Culture Vultures: Raging Bulls
Steyn, Mark
CULTURE VULTURES by Mark Steyn Raging Bulls F or The Deer Hunter, Robert De Niro spent weeks on end at an Ohio Valley steel mill; for New York, New York, he learned to play jazz sax; for Raging...
...That's why De Niro's sex scandal is as instructive as the president's...
...De Niro is supposed to be serious about his art...
...seventy-five years ago...
...Nobody with any respect for his craft could engage in sexual congress with such a person: it's like Jane Austen having an affair with that guy who wrote The Bridges of Madison County...
...I mean, think of the aviation fuel...
...Ginsburg suggested, no more than "the normal interaction between colleagues...
...0 kay, that's enough sex...
...According to London's News ofthe World, which obtained copies of his statements to the Paris police, De Niro admitted he'd asked the head of the vice ring, the quaintly named M. Bourgeois...
...at the preposterous "volunteerism" summit in Philadelphia, representatives of the Ladies' Aid Society were nowhere in sight but Travolta and the rest of the gang were...
...But his old Oxford girlfriends, in private, tell a different story: they don't recognize the deranged pants-dropper who emerges from Paula's account, and Monica's, and Kathleen Willey's: when they, ah, knew him in England, he was restrained, almost courtly...
...It is possible that I chose one of these girls...
...When Bill Clinton no longer has the use of Air Force One, let's hope he can hitch a ride with Bob's chopper...
...Elton John, taking tea on the balcony of his Italian hotel suite, screamed at the room service waiter, "Can't you do something about this f- - - in' wind...
...Bill Clinton's reason for palling round with celebrities would seem to be that, in the remorseless convergence of politics and showbiz in modern America, Barbra and Farrah and Greg and Tom are now the only Americans of appropriate stature for the President to meet...
...And why would he...
...De Niro put on 5o lbs...
...These days, celebrities are the only group still actively pledging their full support, perhaps because, aside from Indonesians and interns, they're the only ones who can get to see him...
...He said he could introduce me to them, in a friendly way, without any notion of money...
...for Raging Bull, he spent a year boxing with Jake La Motta...
...Why haven't Redford and Costner pointed out the environmental costs to Bob...
...Alas for De Niro, the obvious explanation never occurred to the local constabulary...
...I like to think of myself as a swingin' kinda groover, but face it, most of us, when we contemplate (in De Niro's phrase) "meeting women," have to go through the tedious preamble of dinner and a movie, yawneroo conversation, how-about-a-nightcap-back-at-mypad?, the hi-fi high and the lights down low—and even then it may not be worth getting the bearskin rug back from the dry cleaners...
...Just stars...
...With Hollywood, it's been that way at g least since Fatty Arbuckle, Mabel Nor- !, mand and Co...
...In America, unlike Britain, we're not allowed to enjoy a sex scandal for the sex—for the manacles, the dog-collar, for the democratic pleasure of seeing a grandee slip on a banana skin, or a banana-flavored condom...
...Investigating a murky high-class hooker ring, eight cops burst into his hotel room and subjected De Niro to a grueling nine-hour interview—about eight hours 48 minutes longer than the famously uncommunicative star would normally grant "Entertainment Tonight...
...The pants-dropping came when he went into politics...
...So there...
...Now, in his latest film Wag the Dog, he plays the spin-doctoring genius to a President in a sex scandal...
...Clinton: it was, Mr...
...48 April 199 8 • The American Spectator he's routinely hailed as "the greatest movie actor of his generation," and he doesn't wear his greatness lightly...
...But he was able to play golf with basketball superstar Michael Jordan, fall down the stairs of golf superstar Greg Norman, have dinner with Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, appear in a TV movie playing himself, record a special video greeting for Tamla Motown's 4oth anniversary, and schmooze Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and the cream of Hollywood at a state banquet for Tony Blair...
...He's announced that he's blowing out this year's Cannes Film Festival, he's returning his Legion d'Honneur, and he won't set foot on French soil ever again...
...This is a president who, on one January weekend, spent Friday evening watching a White House screening of Titanic and Saturday evening watching The Apostle in the company of its star Farrah Fawcett...
...ney Houston, Uma Thurman, and Naomi Campbell, who, when she suspected he was entertaining other women at his TriBeCa apartment, would apparently call 911 and report the place was on fire...
...What sort of person hires a helicopter to fly to a brief lunchtime sex encounter...
...But, if N'Guyen is Ken Starr sur la Seine, who does De Niro remind you of...
...She's finally lost it...
...He knew lots of beautiful girls," the film star told the vice squad...
...to help him meet women...
...A few weeks later, M. Bourgeois telephoned and said that he was with Miss Sinclair in St...
...50 Apr i 1 19 9 8 The American Spectator...
...It is, it seems, a hard fire to put out...
...So, when Barbra Streisand says she won't enter a room unless it's carpeted, we simply say, "Yes, Miss Streisand" and order up the broadloom...
...That "no money transaction" sounds awfully like the fine distinctions favored by the president: instead of "I didn't inhale," "I didn't cough up...
...His attorney, meanwhile, couldn't have been more emphatic: "Bob never paid for a woman in his life...
