by Paul Fischer
|
with Ving Rhames Starring in Bringing Out The Dead with Nicolas Cage |
 |
Part Two: in which we talk intimidation, get the history of Ving, his take on Mission Impossible star Tom Cruise and directors he has worked with -- John Woo and Quentin Tarantino . . .
CrankyCritic:
You've been involved with acting since High School. What got you interested
in it?
Ving Rhames: I always say "Acting chose me." Myself and
a guy named Mark followed these two girls into a youth center. I was eleven.
I was starting to get interested in girls so I was following them for
something else. They go to this poetry class and it's like twenty girls
and two black guys from Harlem in there. So me and Mark thought this is
the place to be. What wound up happening was that I got introduced to
Lorraine Hansberry and Paul Lawrence Dunbar and all these
great writers; to all these poems I could relate to. I almost felt like
"Wow, this guy has lived what I'm experiencing in life!" And
that's really how I got into acting. I was never a kid who looked at movies
and wanted to be an actor. I probably didn't take acting seriously until
the end of my junior year at Performing Arts High School. I wanted to
play sports.
CrankyCritic: Was there one moment of clarity when you knew acting
would be your life?
Ving Rhames: Junior year, I did a scene from A Raisin in the
Sun. Out of like 60 scenes they chose three to go into the assembly
in high school. It was one of the three chosen. It was like then that
I knew "Ving, God's blessed you with something. There's a reason
for it. You may not understand it but this is what you're supposed to
do while you're on this planet."
CrankyCritic:
Is it more fun playing the good guy or the bad guy?
Ving Rhames: I don't look at characters as good or bad. When I
did Don King, I'd read so much negative press about Don King;
I spent days with Don King and I got a completely different point of view.
But as far as the media was concerned, they viewed Don King as "bad".
What I found, and especially me as an African-American man; I can't let
anyone, but especially another culture, dictate to me what good or bad
is. Or what beautiful is. Or what's intimidating. I did one interview
where the guy said "You play some very menacing and intimidating
parts..." and I said "Do I? or Are you intimidated by me? Because
if you're intimidated by me, that's something you'll have to deal with."
I think, for a lot of characters of color, when other cultures control
the media, it's their perspective of what a black man is. What a "good
guy" black man is. What a "bad guy" black man is. What
a "good looking" black guy is. What the "heroic" black
guy is. It's their image and many times in this society it's the black
guy who's the non-threatening one, who's more likely to be in the position
of Will Smith.
CrankyCritic:
Which makes it interesting that you told Jay Leno you were going to
do The Sonny Liston Story.
Ving Rhames: I'm co-producing Sonny Liston. Tom Cruise is
producing it.
CrankyCritic:
Then we'll get back to it. Let's talk Mission Impossible 2
Ving Rhames: They're still shooting that. I worked on the film
for six months. I finished last Friday.
CrankyCritic: How was it working around with Tom Cruise this time?
Ving Rhames: Fun and easy. Even with him as producer on Sonny
Liston, if we need anything we get it immediately. It's really that
easy.
CrankyCritic: Can't talk about the movie?
Ving Rhames: I won't spoil it.
CrankyCritic: Then tell us about working with director John
Woo?
Ving Rhames: Well, you know, John doesn't speak much English so
he kind of acts out what he wants but as an actor, honestly, I knew where
he was coming from. It was really an interesting way of directing an actor
because he kind of described it in a way that, for me, I really related
to it. But again, it's really an action movie. It is what it is. This
one's going to be much better than the last one. This one, let's put it
this way, Tom is making sure that no one misunderstands it. I'd say "Tom
don't you think we've said this before?" and he'd say "Ving,
you wouldn't believe how many people missed the first one and missed this
point" This one is more character driven, relationship driven, but
it's also more spelled out. If you missed it the first time, you're going
to get it, the information, in the next twenty minutes.
CrankyCritic:
You've said to the media that Tom is truly "color blind"
Ving
Rhames: I'll say this: I think someone in the black community said
something about Tom and I went, "Look -- Tom adopted two children
and one of them is a male black boy. That child is going to be privy to
things that maybe you and I haven't." That kid's scope of the world,
I mean, I've been in Tom Cruise's private jet. They go where they want
to. That kid has seen Africa, Asia, Russia. He could possibly be in a
position to do things that it may have taken a Jesse Jackson until they
were 35-40 [to do]. This kid is being exposed to the world. This kid knows
he's an African-American kid. He's getting his African-American culture
and he's getting Australian culture. I experienced things like that my
first time when I went to Performing Arts High School, where I went to
school with different cultures of people. The neighborhood high school
was basically Black and Hispanic. That was cool with me but when I started
meeting Asian people and learning about those cultures it just opened
up my world view. I realize now, going back to Harlem, I realized that
growin' up in Harlem I probably lived within a five to ten mile radius.
