Posted on: Monday, February 9, 2004
'Vegas' gets a piece of the Van Damme action
By Kate O'Hare
Advertiser News Services
Anybody who doesn't know what happens to action star Jean-Claude Van Damme when he guest-stars at 8 tonight on NBC's "Las Vegas" is urged now to go get a sandwich or read a "Survivor" recap or something. NBC's not shy about the plot twist — so here goes.
"He's funny," says series creator Gary Scott Thompson of Van Damme. "He has a sense of humor about himself — and we kill him. I don't think I'm giving anything away that the promos don't give away. We're going to have to put a disclaimer in, 'Jean-Claude Van Damme was not killed during this episode.' "
The episode is called "Die Fast, Die Furious," which is the name of the fictional movie Van Damme is shooting at the show's Montecito Casino (and a take-off on the name of the real movie "The Fast and the Furious," which Thompson wrote).
Van Damme's apparent demise leaves casino security experts Ed Deline (James Caan) and Danny McCoy (Josh Duhamel) scrambling to figure out what happened.
Looking tanned and fit at 43 (he says he runs into the equally buff Caan at a gym in Santa Monica), Van Damme plays himself on "Las Vegas," as he also did in a 1996 post-Super-Bowl episode of "Friends." But Van Damme insists that it's really fiction.
"I play a guy who is a movie star," he says, "... (who says) 'Doesn't work!' and 'I cannot do this!' This guy has no patience. He goes to his chair, demanding water. I hate that stuff. This is what I am, here, normal. Maybe they thought it was me, but I'm not like that, really. I'm very patient in my job, most days, very focused.
"When I come to do this, I see people having fun on the set — but me, since I came from that old school, I have a hard time ... it's not that I don't want to create fun, I want to do my job."
In one scene, Van Damme has to swing a playful kick at Duhamel.
"He missed me by that much," Duhamel says, holding his thumb and index finger about an inch apart. "The cool thing is, he knows how close he can (come)."
Van Damme is only one of several high-profile guest stars on the freshman action-drama, including Alec Baldwin, who was just nominated for a best supporting actor Academy Award for his role in "The Cooler."
Thompson said the show has had to turn prospective guest stars away.
"We get phone calls every day from people who want to be on the show, and there's no room for them. If we have a really great one, though, we'll find a way to get them in. Donald Trump, the other night, told me he wanted to be on the show, and I'm like, 'OK, fine, we'll figure it out.' Like Paris Hilton, when she wanted to do it, we said, 'Fine, we'll figure out how to get you on.' "
The ability of Thompson and his fellow writers and producers to adapt quickly was tested earlier this season, when Duhamel suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon while playing basketball. The injury and the resultant weeks on crutches and then a cane were incorporated into the show by having Danny recover from a bullet wound.
As soon as the extent of Duhamel's injury was known, Thompson shuffled the production schedule and called a meeting of the writers.
"By the time he went into surgery the next morning," Thompson says, "we had already written in the episode what was going to happen. We wrote him getting shot, then we wrote the denouement of the hospital where everybody comes to see him."
