off, which he intended as earnest, succinct praise but was instead thwarted by a certain Web resource's customarily fluid factuality. "When you go on IMDB," he began, "their lead sentence -- alongside a picture of our guest today, and our founder -- is 'Robert Mario De Niro Jr., who is thought of as one of the greatest actors of all time, was born in New York City. That's all we need to say, along with our thanks to our guest."

"Wait, wait," De Niro said, waving his hands as the audience launched into a swiftly aborted ovation. "I have something to say: My middle name is Anthony."

"So why don't you call the people at IMDB and say, 'Hey, it's Bob...'" Williams dug out his iPad, as if on cue. "I have their app!"

"I talk to people who go, 'I remember when you did this, you did that, you did that...' I say, 'I never did any of those things.' Or I don't want to make them feel bad, so I don't say anything."

"Well, this is one we can rectify," Williams said, pulling up De Niro's IMDB page. "There it is, clear as day. Unbelievable. Wow." He showed De Niro and faced the audience. "This is like that time I gave him a couple ideas for Goodfellas. I don't talk about that much."

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