There’s only one Robert De Niro.
So why do people keep telling writer/director Kirk Jones that the main character in his new movie, played by the acting legend, reminds them of their own father?
“Everybody’s Fine” casts De Niro as a befuddled widower trying to reconnect with his four children.
He wears an out of style jacket, drags a heavy suitcase wherever he goes and never seems to say the right thing to his increasingly estranged children.
Jones tells WWTW De Niro micro-managed the part of Frank until every tiny gesture rang true.
“Frank is a simple man, a blue collar worker. On paper, it’s not that interesting. De Niro brought that alive,” Jones says.
The British director behind “Waking Ned Devine” and “Nanny McPhee” says he never met another actor who prepared as thoroughly as De Niro.
The script the actor worked from had been written on across every empty space, filled with his notes about the dialog, the action and ways he could refine Frank’s mannerisms.
“It sounds like an overcooked performance,” he says. But those little notes – the way he would touch an envelope or stroke his on-screen child’s face – enriched the character.
“When they come together as a whole they represent something really powerful,” he says.
Of course, Jones the screenwriter had some say in making Frank a full-bodied creation. The Brit admits he got plenty of inspiration from his own father, especially the sequences in which Frank clumsily takes pictures of his children at inopportune times.
But De Niro, 66, almost passed on making “Everybody’s Fine.”
“He was attracted to the project right from the start,“ Jones says. But the writer/director started getting nervous when De Niro showed some trepidation.
“He said, ‘you know, maybe I should be seven years older,‘” Jones recalls. “In his mind there was some question about taking a role where he’s so vulnerable and honest about his age.”
“Everybody’s Fine” is a remake of a 1990 Italian film made by a British director overseeing an American cast.
“I don’t think it’s any different for an American family, or a British family or Italian family,“ he says. “I’d like to try to make films with universal films.”
And he suspects families of many cultures have a hard time communicating.
“Whenever you need a favor from your dad you go to your mom first,” he says. “Sometimes we’re more comfortable talking to a friend over a beer than with those closest to us.”
Jones hopes his new film can connect with audiences even though there are no car chases or wacky hijinks, and parts of the film are told with a patient, European sensibility.
It seemed to work with “Waking Ned Divine.”
“It was a very small film with no recognizable stars in the cast and set in the UK. I was thrilled when I came over here [to the U.S.] to see the reception,” he says. “It proved to me you can make a small, sensitive film … without the sex, violence and special effects.”
“Everybody’s Fine” opens nationwide Dec. 4.
(Photo: Robert De Niro plays a widower trying to stay close to his daughter – Drew Barrymore – in “Everybody’s Fine.”/Miramax Films)
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