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Los Angeles Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Can homegrown teens replace immigrant farm labor? In 1965, the U.S. tried
I sank into Randy Carter's comfy couch, excited to see the Hollywood veteran's magnum opus. Around the first floor of his Glendale home were framed photos and posters of films the 77-year-old had worked on during his career. 'Apocalypse Now.' 'The Godfather II.' 'The Conversation.' What we were about to watch was nowhere near the caliber of those classics — and Carter didn't care. Footage of a school bus driving through dusty farmland began to play. The title of the nine-minute sizzle reel Carter produced in 1991 soon flashed: 'Boy Wonders.' The plot: White teenage boys in the 1960s gave up a summer of surfing to heed the federal government's call. Their assignment: Pick crops in the California desert, replacing Mexican farmworkers. 'That's the stupidest, dumbest, most harebrained scheme I've heard in my life,' a farmer complained to a government official in one scene, a sentiment studio executives echoed as they rejected Carter's project as too far-fetched. But it wasn't: 'Boy Wonders' was based on Carter's life. In 1965, the U.S. Department of Labor launched A-TEAM — Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower — with the goal of recruiting 20,000 high school athletes to harvest summer crops. The country was facing a dire farmworker shortage because the bracero program, which provided cheap legal labor from Mexico for decades, had ended the year before. Sports legends such as Sandy Koufax, Rafer Johnson and Jim Brown urged teen jocks to join A-TEAM because 'Farm Work Builds Men!' as one ad stated. But only about 3,000 made it to the fields. One of them was a 17-year-old Carter. He and about 18 classmates from University of San Diego High spent six weeks picking cantaloupes in Blythe. The fine hairs on the fruits ripped through their gloves within hours. It was so hot that the bologna sandwiches the farmers fed their young workers for lunch toasted in the shade. They slept in rickety shacks, used communal bathrooms and showered in water that 'was a very nice shade of brown,' Carter remembered with a laugh. They were the rare crew that stuck it out. Teens quit or went on strike across the country to protest abysmal work conditions. A-TEAM was such a disaster that the federal government never tried it again, and the program was considered so ludicrous that it rarely made it into history books. Then came MAGA. Now, legislators in some red-leaning states are thinking about making it easier for teenagers to work in agricultural jobs, in anticipation of Trump's deportation deluge. 'I used to joke that I've written a story for the ages, because we'll never solve the problem of labor,' Carter said. 'I could be dead, and my great-grandkids could easily shop it around.' I wrote about Carter's experience in 2018 for an NPR article that went viral. It still bubbles up on social media any time a politician suggests that farm laborers are easily replaceable — like last month, when Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said that 'able-bodied adults on Medicaid' could pick crops, instead of immigrants. From journalists to teachers, people are reaching out to Carter anew to hear his picaresque stories from 50 years ago — like the time he and his friends made a wrong turn in Blythe and drove into the barrio, where 'everyone looked at us like we were specimens' but was nice about it. 'They are dying to see white kids tortured,' Carter cracked when I asked him why the saga fascinates the public. 'They want to see these privileged teens work their asses off. Wouldn't you?' But he doesn't see the A-TEAM as one giant joke — it's one of the defining moments of his life. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Carter moved to San Diego his sophomore year of high school. He always took summer jobs at the insistence of his working-class Irish mother. When the feds made their pitch in the spring of 1965, 'there wasn't exactly a rush to the sign-up table,' Carter recalled. What's more, coaches at his school, known at University High, forbade their athletes to join. But he and his pals thought it would be the domestic version of the Peace Corps. 'You're a teenager and think, 'What the hell are we going to do this summer?'' he said. 'Then, 'What the hell. If nothing else, we'll go into town every night. We'll meet some girls. We'll get cowboys to buy us beer.'' ' Carter paused for dramatic effect. 'No.' The University High crew was trained by a Mexican foreman 'who in retrospect must have hated us because we were taking the jobs of his family.' They worked six days a week for minimum wage — $1.40 an hour at the time — and earned a nickel for every crate filled with about 30 to 36 cantaloupes. 