ZypherQueen 
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(8/10/03 10:51 pm)
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 Vin Diesel Interview On AMA and COR
We’ve gotten to see a lot of Vin Diesel lately. After XXX stormed the box office, a little ensemble drama called Knockaround Guys came out. Now for the third film within a year, A Man Apart is opening. This was actually shot before XXX but was held until some last minute reshoots could be completed.
More on that later this week.
But we got to talk to Vin Diesel again. Interviews with Diesel are shorter than other celebrity interviews, because he speaks slowly and carefully and gives long answers. There are fewer questions than in other interviews, but the content is just as juicy. Here’s what Diesel had to say about A Man Apart. In the film, he plays DEA agent Sean Vetter. When his wife is killed in a hit on his life, Vetter devotes himself to bringing down the drug lord that took his love from him.
Naturally, he crosses the line in cinematic vigilante fashion.
How did you like getting to show your romantic side in Man Apart? Part of the reason why I did this movie was it was a very dark look at a romantic picture. Because, the love story exists throughout the movie, but in a painful, tragic sense. He loves his wife. I wanted to play a character who had as good as a relationship could be, a semi-perfect relationship with his wife, a feel good relationship. And I play a character that upholds that fidelity to his wife even after she’s gone. And play with the psychoanalytical breakdown. This is a performance. This is something that was attractive because I was able to play this very dark, dark, dark energy, this character who loses his soul so to speak. Someone showed me the cave and walked to the grave, and it takes the whole film for me to just get off the road and go to the grave and confront the new reality.
Where did the emotion come from? I pulled from the idea of abandonment, which is a theme that I played with here. And I pulled from all that harbored anger we all have and lock away in a vault and keep it there locked so we can function. I just kind of unlocked that vault, which made for a very tough shooting experience because I was never that successful in leaving the character on set so to speak. It’s a little bit harder for me, maybe because I’m dyslexic or I’ve got ADD or all those other wonderful things. It’s hard for me to commit so much to a reality, the reality of a character then detach myself from that commitment on the off hours. So, what ends up happening is you live these three months in this reality, in this dark reality, you don’t want to do those films every year because they’re taxing. I started smoking a lot of cigarettes.
Are you always that intense? Films like this and I’m scared shitless of what Hannibal will be. I’m already prepping all my friends and family, saying, “There’s going to be a time in the next 18 months when I go to shoot this Hannibal character, and I’m going to do my best to channel the character, not even play the part, but literally channel it if that makes any sense on a spiritual level, channel this forgotten character, or all but forgotten character. This general, this third century B.C. Carthiginian general. I’m going to be channeling a lot of anger but different than the Sean Vetter anger or the anger that’s associated to a cause, a greater cause, a cause of a whole civilizations.”
Is this a modern Dirty Harry? It would be flattering to call it a modern Dirty Harry, but I think that this film deals more with the loss of his wife than the traditional revenge vigilante films. I think you feel throughout the picture that this guy is struggling with a real loss, and that’s his motivation whether it’s good or bad.
His actions aren’t always heroic and his actions cost lives. The big shootout scene where he beats a man to death and thus puts his whole team in jeopardy sets this whole thing into motion. Just because he didn’t like what somebody says, which we can all identify with, but from the outside view of this whole operation, Sean’s anger has affected him so much so that Demetrius has to take a gun from these bad guys and shoot Harpo just to mask the fact that Sean just beat him to death with his bare hands.
Before you go, can you tell us the status of Riddick? I’m right about to go shoot The Chronicles of Riddick and there was a screen test yesterday. It was hours of them playing with my eyeballs, testing out these new contacts. The first time I did Pitch Black, they got these contacts out there, in the boon docks, it’s in the outback. Very dusty, there’s dust in the air, and they put these contacts in my eyes. Now, I never wore contacts before. Next thing you know, I’m in the hospital and they’re trying to take these contacts out. I’m like Agghhh. So, yesterday was like, for three days before, I was like, “Oh, no, not the contacts.”
Is it cool to go back to Riddick? It’s so much fun. I’ll tell you. It’s really cool to go back to Riddick and it’s really cool to go back to Riddick when the studio’s excited about doing it, making a trilogy out of that character. That’s a really gratifyingly cool experience.
~Fred Topel
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