Role Call
Role Call is a series in which Vulture talks to actors about performances they’ve probably forgotten by now, but we definitely haven’t.
Role Call
Role Call is a series in which Vulture talks to actors about performances they’ve probably forgotten by now, but we definitely haven’t.
The Italian Job wasn’t just a job for Seth Green — it was the job that paired him with a distinguished Hollywood veteran, three current A-listers, a rap legend, and the Transporter himself, Jason Statham. “While we were rehearsing, Statham was like, ‘Hey, I’ve got a premiere tonight, does anybody want to go?’” Green recalls of the action superstar, who, to that point, had only been in a handful of films. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to check out your movie.’ And it was the fucking Transporter. So now I see this guy who I’ve spent the last two weeks rehearsing with as a literal Superman, jumping out of helicopters and fighting a trainful of soldiers. I was like, “Oh my God, I better be nice to this guy!”
Directed by F. Gary Gray (Friday, Straight Outta Compton), The Italian Job — a remake of Michael Caine’s 1969 film — follows a group of thieves as they seek revenge on a former member of their crew who betrayed them and left them for dead. The all-star cast includes Donald Sutherland as John, the team’s leader who is killed during the double cross; Mark Wahlberg as Charlie, John’s mentee who emerges as the new head honcho; Edward Norton as Steve, the aforementioned trader; Charlize Theron as Stella, professional safecracker and John’s daughter-in-mourning; Statham as Handsome Rob, a charming driver and seducer; Mos Def as Left Ear, a stylish explosives expert; and Green as Lyle, the tech wiz and resident man in the van.
Originally a child actor, Green was starting to hit his career groove when he booked Italian Job, having spent the previous few years starring in Can’t Hardly Wait, Rat Race, Party Monster, and the Austin Powers franchise. Already experienced in delivering tech jargon thanks to roles in movies like Tony Scott’s Enemy of the State, he was drawn to Lyle, who dreams of proving that he — and not his college roommate, Shawn Fanning — is the true inventor of Napster and buying a speaker so loud that it blows women’s clothes off. (That’s 2003 for ya!)
What intrigued you about the film and the character of Lyle?
I liked this guy. I had done a bunch of stuff like this, the guy in the van, the tech specialist. I had studied tech jargon the same way people studied Shakespeare, so that it rattles off your tongue like it’s something you’ve organically thought about. For me, the biggest thing was that he had to be able to hang with a world-class crew. It didn’t mean that he was cool, it just meant that he could fit in with this group without seeming like a sore thumb.
When I got it, I talked to Gary Gray about what he would wear and how he would seem, and I said, “This guy has made all the same money that any of these other thieves have made, so it’s not like he can’t buy cool stuff.” I loved the idea of Lyle being able to shop anywhere, see any fashion magazine, travel around the world, and be like, “I’m going to buy those boots,” but then he just didn’t wear them well. That’s where the gag with the bike came up. Because Gary was like, “Everybody should roll up in some kind of awesome thing,” and I’m like, “Well, you know this guy would’ve bought a motorcycle.” The first thing he would do is buy a motorcycle; he just doesn’t know how to ride it.
I love a great “assemble the team” sequence in a heist movie, and that one in The Italian Job definitely fits the bill. How much of that was you with the motorcycle?
We had to do stunt driving and everything from rappelling to buddy-breathing underwater; we all had to practice because we were going to have to do it on film. That day we did the drive-up, I had already spent a couple days on that bike, and when we were just rehearsing, I had no trouble riding it. It was a little bit taller than my inseam, and so they lowered the seat as much as they could, but even still, it’s a 700-pound machine. And so I drove it, cutting the turn, shifting the gears, no trouble. And then, as I brought it up to the start of the track and just sort of rested in place, I couldn’t get the kickstand down fast enough and the whole thing just fell over. It was a bike that they had borrowed from one of the stunt captains, and the mirror came off when it hit the ground. It was so embarrassing.
But I told Gary, “I feel like this is a thing,” and he said, “What if when you pull up, you can’t control the bike?” And I was like, “I fucking love this.” It’s the perfect introduction, because he looks so cool, sort of, and then he’s just not cool at all. I even got to say, “Can you help me get my bike up?” All of that stuff is so important for that character. It makes him somebody who you care about, that you feel bad for, that you can empathize with, when all these other supercool characters exist in the movie. You’re like, “Oh, maybe that’s the guy I’m the most like.”
