Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Tribeca Festiva
While paying homage to Martin Scorsese’s Apple film Killers of the Flower Moon at this year’s Gotham Awards, Robert De Niro claimed that his original speech had been edited.
“I just want to say one thing,” he said during Monday night’s ceremony in New York City, according to Variety. “The beginning of my speech was edited, cut out, and I didn’t know anything about it. And I want to read it.
De Niro, who stars in the film, was tasked with introducing the Historical Icon and Creator Tribute Award on behalf of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which also stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone. The Oscar-winning actor then pulled out his phone and appeared to read the unedited version of his script.
“Lying has become another tool in the charlatan’s arsenal. The former president lied to us more than 30,000 times during his four years in office. And he is maintaining the pace of his current campaign of retaliation. But despite all his lies, he cannot hide his soul,” he continued. “He attacks the weak, destroys nature’s gifts and shows disrespect, for example by using ‘Pocahontas’ as an insult.” Filmmakers, on the other hand, strive – that’s where I came in and saw that they cut all that.”
“So I’m going to say these things to Apple and thank them all for it,” De Niro added toward the end of his speech. “Gotham, blah blah blah, but I don’t feel like thanking them at all for what they did. How dare they actually do that? But now I go to: Accept the award for Killers of the Flower Moon…”
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The Gotham Awards and Apple did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
In May, Rolling Stone called Killers of the Flower Moon Scorsese’s great American tragedy and praised the director’s “reverence for a culture that has survived terrible trauma.” The film, based on David Grann’s 2017 book of the same name, tells the story of the Osage people of Oklahoma after the discovery of oil on their land leads white settlers to murder them for their wealth.