'Within two days, we thought, 'This is insane,'' he said. 'By the third day, we wanted to leave. But we stayed, because it became a thing of honor.' Nearly everyone returned to San Diego after the six-week stint, although a couple of guys went to Fresno and 'became legendary in our group because they could stand to do some more. For the rest of us, we did it, and we vowed never to do anything like that as long as we live. Somehow, the beach seemed a little nicer that summer.' Carter's wife, Janice, walked in. I asked how important A-TEAM was to her husband. She rolled her eyes the way only a wife of 53 years could. 'He talks about it almost every week,' she said as Randy beamed. 'It's like an endless loop.' University High's A-TEAM squad went on to successful careers as doctors, lawyers, businessmen. They regularly meet for reunions and talk about those tough days in Blythe, which Carter describes 'as the intersection of hell and Earth.' As the issue of immigrant labor became more heated in American politics, the guys realized they had inadvertently absorbed an important lesson all those decades ago. Before A-TEAM, Carter said, his idea of how crops were picked was that 'somehow it got done, and they [Mexican farmworkers] somehow disappeared.' 'But when we now thought about Mexicans, we realized we only had to do it for six weeks,' he continued. 'These guys do it every day, and they support a family. We became sympathetic, to a man. When people say bad things about Mexicans, we always say, 'Don't even go there, because you don't know what you're talking about.'' Carter's experience picking cantaloupes solidified his liberal leanings. So did the time he tried to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in 1969 during Operation Intercept, a Nixon administration initiative that required the Border Patrol to search nearly every car. The stated purpose was to crack down on marijuana smuggling. Instead, Carter said, it created an hours-long wait and 'businesses on both sides of the border were furious.' In college, Carter cheered the efforts of United Farm Workers and kept tabs on the fight to ban el cortito, the short-handled hoes that wore down the bodies of California farmworkers for generations until a state bill banned them in 1975. By then, he was working as a 'junior, junior, junior' assistant to Francis Ford Coppola. Once he built enough of a resume in Hollywood — where he would become a longtime first assistant director on 'Seinfeld,' among many credits — Carter wrote his 'Boy Wonders' script, which he described as ''Dead Poets Society' meets 'Cool Hand Luke.'' It was optioned twice. Henry Winkler's production company was interested for a bit. So was Rhino Records' film division, which explains why the soundtrack features boomer classics from the Byrds, Bob Dylan and Motown. But no one thought audiences would buy Carter's straightforward premise. One executive suggested it would be more believable if the high schoolers ran over someone on prom night and became crop pickers to hide from the cops. Another suggested exploding toilets to funny up the action. 'The mantra in Hollywood is, 'Do something you know about,'' he said. 'But that was the curse of it not getting made — because no one else knew about it!' Carter continues to share his experience, because 'as a weak-kneed progressive, I always fancied we could change the situation ... and that some sense of fair play could bubble up. I'm still walking up that road, but it seems more distant.' A few weeks ago, federal immigration agents raided the car wash he frequents. 'You don't even have to rewrite stories from years ago,' he said. 'You could just reprint them, because nothing changes.' I asked what he thought about MAGA's push to replace migrant farmworkers with American citizens. 'It's like saying, 'I'm going to go to Dodger Stadium, grab someone from the third row of the mezzanine section, and they can play the violin at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.' OK, you can do that, but it's not going to work,' he said. 'I don't get why they don't try to solve the problem of fair conditions and inadequate pay — why is that never an option?' What about a reboot of A-TEAM? 'It could work,' Carter replied. 'I was with a group of guys that did it!' Then he considered how it might play out today. 'If Taylor Swift said it was great, you'd get people. Would they last? If they had decent accommodations and pay, maybe. But it would never happen with Trump. His solution is, 'You don't pay decent wages, you get desperate people.'' He laughed again. 'Here's a crazy program from the 1960s that's not off the map in 2025. We're still debating the issue. Am I crazy, or is the world crazy?'
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola coming to The Henry Ford for sold-out events
The Henry Ford's vast collection of artifacts speaks to the legacy of America's cultural and technological achievements. This month, it also will host a creative icon who should be declared a national treasure. Director Francis Ford Coppola, whose classic films 'The Godfather,' 'The Godfather II" and 'Apocalype Now' and more are imprinted on the national psyche, is set to appear at two sold-out events on April 27 as part of the series 'Francis Ford at The Henry Ford.' The iconic director, a five-time Oscar winner, will deliver remarks that afternoon at a special screening of his latest movie, 'Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis,' at the Giant Screen Experience in the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn. A few hours later, he will participate in a conversation with his biographer Sam Wasson at 'Behind the Lens: An Evening with Francis Ford Coppola." He is expected to discuss his creative process and go behind the scenes of 'Megalopolis,' the 2024 Roman epic that unfolds in Coppola's imagined version of a contemporary United States. All this is happening one day after Coppola is scheduled to receive the American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award, a pinnacle of cinematic recognition. He will be presented with the honor April 26 by filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. For Coppola, who was born at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and spent the early years of his childhood in the city, The Henry Ford event will be a homecoming to the region that gave him his middle name. As his father, Carmine Coppola, a flutist for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, explained in a 1988 letter to the Free Press, 'When Francie came along in 1939, I gave him the middle name for the man I was working for. At that time, Henry Ford was a big contributor to the Detroit Symphony and I also worked for the 'Ford Music Hour.'' The radio program employed Carmine Coppola as an assistant conductor and arranger. Francis Ford Coppola has continued to feel a connection to the Motor City, a bond that helped inspire his 1988 film "Tucker: The Man and His Dream," about the maverick automaker's attempt to create his own car line. In a letter to the Free Press timed to the arrival of "Tucker," the 86-year-old cinematic genius also wrote to the Free Press sharing that "my family always referred to me as the 'Detroit baby.'" Coppola shared his feelings about his birthplace and his AFI award in a recent email interview with the Free Press. Like his movies, his answers don't waste a word as they capture the mood and emotions of a sweeping moment. QUESTION: You were born in Detroit and spent the first three or four years of your life here, where your father played an important role with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. What is one of your strongest memories from that time? ANSWER: Getting stung by a yellow jacket when I was two years old. I couldn't believe how much it hurt and I went crying to my mother. Q: Beyond your middle name, do you think Detroit has had an impact on your life? Is it a place you follow in the news or are emotional attached to? A: It was always important to me that I was born in Detroit. As a kid I rooted for the Detroit Tigers when my whole family was for the New York Yankees. Coming from Detroit gave me a unique identity in a family of New Yorkers. Q: Your AFI Life Achievement Award event is happening on April 26. What do you think the Francis Ford Coppola of the early 1960s, who was making 'Dementia 13' with another native Detroiter, producer Roger Corman, would have thought about this? A: It's hard for me to think how my life has taken the path it has. I never imagined things like this would happen the way that they did. Q: Your movies have become part of the lexicon of American pop culture. How often do you spot a reference or nod to something you've directed, whether it's in a commercial, comedy skit, everyday phrase or another film? A: My eyes are so focused on the future rather than the past; there is a wonderful poem by Robert Browning which expresses how I feel: 'Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?' Q: Your appearance at The Henry Ford include as showing of your latest film, 'Megalopolis,' on the museum's Giant Screen Experience. Can you describe what it's like as a filmmaker, seeing your movie on an 80-foot by 42-foot screen? A: As if you're sharing your dream with a community of your fellow human beings, with your beloved cousins. 'Francis Ford at The Henry Ford' will continue with screenings of 'Megalopolis' at 7 p.m. on May 30 and 31. For information, go to The Henry Ford website. Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@ This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 'Francis Ford at The Henry Ford': Director Coppola to appear at museum
Yahoo
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘It's like doing three movies at once': Robert De Niro on his thrilling TV debut – as America's saviour
