Post by Patcat on Dec 25, 2004 2:38:50 GMT -5
An Exhausting Season for an Implacable TV Cop
December 25, 2004
By MARK LASSWELL
"Quiet, please." It's a common enough request on the set of
a television show. Usually, however, it booms out from a
disembodied off-camera voice, not the star.
But Vincent D'Onofrio, 45, who plays Robert Goren, the
implacable know-it-all detective on NBC's Sunday-night
series "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," is not inhibited by
television production etiquette. Ready to rehearse a scene
being shot in a kitchen of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel this
week, Mr. D'Onofrio, a Brooklyn native, quieted the crew
with the gently intimidating authority one might expect of
a former nightclub bouncer.
He was similarly assertive as the production continued:
Working opposite Chris Penn, a guest star who was playing a
celebrity chef, Mr. D'Onofrio overrode the production
team's kibitzing on how Mr. Penn should handle a knife
("Let Chris do what he wants to do"), called for rethinking
a bit of business with a plate ("It would be nice for him
actually to have something to do. Let's figure it out."),
and announced when the scene had been sufficiently
rehearsed ("All right. Let's shoot.").
"I like to stick my nose in everybody's business," Mr
D'Onofrio said during a break in a Waldorf reception room,
explaining both his own boundary-blurring approach to
filming and his affinity for Orson Welles, who also was
hardly a production wallflower.
Mr. D'Onofrio portrayed Welles in the movie "Ed Wood" in
1994, and last summer began working on a short film about
Welles, which will feature the actor as co-producer (with
his business partner, Ken Christmas), director and star.
The film, based on an event taken from Welles's life, is
the sort of demonstration tape that Hollywood often
requires of actors aspiring to direct feature films. It is
also the sort of demanding project that can dismay their
bosses - particularly when the moonlighting contributes to
the performer's being hospitalized with exhaustion, as Mr.
D'Onofrio was, twice, last month. Dick Wolf, the creator of
the "Law & Order" franchise, said he was "not thrilled" to
learn earlier this year that the linchpin of "Criminal
Intent" was spending the hiatus after the show's third
season working on the Welles film. "You really need all of
the strength you can get in the down time," Mr. Wolf said.
Two other factors made Mr. D'Onofrio a candidate for
fainting episodes that landed him in the hospital. One is
the workload he carries. Hourlong television drama series
are so notorious for their 14-hour days that lead actors
sometimes have contracts stipulating that they will appear
in a maximum of about 14 scenes per episode; Mr. D'Onofrio,
a movie character actor with little television experience
before signing up for "Criminal Intent," does not have that
contract provision. While "Law & Order" and "Law & Order:
Special Victims Unit" spread the work among an ensemble of
actors, "Criminal Intent" leans more toward the traditional
single-protagonist formula. Mr. D'Onofrio and his co-star,
Kathryn Erbe, who plays his partner, Detective Alexandra
Eames, appear in about 28 to 30 scenes per episode, the
show's executive producer, Rene Balcer, said, adding that
"Vincent has a huge number of lines."
The other factor was a simple matter of personality. "To
say that Vincent is hands-on would be an understatement,"
Mr. Wolf said. The producer could imagine the amount of
work that Mr. D'Onofrio was putting into editing and
finishing the Welles project at night after long days
filming this fall, he said, but "I didn't want to know."
When Mr. D'Onofrio was hospitalized and his health status
unclear while tests were being run, Mr. Wolf confronted the
possibility of having to change lead actors at a time when
the show was being sold into syndication to the Bravo and
USA cable channels for a record $1.92 million an episode.
(Both cable channels are owned by NBC Universal Inc.)
Replacing Mr. D'Onofrio was "a frightening prospect," Mr.
Wolf said, because it would have meant tampering with the
mysterious chemistry that bonds a show with a large
audience. Nonetheless, he made a list of candidates, "as
anybody in their right mind would have." One of the
possibilities included actor Chris Noth, who was a "Law &
Order" regular in the early 1990's and was scheduled to be
a "Criminal Intent" guest star in January.
Despite the anxiety about Mr. D'Onofrio's health, a certain
element of comedy was injected into the situation by a
gossip report tying his collapse to his emotional
devastation over the outcome of the presidential election.
Mr. D'Onofrio laughed about the report, accepting it as a
sign of the show's prominence. (This week he was chuckling
over the January issue of Mad magazine, which features a
parody called "Lewd & Disorder: Criminal Malcontent.") When
he fainted a second time, a running joke on the set chalked
it up to Condoleezza Rice's nomination as secretary of
state.
When Mr. D'Onofrio was given a clean bill of health, albeit
with a medical scolding, the crisis about finding a
replacement for him passed. He was sheepish when discussing
the experience. "I work a lot of hours and I get paid well
for it," he said. "I wouldn't dare put myself in the martyr
position. I think my body just said: 'Too bad. We're going
to rest for awhile.' "
As he spoke, Mr. D'Onofrio occasionally took a drag on a
Camel Light cigarette, undeterred by New York's strict
antismoking laws. "That's the one thing about being
successful." he said. "They let you smoke anywhere you
want. Which is not good for your health."
As a television star, he may be free to smoke but he is not
so free to move around his hometown without being stopped
by "Law & Order" fans. Mr. D'Onofrio was less likely to be
waylaid for autographs during his nearly two decades as a
movie character actor, not least because it was often hard
to recognize him from role to role. His résumé includes
playing the hapless Army recruit who goes into a murderous
rage in Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" in 1987, an
insectoid creature in "Men in Black" in 1997, Abbie Hoffman
in "Steal This Movie" and a serial killer in the
science-fiction thriller "The Cell," both in 2000.
He had already been acting for several years, Mr. D'Onofrio
said, before he realized why he seemed to have a knack for
slipping easily into characters. His parents divorced when
he was young, and he divided much of his time between
living with his mother in Florida and his grandfather in
New York. "When you're a child, you're able to assimilate
so easily into any situation," Mr. D'Onofrio said. "You
even start talking like the people you're around. I wasn't
conscious that I was so good at that until I started to
truly feel like an actor."
His newest role is as the television star who avoids
overextending himself. That may prove a challenge. With
"Criminal Intent" shutting down for a holiday break, Mr.
D'Onofrio dutifully planned a vacation in Australia. But he
vowed that, once the airplane trip halfway around the world
was out of the way, he was just going to lie on a beach.
www.nytimes.com/2004/12/25/arts/television/25law.html?ex=1104959619&ei=1&en=1adf5276a9589565
Patcat