Okay, so you had to do the car training with everyone else, but in the film I’m not sure we ever see you behind the wheel. Were you bummed to not have that opportunity, or were you happy to go sit in the back of the van at a chill location while the rest of the cast had to, like, wait around Hollywood Boulevard to film these big chase sequences?
That’s actually exactly what happened. In an earlier draft of the script, my character drove the panel van on Hollywood Boulevard, and then at some point they realized that they needed my character to be in a central space where he would be guiding the operation. So they cast that additional guy, Franky G, and he wound up being the other driver. Gary says to me about a week in, “Hey, Seth, we’re rewriting a bunch of this stuff, and it doesn’t look like you’re going to be driving the car. Are you cool with that?” And I said, “What you actually said to me is that I’m going to have about six weeks off in the middle of this production while everybody else is filming all the coverage around the heist.” I came back after being off for six weeks, and everybody in the crew was exhausted. I’d been working out, I was eating great, I was buzzing with energy. We spent less than two days shooting all of my stuff in Union Station, and I am on fire in those scenes [laughs]. You can see me; I’m vibrating so high because I’ve just been resting and exercising. But then we went directly to Italy and shot for 14 days straight, up super-early in the morning, trying to catch the sun, trying to match that with the tides in Venice. The speedboat, the heist, the van going into the water, shooting all that was the last two weeks of the movie — it was wild.
Sounds like the Italian part of the job wasn’t as glamorous as you’d hope!
What was cool about it was we were up in Canazei in the Alps, and it was the only time I got to work with Edward, and I’m obviously such an enormous fan of his. I was so excited that he was doing this movie, even though by all accounts he got forced into it. But he was awesome; he really made a lot out of the role. We’re staying up in this mountain château that’s typically occupied during the summer, so there’s literally nobody there except the cast and crew of this movie. And one night, probably the first night that we got there, the cast all went down to a game room, shot a bunch of pool, drank a little bit, smoked a little bit, and Jason and Edward went back and forth with jokes. And I’ve never been more impressed by two people, like the fact that they each had 40 jokes in their quiver. Just bang, bang, bang, tit for tat. It was one of the coolest nights.
What was it like shooting that opening heist, with you and Statham just riding a speedboat through the canals in Venice? It probably wasn’t the easiest logistical thing to pull off.
We had spent all that time training on these cars and boats, so Jay was like, “Well, I’m obviously going to drive this.” The tide was rising every second in the canals, and we had an incredibly limited time, like less than 45 minutes each day to be able to shoot before it was too dark or the tide was too high. And there was a point where our DP, Wally Pfister, we were shooting and I just remember seeing the first camera assistant looking behind and literally ducking Wally’s head so he didn’t get his skull crushed by one of these bridges. And going under the bridge, it took his hat off, and you can almost see it, because they kept the shot in the film. Watch my face when we’re in the two-shot with that speedboat — you see a look of shock on my face, like, “Oh my God,” and what I’m reacting to is the DP nearly getting decapitated.
Rewatching the film, it’s funny to think that someone in their 20s right now might have no idea what Napster even is. But, in the moment, that was such a timely bit to include, so what do you remember from that story line, including Shawn Fanning’s flashback cameo?
Shawn was supercool. All of his intentions with creating that platform were pretty altruistic, despite the fact that you could share music, potentially, illegally. Like, it helped write law with respect to how artists collect royalties on sales and plays. But I just thought that it was hilarious. I loved the fact that Lyle had that level of pettiness. But I rooted it in the idea that this whole gang is supercool, and he really feels like a kid among them, so it felt okay to have him be childish and demand a bit of respect, or at least acknowledgment, for his role.
We’ve talked about some of the names, but, at the time, did you realize how cool a cast you were working with?
It’s great casting. Sheila Jaffe also cast Entourage, and she was somebody I’d read for dozens of times. That was her intent, like, “What about Mos Def? What about this guy? He’s just starting to pop.” And while we were shooting that movie, Charlize and I watched the Aileen Wuornos documentary [The Selling of a Serial Killer], and she told me about how fascinated she was with that project; that was before she got Monster off the ground. I definitely was aware of how good a cast this was just within the first couple days of us all working together. Everybody was there for it, putting everything into it. It was really fun. I brought a backgammon kit to the set all the time, because these guys like really quick games and it brings out everybody’s competitiveness. You probably know this already, but Charlize is absurdly competitive.
