October 2001
"Sure, I can see the parallels," laughs Vin Diesel. "I've worn a few vests, I've kicked a few asses, and I don't have much hair". Yippie-kay-yay motherfuckers, the New Bruce WillisTM is in town.
Weighing in at approximately 200lbs, six feet and 34 years, and built like the bloke who built the brick shithouse with his bare hands, Marc Vincent (real name) is the modern action hero incarnate. He may claim to be "so far from Bruce, Arnold and Sly that I can only be flattered by the comparision", but in the tough guy business, attitude is everything. And make no mistake - attitude is one commodity that Vin Diesel has by the bucket-load.
Flashback, for example, to 1999 and the set of Reindeer Games, aka Deception, aka World War III. "John Frankenheimer says to me: 'Frankly, Vin, I'm too old, too busy and too fucking rich, to worry about your character,'" Diesel fumes at the memory. "Now, there are some guys you just don't say that to. You know, you don't say that to the guy who is so poor he is sleeping on his friend's couch. You don't say that to the guy who, when he couldn't get any roles, went off and wrote his own fucking movie! And directed his own fucking movie (Diesel's insired 1994 debut and Cannes success, Multi-facial). And you don't say that fucking guy. You don't say that to Vin fucking Diesel!. " Damn straight! " I simply said to him, 'Okay, John.' It was a calm, collected 'okay'. It was a bad okay and Frankenheimer knew it. He said, 'Oh, come here and give me a hug.' But he knew I was gone. He knew it was too late (Diesel walked). But hey, I guess hindsight is 20:20."
If Diesel's arrogant faith in his ability echoes that of his ageing peers, his path to the big leauge is, no tale of Iron Man contests and soft porn. "When I was seven, my friends and I used to terrorise the neighborhood," he remembers. "One day we were vandalising a theatre and this lady came out and told us what if we wanted to play there, we'd have to come every day at 4pm and learn our lines." The acting brains in place, the brawn followed years down the line, with Diesel funding his daily grind of auditions by working part-time as a bouncer. "And if you bounce in New York night clubs, you better put in the hours at the gym, because you go to work expecting a fight. "
A number of close calls later - "My buddy Rock had his neck slit from here to here," Diesel grimaces, drawing a finger across the width of his throat - and one Steven Spielberg finally gave him his ticket out in 1998, with a part in (and the chance to shoot some second unit footage for) Saving Private Ryan. Vin Diesel had arrived. Just as Bruce Willis was hunging up his grubby singlet, and thanking heaven to M. Night Shyamalan.
Having leant his baritone vocals to The Iron Giant, Diesel then impressed in Boiler Room (a Gen-X Wall Street) and established his action calibre with David Twohy's Pitch Black (that'll be a Gen-X aliens, then). It is, though, another Gen-X spawn that has really lit the touchpaper. "Some days I'd be hanging out of a car doing 70 mph down a desert road" he says of doing the majority of his own stunts in Rob Cohen's Point Break-esque speedfest. "And I'd suddenly think, 'What the fuck am I doing? Am I fucking crazy?'"
But with Diesel's future shedule featuring sequels both for The Fast and The Furious and Pitch Black, as well as Cohen's in developement Triple X (" a hip-hop James Bond thriller") and -hopefully - Terminator 3 ("No script but I met with Jonathan Mostow and I liked what he was saying) it would seem that 'savvy' is rather more than a word.
"It's funny," Diesel smiles. "On the one hand I am now a target, because for people trying to get a break, I translate as dollars. On the other, the rooms get smaller and smaller every day, and I find myself in the company of people I was so awe before. But that's this business. If you don't move with it, you fade away. Whatever you do, you've got to adapt. Methamorphosis, that's the key." And you don't get more Bruce Willis than that.
This interview was brought to you by Pitch Black
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