Art mirrors life on the Netflix show Zero Day, a tense political thriller for Donald Trump's second term. There are mobs on the street and far-right trolls on TV. There's a billionaire making mischief and a state of uproar in Congress. Robert De Niro stars as ex-president George Mullen, whisked out of retirement to investigate a crippling cyber-attack. Mullen is dogged and courageous, but he's a man of the past, not quite on his mettle. His daughter thinks he's out of touch. 'The world has changed in ways he doesn't understand,' says his wife. I'm excited to talk to De Niro about Zero Day and its real-world echoes. The show's politics are what drew him to the project. The actor has made no secret of his disgust and loathing for Trump. But our Zoom interview comes with constraints. Netflix have requested that there be 'no personal or political questions' and have dispatched a pair of publicists to serve as chaperones. Even ex-presidents and movie stars have to work within a wider system. Sometimes it gives them freedom. At other times, maybe not. De Niro beams in from his home in New York. He looks the very ideal of an 81-year-old man: trim and handsome, with platinum hair and professorial specs. There is a potted fern by his head and a barking dog at his feet. One good thing about making Zero Day was that it kept him close to his infant daughter Gia, the youngest of his seven children. At his age, he has learned to choose his roles more carefully. 'I had another thing offered to me over in eastern Europe recently. It was a terrific script but I couldn't make it work and one of the sticking points was the location.' New York shoots are the best, he says. 'It's important, it helps, especially with kids and so on.' Everyone will have their favourite De Niro performance, whether it's silken Vito Corleone or toxic Jake LaMotta; the harried bounty hunter from Midnight Run or the traumatised Green Beret from The Deer Hunter. Naturally, the actor has his own favourites. Yesterday he was at a school fundraiser and the other parents – all much younger than him – were clamouring to discuss his role in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, which was nice and strange, because there is no way of predicting which films will last and which won't. 'I mean, we always liked that script,' he says. 'We thought it was special. Marty and myself, and Paul Schrader who wrote it. But after that you never know. So there's [Taxi Driver], obviously, but there are other ones, too. The Godfather II, Raging Bull, King of Comedy. Everything I did with Marty Scorsese. Roland Joffe's The Mission. David O Russell, Barry Levinson.' He shrugs. 'I've been lucky to work with these great directors.' Zero Day is no Taxi Driver, but it makes for a fine autumn flourish. Netflix's thriller was devised by a pair of political journalists – the New York Times correspondent Michael S Schmidt and former NBC producer Noah Oppenheim – and depicts a United States that can be switched on and off like a light. Shadowy malware knocks out the air traffic control system and redirects trains on to the same stretch of track. The country panics, conspiracy theories abound and the crisis plays out over six precision-tooled episodes. It's a big, glossy production with myriad subplots and an ensemble cast. But De Niro is the linchpin and brings the whole thing back to centre. He's always thought of himself as a big-screen actor but knows TV has changed and figured this might be a good time to dive in. The average film shoot can feel like a sprint; this felt more akin to a marathon. 'It's like doing three features at once,' he says. 'I likened it to being in the Channel between France and England and looking back. I can't see France any more and I can't see England. So I've got to keep swimming, staying up with the scenes, the endless information, the thrust of the story. Stay ahead of it, stay on it. So it was a whole other kind of experience for me.' His hero, George Mullen, is a one-term president who bowed out in the wake of a family bereavement. He's imperfect but decent; an old-school public servant. 'I had the idea of a president who was trusted, well-liked, and who told the truth as much as he could,' says De Niro. 'He's a person who tries to be straightforward. Who has no agenda other than to do the right thing.' I ask if Mullen is based on anyone in particular and he says that no, he's really not; maybe Joe Biden very slightly. I say that he reminded me more of Jimmy Carter, a much respected commander-in-chief, and he accepts that there may be some truth in that. 'Well, Carter was a great president. He was a good person, a kind person, empathetic. No one really gave him credit until the end. But that was important to me, that he was a good person. I didn't know this [at the time] but I watched interviews about him that say he was also a little standoffish, an outsider in certain ways, and that's interesting to me, too.' One president whom Mullen emphatically doesn't resemble is Donald Trump. De Niro despises Trump on an almost visceral level. He has been one of the man's most outspoken public critics. He's called him a pig and a punk and a con artist and a dog. He's called him a jerk and a mutt, a real-estate hustler and a two-bit playboy. But today he's saying nothing. He is courteous but seems wary. The publicists ping me a message suggesting I return my focus to the show. The best artists – the best actors – are hot-wired to their times. De Niro, arguably more than any other living actor, embodied the turbulent last decades of the American century. His golden years were entwined with Vietnam and Watergate, spiking crime rates and a borderline bankrupt New York City. So he's familiar with political instability, with division and anger and a sense of chaos. But I get the impression that the situation under Trump (the tariffs, cuts and firings; the repurposing of the federal government) is different. More than that, I suspect he thinks it's without precedent. 'Well, I'd ask you that,' he shoots back. 'Do you think it is?' 'I think it is,' I tell him. 'But I don't have your reach of history.' 