Robert De Niro accuses Apple of censoring awards speech
Robert De Niro accuses Apple of censoring awards speech
Bits where he criticized Donald Trump and the film industry were cut.
Apple has now gotten caught for doing this to Jon Stewart and now Robert De Niro in a month’s time. Not great.
Kind of a bummer, AppleTV+ actually has really good content now, and this makes me not want to support it.
Almost makes someone want to setup a Jellyfin/Plex server with radarr, sonarr and a VPN like AirVPN, then sail the high seas and grab all the easily acquired AppleTV content floating around out there to watch without financially supporting the company, but that'd be wrong.
Variety reports that De Niro’s accusations regarding censorship have been denied by “a source close to the film,” who instead claims the incident was a miscommunication. The insider alleges that multiple versions of the speech had been created, and that both Apple and the filmmakers were unaware that De Niro had not approved the final draft. We have reached out to Apple and the Gotham Film & Media Institute to clarify the situation.
I can't rule out a dumb employee trying to make a unilateral change to a speech almost nobody would have known about otherwise, but a miscommunication over multiple drafts certainly strikes me as highly plausible, and I can also understand why the filmmakers would have been encouraging a draft that was more focused on the film than tangential contemporary political issues.
I wouldn't say that contemporary political issues are tangential to the movie. The same thinking and greed behind those murders still drives American capitalism.
I can see Apple and the filmmakers wanting people to not draw comparisons.
I think there's a time and place. Trump is a criminal who should be in prison, but his casual racism against Native Americans is still quite tangential to the Osage murders. I think most filmmakers who made a movie about bad things in the past do indeed want to draw contemporary comparisons (because we should try to avoid repeating past mistakes), but that doesn't mean every comparison is appropriate in every circumstance. Nobody wants rambling acceptance speeches, perhaps even more so at obscure awards shows where there isn't even a large audience who might need to hear the message. The speech as given just wasn't very good. It veers progressively off-topic.
Regardless of whose idea it was to cut the speech, the fact remains that someone made a censored draft, the organizers received it along with the full speech, and the censored version ended on the prompter without De Niro's consent. Perhaps Apple wasn't responsible, but then who?
Or a former version of his speech didnt have any politics in it because it was a draft, and he passed it to someone for review on what he had already written.
Then that copy somehow got mistaken for a, if not the, final draft.
I do that when writing. I ask for review on what I have written down, even knowing that I have more to add but just dont know how to start putting to words yet.
someone made a censored draft
I don't think we can quite say that. Speeches usually have a time limit. It would be perfectly normal to write more than you can actually say and then start cutting back or rewording parts to make it shorter. That's not "censorship." If you're cutting down an acceptance speech, the more off-topic stuff is naturally going to be looked at critically. I'd expect there to be multiple drafts with different portions cut out so it's not so much as a "full" verses "cut" speech but which version of cuts was the final version.
the filmmakers would have been encouraging
Yet this kind of encouragement seemed a tiny bit... unwelcome maybe? 🤣
Shame on Apple and the production company. Deniro is a badass for overriding and calling them out.
yeah, I do not agree with a lot of the guy's opinions, but I respect that instead of playing ball with Apple he took his phone and read his own speech.
I don't want to give credit to Apple, but let's not forget that De Niro is anti vax, among others bullshit he have spewed over the years
I honestly don't care what the guy had to say. Removing parts from his speech without telling him is plain awful.
Wait... He is? I don't follow news about celebrities as often and only watch movies and shows, maybe some interviews.
Yeah, this is the first I've heard about that.
Yeah... honestly don't blame them for cutting an unhinged rant out of their awards show speeches. But if they did it without informing him, or explicitly approved it to get him to commit, and bait and switched, then yeah, they're in the wrong.
It did make it far more entertaining, though.
deleted
This is just whataboutism.
actually it's ad hominem,
Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem, refers to several types of arguments, most of which are fallacious. Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.
Also had a kid this year at 80.
Why does him being antivaxx matter lol he should be saying what h wants not he controlled.
Corpo bootlickers have entered the chat
What are you smoking? Just about all of us here are shitting on Apple for doing this.
I see few comments shitting on de Niro for being an anti vaxxer as if it holds a weight in this argument.. read some of those comments too.
Apple Inc has their own awards show?
U censoring me?
ooh a teleprompter streisand effect, nice move from the organizers
alleges that multiple versions of the speech had been created, and that both Apple and the filmmakers were unaware that De Niro had not approved the final draft.
What a lame excuse LOL that's just another description for censorship by some clueless interns. And I'm sure they are going to come up with new, multiple versions of lame excuses during the next days.
They should rather take responsibility for their malpractice! Lo and behold: the actor himself has no problem with taking responsibility for his own speech.
Fuck apple but I am skeptical of an 80 year old antivaxxer.
Bwamp, I missed that he was an anti-vaxxer. :(
What is it with atrocities towards native Americans and Hollywood award speeches?
Did you see what film he was being awarded for? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5537002/
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Robert De Niro slammed Apple and the Gotham Film & Media Institute this week after claiming his speech for the Gotham Awards had been censored — allegedly by an Apple employee just minutes before the show started, according to Variety’s sources — to remove criticisms about Donald Trump and the entertainment industry.
The actor appeared onstage at the ceremony on Monday night for the presentation of the Gotham Historical Icon and Creator Tribute to Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon, a film distributed by Apple that focuses on a series of murders targeting the Osage people in Oklahoma during the 1920s after oil was discovered on tribal land.
According to Variety’s sources, an edited version of the speech was uploaded to the teleprompter just minutes before the Gotham Awards kicked off, by a woman who identified herself as an Apple employee, in response to “feedback from the filmmaking team that wanted the actor’s remarks to be centered on the movie.” Variety also reports that the teleprompter company was emailed a revised speech script by two Apple employees that evening, and that De Niro was not aware of the changes.
Variety reports that De Niro’s accusations regarding censorship have been denied by “a source close to the film,” who instead claims the incident was a miscommunication.
The insider alleges that multiple versions of the speech had been created, and that both Apple and the filmmakers were unaware that De Niro had not approved the final draft.
De Niro’s accusations of censorship come just weeks after reports that Jon Stewart’s show on Apple TV Plus, The Problem With Jon Stewart, was ended due to “creative differences” related to topics on China and artificial intelligence.
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"multiple version of the script?!?!" If this was the wrong version uploaded, De Niro would have known it was the wrong version uploaded since he would have known about this version. Unless of course he wasn't involved in multiple revisions.
And now that I've seen this article, I've watched a clip for a broadcast I normally wouldn't give a rat's bottom about. Thanks Apple!
Does anyone remember the days when there were a few people who didn't feel like they needed to make a political statement every five minutes?
Like you're doing now?
If you're referring to his speech, the political statements he made reflected the whole premise of the film (and real events) he was speaking about.