Talk:Robert De Niro

Humour:	8.75	The way I review, I generally put the majority of my comments and suggestions in the humor section. This allows me to be lazy keep all of my thoughts organized. I'll give you my first impressions after one read through and then go in section by section for a more detailed look. Initial Impressions Same as I said last time, I really like this article, it's very well put together and very funny. I like the running gag about De Niro's method acting as well. However, I do have some comments on what can be improved in my opinion and what you can add to make this a complete article. I'll also be sure to specifically point out what you do here that particularly works well. Section by Section Introduction Your introduction is solid. You give his real name, followed by his screen name and introduce why he is relevant. The one thing that stand out to me though is that you put 'convicted felon' in with his list of reasons why he is famous, but you don't really go into that aspect very much throughout your article. Your examples in the introduction about how De Niro uses The Method are also top notch: You list three examples that get progressively more farcical, this is a great technique. Overall, there isn't much in the way of criticism I can offer for this section, other than the bit about being a convicted felon. Early Life I like how you use the breast feeding bit to subtly suggest that perhaps this may have been the catalyst for De Niro's exceptionally dedicated use of The Method, at least, that's how I see it after reading it twice. If that wasn't your intention, I suggest using a line or two to subtly develop this idea, I think it could be quite funny. Secondly, I really like your joke about his mom's significance, being the wife of a successful artist. One suggestion I have is to get rid of the final sentence in this section. It seems odd that someone like the character you've developed for De Niro here would have enough self-awareness to know he had 'big things' ahead for him. This would suggest that he is aware that he is in fact an actor. I think, based on my impressions from reading this, that you have shown that De Niro's sense of reality is completely unhinged throughout his career due to his brainwashing acting coaching in The Method. The way I envision it, De Niro was somewhat rational before learning the method, but afterward he became totally detached from reality. I don't know if you ever saw it, but a while ago there was a video floating around youtube about this very concept, but with Arnold Schwarzenegger. The joke was that Arnold had been brainwashed in order to believe he was actually doing the things he was acting in movies in order to get authentic acting, i.e. he thought he was a robot from the future, he thought he was a commando battling an invisible alien, etc. This article kind of reminds me of that. I will touch more on my ideas surrounding this later int he concept section. For now, take away that I believe the section would be improved with the deletion of the last sentence, since it doesn't really add anything humor-wise and kind of conflicts with the mood being set, it's better to remove it. One other thing I noticed that would be helpful would be to include a firm date for De Niro's studies of The Method. When you mention later that De Niro Tried out for every role for the Godfather in 1972, the reader is unsure if De Niro was a firm believer in the Method at this point or not. Early Career You do a very good job here with not being too descriptive of De Niro's behavior. You're letting the reader put two and two together about De Niro's method acting, and I really like that approach. Some problems arose from the text while going through a second time section by section. The first is this sentence; "the producers had already used almost every Strasberg-educated Italian-American method actor available." What you're implying here is that De Niro's behavior would not be exceptional to the makers of the Godfather Part II, in fact it would have be common on the set. This takes away from your joke about De Niro taking the method too far because you later assert that producers were very pleased with De Niro's dedication to his character and other requests. I will touch on this under concept. Mainstream Success You touch on all of the important bits here, and do a good job with developing the core of your concept further. It is becoming increasingly obvious that De Niro takes his acting way too seriously. I think this is a good place to indicate that directors don't need (and maybe even don't want) a script for De Niro, that due to his extreme condition and circumstances, he simply lives out the character and all of his scenes and lines are completely ad-libbed. This ties in with the concept I outline below. More Success here is an example of De Niro being aware that he is an actor, when he pays Scorsese a visit in the hospital. Your language and description of De Niro's behavior indicates that he is extremely aware that he is an actor, that he plays roles, and does not believe that past roles were actually a part of his existence. This concern of mine ties in more with what I have written in the Concept section. What would work here, is that due to his crime associations with Scorsese during his upbringing, and De Niro believing he is all of the roles he has played, he believes visiting his crime pal in the hospital is a good course