"The Pacifier" Interviews: Talking with the Cast
By Sharon Knolle, Special to Hollywood.com
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Friday, March 04, 2005
Vin Diesel |
In The Pacifier, Vin Diesel sheds his tough guy image to play ... nursemaid to a bunch of kids? Yep. But don't call it a remake of Kindergarten Cop, insists director Adam Shankman. "That movie was so violent!" Shankman says, horrified. "You've got a grandmother's brains being blown out and splattering on a tile, right in front of her grandchild!?"
Shankman (Bringing Down the House), says he wanted to do the film because it reminded him of "traditional Disney family movies like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and all the old Kurt Russell movies. That's what I grew up on. This was exactly in that tradition: a little danger, but no one ever gets hurt."
Convincing him that Diesel was right for the part of a tough-but-nurturing father figure took a little more doing. "I was skeptical, because I bought into the persona thing," says Shankman. "Once I read the script, it made sense to me why he was the perfect person for this thing. I just needed to make sure he could do the second half of the movie." When Shankman met Diesel, he immediately thought, "He's absolutely the person who is the second part of the movie and the acting part is the tough guy. And I was like, "Oh, God! You're a softie!?"
While it may seem that Diesel is following in the footsteps of Arnold and Sly with his turn to comedy, that's not who his role models are. "The career I've watched most is Mel Gibson's. I think we all know why," he says. He's even met with Gibson on a Biblical-themed project of his own.
Joining Diesel in The Pacifier are TV vets Brad Garrett (Everybody Loves Raymond) as a grudge-bearing gym teacher, Lauren Graham (Gilmore Girls) as the helpful school principal, and Brittany Snow (American Dreams) as the oldest daughter in the family Diesel is assigned to protect. They sat down with us recently to talk about the film.
Why did you want to do this film?
Vin Diesel: "I hadn't done a film that a whole family could see, that my nieces and nephews--who've been dealing with the reality that their Uncle Vin is a movie star--can see. The Iron Giant was the only movie I've done that they can see--and it's just my voice, so I'm not even really in it. I think that one of the things that was interesting about doing this film was that it played on people's perception of previous characters I had played."
Lauren Graham: "I haven't really done 'supportive love interest lady.' Vin
usually has Hottie McHotties, doesn't he? I'm more like, straight and narrow
for him."
Brad Garrett: "On Everybody Loves Raymond, I've been playing the same guy for
nine years. I've done very few films. My film career, or lack of it, is due
to the fact that I'm picky and I?m not in demand. I'm actually turning down
roles I'm not even offered. I'll call DreamWorks and say, 'I'm not
interested in doing Shrek 3,' and they'll go, 'Great!' I'm a schlub and I'm
lucky to be on the bus. Also, I was a 6-foot 13-year-old who couldn't make a
lay up or throw a ball so this is my homage to all the P.E. teachers who
made my life miserable. I had no game. I tried. We moved a lot, and at each
new school, I was the great white hope. I wasn't great and there was no
hope, I was just white."
Brittany Snow: "I only had four months off from American Dreams but I wanted
to pick something completely different. I chose a comedy, which I've never
done before, and Adam Shankman is an awesome director, and I love Vin
Diesel, and it was a great, funny script. I'm really proud of it. I think
It's a really good movie."
Vin, was it hard making the switch to comedy?
Diesel: "It was a source of anxiety to me, initially, because it's an
all-out comedy. It's one thing to say, 'Come to my movie and you'll laugh a
little bit.' It's another to say, 'You're going to laugh so much.' When
people say that comedies are hard to do, they don't mean the actual
production of comedies is hard. What's hard is to hit the mark once the film
is made. Shooting a comedy isn't physically demanding. It isn't a
complicated process while you're doing it. What's hard is making sure the
jokes pay off."
Brad, how on earth did you get talked into wearing that outrageously skimpy wrestling outfit?
Garrett: "They wouldn't show me the outfit until I was on board, which
aggravated me. Adam said, 'I need you to wear something. I'm going to send
it to you.' (It arrives and) it's in a small box and I don't know what it
is. I open it up and my five-year-old daughter says 'It's never going to fit
you, Daddy.' And I said, I know, and I put it on and it was very
embarrassing and I didn't want to do it. But then I thought, I look like
this and this is me and I know where I am on the food chain and I'm a
buffoon. If it works and it's funny, it's all about the funny. "I wanted to change the outfit. I want to change it as I'm sitting here, right now, but it's not going to happen. When I saw it, I went, 'Of course,
it's terrible.? It's a sight gag and I get it. My six year old boy, said, 'Why would you wear that?' when I showed up in that outfit. He was shocked."
Photo(s) by Ken Kwok- © 2004- Hollywood.com, Inc- All Rights Reserved