Your Periodic Reminder That Vin Diesel And Sir Michael Caine Are Friends

Some celebrity friendships make a lot of sense. Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, for example. Obviously those two guys are friends. They’re probably sharing a bungalow in Maui right now, or filming a commercial together, or filming a commercial together about bungalows. Other friendships are a little tougher to wrap your head around, at least without any context beyond the fact of its existence alone. I think my favorite example of this is Vin Diesel and Sir Michael Caine.

I had actually forgotten they were friends until recently, despite the thing where I actually wrote about their friendship three years ago. I blame this on a combination of my goldfish brain and the thing where it’s still kind of startling. But I was reminded of it recently when Vin posted a picture of himself at dinner with Michael Caine. I got all excited all over again. So now I’m reminding you again, too. That‘s all we’re doing here.

The timeline of it all is fascinating to me. You might see the phrase "Vin Diesel and Michael Caine are friends" and think “I bet they did a movie together and became friends on the set,” and then you might do some research and see they were in The Last Witch Hunter together in 2015, and then you might say “Wait, which movie was that again?” before you go find the trailer on YouTube and say “Oh, right, the one where Vin Diesel has a beard and a flaming sword,“ and then you might contemplate flaming swords for a while, and then you might come to the assumption that they’ve been friends since then.

And you would be wrong. Not about the flaming sword. Vin Diesel does very much have a flaming sword in the trailer for that movie. Here, look.

Where you were wrong is that they did not become friends because they made the movie together in 2015. They made the movie together because they had already been friends for 20 years. Here’s something Michael Caine said about Vin Diesel in the memoir he wrote earlier this year…

"Vin’s special. I love Vin. We first met at a dinner party about thirty years ago. I just instinctively greeted him with a hug and announced to the whole room, ‘This is my son!’"

And here's something Vin Diesel said back when the movie was released...

 "We always wanted to do something together. And when I finally got this project and called him, he thought I was calling him to be in Fast & Furious, and so his first response was, 'I don't even drive anymore! How are you gonna ask me to do Fast & Furious?'"

A few things here:

• If Michael Caine’s math is correct, that means their friendship started in the late 1990s, before any of the Fast & Furious movies came out
• Imagine Vin Diesel explaining a grand vision for the whole franchise in like 2010, right before Fast Five, with everything up to and including space travel and secret government organizations recruiting street racing international fugitives to save the world, and Michael Caine saying “Oh, that’s lovely!”
• Michael Caine must be so proud of him
• Actually, just imagine the two of them having any conversation about anything with their two very distinctive voices
• I can’t even comprehend how wonderful it must feel for Sir Michael Caine to embrace you at a dinner moments after you meet him and immediately declare you are his son
• The other people at the dinner were probably pretty confused
• It’s really very sweet and the jokes I’m making here should not take away from that

Anyway, because this is how my brain works, I jumped pretty much straight to “I wonder if Sir Michael Caine took Vin Diesel’s side in the much-publicized feud with The Rock.” I was having fun thinking about the two of them gossiping about The Rock over dinner and talking some crap about his movies. I was really enjoying it. And then I saw this quote from the same excerpt of Michael Caine’s memoir…

"He’s another really great person. Down-to-earth and warm. I love talking to these guys, hearing what they’ve been up to all over the world. They carry the torch!"

That is Michael Caine talking about The Rock.

Which leads me to this...

Sir Michael Caine, if you are reading this, please consider negotiating a truce between Vin Diesel and The Rock, on live television, possibly with one or more of the Muppets there as a buffer. I assume y‘all are still close.

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STUFF I CLICKED ON

— Vince Mancini wrote about how prestige television is changing and evolving away from nude scenes 

— Rodger Sherman wrote about maniacs doing high dives 

— Alan Sepinwall wrote about the South Park season premiere, which is almost certainly the first episode of television that the White House has commented on after the president was depicted as having a sentient micropenis

— Bryce Harper was in the news this week for cussing out the commissioner of baseball over the concept of a salary cap, which is as good a reason as any to link to Michael Baumann really exploring the limits of baseball writing on the subject 

— I do not watch The Gilded Age but this is making me reconsider that entire decision 

— Letterman remains just outrageously fed up

— Nintendo would like you to stop asking if Mario and Peach are a couple 

— Demi Adejuyigbe might still be the funniest person on the internet 

— Katy Perry almost got killed by her own huge mechanical butterfly

— I remain hyped for Coyote vs Acme

— Molly Gordon: confirmed blabbermouth

— from the people who brought you "uhhhh Max is HBO Max again, pretend it always was"

— “What happens if an asteroid hits the moon?”

— “Florida woman caught trying to carry turtles through airport security in her bra, TSA says”

— what in the damn world is going on at Chuck E Cheese restaurants this summer?

— please watch this to see what Bob Odenkirk says about Mario

Okay, that's it for this week. Please share and subscribe and contemplate friendship.