'Yeah, you're a lot younger than me.' He pauses. 'But it is unprecedented. It is. It just is. As we all know.' Is he hopeful or despairing? 'I'm not despairing, because I always look at the bright side and hope that things will right themselves and that people will appreciate goodness and empathy and will try to do the right thing. So I can't help but think that.' Another pause. 'Some people look at [things] differently. They have different values. That's disturbing to me. I don't understand it. But I just have to look at things in an optimistic way.' De Niro's Zoom window is minimised and one of the publicists drops in. 'Sorry to interrupt,' she says. 'But can you just bring it back to show questions?' Michael S Schmidt – Zero Day's co-creator – is still on staff at the New York Times. Last month he filed a story about the president's threatened reprisals against his perceived enemies. Schmidt and his co-writer Glenn Thrush contacted more than two dozen of Trump's most vehement public critics. Almost all, they said, now declined to speak up in case it made them a target. I mention this article to De Niro and make one last attempt. 'I'm wondering,' I say, 'if you're now feeling you need to be more careful about what you say.' He has no time to answer. The publicist pitches in. 'No, no, no. Sorry, Xan, I'm really sorry but we agreed this. Can we just go back to the show because we don't have much time.' And that is the end of our Trump conversation – inasmuch as it ever became one at all. I've had car-crash interviews in the past and I'm unsure this quite qualifies as one. It's too polite and well-managed; the tone is faintly apologetic. It's not even clear who is in the driving seat here. Is it the actor's decision not to discuss Trump with the press or does his contract have him muzzled? Either way it begs an obvious question. If De Niro – a world-famous two-time Oscar-winning millionaire – no longer feels he is able to speak out, one wonders who in the US does. In Zero Day, De Niro effectively plays the role of backstop, the US's last line of defence. President Mullen's Secret Service codename is Legend. Colleagues describe him as a knight in shining armour. He is old and exhausted, but his values are sound and he's still up for a fight. We need heroes like that, says De Niro, both on TV and in films. 'And in the real world, yeah, of course.' Zero Day is on Netflix from 20 February. • The headline of this article was amended on 7 February 2025. Robert De Niro's character in Zero Day is a former US president, not a current one as an earlier version said.
The Guardian
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘It's like doing three movies at once': Robert De Niro on his thrilling TV debut – as the US president
Art mirrors life on the Netflix show Zero Day, a tense political thriller for Donald Trump's second term. There are mobs on the street and far-right trolls on TV. There's a billionaire making mischief and a state of uproar in Congress. Robert De Niro stars as ex-president George Mullen, whisked out of retirement to investigate a crippling cyberattack. Mullen is dogged and courageous, but he's a man of the past, not quite on his mettle. His daughter thinks he's out of touch. 'The world has changed in ways he doesn't understand,' says his wife. I'm excited to talk to De Niro about Zero Day and its real-world echoes. The show's politics are what drew him to the project. The actor has made no secret of his disgust and loathing for Trump. But our Zoom interview comes with constraints. Netflix have requested that there be 'no personal or political questions' and have dispatched a pair of publicists to serve as chaperones. Even ex-presidents and movie stars have to work within a wider system. Sometimes it gives them freedom. At other times, maybe not. De Niro beams in from his home in New York. He looks the very ideal of an 81-year-old man: trim and handsome, with platinum hair and professorial specs. There is a potted fern by his head and a barking dog at his feet. One good thing about making Zero Day was that it kept him close to his infant daughter Gia, the youngest of his seven children. At his age, he has learned to choose his roles more carefully. 'I had another thing offered to me over in eastern Europe recently. It was a terrific script but I couldn't make it work and one of the sticking points was the location.' New York shoots are the best, he says. 'It's important, it helps, especially with kids and so on.' Everyone will have their favourite De Niro performance, whether it's silken Vito Corleone or toxic Jake LaMotta; the harried bounty hunter from Midnight Run or the traumatised Green Beret from The Deer Hunter. Naturally, the actor has his own favourites. Yesterday he was at a school fundraiser and the other parents – all much younger than him – were clamouring to discuss his role in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, which was nice and strange, because there is no way of predicting which films will last and which won't. 'I mean, we always liked that script,' he says. 'We thought it was special. Marty and myself, and Paul Schrader who wrote it. But after that you never know. So there's [Taxi Driver], obviously, but there are other ones, too. The Godfather II, Raging Bull, King of Comedy. Everything I did with Marty Scorsese. Roland Joffe's The Mission. David O Russell, Barry Levinson.' He shrugs. 