Tribeca festival opens with love for Gilda
Host De Niro comes out swinging against Trump
The 17th annual Tribeca Film Festival opened Wednesday with pugnacious political words from Robert De Niro and the tender opening-night première, Love Gilda, an intimate celebration of the beloved comedian and former Saturday Night Live star Gilda Radner.
Lisa Dapolito’s documentary opened the New York festival in a star-studded screening at New York’s Beacon Theatre that drew generations of SNL cast members, including original member Laraine Newman and Tina Fey, who introduced the film. SNL creator Lorne Michaels, Chevy Chase and Billy Crystal also came to see Dapolito’s documentary, which closely follows Radner’s meteoric rise, her struggles with eating disorders and depression and her tragically young death from cancer, through readings from Radner’s personal diaries.
Speaking for herself and SNL cast mates Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph and Rachel Dratch, Fey said Radner — a frizzy-haired force of genuine and joyous comic spirit — made an indelible impression on their generation of female performers.
“She was so authentically herself and so regular, in so many ways,” said Fey.
“She was who she was on the TV. We all saw that and were like: ‘I want to do that, and it’s possible.’ It was an early example to me of how important representation is for everyone from every walk of life.
“Gilda was our equivalent of Michelle Obama.”
The opening came just days after De Niro, who co-founded Tribeca with producing partner Jane Rosenthal, appeared on SNL in a sketch as special counsel Robert Mueller. De Niro said he would like to reprise the part.
“I hope there’s a couple where I interrogate him then I arrest him and then I escort him to jail,” De Niro said, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump.
At a kickoff luncheon, De Niro referred to Trump as “our Lowlifein-Chief ” and rejected what he referred to as the president’s narrow definition of the U.S.
“The country has had a bad year, and you — the press — have taken a lot of hits,” De Niro told the reporters in attendance. “America is being run by a madman who wouldn’t recognize the truth if it came inside a bucket of his beloved Colonel Sanders Fried Chicken.”
The festival will also hold a daylong #TimesUp event on April 28, featuring hours of conversations with the initiative advocating for gender equality. Of the festival’s 99 features, 46 per cent are directed by women, the most in Tribeca’s history. Co-founder Rosenthal has credited that percentage in part with the makeup of Tribeca Enterprises, which she said is 80 per cent female.