The “crime of cinema” Steven Spielberg accused Vin Diesel of committing
As a legend of the industry and one of its greatest-ever directors, the opinion of Steven Spielberg carries a lot of weight in Hollywood. With that in mind, when he tells someone they’ve committed a cardinal sin against the medium itself, it’s something that would surely be rectified in short order.
Of course, Vin Diesel isn’t most people, and after being struck with such a lofty accusation by a three-time Academy Award winner, the only filmmaker to have helmed the highest-grossing release in cinema history three times over, and the single most commercially successful director there’s ever been, he’s done absolutely nothing about it.
It might shock some people who only know the bald-headed behemoth from the regular procession of franchise fare that’s been his stock-in-trade for well over 20 years at this point, but Diesel first caught his break in the film business by displaying his multifaceted talents as not just a performer, but a creative force.
He wrote, directed, produced, composed the soundtrack, and played the lead role in his 1997 short Multi-Facial, a semi-autobiographical drama following aspiring actor Mike, who struggles to land any meaningful parts on account of his ambiguous ethnicity. He followed that up by writing, producing, and directing his feature debut Strays, which captured Spielberg’s attention.
The bearded icon invited Diesel to the set of Amistad to inform him that not only was he a fan of his work on both sides of the camera, but he was writing a part in Saving Private Ryan specifically for him. It was his biggest on-screen gig to date, and within three years, he was well on his way to superstardom after headlining Pitch Black and The Fast and the Furious.
How many features has Diesel directed since 1997? Zero. In fact, the only time he’s directed anything came through 2009’s Fast & Furious short film Los Bandoleros, which runs for all of 20 minutes. As a result, the actor was forced to admit to The National that when he encountered Spielberg for the first time in a long time, he was immediately accosted.
“I saw him recently, and he had said to me, ‘When I wrote the role for you in Saving Private Ryan, I was obviously employing the actor, but I was also secretly championing the director in you, and you have not directed enough,’” he said, before revealing he was told by the maestro himself “that is a crime of cinema and you must get back in the directing chair.”
He has been harbouring dreams of mounting an epic trilogy based on the life and times of Hannibal Barca for what feels like forever, but considering a very similar project is moving through development at Netflix with Antoine Fuqua directing Denzel Washington in the lead role, it looks like Spielberg might have to wait a little longer before he can declare Diesel innocent.
