Larry Zito: John Diehl

[Pink Flaming0]

From the book "The Making Of Miami Vice" by MacGregor and MacGregor (I recently purchased)His place on Miami Beach is small, comfortable, and pleasantly cluttered. The NewYork Times is stacked on the floor next to the coffee table where there's a copy of lastweek's TV Guide with Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas on the cover.A fascination with boxing is evident everywhere. There's a poster from a MadisonSquare Garden bout taped on the wall. A pair of pink boxing gloves hang on the back ofa chair. A purple boxing robe with orange trim is pinned to the wall. On the back iswritten: DIEHL'S DEAL. Boxing, after all, is one of Diehl's deals.On December 14, 1985, he made his pro debut as a middleweight boxer and knockedout his opponent, Deboe Pickering, in the first round. He trained four months for thefight, working out two hours a day at a gym on Fifth Street on Miami Beach. Since thefight, he has had a lesson from Roberto Duran when the boxer guested on an episode ofVICE."Boxing is really the martial arts of the Western hemisphere. And it's an art form. Iremember an article on boxing by Joyce Carol Oates that I read a few years ago in TheNew York Times Magazine. She described it as something with soul, poetry. That's how Ithink of it," he says when he finally sits down. "And I liked having to quit smoking andget in shape."A quiet, somewhat diffident man, John Diehl readily admits he finds it difficult totalk about himself. "It's a lot easier talking about other people. What do you want toknow about Don? That's what everyone asks."He laughs, gets up and walks across the room. He picks up a hardbound bookwithout a name on the cover and returns. It's a prop to get him started. He flips it open,revealing pages and pages of small, precise handwriting. "I've kept a daily journal forten years. I usually jot notes at the end of a day and then make entries the next morning.It's become an obsessive habit."He turns over a few pages. "I picked it up from my dad. He's a retired civil engineerwho at heart is a historian. He's been keeping a journal for forty years. That's how Iknow that on the night I was born, there was a full moon," he laughs.Instead of talking about what he writes about his life, he describes the type ofjournal he uses. "I was using regular notebooks, but I switched to a bound journal." Heuses the same brand as his father. "If the old man uses it, I figure it's the best kindavailable." He snaps the book closed.When pressed about what he has to say on an average day, he sits back and smiles."Sometimes I get stuck on the mundane. A lot of times, it's stuff like, '6:30 cafe cubano,feed Panzy (his cat). He acted a little weird this morning. Was at the set at 8. Sat by myself forthree hours.' That sort of thing."The best way to get to know John Diehl, it seems, is by seeing him in his ownenvironment, and by looking at him through his VICE character—Larry Zito. There'smore than a bit of Diehl in the offbeat undercover cop. The sort of mishaps that are apart of Zito's life are also happenstance in Diehl's.While Diehl is attempting to shed some light on himself, he can't seem to turn on theceramic alligator head lamp on a nearby end table. When he flicks the switch, nothinghappens. He walks across the room and tries another lamp. It doesn't work, either.Earlier he mentioned that his air conditioning has been on the blink for two days.Minor matters. On VICE, Zito's house burned down. Just another incident in a day inthe life of....When he was hired for the part, the character wasn't fully developed, so he wrote abio on who Zito is, imbuing the character with traces of himself. John finds the bio sheetin a drawer. Here is what it says:Larry is thirty-four years old, born and raised on Staten Island. The Statue of Liberty is veryimportant to him-It's a figure from his childhood and background and as he's gotten older, he'srealized and appreciated it as a symbol of freedom and liberty.Larry's favorite color is emerald green. His favorite food is gnocci (his father made it great.)Gnocci is a potato noodle—something like the combination of his ancestry—his mom is Irish andhis dad is Italian.Larry is well organized. He used to be a furniture mover so he's used to making lists, andputting everything in its place. He's quite intolerant of disorganization.His mother's brother—his favorite uncle—was a cop in New York City. He was Larry's idol.As a kid, he would go to the office with him and walk the beat with him. As he got older, he didsome drugs until his little brother overdosed and died. At that point, Larry decided to be a cop. Itseemed right and good that he could help and be a service to people. He became very anti-drugand eventually specialized in narcotics.Zito was married once, divorced. He now has a girlfriend. They live separately in a hard-tobetogether, hard-not-to-be-together relationship. His apartment is in the South Beach deco area.Zito has been a cop for five years, first as a patrolman in NY. He has been in Miami twoyears and started