Probably my favorite thing about Vin Diesel is that he’s kind of an idiot. He tries to make big words and it’s adorable, like a puppy wearing clothes. The future star of 12 Fast 12 Furious: Fast to the Future recently opened up to Men’s Fitness, which is precisely the kind of venue to whom you’d expect Vin Diesel to open up. In between showing off his guns in wifebeaters and sleeveless hoodies, he told the mag that men in Hollywood face even more pressure to stay in shape than women. Cue Jezebel article in 3.. 2…

The “Fast & Furious 6″ star opens up about body image in the latest issue of Men’s Fitness (watch video from the photo shoot above), where he also addresses how his muscular frame has affected the movies he’s been offered.
“Hollywood is more concerned about its male actors being in shape than its female actors,” he continues.

“Being a physical presence will rule you out of a lot of roles,” Diesel tells the mag. “I couldn’t have done [a movie like] ’Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ with that physical presence. But I like it as part of me; it’s part of what I represent, and I think if Humphrey Bogart were around today he’d be a lot bigger.” [source]

You know what else will rule you out of a lot of roles? Naming yourself “VIN DIESEL.”

Anyway, I’ve screencapped a few more of Vin Diesel’s poses from the magazine shoot after the jump, because I always like reading Vin Diesel quotes better when I can picture him whispering them to me in a wifebeater. I also absolutely LOVE Vin Diesel’s hypothetical about Humphrey Bogart, and whether he’d be buff if he were alive today. In fact, I’d love to see an entire TV show, hosted by Vin Diesel, called “How Jacked Would They Be?” dedicated to Vin Diesel’s speculations about the workout habits of dead celebrities, preferably with MANSwers sound effects. “Rudolph Valentino? Yeah, he’d probably be more of a kettlebell guy, keeps the core tight, does a lotta cardio…”

Shine on, you glorious, glorious buffoon.

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Every Expendables movie has that sweet spot where it’s awesome and not sad and lame, which usually happens a few weeks or months before the cameras roll. If they could just take the movie out of these movies, they’d be set. An idea this fun could only be ruined when you try to execute it. We’ve just entered that stage with Expendables 3, as word has it that Wesley Snipes has joined the cast. Fresh out of prison for tax evasion, Snipes is exactly the kind of person the Expendables would recruit in real life, if only he had a knack for wisecracks and his conviction was a government frame job as retribution for knowing too much.

TwitchFilm and Moviehole both reported the Snipes story, which was apparently based on a Tweet from Sly himself. He’s since deleted the tweet, and no one knows yet what to conclude from that. You never know with Sly, the mix of HGH and those tiny iPhone buttons is a recipe for disaster. One tweet he did leave up, meanwhile, was the one about getting Mel Gibson to direct. …Oh please oh please oh please…

No , I was kiddiing about , but seriously , what about Mel Gibson directing EXPENDABLES 3?Opinions anyone ?Curious…..

— Sylvester Stallone (@TheSlyStallone) April 11, 2013

Mel is a MAGNIFICENT director! Pure passion on every level . we’d be blessed to have him.. A REAL long shot, but LIFE is a long shot -right?

— Sylvester Stallone (@TheSlyStallone) April 15, 2013

No one uses caps lock to punctuate his revelations like Sly Stallone. In any case, at this point, I’m not too interested in Sly’s fantasy camp for aging action stars, but if he gets Mel Gibson to direct Wesley Snipes in it and we get a Some Kind of Monster-style documentary about the making of, I’d pay $100 for a ticket. The combination of The Expendables’ silly name conventions and Wesley Snipes’ penchant for staying in character alone would priceless. I imagine Mel Gibson screaming racial slurs at everyone on set while Snipes refuses to come out of his trailer and communicates only by post-it notes signed “Felt Penn.”

This is the actual cover photo from Vin Diesel’s Facebook page.

Fast and Furious is a gloriously dumb franchise that has become incredibly successful selling the dream that anything – fame, fortune, gold necklaces, women, well-moisturized arms – can be yours, as long as you put enough aftermarket body work into your Honda Civic. To his credit, Paul Walker has always seemed like he’s just enjoying the ride (the episode of MTV Cribs set in his surfer-dude RV being a particular highlight), and you can’t blame him for that. Vin Diesel, on the other hand, who unlike Walker has actually done some decent acting work on occasion, seems to be taking all of this SUPER SERIOUSLY. Interpreting the ongoing appeal of vroomy car porn as validation that they’re making Important Art, and denied proper awards consideration simply because the films appeal to the working class. Though it’s not just Fast and Furious. Diesel once wrote of his Chronicles of Riddick sequel, “Money is always second to art, integrity and spirit… but the real issue is deeper. Can I suspend my life, to momentarily venture to that dark place.”

Isn’t he great? Diesel was back on Facebook this week to discuss Fast 6 screenings and the possibility of Fast 7 in typical Diesel fashion.

There was an early screening in LA this week of Fast 6. The crowd reaction was surreal… and their demand for the continuation was powerful…

It’s remarkable to think I first embodied this character in 1999… and the evolution continues.

