Vin Diesel XXXposed

By Michael Robin and Todd Rone Owens

Vin Diesel is everywhere -- the newly crowned king of the box office and the newsstand. But who is he really? The world's hottest star is also its most mysterious. Few fans realize that this so-called overnight success is actually the product of a lifetime of planning and struggle.
This book follows every step of Vin Diesel's rise from his days as a poor but happy mischief-maker in New York's Greenwich Village -- where an act of vandalism led to his stage debut at the age of seven -- through the long years spent toiling as a bouncer in Manhattan's trendiest clubs while trying to break into Hollywood -- to his first "big break" from Steven Spielberg.
Take a look behind the scenes of each of Vin's films -- the roles he fought for, the role he walked away from after filming had begun, and the leading ladies he continued to see off-screen. VIN DIESEL: XXXPOSED takes on the rumors about his background and his ego and reveals how fame has taken its toll on the intensely private star. This is the unlikely and inspiring story of how an outsider who wouldn't give up transformed himself into the action hero of the new millennium.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Release date: Jun 15, 2010
• ISBN: 9781451604412

Michael Robin

Michael Robin is the author of Vin Diesel XXXposed. 

Book preview

VIN DIESEL

XXXPOSED

VIN DIESEL

XXXPOSED

Michael Robin and Todd Rone Owens

A ROUNDTABLE PRESS BOOK

POCKET BOOKS

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The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as unsold and destroyed. Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this stripped book.

An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Copyright © 2002 by Roundtable Press, Inc.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

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ISBN:  0-7434-7085-0

eISBN: 978-1-451-60441-2

First Pocket Books trade paperback printing November 2002

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Directors: Julie Merberg and Marsha Melnick

Project Editor: Sara Newberry

Production Editor: John Glenn

Cover and Book Design: Charles Kreloff

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PHOTO CREDITS: page 6: Tammie Arroyo/IPOL; pages 9, 15, 46, 51, 106, and 112: Ben Watts/Kramer & Kramer; page 11: MPTVA/HA-LFI; page 12: Alberto Lowe/Zuma Press; pages 16, 34, 41, 76 (bottom), 81, 82, 85, 87, 98, 100, and 110: Columbia Pictures/Zuma Press; page 19: Shark Pictures/Zuma Press; page 22: Jerzy Dabrowski/Zuma Press; pages 26, 31, 33, 36, and 42: Marsha Melnick; page 29: BEImages; page 38: Jeff Vespa/IPOL; pages 45, 52, 57, 60, 62, 64, 69, 70, 74, 76 (top), 79, 86, and 96: Photofest; page 72: Lisa O’Connor/Zuma Press; page 90: Lawrence Bender Productions/Zuma Press; page 94: Rena Durham/Zuma Press; page 97: Globe Photos; page 99: Big Pictures USA; page 102: George Campos/LFI; page 105: AP/Wide World Photos; page 108: Christina Radish/LFI

Contents

1. Why Is the Big Man So Huge?

2. Growing Up Vin, I Mean Mark

3. Bouncing His Way Up

4. Making His Own Breaks

5. Hovering in the Background

6. The Hot Winter

7. The Fast and the Furious Rise to the Top

8. xXxtraordinary Success

9. Coming to a Theater Near You

10. Up Close and Personal

11. What Lies Ahead?

The future king of the box office in 2000

Chapter 1

Why Is the Big Man So Huge?

V in Diesel is huge. Seemingly from nowhere, the man with the body of a giant and the voice to match has gone from a struggling actor to an Atlas carrying the future of American action film on his massive shoulders. He’s king of the box office: his xXx knocked Mel Gibson from the top of the sales charts with a $44.5 million box-office jackpot in just its first three days of release. He’s king of the newsstand: his Mount Rushmore—like head sneers, smiles, and scowls from the covers of magazines from GQ to Savoy. And he’s king of the Internet, with fan pages blossoming every day, everywhere, and his name rapidly surpassing those of today’s hottest film stars and models as the most searched on the web. But what accounts for the phenomenon that is Vin Diesel?

Timing Is Everything

Hollywood was starved for action heroes. The box office behemoths of yesteryear—Schwarzenegger and Stallone—are a touch past their prime. The martial artists who used to pick up the slack—Norris, Seagal, Van Damme—have faded from view. The few consistently persuasive movie tough guys—actors like Clint Eastwood and Sean Connery—aren’t in their thirties … they were born in the ’30s. Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, and Russell Crowe chase Oscars in dramatic roles. Ben Affleck is more pretty than tough. Keanu Reeves would probably lose a fair fight with Carrie-Anne Moss. Rob Cohen, who directed Vin in xXx and The Fast and the Furious, tried to explain Vin’s appeal to the Toronto Sun’s Bruce Kirkland: In the past, action men have basically been killing machines who can make a joke. Vinny, on the other hand, has the courage to be overwhelmed and uncertain and sometimes to be almost nakedly needy.

What Makes Vin a Hero for the New Millennium?

Though Vin is continually compared to Stallone and Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis is the action hero he most closely resembles (and it’s more than scalp-deep). Like Willis, Vin has a certain postmodern sensibility; he’s in on the joke. His action heroes treat every situation they’re placed in with appropriate seriousness, yet Vin also seems liable at any second to look right into the camera, smirk, and ask, Did you guys get a load of that one?

As Salon put it, In a way, he’s the perfect twenty-first-century hero: a bad guy who’s really a good guy, who isn’t necessarily Wittgenstein but is certainly smarter than he looks.

Vin in his downtown-NYC stomping ground, 2002

So what is it exactly that guides Vin in his choice of these kinds of characters? What is the new thing that he brings to the table? Vin told Zap2it.com, My characters start as underdogs … and allow the audience to become heroic with the character. Or as xXx director Rob Cohen put it, In the case of Vinny, he’s a true antihero. He’s an anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian badass. Okay, but is that so novel? Haven’t we seen that before in heroes ranging from Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry to Wesley Snipes’s Blade? No, because these classic anti-heroes were essentially idealists, resisting chaos, fighting