in Vice with Switek. He likes VICE—the hours, being outside, the freedom,meeting new people, the adventure and intrigue. He hates sitting in a car surveillance for hours.He drinks too much coffee. He drives a blue-green '70 Fleetwood Cadillac named Ricky.That's Zito's life. His alter-ego's life began in Cincinnati, Ohio where he was born onMay 1, 1950. John is the only boy in a family with four girls. He lived in New York for awhile before he had any aspirations to be an actor. There he worked in hospitals, droveand packed trucks, bartended, and studied art (pen-and-ink and sculpture are hisfavorite mediums). He moved to Los Angeles in 1976 and for awhile had his ownfurniture moving business, in which he specialized in delivering antiques. "EddieOlmos was doing something similar about the same time. I'd heard about him, but hewas just getting out, making it as an actor, as I was starting my business."In LA he began taking acting workshops and voice lessons, learning the craft on hisown. "I studied acting just as fervently as I did art. And I was lucky. In 1980, I startedgetting good parts."Those parts included feature films like City Limits, Shadow of Love, Stripes, Angel,Escape From New York and Leon's Case, which won the Grand Prize for short film at theChicago Film festival in 1982. His TV experience has included guest spots on Hill StreetBlues, Cassie & Co., and Cagney & Lacey, as well as A Rumor of War, Cry For Love andAmbush Murders. His theater credits have included a dozen plays that range fromSartre's No Exit to Endgame.Even back then there was more than a little Zito in John. He had an important role inCity Limits, and thinks it's a good movie. But as might happen to Zito, were he an actor,John has never been able to find it showing anywhere. "I keep watching for it. I'd reallylike to see it sometime."Finding VICE, of course, is no problem. The show and its reruns, in fact, are likely tobe seen on TV for years to come. Initially, he had some reservations about trying out forthe show. "I didn't really want to do TV, but the money they offered for the pilot wastoo tempting to pass up."Like Zito, John drives a 1970 greenish blue Fleetwood Cadillac he bought for $1,200.His girlfriend, an actress, lives in LA, and he finds it lonely being away from her. Hedoesn't do drugs and doesn't drink. He's also as self-contained and wryly humorous asthe character he portrays."Last year, Zito's place burned down and he moved in with Switek and hisgirlfriend, right? Well, what's happened since? We never heard. He can't STILL beliving with them." He speaks as if referring to an old, eccentric friend with whom he hastemporarily fallen out of touch.The exposure VICE has provided Diehl doesn't seem to have changed him verymuch. When asked what he'd do if he weren't acting, he muses a moment. "I couldalways go back to packing trucks. I was good at that."The regular income from VICE is nice, but he doesn't spend much of it. "I don'tspend money on dates or anything. I don't drink and don't do drugs. I don't fly firstclass when I travel, and I don't have a manager. Sometimes I'll go out and buy a pair ofpants, and that's a big rush," he laughs.However, he now takes taxis to the airport instead of driving and when he's in NewYork, he doesn't bother riding the subway anymore. "The income has made a differencethat way. I guess I finally understand the meaning of the saying, 'Time is money."The fact is, now that he has money, he has little time."I like to travel, but with episodic TV, you don't have the time for it." One of hissisters, married to an Ecuadorian, lives in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and during the secondseason Christmas hiatus, Diehl visited her. The trip was obviously one of his highlightsof the last two years.He mentions a book called The Sheltered Sky, by Paul Bowles, and his face lights up."The man's a fantastic writer, a kind of expatriate, I guess, who lived for years inMorocco. All his books are set there." Morocco, where Diehl rented a house for a while,holds a certain mystique for him. When he speaks of it, you sense the free-spiritednomad in him, the man who would be just as content in a tent on a Moroccan desert, asweep of black sky above him, as in an apartment on Miami Beach.He rises in a single, fluid motion from the rug, where he's been sitting, strokingPanzy, and offers his visitors glasses of water. "I'm afraid there's not much else in thefridge. Oh, wait, I forgot," he adds, and brings out a platter. "One of my fans made thisgreat cake and left it downstairs in the lobby. You gotta try this stuff."Occasionally, when a fan finds out where he lives, gifts like the cake arrive. It's notreally that hard to find him. He's listed in the phone book. "Sometimes I get crank calls.Usually, it's somebody who wants to know what Don is doing. Gross, huh?"But more often than not, his fans send letters. He brings out a box of fan mail he hasto answer—letters from Canada and England, from California to Georgia, from kidsand flight attendants and cops."I feel responsible for