HAIRCUT 100: Day 97, No. 97. Vin Diesel, actor, producer, director and screenwriter. To petrolheads everywhere, he is closely identified with the role of Dominic Toretto, engineer, ex-con and street racer in The Fast and the Furious series, which he absolutely owns, but here we celebrate him principally as Richard B. Riddick: Furyan warrior, mercenary, fugitive, ‘shiner,’ and one-time Grand Marshal of the Necromongers, because he’s just so fucking cool. Riddick exploded onto the screen in the relatively low-budget cult sleeper Pitch Black in 2000, a sci-fi/horror movie co-written and directed by David Twohy. Riddick is introduced as the highly dangerous captive of a drug-addled bounty hunter, en route to prison on an unremarkable transport ship. His eyes have been ‘shined,’ surgically altered so he can see in the dark, resulting in a sensitivity to daylight that requires him to wear welding googles, creating his signature steampunk look. In a fantastic exercise in character development, the enigmatic Riddick moves from villain to hero after the ship crash lands on a desert planet populated by vicious, raptor-like creatures that emerge during an eclipse.
This was followed by the more ambitious The Chroniclers of Riddick in 2004, and epic hero’s journey in which a personal quest for vengeance leads Riddick to overthrow the brutal religious crusade of the Necromongers, becoming the Order’s Grand Marshal. In Riddick (2013), the character is once more stripped down to his essence, fighting for survival on a desert planet against vicious alien creatures and two rival groups of mercenary bounty hunters. (There’s also an animated movie – Dark Fury – and a couple of video games.) In the original draft of the Pitch Black script by Jim and Ken Wheat, the character was a woman called Taras Krieg.
The distinctively-voiced Diesel is a fascinating actor, with much more to him than your average mainstream action hero. He has described himself as ‘of ambiguous ethnicity.’ His step-father was an acting instructor and theatre manager, and Diesel (born Mark Sinclair) started his stage career aged seven. After an uncredited part in Penny Marshall’s Awakenings (1990), Diesel made the short film Multi-Facial in 1995. The film is a semi-autobiographical exploration of Diesel’s frustration at the difficulties faced by mixed-race actors seeking parts in Hollywood. He was inspired by the book Feature Films at Used Car Prices by Rick Schmidt, and wrote, directed, starred in and scored the movie on a budget of $3000. On the strength of a positive showing at the Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan, the film was accepted for the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. Diesel went on to make the feature-length Strays in 1997, again writing, producing, directing and taking the leading role, as a small-time New York hustler searching for meaning in his life. On seeing Strays, Steven Spielberg, who had already been impressed by Multi-Facial, wrote the part of Private Adrian Caparzo in Saving Private Ryan specifically for Diesel, providing the actor with a powerful, break-out role.
Diesel has three kids, but prefers to keep his family out of the public eye stating that ‘I’m not gonna put it out there on a magazine cover like some other actors. I come from the Harrison Ford, Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino code of silence.’ Class. And as for Riddick, well he’s still doing his thing. In an alternative ending to Riddick, the character is shown on the ‘threshold to the Underverse,’ intermating that he’s going in, while Diesel confirmed earlier this year that he and David Twohy were developing a fourth movie entitled The Chronicles of Riddick: Furia. ‘You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?’
Please click here for Day 98
HAIRCUT 100: Day 96, No. 96. Sticking with the Alien franchise – and why not? – The Engineers (AKA Pilots, Ossians, Mala’kak and ‘Space Jockeys’); in the Prometheus universe: God. It took a couple of watches, but I’ve got to admit I liked this movie, although the pacing was off: too much build-up followed by a hasty and inconclusive climax. That said, the cast is wonderful. Michael Fassbender as the Peter O’Toole obsessed android David owns this movie, while Idris Elba effortlessly steals every scene that he’s in and Noomi Rapace is far from terrible as the ‘
HAIRCUT 100: Day 95, No. 95. Ripley in ALIEN3 (1992), as played by the beautiful Sigourney Weaver. Did you really think I’d forgotten her? For shame. Granted, I’m betraying my age and inclinations here, but I did warn you a pattern might emerge, in my case cult movies from the eighties and nineties. What can I say? That’s the wind beneath my wings. Make your own damn list! Anyway, in a dark and radical change of direction following the exuberance of James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), bleak stylist David Fincher totally pressed the reset button on this one. Critical opinion remains divided – and Fincher himself can’t stand the film, citing constant producer-interference – but if ALIEN3 is a franchise misfire then it’s a fascinating one, and an obvious preface to the gothic claustrophobia of the debut director’s subsequent nineties masterpieces Seven and Fight Club. In negating the upbeat resolution of Cameron’s previous instalment, Fincher makes the right move by shocking his audience from the outset and isolating his protagonist. With the other survivors still in play, it would have been difficult to avoid just remaking Aliens, although that’s no doubt what the studio wanted.
HAIRCUT 100: Day 94, No. 94. Peter Weller as Alex Murphy, Robocop: part man, part machine, all cop. In a dystopian near-future that looks more like reality every day, a corporate oligarchy in which multinationals seek profit in de-unionised public services and effectively control local government, a cheap solution that will restore public confidence in inner-city policing is required. Omni Consumer Products, whose motto is that ‘Good business is where you find it,’ have brought a controlling interest in the newly privatised Detroit Police Force from a city on the brink of financial ruin, as part of a corporate vision that sees citizens of the future ‘Delta City’ buying shares rather than casting votes. Unfortunately, their latest product, the ED-209 Enforcement Droid, doesn’t actually work, paving the way for an ambitious young executive to fast track the back-up ‘Robocop’ programme, which is based on cybernetics rather than robotics. Likely candidates for conversion in the force are selected and put in harm’s way until the inevitable happens and an unwitting donor, Officer Alex Murphy, is killed and resurrected as the prototype Robocop. Programmed to ‘Serve the public trust,’ ‘Protect the innocent,’ and ‘Uphold the law,’ Murphy’s human personality gradually begins to reassert itself, according to the classic ‘Tin Man’ archetype in science fiction, which explores the concepts of Identity and Self, and what it actually means to be ‘human.’
HAIRCUT 100: Day 74, No. 74. Sticking with middle aged naked bald guys, Lt. Col. Glenn Manning (played by Glenn Langan) in The Amazing Colossal Man. This 1957 movie directed by Bert I. Gordon and distributed by American International is an uncredited adaptation of The Nth Man (1928) by Eon Flint, a novella about a ten-mile-tall man. It was intended to capitalise on the success of The Incredible Shrinking Man, released six months earlier, although the climax feels more like King Kong. Korean War vet Manning is caught in the blast during an atomic test in Nevada while trying to rescue the pilot of a crashed aircraft, receiving terrible burns and losing his hair. Mysterious cellular regrowth follows, leading him to not only recover but grow eight feet in height a day, also acquiring a rather dark sense of humour. Increasingly depressed by his condition, Manning eventually loses it. He escapes his military doctors, picking up his fiancée, Carol, during a long chase in which he trashes the Las Vegas strip, moving into classic monster movie territory by demolishing famous cultural landmarks, in this case the Riviera Hotel, the Royal Nevada, the Silver Slipper, the Sands Hotel, and the Tropicana. (Vegas weddings, ‘eh?) He is eventually stopped at the Boulder Dam, taken out by a giant syringe full of ‘anti-growth serum’ and police and army gunfire, apparently falling to his death in the Colorado River.
THE HAIRCUT 100........ 