h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Robert De Niro - Birth of an Actor - A717833
Author: Jimster - U292

I didn't think it was worth doing a full biography of someone who is still alive and working, so this is an entry on the early work of actor Robert De Niro.

I'm desperately trying to write a shorter entry than the ones I've done so far. I just get the textual runs. Sorry.

Jims

Hi Jimster,

Sincere thanks for this piece - absolute class!

I learned stuff about the early career of an actor I *thought* I knew something about the early career of!

I also heard about this NY film festival, which is probably worth an EG entry in itself.

thanks again
seeya
spiff

Cheers, Spiff.

Fine actor, one of my faves. Really had to struggle not to go overboard and do his entire life for this.

Jims
(anyone fancy a game of Calvinball?)

I think we need a list of all the films he's appeared in. Yes, that would be nice.

There's a link to his IMDB filmography already there. One click away

(You don't think I'm gonna do the GuideML for 80+ films do ya? besides, it's an entry about the beginning of his career, so...)

Jims

How about that calvinball game then?

Okay, I'm running to get the flag from third zone blue....


Jims
(hoping more than just us three know how to play Calvinball)

I don't!

Great entry Jims!

I've moved the whiffle ball from the no-fly zone to south of the line of demarcation, which means you have to hop on one foot around the goal post.

Excellent, Jimster! I can't fault this Entry at all. It's at times like this that I really wish we had an Smiley!

Theanthrope - I have the anti-hop bandana, thereby reversing the effects - no hopping allowed!!

Look - a bear!

[grabs ball and legs it...]

Jims
...Calvinball is like mornington crescent - you make the rules up with every move

Perhaps you should write a Calvinball Guide Entry, so that the rest of us might have a clue what the you're on about?

I'm invoking the clause of the 1978 Ravenna Treaty prohibiting the use of rule-altering bandannas, which furthermore punishes you by giving you one million negative points. I'm also filling your eighth wicket with marbles of defeat.

(Gamely attempting to resist the topic drift... )

One question, Jimster: you say that 'Glamour, Glory and Gold' was 'an off-off-Broadway soap-opera production'. I thought that a soap opera had to be a TV series, by definition. How could a live play in a theatre be a 'soap opera production'?

(s off to evade low-flying whiffleballs)

It was about a Soap Opera.



Jims

Actually I wondered about that as I read it, but it didn't leap out at me enough second time round to include. Maybe you could think about a slight rephrasing...

*Rises in an enormous leap, arcing sharply but elegantly, eyes riveted on the speeding ball, stretches... and takes it squarely on the left eye-brow, knocking himself off trajectory to finish in a dusty heap, inches from secret base 5.01*

seeya
spiff

...changed that to read "soap-opera-themed".

And Spiff, you are KING of Calvinball.

Jims

I always thought Stupendous Man would be better at it.

*regrading the playing field with a bulldozer so that the game goes in my favor*

*picks up ball and bulldozer whipping both into a kind of full on tornado-type-thing and landing both on pre-arranged-definitely-counts-home-for-at-least-20secs-safe-ground! Rushes off with ball in suitably unpredictable direction*

...Which causes you to fall into a tiger pit I dug specifically for this purpose. The well trained tiger spits the ball to me...