making personal replies. If it's a first letter, I usually send anautographed photo and a short note." He slices pieces of cake, tears off sheets of papertowels, sets out glasses and two bottles of water. Then he reaches into the box andshuffles through a handful of letters. He holds up one. "A repeat. This is from Lisa, I bet.I can tell from the handwriting."He pops a bite of cake in his mouth. Panzy, sidling like a crab because of hisnumerous injuries over the years, strolls over to investigate, sniffs at the cake, and Diehllaughs. "You won't like it, Panz." And sure enough, the cat seems to give the equivalentof an indignant snort and wanders back to his spot by the window.Part of the attraction of Zito and Switek is that the two actors improvise. They oftenadd their own lines, altering the script to fit their characters and sense of humor. In anepisode called "Payback," about a crooked cop and $3 million in missing drug money,Zito and Switek are in the bug van listening in on a conversation. Even though it wasn'tin the script, Switek turns to Zito and asks what he would do with three million."I'd put a chunk of it in the State of Liberty," deadpans Zito, the guy who grew up onStaten Island."You'd give your buddy some, wouldn't you?" Switek asks.Zito looks at the man he's cooped up with on surveillance day after day. "I guess."Diehl explains he and Talbott are allowed a free rein to do just about anything theywant. "Our characters don't usually push the story along, so no one ever says much tous about what we can or can't do. When I grew my hair long and wore a beard, no onesaid anything about it. Then when I cut it off, no one said anything, either."He's even broke VICE's color taboo and no one has complained. In "Sons & Lovers,"there's a scene in the OCB when the cops are having their strategy meeting. Diehl isgetting his radio set up and his gun loaded and is carrying a brown duffel bag."That brown bag is mine and I've been using it on the show for two seasons. They say brownisn't allowed on the show, but no one's ever said anything about the bag. I just keepdoing stuff, like a kid, I guess." He pauses. "Actors are children and presidents, too.He considers Michael Talbott a friend, and occasionally visits him at his apartmentin Coconut Grove. But he doesn't go out as much as he did the first season when he,Talbott, and Gregory Sierra, the original lieutenant on the show, used to carouse aboutMiami together."I always got stuck driving. Michael would ride shotgun doing his running comedyroutine and Greg would sit in the back seat singing along with every tune on the radio.He always knew all the words. It was crazy. Now, me and Panz spend a lot of timetogether. He's my buddy."Unlike some of the other VICE stars, Diehl hasn't used his exposure to make incomeon the side. He did try a car show with Talbott one weekend, but says that kind of thingisn't his style. He's more concerned about his future as an actor. He excuses himself fora moment while he returns several phone calls. He's trying to line up work for theseason's hiatus— either a feature film or a play.He returns to the living room, munches on another slice of cake and walks over tothe window. In the moonlight, the wide beach stretches gold to the painted sea."Even though this place is small, I like living here because of the view." Panzy leapsup onto the counter beneath the window and rubs up against Diehl. "Poor Panz. He'sgone from living in LA where he had to deal with coyotes to being a retiree on MiamiBeach," he says.Because of tax laws, it's to his advantage to maintain a home base somewhere otherthan Miami. For the last two years, that base has been LA, but now he's planning onmaking it New York. He hasn't lived in Manhattan in ten years and would like tochallenge himself by working there as an actor. While he has enjoyed episodic TV, hedoesn't think he would ever do it again.There's a sort of ennui about him now. He sits down, gets up again to show hisvisitors the photographs of his girlfriend in the next room. "She's a good actress," hesays. "She's done some features, like Frances, with Jessica Lange, and guests slots onTV." He points at a black and white photo of her. She's wearing a wide brimmed hatpulled low over one side of her face; her dark eyes speak paragraphs. There's a Garbomystique about her. In another photo, taken on Halloween, she and Diehl are dressedlike goblins. It's evident he isn't satisfied with the long distance arrangement."You hear that Miami is the new Hollywood, but it just isn't so. My girlfriend had aguest spot on VICE and lived here for five months afterwards, but there just wasn't anywork. If you want to do films, you've got to be in LA and if you want to do theater,New York is the place."

[Sjako]

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[Matt5]

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[Matt5]

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[Pink Flaming0]

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[Matt5]

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