P.s. Filming begins this summer in LA, where it all started… talk about a studio in sync with the audience…

/smile

Vin Diesel strikes me as a guy who spends a lot of time talking about his “brand.”

Audience demand for 7 Fast 7 Furious was palpable. I’ll tell you… It hasn’t always been an easy task as an Actor, taking this Dom Toretto character home to my baby girl. A guy who lives his life a quarter mile at a time. Who respects no authority and never narcs on his homeboys. But on the final day of shooting, as I watched The Rock piledrive that terrorist off a suspension bridge, before I even knew what was happening… My eyes felt wet. My hands were coming together in a slow clap. The performance was just so… so brave. In a way that bypasses your brain and goes right through your pectoral muscle to your biggest muscle of all, the muscle of heart. And it was then that I knew that all those times I’d been a jerk to my wife and my kids and my bengal tigers, just because I’d brought this bad boy home with me had all been worth it. I could see it written in the shining eyes of fans, the fan letters from Jiffy Lube employees. 7 Fast 7 Furious is for the children.

/smile. //preacher curl.

—

See also: Vin Diesel Goes to the DMV.

Last night Shia LaBeouf went on David Letterman, and Dave, to his credit, wasn’t Shia (sorry) about asking The Beef about his public feud with Alec Baldwin. You know, the one where Shia passed off an Esquire article (and a pretty lame one at that) as his own public apology. Shia tried to explain, but he was so obtuse and full-of-sh*t actorsy about it that the audience was openly mocking him before he’d even finished talking. It’s actually remarkable how quickly they turn on him. Here’s a partial transcript (more after the jump, with video):

SHIA: I’m pretty passionate and impulsive. And he’s passionate and impulsive too, and I think that makes for some fireworks.

DAVE: So… why did you get fired?

SHIA: Because me and Alec had tension as men. Not as artists, but as men. In a room, I think that became a hard thing to deal with. When you got tension as men, that’s tough till July. You know, it’s cool for increments, but I think to do that for a long period of time… is pretty tough.

“When you got tension as men, that’s tough till July.” Deep, bro. Is that another truism gleaned from the perfumed pages of the Megan-Fox-as-Aztec-sacrifice issue? Got any juicy bon mots about matching ties to cuff links?

Now, it’d be good internet business to just say “HERE’S SHIA LABEOUF ACTING DOUCHEY, LET’S POKE HIM WITH STICKS!” because that’s the kind of simple morality tale that plays here in the cat-o-sphere. And you know, it wouldn’t be totally wrong. But in the interests of fairness, it should be pointed out that there are some contextual reasons why Shia Labeouf might be trying to communicate in metrosexual slam poem that go beyond his personal preference.

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TODAY IN EXISTENTIAL BUFFOONERY

Shia Labeouf recently left a Broadway production of Orphans over “creative differences” (the producers’ words), with co-star Alec Baldwin. Which wouldn’t be particularly newsworthy in itself, except that The Beef himself posted a bunch of inside-baseball emails between himself and the director, himself and Alec Baldwin, and himself and actor Tom Sturridge on his Twitter account, detailing just what went wrong.

Apparently, it was an “incompatibility” between LaBeouf and Baldwin that led to the departure. Now, I hesitate to paint Shia Labeouf with the “existential buffoon” label – a phenomenon we’re obviously quite fond of here – because having a personality that tends towards sensitive, overwrought, and dramatic is basically what makes actors good at their jobs. Still, I don’t what else to call it when a guy sends an apology email and prefaces it by quoting liberally from an Esquire essay called “How to Be a Man.”

Here’s Shia’s email to 72-year-old Orphans director Daniel Sullivan (which, again, was posted by Shia himself):

My dad was a drug dealer. He was a sh-t human. But he was a man. He taught me how to be a man. What I know of men, Alec is-

A man is good at his job. Not his work, not his avocation, not his hobby. Not his career. His job.

A man can look you up and down and figure some things out. Before you say a word, he makes you. From your suitcase, from your watch, from your posture. A man infers.

A man owns up. That’s why Mark McGwire is not a man. A man grasps his mistakes. He lays claim to who he is, and what he was, whether he likes them or not.

Some mistakes, though, he lets pass if no one notices. Like dropping the steak in the dirt.

He does not rely on rationalizations or explanations. He doesn’t winnow, winnow, winnow until truths can be humbly categorized, or intellectualized, until behavior can be written off with an explanation.

A man knows his tools and how to use them – just the ones he needs. Knows which saw is for what, how to find the stud.

A man does not know everything. He doesn’t try. He likes what other men know.

A man can tell you he was wrong. That he did wrong. That he planned to.

He can tell you when he is lost. He can apologize, even if sometimes it’s just to put an end to the bickering.

Alec, I’m sorry for my part of a dis-agreeable situation. – Shia. [transcription via Jezebel]

“Look, my dad may have been a piece of shit drug dealer, but at least he taught me that real men eat dirt steaks, unlike that pussy Mark McGwire.”

I’m not sure if it speaks better or worse of Shia that he stole the dumbest parts of that email from a printed pep rally for dipshit finance guys published in 2009 in Esquire. At least he didn’t write them himself? But he still thought they were worth repeating? Here’s the original:

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