channing tatum - a guide to recognizing your saints cast & crew
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  Cast & Crew Chapters Other MoviesThe Vow 2012
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Haywire 2012
The Son of No One 2011
Dear John 2010
Fighting 2009
Stop-Loss 2008
Step Up 2006
She's the Man 2006
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 At last week’s Los Angeles press day to promote first-time director Dito Montiel’s "A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints," veteran actor Chazz Palminteri and newcomer Channing Tatum sat down with Movies Online to discuss what it was like working together on the coming-of-age drama inspired by Montiel’s mid-eighties youth in Astoria, Queens and based on his 2003 memoir of the same name.
The film follows the personal journey of Dito (Robert Downey Jr.), a successful writer living in Los Angeles, who is summoned home to Astoria after a 15-year absence by his mother (Dianne Wiest) when his father (Chazz Palminteri) becomes seriously ill. He finds himself swept back into the childhood events that shaped him during a sweltering 1986 Queens summer. Memories of his youth come flooding back as Dito (played as a teenager by Shia LaBeouf) revisits the old neighborhood, encountering the few childhood friends (the "saints" of the film and memoir’s title) who aren’t in prison or dead. Among them is the unforgettable Antonio (played as a teenager by Channing Tatum), Dito’s cocky and volatile best friend grappling with an abusive father.
Academy Award nominee Chazz Palminteri has had a very busy year. His most recent releases include Ron Underwood’s "In the Mix" starring Usher and the animated film "Hoodwinked," with Glenn Close, Jim Belushi and Anne Hathaway. In 2006, he’ll appear in "The Dukes," a heist movie set to 50’s rock and roll, written and directed by Robert Davi; "Push," a drama set in the world of drugs, sex, and the allure of fast money directed by Dave Rodriguez; and the action thriller "Running Scared," written and directed by Wayne Kramer and co-starring Paul Walker. In "A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints," Palminteri delivers a heartrending and uncompromising performance as Dito’s blue collar dad, Monty, who just wants the best for his son, even if he’s misguided.
Channing Tatum is sure to establish himself as a breakout star in 2006 with exceptional roles in three films including "She’s the Man," directed by Andy Fickman, "Step Up," directed by Anne Fletcher, and now his most impressive and powerful performance to date as the brutish, abused Antonio in "A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints" helmed by Dito Montiel.
Here’s what Chazz Palminteri and Channing Tatum had to say about their new film:
Q: The style of dialogue where everything is overlapping? I’m wondering how technically challenging that was to memorize, to rehearse and execute. Is it even something that could be written out a certain way?
CP: Well, it was written out but he gave us freedom as actors, I think, just to talk. Real talking is you step on people’s lines. People don’t go you talk, I talk, you talk. Talking, especially in a family like that, in a household where everybody’s talking, some people are listening, some people are not even listening. That gives us a sense of almost a documentary.
CT: You don’t hear what some people say. You’re wondering and then you just feel it out, you feel the direction of the whole thing. Even though you might not have heard something clearly, you still know what we were all talking about. It was sort of written like that a little bit but just the dialogue. Then, the next thing you know, in the middle of a sentence, he changes thoughts and says something else. It was written like that but it wasn’t about what the words were. It just gave the gist of how he wanted us to make the lines. He was like, ‘Screw the writing of it. It’s shit. Let’s figure out the scene.’
Q: So how different could it be from take to take?
CP: A little. Not too much.
CT: We would rehearse it. We would figure out the timing of it. He was saying, ‘It’s all about reaction. You say something to me, I’m going to listen to you, and then I’m going to talk back to you.’ You don’t want to ever really step on anybody’s lines unless you’re listening. If you’re listening, I’m not going to be talking over you.
Q: Was Chazz a father figure on set?
CT: Absolutely.
 Q: How was it off screen?
