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“The Pacifier” Interviews: Talking with the Cast

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!?”

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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.”

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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.”

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Were you nervous to wrestle Vin?

Garrett: “The scary thing, is I’m not athletic and I was never a
jock type of guy. And Vin, he looked at me and he went (mimics Vin’s deep
voice, mumbles something utterly incomprehensible, meant to sound like Vin),
and a guy comes out with a clipboard and translates, ‘He wants to know if
your hand hurts.'”

Lauren, did you do your own stunts?

Graham: “No one even asked me if I wanted to try to do my own stunts.
But then the stuntwoman injured herself in that one difficult, dangerous
scene, so I had to do it and it was so fun! I’m not really the most obvious
pick to be an action hero, but I would love to train for that and do that.”

What was your favorite scene?

Graham: “I really like that last scene where Vin and I kiss. Before
that, I was always being professional and holding back and I thought this
was a nice scene where they could be a little less aloof.”

Snow: “The party scene. There was a bunch of extras and by the end
of the day we were all just chatting. But it was also the worst scene,
because it had my most embarrassing moment. I had to do a little stunt where I’m on my boyfriend’s lap, and then when Vin comes in, he has to throw me off of him and onto the floor. That day I
was feeling really rebellious, so I wore special red underwear. During the
rehearsal, everybody was watching the stunt. So all these extras, like 100
of them, mostly guys, are watching, and so is Vin and the cameraman and the
crew. So Kyle (who played my boyfriend), throws me off his lap and somehow
my skirt got caught up in my shirt and my bottom was facing everybody. And
one extra yells, ‘Whoa! She likes red.’ And I was like, ‘That’s funny. How do
they know I’m wearing red’? And I got up and the minute I realized what
happened, I started bawling. I ran out of there sobbing, ‘I don’t think I
can do this!’ I still actually had to do the scene, with all these extras
watching! They gave me black biker shorts and said, ‘OK. No more accidents!'”

Garrett: “We did two takes of our scene (where I try to intimidate Vin).
The director just let me go. A lot of that wasn’t on the page.”

Diesel: “Any scene that I had with the children. When I was home on the
weekends, I?d be thinking about these kids. I never had a relationship with
a co-star that was so profound. It definitely pumped up that paternal urge.”

What about the old adage not to ever work with animals and children? Here,
you’re doing both.

Diesel: “W.C. Fields said that. It was a different time. The reason
people say that is kids will force another take. And you can’t force a kid
to do a take. As a director, it can be frustrating. But for an actor, like
me, all I had to do was get out of the way and let these kids shine. If you
can get an organic performance from a kid on camera, it’s priceless.”

Brittany, your character in the movie is a terrible driver. How good a diver are you?

Snow: “When I first started driver’s training, I was one of those
girls that thought I was never going to be able to drive and I’d have to
take a cab everywhere. The first time I did a driver’s training test, I hit
a bus. I got really nervous because there was a hot guy looking at me, and I
put my foot on the gas instead of the brake. So, yeah, I hit a bus, in front
of a lot of people, too. So I could really relate to Zoe on that level,
being a terrible driver!”

What’s next for you?

Graham: “I’m working on mastering the greatest cupcake recipe ever. I
really am. I made these cupcakes that are coconut, but they’re just not
moist enough. Somebody else told me I have to add buttermilk. I’m usually
home for eight hours and eat some almonds and hit the road again, but when I
have to time for entertaining people. Someday when this is all over, I’m
gonna bake cupcakes. I don’t look forward to Gilmore Girls ending, but I look forward to having
more freedom and doing other projects. I think most actors are pretty much
short attention span. This has taught me so much, and it’s so exciting. But
a 15 hour day is a 15 hour day and you want to have some balance. I think
the max is probably two more years.”

Snow: “I think I’m going to start going to college in the fall.
Definitely I want to do a few movies and get my name out there and get
established a little bit, and then leave and go away to school.”

Garrett: “I’m getting back into stand up again. I’ve been working this
last year on an act. I’m doing about 12 dates, six casinos, six small
theaters, across the country.”

Diesel: Hannibal. I’m going to direct Hannibal. And I’m going to direct
it as a multilingual film. It will represent all the languages that Hannibal
spoke. I decided I wanted to direct it myself after I got a budget back from
a studio that said $217 million below the line. I said, ‘Huh?’ I know I’m
not the smartest guy in the world, but $217 million–doesn’t that mean
that this film will never get made? And I’ve already committed to this
character. I’ve channeled this guy. So I decided I’d go into soft pre-production and think about ways to shoot sequences with the same story value, but that will cost a lot less. And I
got the budget down to $50 million. If you are thoughtful and creative, you
can cut down a scene to have the same story impact, the same action impact,
and not spend so much. The second our films start costing over $200 million,
we give our industry up to the corporate world.”

The Pacifier opens in theaters Mar. 4.

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