Actor Vin Diesel discusses his not so tough role in family film The Pacifier
By Dee Dee Chew, Tempo Editor
Though it may seem glamorous at times, the life of a Hollywood action star certainly isn’t easy. Besides having to face all the health hazards that come along with being a cinematic superhero, one also has to deal with paparazzi, obsessive fans and – in the case of actor Vin Diesel – the occasional angry duck.
While shooting a scene for his latest film The Pacifier, Diesel was told he would receive a soft little nip on the ear from the movie’s resident duck. But instead of providing the actor with the gentle kiss he was expecting, the overzealous mallard chomped down onto his ear lobe and held on for dear life.
“I got a duck hanging from my ear, “he said. “And I’m walking around waiting for the director to yell, ‘Cut!’ The duck flies to its owner and I had blood coming out of my ear.”
Throughout his career, Diesel has certainly dealt with creatures bigger and badder than a scrawny little duck. Primarily known from films such as Pitch Black, The Fast and the Furious and xXx, the actor isn’t exactly what you would call a kid-friendly kind of guy. With the exception of an unrecognized role in the animated film Iron Giant, Diesel said he has never starred in a film that was considered appropriate for children, which is exactly why he wanted to do The Pacifier in the first place.
“If you think about my filmography, “Diesel said, “I have never done a movie that a kid could go see except for Iron Giant and I’m not even on the screen. So when you have little nieces and nephews that say, ‘Uncle Vin, when am I gonna get to see your movie?’ you want to do it for them.”
In the film, Diesel plays tough guy Shane Wolfe, a Navy SEAL assigned to protect the unruly children of a government scientist. Accustomed to a regimented lifestyle, Shane applies military tactics in order to keep the family in line, which eventually only end up driving them farther apart. Besides having to change an endless supply of dirty diapers, Shane must also deal with drama queen Zoe (Brittany Snow), who keeps running away with her punk boyfriend, and rebel teen Seth (Max Theirot), who appears to be a closet neo-Nazi. It is only after a disastrous experience with a troop of hyper Girl Scouts and a rough encounter with the kids’ vice principal (Brad Garrett) when Shane finally realizes he needs more than just army rations and tracking devices to bring the family back together.
Though the movie has yet to be released, many are already predicting that the film will be a re-make of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Kindergarten Cop. And, interestingly enough, so did director Adam Shankman. When production for the movie first began, Shankman said he was worried he would just be making another Schwarzenegger knockoff. After watching the movie again, however, he realized the two films are completely different.
“Kindergarten Cop is seriously one of the most violent movies I’ve ever seen, “Shankman said. “A grandmother’s brains are blown out of her head in front of her grandson. They have the premise and it ends there.”
Best known for directing the romantic-comedy The Wedding Planner, Shankman said he wasn’t accustomed to working with small children. This factor presented several problems, as he quickly learned that filming the movie’s infant stars, 9-month-old twins Bo and Luke Vink, would be his most difficult task.
“It’s all bribery, “Shankman said. “It’s literally a negotiation. This is sort of awful. To get the 9-month-olds to do things, we had to give them cookies.
So by the end of the movie, they looked like blimps. They literally weighed, like, 45 pounds.”
Diesel seemed to agree with Shankman about the amount of work required to make a film with small children, saying the time dedicated to watching little Bo and Luke was well worth it in the end.
“The reward of seeing a 9-month-old smile when you show up on the set is so profound, “Diesel said. “You turn into mush.”
During the course of several months, the actor grew fairly close with his infant co-stars and quickly became the set’s resident babysitter. Diesel said he also developed close relationships with the rest of the movie’s cast, despite their irrespective backgrounds. Though a few of the movie’s stars had dabbled in the film industry, most of the cast hailed from a completely different form of media – television.
“Vin is outside of his box in this movie, “Shankman said. “So everybody around him had to be in theirs. That was really important to me. That’s why I used so many TV actors because audiences know these people and they feel comfortable seeing what they’re doing.”
Besides plucking Laura Graham from her hit show “Gilmore Girls, “the movie also stars Faith Ford from ABC’s “Hope and Faith “and Brad Garrett from his Emmy Award-winning show “Everybody Loves Raymond. “In the movie, Garrett plays the power-hungry Vice Principal Murney, who gives Shane a hard time for being a nanny. Though Garrett’s character spends a majority of the film bullying the kids around at his school, he has one hilarious scene in which he goes head-to-head with Diesel’s character in a wrestling match wearing nothing but a tight, spandex leotard.
“The Green Peace people … saw a picture of me in that scene, “Garrett said. “They’re using it as a poster to hopefully get people out of eating tuna, because they think people will think of a pilot whale in the netting.”
Like Garrett, Diesel takes his role in the film quite lightly. While the actor realizes that he will never win an Academy Award for this film, he says he chose to star in it because it is a movie families can watch together.
“This may sound sappy, “Diesel said, “but when I went to the movies with the whole family, I remember those experiences.
“We don’t think about it now because we’re all older. (But) it’s something that you’re doing altogether, and you actually take (a lot) away from it.
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