...In Robert De Niro, Bill Clinton has a tough actor to follow...
...Over the years, I've met a fair few, from Sinatra on down, and, with the more agreeable ones you're impressed mainly because they're not complete fruitcakes...
...De Niro has been romanced by glamorous women ever since the age of i8, when he was taken up by Shelley Winters, who got him into the Actors' Studio and presumably taught him everything he knows about gaining weight More recently he's been linked with WhitMAIU< STEYN is theater critic of the New Criterion and movie critic ofthe Spectator of London...
...If it works for the President of the United States and an entry-level Pentagon clerk, it ought surely to cover De Niro and Charmaine Sinclair...
...In pornographic movies, leaving aside the main event, the perfunctory pre-sex stuff conforms to a handful of well-worn conventions —the scene where the worldly contessa helps her young virginal maid pick out some new clothes ("Ja, that pipphole bra rilly suits you"), etc...
...How can we ever again take his weight loss seriously when he's burning off calories with a porno actress...
...There is a level, of course, at which every star is inherently ludicrous...
...He'll find some other way to meet chicks...
...In fact, the more you think about it, the more you wonder why De Niro is so insistent that there was "no money transaction," since a "money transaction" would appear to be the least bizarre characterization of the encounter...
...A couple of years ago at the Oscars, after De Niro had come out to read the nominations for Best Animated Shorts or some such, Billy Crystal observed solemnly: "Mr...
...True, other opportunities occasionally present themselves, but their traditional designations seem even lessapplicable to De Niro...
...In America, we're supposed to be high-minded about these things...
...What then are we to make of a president who has Jacko dancing at his inauguration, Sir Elton singing at the White House ("Money—that's what I want"), and Barbra, after her last summit meeting with him, issuing formal communiqués announcing that he retains her full support...
...the administration briefs Travolta on the situation of Scientologists in Germany...
...As with De Niro, it doesn't have to be a "money transaction" because it's one of the perks of the job...
...What's he saying otherwise...
...I left in the afternoon by helicopter, then took the plane to Paris...
...Michael Jackson travels everywhere with a 12-year-old boy who came first in a Michael Jackson lookalike contest in Norway: he's kilted out in matching white gloves and surgical mask, and he's a kind of lucky mascot for Michael...
...When Bill Clinton declares that he needs "to get back to work for the American people," it's as well to ask: what work...
...Perhaps De Niro was merely meeting with her to give her some tips on motivation: "I usually find, if you're playing a sex slave, it helps to hang upside down in a basement for six weeks...
...And it seems that Charmaine Sinclair was the one...
...to make that announcement...
...As De Niro and his helicopter remind us, these people are, to put it at its mildest, very untypical Americans, and the president's love affair with them, metaphorical and (in certain cases) not so metaphorical, would be insulting if it weren't so laughable...
...But De Niro isn't taking this sex thing lying down...
...Surely it's just the usual rigorous role preparation...
...Oh, and he's attacked the Paris magistrate, Frederic N'Guyen, for "engaging in a witch hunt," while his attorney has denounced N'Guyen as "another Kenneth Starr...
...Tropez...
...So, given the predilections of the real-life spin-doctorcum-outer-of-First-Ladies Dick Morris, what's the big deal about De Niro's name turning up both in the address book of a Parisian call-girl and in the sworn statements of three other prostitutes...
...Maybe he'd have done better to try the line briefly advanced by William Ginsburg to explain the dozens of meetings between his client and Mr...
...So, with Robert De Niro, it's not the sex, it's the flying...
...for her London concerts in 1994, she insisted Wembley Stadium be carpeted, and it was...
...According to that ridiculous journalist from Arkansas, Mr...
...But, if it wasn't a "money transaction," then what exactly was it...
...She, too, is a "colleague," a fellow thespian, the undisputed porn queen of "Britain's hottest X-rated videos...
...Under the Clinton presidency, their role has been formalized: Streisand is invited to the White House to discuss foreign policy...
...after all, these are folks who in some cases have not been treated as normal people for several decades...
...There had been no money transaction...
...The media never ceased to mock Ronald Reagan for inviting showbiz chums round to the White House, but at least they were real chums, friends from his acting days...
...She's lost it," sighed a member of his entourage...
...His fans fretted, fearful that, if De Niro were found guilty and sentenced to six months, he'd insist he needed at least two years to really get into the role...
...Clinton would still be irresistible to women if he was the guy who came round to fix your trash disposal unit, so why begrudge him for taking advantage of the opportunity...
...All showbiz, all the time...
...That this is his idea of warm, personal, human relations...
...With President Clinton, the approved line is "It's not the sex, it's the lying...
...Sadly, he couldn't find the time in recent months to work out any coherent war aims in Iraq...
...No scientists, no sculptors or architects, no worthy left-wing artistic directors of regional theater companies...
...I had sex with Charmaine in the villa," he said...
...But, The American Spectator • April 1998 49 in those days, celebrities were freelances on the wilder shores of society...
...Well, that's all right then...
...casual sex," almost by definition, would seem to exclude round-trip air tickets plus a chartered helicopter...
...De Niro flew to Nice and then took a helicopter to the villa Bourgeois...
Vol. 31 • April 1998 • No. 4