That was my whole world. Maybe I came downtown to go to the movies or
go to work. Otherwise my whole world was black people and Spanish people
and some Dominican people. Normally all of the same economic background.
CrankyCritic:
We were talking directors. Your experience with Quentin Tarantino
was... ?
Ving Rhames: Quentin? Pulp Fiction was before Quentin was
big. I don't know what it's like working with him since he's larger now
but Quentin was really an actor's director. He was very into being risqué
and trying ways of expressing yourself and fun. Very easy going, light-hearted.
Easy to work with.
CrankyCritic: He's taken a lot of criticism for using the "n"
word a lot
Ving Rhames: It's interesting. I use the "n" word around
my people. I'll explain it like this. Part of black culture is that we've
taken negative words and made them positive. The word "bad"
is a negative word but we say "I'm bad"; Dope and Fly is the
same thing. We take words and we give them our own personalized cultural
meaning especially growing up in the streets. What's always amazed me
is why white folks want to say it? That's our word! If Quentin
is writing a script and the characters speak like that; quite honestly
Sam Jackson will tell you he threw that word in several times. Ask him.
Even in Pulp Fiction I call John Travolta [deleted]. A lot of people
miss that. So, for me, I use the word a certain way when I'm talking to
a black person, I use it a certain way if I'm talking to white people.
For me, I look at the context that it's set in. The rap community now
uses the term "my dog". I don't know if that's a nice thing
to call someone [laughs] but how it is is a dog is man's best friend.
If "you my dog," it's a term of endearment. I don't find it
necessary to explain certain cultural things to people outside of that
culture.
CrankyCritic:
Looking back at the years so far, it's been a damned good career for
you, hasn't it?
Ving Rhames: I hope that with acting I'm continuing to learn. To
grow. I'm hoping and praying that I get better with each performance as
I discover more about myself and more about the human condition with each
performance. I guess I always hope that the role I'm working on is taking
me a bit closer. I'm training now to do the Sonny Liston Story for Paramount.
William Friedkin is directing it. Sugar Ray Leonard is training
me and I've done a ton of research. So I'm hoping that that's the role
that; each role can encompass everything I've learned in life, that I
can put into the role.
CrankyCritic:
OK, spill what you know ... the most controversial moment in Liston's
career was ...
Ving Rhames: ...was Ali's Phantom Punch. I interviewed some mob
guys that were there. I interviewed some guys in the Las Vegas police
department, you'll see that in the film. If you look at the punch, it
was the first time Liston was ever knocked down. And Ali wasn't known
at the age of 22 for knocking down people. And every boxer I interviewed
said "Look. There's no way that punch would've taken Liston down".
I watched it about thirty times. Ali hits Liston by the temple and Liston
kind of stumbles forward, then rolls the other way. If I get hit by a
punch I'm going to go one way. Well, Sonny Liston falls almost on all
fours, then rolls the other way and flips over. Then he gets up on one
knee and, even all this time, according to the rules of boxing, the count
doesn't start until Ali goes to a neutral corner. Ali is standing over
Liston going "get up!" Even in the corner Ali is saying, and
I think this is in When We Were Kings, "Did I hit him?"
Ali didn't believe it. When you knock out somebody, and I've been knocked
down in the ring -- trust me, it's something you can feel. It's a power
that shoots up your arm. You know when you've clocked someone to knock
them down. Sugar Ray Leonard will tell you. Every fighter that I've interviewed,
George Foreman, Tim Witherspoon, Larry Holmes, Floyd Patterson,
nobody, believed that punch would've put Sonny down.
CrankyCritic:
Sonny's death was shrouded in mystery. They don't know when he died...
Ving Rhames: I know when he died. I know who killed him. You'll
see it.
CrankyCritic:
And the film is due?
Ving Rhames: We don't film until the end of February.
Which means maybe we'll see it end of 2000 or in 2001. And with that, Rhames started shadow boxing, demonstrating the difference in technique between trainer Sugar Ray Leonard and Sonny Liston. The man has got the moves and we are totally stoked for this flick. We did find out what happens in Mission Impossible 2 (and co-star Thandie Newton teased our Paul Fischer about it in her StarTalk). . . but we're not telling, neither!