Seth Meyers cracked up guest Robert De Niro on Tuesday night with a corny dad joke about his new gangster movie “The Alto Knights.”
Drawing attention to the fact that De Niro stars in the movie as two 1950s mob bosses, Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, Meyers brought out a still from the Barry Levinson film that shows the two characters sitting opposite one another — in other words, De Niro facing off with De Niro.
“You are playing two different gangsters in the film,” Meyers said as he looked at the image. That’s when he cracked his dad joke. “I apologize for the first thing that popped in my head when I saw this.”
“What?” De Niro asked.
“You talkin’ to you?” Meyers deadpanned.
“OK,” De Niro said, chuckling and apparently charmed while Meyers again said, “I apologize.”
Watch the moment below:
De Niro was tickled at the “Taxi Driver” reference: In one of the most memorable moments in Scorsese’s 1976 film, De Niro’s character confronts his reflection in a mirror and famously riffs, “You talkin’ to me?”
“The Alto Knights,” which was scripted by “Goodfellas”screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, will hit theaters March 21. It co-stars Debra Messing, Cosmo Jarvis, Kathrine Narducci and Michael Rispoli.
De Niro said that the film, which was originally titled “Wise Guys,” had been in the works since the 1970s. “There were people at that time trying to do a movie on Costello. I think Mike Cimino was trying,” he said, referring to his director on “The Deer Hunter.”
Meyers then produced a newspaper clipping from 1974 announcing that the movie was in the works from producers Robert Chartoff and Irvin Winkler, just one year after Costello’s death. “For people who are trying to get into the movie business, sometimes it takes time,” Meyers quipped.
Watch De Niro’s full “Late Night” interview in the video above.
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