As 12 not-so-angry press members sat and waited at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills for Vin Diesel to arrive, the impromptu jury talked about the action star’s role in the new Sidney Lumet drama, Find Me Guilty. The verdict: the film, based on the real 1980s court case of New York mobster Jackie DiNorscio, marked the first time Diesel’s play a character with an actual heart and actual storyline since he began headlining his own films.
Lumet is the same man who brought us the classic 1957 film 12 Angry Men. So when Vin was approached by Sidney to do this film, his answer couldn’t have come fast enough; Sidney was Vin’s inspiration to become a film director. “I started acting in the New York theatre over thirty years ago, and as a New York actor you dream of being in a Sidney Lumet movie, one of our few New York directors,” Diesel told us after he sat at the head of the table. “He was such a role model for us New Yorkers, for everybody really, that when I went off to direct my short film Multi-Facial, and I had spent years learning how to write at Hunter College, and I’d already spent years working as an actor and studying to be a student of the craft for so long, I had no idea how to direct a movie. I went and I bought a book called Making Movies by Sidney Lumet.”
Diesel had to extremely alter his appearance, gaining weight, and two hours in the make up chair adding hair on his head. And for the natural heavy weight, not working out was a nice change of pace. “I enjoyed departing from the normal characters that incorporates that physicality. I enjoyed playing Jackie DiNorscio and everything that meant, everything that came along with it.” So what was his diet? “Ice cream, a quart a day.”
But the hair was a very important part of Diesel‘s transformation into Jackie. Lumet even had the actor get in the outfit and the make up during table reads. “He would ask me to come in three hours early for the table readings to get into makeup,” said Diesel. “I said I don’t need to do the makeup. For me, it’s not going to do anything for my table readings but I realized it didn’t have to do with me. It had to do with every other actor that he needed to see only Jackie DiNorscio. He didn’t want any other actor in the room to be familiar with Vin in the way they were familiar with me. He was very adamant about everybody getting to know Jackie DiNorscio through this process so much so that when they came to the table reading I’d already been Jackie from the two hours of makeup.”
Jackie DiNorscio died in the middle of production of Find Me Guilty, and Diesel carried the imminently likable defendant’s spirit for the rest of the shoot. “I didn’t think about how the character would come off as a whole after watching the picture,” he recalled. “And after watching the picture I realized I haven’t seen a character in film for a long time that has Jackie’s ability to love. I haven’t seen a character that had the ability to love to the degree that he could love a cousin that shot him and tried to kill him, a character that would be willing for the sake of loyalty, for that dying virtue, be willing to sacrifice his own life to make a statement about loyalty.”
That loyalty was what DiNorscio was all about; as a defendant in the court case against him and many members of his ‘family,’ everyone else had a team of lawyers while DiNorscio defended himself. It’s a move that at first hindered him, but later worked to his advantage. Diesel learned all about what that meant to DiNorscio days before his death; he had the chance to meet DiNorscio and spend some time with him.
“It wasn’t until I met him, until he actually came to the set, until he had a heart-to-heart with me, that I understood, or began to understand, what the whole trial meant for him, and what at the core he was fighting for,” remembered Diesel. “When I met him all of the attention that I paid to his characteristics, the work that I’d put into imitating him, took a backseat to me representing the truth he was trying to fight for. So it was very, very, very helpful for me and a blessing for me to have met him before starting filming.”
That trial was all DiNorscio had, but as Diesel describes it, defending himself was not as difficult as it seemed. “He was there on trial where the objective by the prosecutor was to expose how inhumane they all are, and all he really did was expose how human they all are. He was revealing the humanity of everyone, through humor, through his own experiences, through anecdotes that the jury could relate to in one way or another.”
One of the lawyers on the defense team, Ben Klandis, who quietly becomes personally invested in the outcome of the trial, is played by Peter Dinklage, who earned effusive praise from Diesel. “He was a real blessing for the project. He really, really brought something special to the role of Klandis. You want actors who are that committed in a picture like this. When Peter Dinklage came on, he immediately grabbed that character, and then our relationship started building in a very cool way. Sidney didn’t want to make it so obvious that Klandis was secretly rooting him.”
While the actor is earning early praise for setting aside his buff biceps and butt-kicking image in favor of showing off his considerable acting chops, Diesel revealed that he hasn’t put his action star status behind him forever, as he hopes to take yet another turn as the sci-fi hero Riddick. “It took me five years to make to make The Chronicles of Riddick,” he said. “Hopefully it won’t take five years for the next one.”
As far as rumors that Diesel is buying the franchise back from Universal…well, let’s just say he didn’t say deny it. “Hmm, very interesting,” he mused. “It sounds like a very interesting idea. I will give it thought.”