CP: Well, I like sometimes to embrace that. Obviously, I was the father figure on screen to him but also off screen. What I do is I try and I saw he was very receptive and he wanted to learn. He wanted to hear things that I had to say and when I see that, I give more. First of all, I could see that he was extremely talented and I say that very honestly because I would say something to him and he would do it immediately. And then I would forget about it and he would do it again later. So I knew right away, I said ‘Oh, okay, he gets it. He really, truly understands and he gets it.’ Sometimes, some actors don’t want to hear anything. He was smart enough to understand. ‘Okay, let me learn.’ Like when I was a young actor, I learned from the older actors at the Actor’s Studio and I would listen and I was like a sponge. Just one quick thing, what happened was we did this one scene with the seizure, he went crazy and he did all this improvisational stuff and wrecked the whole place. A few people were yelling at him and I saw that. I don’t like anybody treating anyone bad, but he’s a young actor and he’s not sure of things and I just said, ‘Hey, don’t fuckin’ yell at the kid.’ I just got up as me, I said, ‘Don’t yell at him. Don’t fuckin’ yell at him. You want to yell at somebody, yell at me.’ And then everything calmed down and we were fine again. Dito brought that up to me. I don’t even remember I did that but Dito remembers it.
CT: I remember it. I was like ‘Oh, thank god.’
CP: Right there I knew. It was little things. We had no air conditioning, they asked for air conditioning, they didn’t get it. When I kept hearing that, I said after two days, ‘Look, I want an air conditioner tomorrow. We gotta have it and if I don’t have it, I’m going to really be an asshole. I don’t want to be an asshole because I’m a nice guy, but you’re going to turn me into an asshole if there’s not an air conditioner tomorrow.’ And the next day there was an air conditioner.
CT: And that was just the nicest way. It was just like, ‘Look, if there’s not an air conditioner tomorrow, I won’t be here. That’s not a threat. It’s just kind of how it is.’ And I was like, ‘That was just so smooth.’
CP: There was an air conditioner. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
CT: He definitely took me under his wing and, I don’t know, I think you’re an idiot if you’re an actor and you don’t take the opportunity to learn something from someone that has had the experience and the talent that he has done through the years and people that he’s gotten to learn from. I’m a moron if I don’t take that opportunity and I think anybody that works with him is a moron if they don’t try to just listen to him and just listen to what anybody has to say for that matter. I can probably learn something from somebody who just had a job yesterday. They might not be as experienced. I think you learn something from anybody but especially from someone that has such a deep well of experience.
Q: What did you enjoy most about this project?
CT: For me, I’d probably have to say the learning experience we were just talking about. But the opportunity to do a story that is this beautiful and to have the freedom that we did when we were doing it. It just felt so kind of organic. It all just worked.
CP: It was just like one of those magical things, lightning in a bottle. It was a great story with a first time director who was really free and collaborative with a perfect cast, a really perfect cast and it just gelled. It’s like when you meet somebody in life, you either like them or you don’t like them. People have auras around them that they develop over the years. He has 26 years of an aura. I have 53 years of an aura. When you meet somebody, you go, ‘Whoa, I like this person. Oh, I don’t like this person.’ It was one of those things where we all just kind of liked each other and we were all there for the same reason: to make the work good. It wasn’t about me, it wasn’t about him, it wasn’t about I want to show off, egos. It was about "Can we do this? Can we get this better? Come on, guys. Holding hands, all right, ready? C’mon. Let’s do this.’ And that’s what it’s about because in the end, that’s all you have is the work. That will follow you for the rest of your life. And to me that’s all that’s important.
Q: What did Dito tell you about his father?
CP: Dito told me- - I didn’t read the book, I didn’t want to read the book. I just said, ‘No, no, nobody knows who Dito’s father was and how he acted so I don’t want to hear that.’ All I wanted to know was what Dito’s father felt, how he was and what he had a hard time saying, what didn’t he have a hard time saying. And then I took all that and just made it my own.
Q: It seems like for a while you played a lot of gangsters and tough guys. How nice is it to be at a point where you can play a father? Just a father.
CP: Just a father, yeah. Well, I played parts like this on stage in New York but I’ve never played one on screen. So when I read it I said, ‘Oh, I’m going to show another side of me that people have never really seen.’ So I really wanted to do that.
Q: This is really the first time we get to see this side of you. What was it like for you to get into that mindset and be kind of a gangster and kind of show that different side?
