Robert De Niro’s Golf Game a Prime Suspect in Recent Job Loss

Robert De Niro has been picking up work where he can — a speaking engagement here, a morning-show gig there — so we were more than little surprised last week when we heard he’d backed out of the thriller Edge of Darkness, currently shooting in Boston. That’s not the De Niro who jumped to ostensibly greener pastures at Endeavor a while back, and it’s definitely not the consummate professional whom producers brought aboard to make alpha-male magic with Mel Gibson and director Martin Campbell. But a report today out of Massachusetts offers no fewer than four scenarios making the rounds — chief among them being a sort of fantastically Kubrickesque golf-course torture: