An oral history of vincentdonofrio’s perfect Men in Black 'sugar water' scene, by rachel_handler
Photo: Sony Pictures Approximately once a week, I think about a single scene from 1997’s Men in Black. Early in the film, we’re introduced to Vincent D’Onofrio as Edgar, an upstate New York farmer living in an Upside-Down version of the American Gothic house, who berates his long-suffering wife for screwing up dinner.
I loved the story because the basic concept is we don’t have a clue. And that’s the way I feel about everything.Sonnenfeld: D’Onofrio’s name came up early with the casting director, and I thought he was great. I had a meeting with him and asked him a lot of questions about Full Metal Jacket, which he’d done with Stanley Kubrick. It was so fun to hear how Kubrick worked: He made Vincent come to London and drive out to his estate once a week for months and just gain weight.
We went to the set and did a take, and he cleared the set after that. He said, “So this is what you’re gonna do? That’s the voice?” And I was like, “Yeah! That’s what I got.” And he said something like, “It’s gonna be great, or it’s gonna be a complete and utter failure.” I trusted Barry, and he trusted me. It was a little scary, but we did another take, and then we did another take, and I got more and more comfortable.
D’Onofrio: I was combining two voices: George C. Scott’s and John Huston’s. The first scene we shot was the one where I come in and kill the alien at lunch — where I say, “Pond scum” — and it really launched me into that voice. [Imitates Huston]: “Pond scum!” I’m sure you’ve seen Dr. Strangelove. George C. Scott has this particular raspy voice — he had it his whole career, even when he was younger. It got more and more pronounced and scratchy as he got older.
D’Onofrio: I was so into what Rick was doing. He’s such an artist. His original designs are very close to what we ended up doing for Edgar. He’d actually take a part of my cheek and glue it to another area of my face so it pulled my entire face up — it was a trip. They’d put prosthetics on top of that. I remember Rick saying to me that because I’d lost all that weight after the Kubrick shoot, it was easier to [manipulate my face].
Sonnenfeld: We were about an hour and a half north of L.A., though it was supposed to be upstate New York. We found a place that looked like an upstate New York farm, a crappy farm with one cow. We dug that big hole.
Sonnenfeld: The concept of an action-adventure comedy is an oxymoron. Almost without fail, the comedy kills the reality of the action, or the action has to stop for some sort of funny line. And it doesn’t make sense. If the action is too scary or too gross or graphic, it kills the comedy. It’s a very hard line. I remember seeing Will Smith in Hancock. I loved the first two-thirds of it. I was so jealous I didn’t get to direct it. It was funny, charming.
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