Maybe the biggest laugh in the movie is courtesy of Lyle doing his Handsome Rob impression. Was that something you had in your pocket, or did you just find it on the day?
Gary Gray is awesome and so much fun. I was like, “How big do you want me to get?” He’s like, “Say whatever you want.” Thinking about it now, when we made that movie, improvisation wasn’t really a thing. Not that it wasn’t a thing, but we’ve hit a really nice heyday in the last 20 years of actors being allowed to improv, being encouraged to improv. And I’m a mimic, so I can’t help but come up with some kind of impersonation. It just sort of happens the longer I spend with someone, and Jason is so cool and so imitable that it made sense for Lyle to be almost obsessed with him. You see me in scenes with Mark, or any of these other guys, and I’m a little puppy dog about it. Like, when they’re walking, I’ll try to walk the way that they walk. I just liked the idea that this character spends all his time behind a computer screen and approaches behaving like a normal human like someone on the spectrum who is self-aware enough to observe other people and then try to be them. So I was workshopping a Handsome Rob voice for a while, and when Gary and I were doing that shot, he was like, “Why don’t you just be him?” So we shot about three takes of it, all improvised, and then he put the best stuff from those takes into one scene.
So what’s the deal with the infamous “Brazilian Job”? Was there ever serious talk of doing a sequel, or is it just an internet dream?
Who have you talked to? [Laughs]
I haven’t talked to anybody! Honestly, it’s been one of those things that I’ve seen sitting on The Italian Job Wikipedia page for probably the last decade, and I’d always be like: Stop teasing me, is this happening or not?!
Well, the biggest why not is that there’s been four different heads of studio at Paramount since we made this movie. But what happened was, those last two weeks of shooting were up in the Alps of Canazei and it was below freezing everywhere; we’re sitting there and rubbing our hands together, and the producer, Donald De Line, says, “We ever make a sequel to this, we should do it somewhere exotic.” I’m pretty sure he was the one who said, “We can call it The Brazilian Job.” And we all laughed. Everybody laughed because the Brazilian job is obviously a double entendre having to do with feminine grooming, and nobody thought that was serious. And then the movie blew up, and all of a sudden Paramount was hiring the powers that be to write a Brazilian Job movie. [Laughs] I’d say, over a five-year period, I read three different drafts, and I’d run into Mark wherever, or I’d see Donald, and they were like, “This is going to happen.” But I don’t think I ever talked about it with anybody else.
So there was talk of an Italian Job sequel, and then all of a sudden F. Gary Gray is directing The Fate of the Furious with Charlize and Statham. What was your reaction to learning that?
I guess I’m just never the person who watches anything and says, “Hey, why am I not in that?!” But I did like that they made a nod at one point in Jay’s spinoff [Hobbs & Shaw], and … he’s Hobbs, right?
He’s Shaw! Deckard Shaw!
Yeah, he’s Shaw. So they’re in Shaw’s super-garage, and he’s got a Mini in there, and then the Rock goes, “What’s up with this one?” And he goes, “Oh, it’s from another life.” [Laughs]
In case we never get The Brazilian Job, what do you think Lyle would be up to nowadays?
I guess it’s not a spoiler to say, but one of the drafts presumed Lyle had gotten to work in quantum computing. Because it was early internet, the presumption was that Lyle had created some new tech or had some algorithm or compression program. He made money legitimately in the tech sector but was still down to take over a traffic-control system or some kind of missile guidance.
It feels like we no longer get the likes of The Italian Job, a sub-$100 million action movie that relies more on the charisma of its cast than the special effects.
Because modern audiences have gotten so accustomed to just repeating an experience, if a movie works, everyone’s like, “I need this sequel so that I can feel those feels again.” I find that to be a really fascinating evolution, but I love that this movie has that kind of place in pop culture. We had such a blast making it, and it is such a rare thing. The first time I went and did ADR, it was so funny. I was like, “This movie’s pretty good,” and Gary’s like, “Yeah, I think it’s pretty good!”
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