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Vogue
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
From the Archives: Robert De Niro's Directorial Debut
'De Niro Direct,' by Julia Reed, was originally published in the September 1993 issue of Vogue. For more of the best from Vogue's archive, sign up for our Nostalgia newsletter here. Robert De Niro is in a sound booth at Forty-ninth and Broadway with Lillo Brancato, the sixteen-year-old star of his new movie, and they are looping lines. Which is to say that Lillo is repeating lines he has already said when they were actually shooting the film, but he is saying them clearer this time, better, more like De Niro wants them. De Niro is pacing around drinking coffee (double espresso with five sugars), tearing bread off a baguette left over from lunch (a meal he almost never eats), and he does not take his eyes off the scene on the screen in front of him or his actor, who has spent the morning beeping himself on his brand-new beeper and who has informed me that "there's nothing better than going out at night and coming back home when the sun is coming up." The movie, A Bronx Tale, is a charming coming-of-age story about a boy (Lillo) torn between the influence of his hardworking father, a bus driver played by De Niro, and Sonny, a glamorous mobster played by Chazz Palminteri, who also wrote the film. It is De Niro's directorial debut and Lillo's acting debut—unless you count the fact that he has spent his entire life doing De Niro imitations, stuffing orange peels in his mouth to do Jake LaMotta because he didn't have a mouthpiece, growing his hair out and slicking it back to do Cape Fear's Max Cady. A year ago he was a kid hanging out on Jones Beach. Now he's a movie star having trouble paying attention. "Fight the medication, Lillo," De Niro says, grinning. "I'm gonna get you some other stuff. Ritalin. It'll focus your attention." He is joking, of course, but I suggest to the sound tech that maybe Ritalin is responsible for De Niro's own almost superhuman focus. "Nah," says the sound man: "Bob's on espresso." He needs it. So far he has spent $21 million on this movie, originally a one-man show by Palminteri, an actor who was having trouble getting parts so he wrote eighteen for himself in one sitting. De Niro saw the play in Los Angeles on the advice of his trainer and took a flier—Palminteri had gotten seven-figure offers for his script, but only De Niro would guarantee him the role of Sonny. "The thing I'll tell you about Bob De Niro," says Palminteri, "is that he is a real man. In my neighborhood, we'd say Bob is a stand-up guy. When he gives you his word, that's it, period. He looked me in the eye and said, 'You will play the part of Sonny and no one else will touch the script.' And that's what happened."
Vogue
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
How Eva Victor's ‘Sorry, Baby' Became One of the Most Hire-Wire, Hilarious Films of the Year
Tucked away in the corner of the Chateau Marmont garden on a sunny Friday afternoon, Eva Victor, cloaked in black, is telling me about stumbling, unwittingly, into comedy. The story begins at Northwestern's prestigious theater program, where Victor harbored ambitions to perform Chekhov and Euripides. 'No one would cast me in those plays,' the 31-year-old writer-director-actor says. 'I kept trying to do serious monologues and everyone would laugh.' The recent Los Angeles transplant takes a sip of Earl Grey tea with oat milk. 'It was so upsetting,' they recall, in a droll deadpan that neatly elucidates the problem: Victor can't help but be funny. It's this 'problem' that makes Victor's directorial debut, Sorry, Baby, thrilling to behold, a high-wire film that glides from hilarity to heartbreak and back again. The story centers on Agnes, a graduate student turned English professor played by Victor, who must piece her life back together after a traumatic event that is never shown and is referred to almost exclusively as 'The Bad Thing.' Victor, previously known for viral comedy videos and a supporting role on the Showtime series Billions, can now add auteur to their résumé with Sorry, Baby, which was produced by Academy Award–winning filmmaker Barry Jenkins, debuted at Sundance, and was acquired by art house giant A24 for a ballpark $8 million. It will open in theaters in June and also stars Naomi Ackie and Lucas Hedges. Defying easy categorization is a recurring theme for Victor, who identifies as nonbinary and uses they/she pronouns interchangeably. When I ask if she would prefer to use both of her pronouns in this profile, Victor's olive-green eyes widen. 'Are you allowed ?' she asks. 'Nonbinary for me has always been the space in-between. And that's the thing that people are really uncomfortable with. The idea of, 'I can't totally figure you out.' But it's a huge gift to give to yourself to think you could be more than one thing, that you could be limitless.' Her assessment of what genre Sorry, Baby fits into is similarly expansive. 'Everyone wants a box, don't they?' she says with a laugh. 'I understand why genre exists and I love things that are genre, but I think the film travels on a spectrum of drama and comedy.' Just don't call the film a traumedy. 'Send them to my office,' Victor says of any reviewer who would apply that portmanteau to the film. 'I'll have some words.' Hedges, who plays Agnes's gentle but aimless neighbor, Gavin, recognized the uniqueness of the film when it only existed on the page. 'It reminded me of things I loved, while also feeling like its own thing,' he says. 'I didn't feel like the film was directly following in anyone's footsteps'—mentioning only Kenneth Lonergan, who directed Hedges in Manchester by the Sea, in the same breath—'which is the nature of Eva's charm.' At the core of Sorry, Baby, and from which much of its levity springs, is the friendship between Agnes and her best friend, Lydie, played by Ackie (Blink Twice, Mickey 17). Lydie is Agnes's ride-or-die, a Black lesbian Ted Hughes scholar who acts as a tether to the outside world, keeping Agnes from slipping into a void. 'She comes in and revitalizes Agnes with energy,' Ackie says, comparing Lydie to CPR. 'The friendship exists in the laughter,' is how Victor describes it, and Ackie couldn't agree more. 'One of my favorite scenes is when we're on the couch and we're talking about how guys have sex,' says the London-based actress. 'We tried so many different takes and we made ourselves laugh until we cried.' Lydie is based on a close friend of Victor's, someone they've known since they were a teenager in San Francisco. 'We went to theater camp and then college together,' Victor says. 'She's the person I call every day and who I basically say anything I have to figure out to.' Victor likens that kind of friendship to a 'slow-moving train that's underneath everything.'
