Robert De Niro came to a small film school in Meredith’s Bay, Georgia, expecting the usual courtesies: a full house, a polite laugh track, and a podium that would stay his for as long as he wanted it. He got the full house. The rest of the morning went off script.
The graduates had been promised a legend and a commencement address. What they got was one of De Niro’s customary political rants, delivered with the rhythm of a man who has given this speech in nicer rooms and liked those rooms better. He talked, and talked, and then talked some more, while mortarboards tilted toward phones.
The first boos were scattered, like weather you could still pretend was a cough. De Niro raised his voice and kept going. The second wave was not a cough. It was a room deciding it had heard enough of the national news and would like, please, to get on with lunch.
He tried to push through. That is what professionals do. It did not work. The booing got loud enough that he sat down on the stool behind the podium, a famous man briefly looking like a substitute teacher who had lost the class. A student near the aisle stood, cupped his hands, and shouted the line that would travel: “Get outta here.”
A few people gasped. More people laughed. Then, in a move the film students will be accused of rehearsing for the rest of their lives, almost the whole class turned their chairs around and faced away from him. The school seal on the curtain suddenly had a better view of De Niro than the seniors did.
He stayed at the microphone a little longer, because pride is a hard habit to break, and then he left the podium to the sound of backs and a few remaining jeers. A dean hovered with the frozen smile of a person calculating donor language in real time. The valedictorian, waiting in the wings, whispered that this was going to be a long reception.
Video from the gymnasium — it was a gymnasium, let’s be honest — hit the internet before the folding chairs had finished scraping. Commentators argued about manners, politics, and whether a commencement is a pulpit. The graduates, interviewed with their gowns half unzipped, were more candid. One said he had come for advice about cameras, not a cable monologue.
Another said the yelling was rude and also, in the moment, irresistible. A third said the free lunch was the only part of the program still polling well. De Niro, according to a person who walked him to the car, called the crowd small and the town lucky to have him. He did not say this into a camera.
Local businesses did what local businesses do. A diner put “Get outta here” on a letter board, then took it down, then put it back up because customers kept asking. The chamber of commerce issued a statement welcoming all visitors, which is a statement that only gets written after a visitor has had a bad morning.
De Niro later said he had a right to speak his mind. He does. The room had a right to answer, and it answered in the local dialect of boos, a shouted send-off, and a view of a hundred graduation gowns from the back. Maybe next time, try the North, Bob.
The school will still mail the diplomas. The actor will still have the career. Meredith’s Bay will still be a small place with a gym and a story. For one morning, a political rant met a crowd that would not put up with it, and the crowd, chairs and all, got the last shot.