Saturday, March 6, 2010

Rupert, Marty, Al & Liza

De Niro still hadn't given up the Rupert Pupkin look at this point. The August 1981 date of these photos would be about the time that The King of Comedy was in production. It would take almost 15 years for De Niro and Pacino to appear on screen together in 1995's Heat.


6 comments:

Unknown said...

Love De Niro's pimp mustache. Obviously, so did Sean Penn as he sports a similar 'stache in THE FALCON AND THE SNOWMAN.

Ned Merrill said...

Good call on the FALCON AND THE SNOWMAN connection. Penn was definitely channeling the Pupkin look there. IIRC, People Magazine, bastion of serious film journalism, pointed this out in their review of FALCON / profile of Penn published at the time of FALCON'S release.

Rupert Pupkin said...

You know I love these pics! Any Pupkin-like De Niro is always a good thing!

Ned Merrill said...

Rupe,

I knew you would appreciate these more than most!

What do you think of Penn's Pupkin-like appearance in FALCON? This is one of my favorite Penn performances. Overall, I tend to be more impressed by the great quiet performances--in Penn's case, things like BAD BOYS, STATE OF GRACE, AT CLOSE RANGE--than the showier ones like Penn's Daulton Lee. That said, the main reason I can revisit FALCON is because how damned magnetic Penn is here. If he wasn't thought of as a snot-nosed punk by so much of the establishment, I think he would have gotten more nominations when he was younger and FALCON would have been one of them.

Unknown said...

Ned Merrill:

Good call on Penn in FALCON AND THE SNOWMAN. He was very, very good in that, esp. with the way of speaking he adopted. Very specific but worked so well. And yes, so many forget about AT CLOSE RANGE which is a really good film that still holds up. The scene where Penn points a gun at Christopher Walken still makes me nervous even though I know how it ends.

That being said, I do dig some of Penn's scenery-chewing roles, like his coked-up lawyer in CARLITO'S WAY. Man, he was good in that one.

Ned Merrill said...

J.D.,

Yes, I absolutely love Penn as Kleinfeld in CARLITO'S WAY--very much one of the great, wacky Penn performances along with FAST TIMES, FALCON, SWEET AND LOWDOWN. IIRC, CARLITO'S WAY was the first nomination Penn received (a Golden Globe). At times during FALCON and CARLITO'S WAY it seems like Spicoli has been resurrected. I recall reading an interview, perhaps in SEAN PENN: HIS LIFE AND TIMES, where his own mother recalled not recognizing him the first time she saw him in his Rupert Pupkin / Daulton Lee get up, complete with seedy mustache.