At times, Diesel is nearly unrecognizable as DiNorscio, having donned a hairpiece, adopted a new voice and posture, and packed on the pounds for the role.  “This is going to sound perverse, but I enjoyed putting on the weight.  I ate a quart a day of ice cream.  I enjoyed departing from the normal characters that incorporate that physicality.”

Diesel was also drawn to the project for the opportunity to work with Sidney Lumet, a legendary actor's director with a resume ranging from 12 Angry Men to Serpico to Dog Day Afternoon.  “I started acting in the New York theatre over 30 years ago and, as a New York actor, you dream of being in a Sidney Lumet movie.  He’s one of our few New York directors.  He was such a role model.”

“When I went off to direct my short film Multi-Facial, I had spent years learning how to write at Hunter College, and I’d spent years working as an actor and studying to be a student of the craft, but I had no idea how to direct a movie.  I went and bought a book called Making Movies by Sidney Lumet, and that’s where I got the confidence to direct my first short movie. It came full circle, 10 years later, when he saw that short movie and became adamant that I should play Jackie DiNorscio.  Having an opportunity to work with Sidney Lumet was kind of like going into the Masters Program of Filmmaking.”

{quote_top}After he was signed on and rehearsals had begun, Diesel admits that his biggest worry was the fact that he didn’t look anything like DiNorscio.  “ Sidney said, ‘Jackie wants you to play him.’  I asked what movie he saw me in that led him to wanting me to play him, and Sidney told me it was The Fast and the Furious.  I didn’t understand what Dominic Toretto had to do with Jackie DiNorscio, but Sidney said, ‘Vin, we have ways of making you look like Jackie DiNorscio.’  Little did I know that it would take two hours of make-up every morning.  And, had been working with the details of his movement so much that I felt that if I put on a weight suit, I would lose some of the physicality I had been developing for this character.  While we were doing table readings before we were shooting, Sidney would ask me to come in three hours early to get into make-up, so that the other actors could see only Jackie DiNorscio.  Sidney was very adamant about everybody getting to know Jackie DiNorscio through that process.”

 Because of all the courtroom scenes in the film, Diesel had to call on all of his New York theatre experience to effectively be in control as an actor, while in a courtroom full of extras.  “As a director, Sidney was committed to the emotional truth of everybody in that room, to the point that he auditioned and hand selected all of the actors in the courtroom, and on the jury.  It was very much like returning to the stage, in part because you would have to know 15 pages off book, and be ready to do it in one take, in front of a sea of New York actors.”

For an uneducated mobster, it’s both amazing and surprising that DiNorscio was able to defend himself at trial so effectively.  “At the end of the day, it’s real simple.  He was there on trial, where the objective of the prosecutor was to expose how inhumane they all were.  All he really did was expose how human they all were.  He revealed the humanity of everyone, through humor, through his own experiences and through anecdotes that the jury could relate to, in one way or another.” 

Taking on a real life character is daunting for any actor, and Diesel feels fortunate that he was able to meet and spend time with the real DiNorscio during filming.  “I spent all this time, prior to meeting him, working on the attributes, mannerisms, characteristics and physicalities that Jackie possessed, in an attempt just to match the footage that I saw.  It wasn’t until I met him, when he actually came to the set and had a heart-to-heart with me, that I began to understand what the whole trial meant for him, and what he was fighting for.  After meeting him, all of the attention that I paid to his characteristics, and the work that I’d put into imitating him, took a backseat to me representing the truth that he was trying to fight for.  This was the first time I’d ever played a real person, and I had to represent a man whose characteristics represented the trial, and whose truth represented the outcome.”

{quote_middle}Although the real Jackie DiNorscio died during the production on Find Me Guilty, Diesel still seems devoted to his memory. “After watching the picture, I realized that 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 could love to the degree that he could love a cousin that shot him and tried to kill him.  He was someone who was willing to sacrifice his own life to make a statement about loyalty.”

Since DiNorscio used humor as a means to get the jury to relate to him, Diesel says that Find Me Guilty would have to be classified as a dramedy, even though it is still a very serious subject at its core.  “While shooting the movie, I was very in tune with the drama of the character, to the point where, when I saw the movie with Sidney in Berlin , I told him, ‘I wasn’t trying to be funny.’  And, he said, ‘By committing to the character the way that you did, you took on the attributes that Jackie had, and one of them was being an entertainer in that courtroom.’”

 {quote_bottom}On top of his huge box-office success, Diesel is also a prominent producer and filmmaker.  In the future, the former telemarketer and bouncer wants to step behind the camera to bring his much talked about production of Hannibal , which tells the story of the Carthaginian general who rode and elephant across the Alps in order to attack Rome in the 3^rd century B.C., to the big screen.  He also hopes to revisit the role of Richard B. Riddick that he brought to life in the cult favorite Pitch Black, as well as The Chronicles of Riddick, which his company, One Race Films, produced.