Before he was the tank-top-wearing star of the biggest film franchise on the planet, Vin Diesel was just a regular, tank-top-wearing Joe hustling from audition to audition. The problem he kept running into during this period was that his ethnically ambiguous looks got him into a lot of casting calls, but prevented him from actually landing many roles. Frustrated by the process, he made a short film about it titled Multi-Facial, produced 20 years ago for $3,000 and just re-surfaced by the internet this month.
All of which brings us to a very important questions: Doooooooo you want to hear a young Vin Diesel attempt to do very on-the-nose accents for a number of different cultures? I’ll answer for you. Yes, you do.
Some highlights:
- The film opens with Vin doing an Italian accent so thick and stereotypical, I’m surprised it didn’t come with a serving of gabagool. He does this not only during his monologue (which features homophobic slurs and jokes about beating his girlfriend), but also after, while talking to the casting directors. Is… is he going to do this the whole time?
- SURPRISE! Vin isn’t really Italian, he was just pretending to be Italian to try to get a part. I consider this reveal to be at least as important to film history as Kevin Spacey losing the limp in The Usual Suspects.
- EARRING!
- Auditions for a role as a Latino. Does what is essentially a Tony Montana impression. This is a good movie.
- Auditions for a role as a black actor. We miss most of what he’s saying because some of his words are drowned out by the film’s soundtrack.
- THE FILM’S SOUNDTRACK IS A RAP SONG PERFORMED BY VIN DIESEL.
- As if that wasn’t enough, he then opens his next audition with an extended, a capella rap verse that name checks everything from Marlon Brando to the Barcelona Olympics. He does this while wearing a jean jacket. The old white man in the audition who looks like Peter Bogdanovich tells him with 100 percent sincerity that he is excellent at rapping. This is a very good movie.
- Vin then delivers a heartfelt and heartbreaking monologue about his life as the camera slowly zooms in on his face. When he is done Fake Peter Bogdanovich tells him they’re passing because they’re looking for someone with “Pauly Shore” hair. This is somehow more 1990s than the thing where Vin Diesel wrapped about the 1992 Olympics in a jean jacket.
Now, look, I’m obviously having some fun with this because there is lots of fun to be had knowing what we know now. But as far as 20-minute short films made in under a week for the price of a used 2002 Honda Civic go, you could do a lot worse. A WHOLE LOT worse. Hell, this actually made it into Cannes and caught the eye of Steven Spielberg, who then gave him a small part in Saving Private Ryan. So without this short film, there’s a good chance Vin’s career never takes off and we all end up with a Fast & Furious franchise set in Boston starring Mark Wahlberg or something. Unacceptable.
Source: Yahoo
