Page Six reports that Robert De Niro pulled heavily from his inner gangster on Wednesday at a Wall Street Journal Magazine awards event in New York City, when he coarsely scolded a tech CEO for joking about him and the other celebrities in the room.
Stewart Butterfield, the co-founder and CEO of the communication app Slack, who also co-founded the photo sharing site Flickr, accepted an award at WSJ‘s 2015 Innovator Awards ceremony at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art.
“We are a long way from San Francisco,” joked Butterfield, who had taken notice of the event’s “supermodels and movie stars,” of which Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Jared Leto, and others were in attendance.
The CEO then reportedly quipped he had received the “nerd award,” and then pointed to De Niro, and said, “I watched Godfather II on the plane… when you killed Don Fanucci, I liked that.”
DeNiro, 72, was up next at the podium to present an award to Jolie, and he took a shot at the much younger techie, whose remarks he had found offensive.
“Whoever the last speaker was… I thought you were a bit condescending to us actors, celebrities. I’m gonna go on record with you just to say that.”
De Niro then said, “And I don’t give a f—k who you are.”
Butterfield immediately posted about the tongue-lashing on his Twitter page.
As previously reported, De Niro was himself accused of being condescending just two months ago when he stormed out of an interview with UK Radio Times journalist Emma Brockes.
Taking issue with the reporter’s questions, De Niro accused her of being “negative.”
“I think you’re very condescending,” Brockes said she told the actor, who had been referring to her as “darling.”