Q: You produced and star in MEDELLIN, you put your own money into the film — and it's not exactly a low-budget indie. You really put everything on the line. Why risk so much for a story about a ruthless killer?

Vince: Well, when you put it that way... what was I thinking?! Seriously, from the moment I first read this script, I knew it was a part I had to play. And believe me, we tried to get someone else to foot the bill. But when it became clear that wasn't gonna happen, well, sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do, you know? And while it may not be QUEENS BOULEVARD, in the scheme of Hollywood movies, it's still a low budget independent film.

Q: Why Pablo Escobar?

Vince: Why not? When you think about it, it's a Horatio Alger story. He pulled himself up from a life of poverty to become one of the richest men in the world. In the eighties, Forbes named him, like, the 3rd richest man in the world. I mean, sure, you can be Bill Gates and invent a computer program and become a billionaire, but if you're born in a poor country to a teacher and farmer, well you have to play the cards you're dealt. And I can relate to that, being a kid from Queens, you know? Yes, he had to kill to get there. "Plato o Plamo," that was his motto. "Money or lead." You gotta love that.

Q: The man was responsible for so many deaths — not just the people he personally killed, but if you count all of the drug-related deaths he supplied the cocaine for.... Don't you worry about glamorizing someone like that?

Vince: First, I don't think we glamorize it. Billy Walsh isn't a Hollywood director, that's why I knew he was the man for the job. He wasn't going to make this look sanitized and fun. You can smell Billy's movies. And that's what drew me to the part. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the guy was a hero or anything. But I think we need to understand how people like Pablo think, how they are able to capture the love and loyalty of a group of people, while being reviled by others. If we don't get inside the psychology of guys like Escobar, and show how they work, we run the risk of it happening again.


Q: So you see MEDELLIN as a morality piece?

Vince: [laughs] No. Not at all. I'm just talking as an actor now, not the producer. You can't judge your character, you know? Pablo Escobar didn't wake up every day and think "I'm a ruthless bastard with no morals, no values." He had values. He built churches, he gave to the poor, he had his causes. In his mind the ends justified the means. I'm not saying that to the rest of the world it wasn't twisted, but in his mind, it was probably noble. That's all we're trying to get across.

Q: You shot the film in Spanish. But you don't even speak Spanish. Wasn't Benicio Del Toro originally supposed to play Escobar?

Vince: It was Billy's idea to shoot it in Spanish and I thought it was genius. To really tell the authentic Pablo Escobar story it had to be in Spanish. I had a great dialect coach on set. Hopefully my accent doesn't offend Benicio.

Q: How did you prepare for the role?

Vince: I ate my brother's spaghetti carbonara every night. Seriously, I had to put on the weight, there was the Spanish, but mostly I just read everything I could about Escobar and tried to get into his head. How do you kick around a soccer ball with a kid one minute and blow away his you kick around a soccer ball with a kid one minute and blow away his father the next? What's the psychology there? "Plato o Plamo." It's pretty simple actually. Escobar lived by a simple ideology.

Q: Critics are buzzing. Is this your Oscar?

Vince: I don't think that way. It was all what the role required. What Billy wanted. And what I wanted. Me in a fat suit just wasn't gonna cut it.

Labels: Entourage