Good Shepherd previewed in Rome, various

Ten minutes of The Good Shepherd was screened as part of the Rome Film Festival. Here's Variety's report:

But Robert De Niro provided the event with a grand finale when he attended a public interview and screened footage of his CIA thriller "The Good Shepherd" Saturday.

Dazzling, if a bit outre, 10-minute trailer of De Niro's depiction of the CIA's origins included a scene in which protag Matt Damon is urinated upon as he squirms in mud as part of an initiation rite into what appears to be Yale U.'s Skull & Bones secret society, from which early CIA agents allegedly were recruited.

"It's kind of ambitious," De Niro told the more than 1,500 fans packed into Rome's Parco Della Musica Auditorium.

Budgeted at a reported $110 million, "The Good Shepherd" goes out Stateside via Universal Dec. 22. Medusa is releasing in Italy.

A comment from Jack Nicholson's Rolling Stone interview, after referencing Leo when deciding whether to accept the role in The Departed:

"Matt I knew too. I had good feelings about both of them."

And an expanded comment from actor Billy Crudup in Empire magazine, talking about The Good Shepherd.

"Robert DeNiro, Matt Damon; he was a great guy, we had a ball together."

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