of action, and brings the book as a gift. Scorsese gets the idea after reading the summary of the book's plot on the jacket and being around De Niro at the same time, knowing full well how to take advantage of De Niro's mental state. Now, I'm not saying that all of the above needs to be included or that in-depth, but these should be the unconscious conclusions the reader reaches after reading this section. De Niro shouldn't be wanting to get Scorsese's career back on track, Scorsese shoudl want to do that for himself by taking advantage of De Niro, this would be fairly funny imo. Here you employ the right idea along with the concept, with his Oscar acceptance speech; "De Niro said that he'd enjoyed his career as a boxer, but was looking forward to getting back to his regular job of organized crime." Here it is obvious that De Niro actually believes he is the character(s). Later Career Ok, what you have here is pretty good. A few problems result though. for example, "failed to match the success of his earlier work, and De Niro realised his career was winding down. Fortunately, he had a wild card that he'd been saving since the early 70s, something the cinema-going public had been screaming for since he'd arrived on the scene - Robert De Niro would make a film with Al Pacino. Heat was the result, a massively successful action movie directed by Michael Mann." Here De Niro is once again very self-aware, which breaks the mood you've set. What would be funnier is if movie producers decided to make a movie with De Niro and Pacino and simply had to convince De Niro that the plot of Heat was real. Pacino of course realizes and knows well what's going on with De Niro and uses it for his own personal amusement when they aren't filming. Just some ideas that stem from that. The same should be done with his directing stint: producers convinced De Niro that he was a director, so he became one. Recent Work I think better conclusions can be made about my ideas for this section by reading bullet 4 of my list in the concept section. Acting style This is a good section to reveal to the reader the problems that De Niro has had and his total belief in being the roles he plays. This should be the section where everything is revealed pretty much in black and white so that readers who did not necessarily make the connection earlier that De Niro has, and always will believe he was the roles hes played, will be able to do so. This: "He is also known for the technique of "saying everything twice", which most people agree adds realism to the performance. He is also known for the technique of "saying everything twice", which most people agree adds realism to the performance. " was the one thing in the article I didn't like, it's a fairly lame joke imo that breaks the style of writing you've chosen. Personal life As I say in the concept section, this needs to be expanded. I offer ideas below for what you might consider to include. Salary This is a good and funny section, but I find it's placement at the end of the article to be odd. I think putting slaray either before or after 'recent work' would be a good idea. Final Humor Comments What you have here is fairly hilarious, and your writing style greatly improves this. Had this been written in a different manner, it's probably only a 7ish, but I really like the subtle style you've employed.
Concept:	7	I really like your underlying concept here, of De Niro taking his roles way too seriously, but I see a lot of potential for smoother development of this concept throughout. You may not like my suggestions, and that's totally ok, but there a few things you can do that I think will improve this article. Here's my basic outline for how I see your concept being more fully developed. just a disclaimer, my concept ideas are probably going to sound very serious, but I fully intend for them to be applied in the most humorous way possible. You should emphasize how messed up in the head De Niro was as a child. Breastfeeding him well past a reasonable age I think demonstrates that you thought of this angle, but didn't develop it much further. Being messed up in the head as a child I think sets up a reason why he would choose to become an actor, looking for social recognition and fame. this also sets up a great ironic twist throughout, that because of his behavior used to become successful, he never achieves this. more on this in the section by section look. You should add a section about (and add some fictitious elements if needed) De Niro being involved in crime from an early age, and choosing to become an actor, but failing miserably at first or at least not being very successful. This sets up his willingness and need to learn The Method from Lee Strasberg. His desperation for success and recognition, fueled with the unstable nature of his mind, leads to him taking The Method way too seriously. Maybe a short fictional quote from Strasberg could detail personal misgivings about his creation of De Niro, but his curiosity to see how he turns out professionally outweighs these misgivings. Handled correctly, I think this could be very funny. De Niro finds success with his new found Method. De Niro shouldn't be aware of this, and neither should the reader to an extent. You should make use of gradually revealing to the reader how messed up De Niro is. It should gradually be revealed that De Niro has no concept of reality and 100% believes that he is the role he is playing. You should reveal that De Niro in no way is attached to reality, and that directors later realize this and give up treating De Niro simply as an actor, but actually invest time in convincing De Niro that he is the character he is playing. The reason they have to invest time into this is because he still believes he is the previous role he played. This is why he does so many crime movies: he essentially doesn't have to change much, and it relates to his earlier life. Now, you basically do this, but there are little cues throughout your text that De Niro isn't 100% in the state of mind of being his characters %100 of the time. He is isn't simply using The Method, he is The Method without even realizing it. I thin the point I'm trying to make is that he was unintentionally brainwashed, to the advantage of Hollywood. All of this should be done subtly, however, in the same manner that you have done within the text you have. This should be revealed only in passing and never directly, that is where it becomes very funny. De Niro's later career is in fact him believing he is in fact a famous criminal turned comedy actor. I think it would be hilarious to place this fictitious, oblivious De Niro into a world where he believes he is an actor, within a world where is is actually an actor. I hope that makes sense, lol. That's basically my suggestion for making what you have already more unified. a one sentence summary could be; he's messed up in the head in childhood. he is a failure as an early actor, which caused him to learn the method. he becomes a hugely successful actor may have even been unintentionally brainwashed. Now, you need to also expand the personal life section. This is a good opportunity to touch on that irony I mentioned earlier, and how being totally brainwashed in The Method affects his daily life when he isn't making movies. Lots of potential here that I'll defer to you. The addition of a future projects section might also be a good idea in order to give the article an effective conclusion. You have a very strong foundation here. I may have suggested a bunch, but it would be very easy to make the above vision happen with every thing you have already but with a few minor edits.
Prose and formatting:	8	From what I can tell, you have very few grammar errors. There are a few spelling problems, but nothing a little spell check won't fix. One particular example that comes to mind, however, was your spelling of organized as 'organised' at one point. The sections are all well divided up and appropriately titled. As I've mentioned earlier, the addition of a section on future projects and moving the salary section to a more appropriate place in the article would be good ideas. (future projects could serve as a nice conclusion to the article). You may want to add some "spacing" at the end of the recent work section so that the "acting style" title isn't smushed against the image. This is of course assuming you change nothing else about the article, lol
Images:	7.5	Your use of images is solid, but more average than extraordinary, which is fine. I really don't see an incredible need for massive photoshoping. The number of images you have is just about right, although you could probably get away with adding one more. if you choose to expand the article, the addition of an additional image will most certainly be a good idea. I'll go through each image and caption: Nice image, being on the right and him looking left makes a good visual flow. The caption is pretty decent too, but to someone unfamiliar with De Niro's acting career may not make the connection right away. Again, average image made better by the caption. I like what you've done with tying both the caption and image into the text. This (and I think I actually mentioned this in my first attempt at reviewing this article), is by far the best image and caption in your article. This made me laugh pretty hard, nice job. This image is probably essential to your VHS box joke in the text, but the caption is very bland. I feel like you could make a better joke tied into the text here. This image sets up a pretty good joke, but if you choose to employ any of the concept additions I suggested, a different wording of the caption may be required. This image can easily be tied into the notion that De Niro is unaware that he is an actor or that he 'acts'.
Miscellaneous:	8	my overall enjoyment from reading this article.
Final Score:	39.25	I've included a lot here, but I'm dead serious when I say you should keep 95% of your material exactly as it is. It's very possible to implement some of what I've suggested with only a few well placed edits and section additions, rather than by retracting anything. of course though, if you do decide to go with what I've suggested, you will need to change some of the existing text, but I don't foresee any great need for drastic overhaul regardless of what you decide to do from here. This article isn't ready to be featured though. it needs a better conclusion if not anything else. This is still an immensely entertaining read, and you've done a fine job here. Hopefully this was a much better review than my first one and has been helpful for you. As always, if you need to discuss anything about this review or anything in general, don't hesitate to drop me a line.
Reviewer:	--Sir Skinfan13 Talk {< CUN RotM FBotM VFH ΥΣΣ Maj. SK >} 16:59 EST 18 Feb, 2010 If you found this review helpful, I would appreciate your vote for ROTM!