CT: It was beautiful. I hadn’t really considered myself. I thought I had acted a little bit. The parts that I had done were kind of, they’re fun. They’re fun but they didn’t have this depth. They didn’t have the sincerity and the seriousness. I don’t know. It was just such a different thing than I had ever even read before, much less had an opportunity to be in and be a part of. It was the first time I ever really considered myself doing something that was in my opinion a real acting role, where you really have to step outside what is just on the paper and really look deep and find a love in something that you love. I just love this movie and I love the character. I love everybody else’s character and I think if you could only be blessed to do more movies like that, that’s what you should do.
Q: Did you meet Antonio?
CT: No, never. I never met Antonio. He’s still in prison.
CP: He’s on vacation. We used to say that in the neighborhood. You’d say ‘Where is he? He’s on vacation.’ (laughs)
CT: I’m going to use that. I’m so using that. (laughs)
CP: ‘He went away to college.’ That‘s what we used to say. We said that too. ‘He’s in college.’ Oh. That’s kind of a nice way of saying it.
CT: Yeah, exactly.
Q: How do you transform as actors? The physicality of an actor. Obviously you’re learning your lines and doing things to get into the mindset of that character. But what did you do physically for this particular role? How do you go about preparing on that level?
CT: I lost a lot of weight for Antonio actually. Once I got there I realized that it wasn’t really about how big Antonio was. It wasn’t about being- - Antonio wasn’t a big guy but I just didn’t want to look that big compared to everybody else because everybody was pretty small as far as the other younger kids. But physically, Antonio’s a very- - he can be very vicious. But it’s always kind of- - ‘I’m not the type of guy to bark at you and be really ferocious and then try to kill you. I’m a guy who’s just going to smile at you until you don’t even know it and I’m all over you.’ That’s who I thought Antonio was. He’s not one to talk trash. He’s one to smile right at you and next thing you know, your life’s gone. That’s what was so beautiful to me. It wasn’t about puffing up and being tough. It’s about being this guy that you don’t even see coming.
CP: What Channing played there, that was great. In fact, I never even spoke to him about it. He had this inner violence that was always going on, even when he wasn’t even doing it. And I grew up with guys like this all my life, especially there was one or two of them that were just, this guy Joey the Bomb we used to call him. Joey the Bomb, they called him Joey the Bomb because every time he would walk into a place, everybody would leave because it was like a bomb went off. When he would walk in, people would go, ‘Oh my God.’ Because you knew any minute something bad was going to happen. But Joey always had this thing, like very physical. He wasn’t even talking but any minute, if somebody said the slightest word out of order, shit was going to happen. And he did it, he captured that essence of what this was. And either you do it or you don’t do it. You have it or you don’t have it. He has it. I mean that sincerely. That’s why he could play that character as opposed to a different type of character. And as far as myself goes, I embody these guys, I grew up with them. I just knew this father. I knew this man. I knew that he had a rage in him but he couldn’t express the love for his son. But again, instead of the violence that Antonio had inside, I had rage inside of me so I had both of those.
Q: So Channing, this summer, what’s changed for you since "Step Up" opened so huge?
CT: A lot. A lot. All of a sudden, the studio heads are turning and kind of being like, ‘Oh, who’s this kid?’ It’s so weird. Nothing’s changed. I haven’t changed. Everything’s still the same. It’s just all of a sudden they did a movie that didn’t cost a lot of money and we accidentally did really well. I don’t know if accidentally, that would be the wrong word. We loved the movie so much. It was a lot of fun to do. We just never imagined it was going to do as well as it did.
Q: Are there certain pet projects that you have now that you’re pushing?
CT: No, because right now I’m right in the middle of a project and it’s just a little bubble. I try to turn off my phone and really just focus on that. It’s a lot like God. It’s a very sentimental and it’s a movie about relationships again. I think that if you are constantly trying to think about the next thing when you’re in the middle of it, you’re not in the middle of it. You’re half there or partially there. But I don’t really have any pet projects yet. There are things that I eventually want to start writing and stuff like that but nothing I’ve even started yet.
Q: Thank you for your time this afternoon.
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