'I've been lucky to work with these great directors.' Zero Day is no Taxi Driver, but it makes for a fine autumn flourish. Netflix's thriller was devised by a pair of political journalists – the New York Times correspondent Michael S Schmidt and former NBC producer Noah Oppenheim – and depicts a United States that can be switched on and off like a light. Shadowy malware knocks out the air traffic control system and redirects trains on to the same stretch of track. The country panics, conspiracy theories abound and the crisis plays out over six precision-tooled episodes. It's a big, glossy production with myriad subplots and an ensemble cast. But De Niro is the linchpin and brings the whole thing back to centre. He's always thought of himself as a big-screen actor but knows TV has changed and figured this might be a good time to dive in. The average film shoot can feel like a sprint; this felt more akin to a marathon. 'It's like doing three features at once,' he says. 'I likened it to being in the Channel between France and England and looking back. I can't see France any more and I can't see England. So I've got to keep swimming, staying up with the scenes, the endless information, the thrust of the story. Stay ahead of it, stay on it. So it was a whole other kind of experience for me.' His hero, George Mullen, is a one-term president who bowed out in the wake of a family bereavement. He's imperfect but decent; an old-school public servant. 'I had the idea of a president who was trusted, well-liked, and who told the truth as much as he could,' says De Niro. 'He's a person who tries to be straightforward. Who has no agenda other than to do the right thing.' I ask if Mullen is based on anyone in particular and he says that no, he's really not; maybe Joe Biden very slightly. I say that he reminded me more of Jimmy Carter, a much respected commander-in-chief, and he accepts that there may be some truth in that. 'Well, Carter was a great president. He was a good person, a kind person, empathetic. No one really gave him credit until the end. But that was important to me, that he was a good person. I didn't know this [at the time] but I watched interviews about him that say he was also a little standoffish, an outsider in certain ways, and that's interesting to me, too.' One president whom Mullen emphatically doesn't resemble is Donald Trump. De Niro despises Trump on an almost visceral level. He has been one of the man's most outspoken public critics. He's called him a pig and a punk and a con artist and a dog. He's called him a jerk and a mutt, a real-estate hustler and a two-bit playboy. But today he's saying nothing. He is courteous but seems wary. The publicists ping me a message suggesting I return my focus to the show. The best artists – the best actors – are hot-wired to their times. De Niro, arguably more than any other living actor, embodied the turbulent last decades of the American century. His golden years were entwined with Vietnam and Watergate, spiking crime rates and a borderline bankrupt New York City. So he's familiar with political instability, with division and anger and a sense of chaos. But I get the impression that the situation under Trump (the tariffs, cuts and firings; the repurposing of the federal government) is different. More than that, I suspect he thinks it's without precedent. 'Well, I'd ask you that,' he shoots back. 'Do you think it is?' 'I think it is,' I tell him. 'But I don't have your reach of history.' 'Yeah, you're a lot younger than me.' He pauses. 'But it is unprecedented. It is. It just is. As we all know.' Is he hopeful or despairing? 'I'm not despairing, because I always look at the bright side and hope that things will right themselves and that people will appreciate goodness and empathy and will try to do the right thing. So I can't help but think that.' Another pause. 'Some people look at [things] differently. They have different values. That's disturbing to me. I don't understand it. But I just have to look at things in an optimistic way.' De Niro's Zoom window is minimised and one of the publicists drops in. 'Sorry to interrupt,' she says. 'But can you just bring it back to show questions?' Michael S Schmidt – Zero Day's co-creator – is still on staff at the New York Times. Last month he filed a story about the president's threatened reprisals against his perceived enemies. Schmidt and his co-writer Glenn Thrush contacted more than two dozen of Trump's most vehement public critics. Almost all, they said, now declined to speak up in case it made them a target. I mention this article to De Niro and make one last attempt. 'I'm wondering,' I say, 'if you're now feeling you need to be more careful about what you say.' He has no time to answer. The publicist pitches in. 'No, no, no. Sorry, Xan, I'm really sorry but we agreed this. Can we just go back to the show because we don't have much time.' And that is the end of our Trump conversation – inasmuch as it ever became one at all. I've had car-crash interviews in the past and I'm unsure this quite qualifies as one. It's too polite and well-managed; the tone is faintly apologetic. It's not even clear who is in the driving seat here. Is it the actor's decision not to discuss Trump with the press or does his contract have him muzzled? Either way it begs an obvious question. If De Niro – a world-famous two-time Oscar-winning millionaire – no longer feels he is able to speak out, one wonders who in the US does. In Zero Day, De Niro effectively plays the role of backstop, the US's last line of defence. President Mullen's Secret Service codename is Legend. Colleagues describe him as a knight in shining armour. He is old and exhausted, but his values are sound and he's still up for a fight. We need heroes like that, says De Niro, both on TV and in films. 'And in the real world, yeah, of course.' Zero Day is on Netflix from 20 February.
