Channing Tatum’s appeared in three very different films in 2006. Tatum was a hottie in the teen movie She’s the Man, a dancer from the wrong side of the tracks in Step Up, and in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints he really mixes things up by playing an angry young man who uses his fists to solve problems. The popular young up-and-coming actor disappears into his Saints character, Antonio, and with this particular role really gets the opportunity to show there’s much more to him than just another handsome face.
Dito Montiel adapted and directed the film which is based on his memoir of the same name. The story begins with Dito (played by Robert Downey Jr), a writer living in LA, heading back to Astoria to visit the father he hasn’t seen in 15 years. The visit to his old neighborhood stirs up memories of the times he spent with his closest friends, many of whom are now either dead or in jail.
Transforming Into His Character: Tatum, who plays one of Dito's friends from his teenage years, actually lost a lot of weight in order to play Antonio. "Once I got there I realized that it wasn’t really about how big Antonio was," said Tatum. "...I just didn’t want to look that big compared to everybody else because everyone was pretty small - as far as the other kids. But physically, Antonio’s a…he can be very vicious. I’m not the type of guy to bark at you and be really ferocious and then try to kill you. I’m a guy who’s just going to smile at you until you don’t even know it and I’m all over you. That’s who I thought Antonio was. He’s not one to talk trash. He’s one to smile right at you and next thing you know, your life’s gone. That’s what was so beautiful to me. It wasn’t about pumping up and being tough. It’s about being this guy that you don’t even see coming.”
Working Out the Dialogue: Voice-overs, flashbacks and other techniques sometimes made it difficult for the actors to keep track of the dialogue in the film. “You don’t hear what some people say,” explained Tatum. “You’re wondering…and then you just feel it out. You feel the direction of the whole thing. Even though you might not have heard something clearly, you still know what we were all talking about. It was sort of written like that a little bit, but just the dialogue. Then, the next thing you know, in the middle of a sentence, he changes thoughts and says something else. It was written like that, but it wasn’t about what the words were. It just gave the gist of how he wanted us to make the lines. He was like, ‘Screw the writing of it. It’s s**t. Let’s figure out the scene.’”
Tatum said they’d play it a little differently from take to take. “We would rehearse it. We would figure out the timing of it. [Montiel] was saying, ‘It’s all about reaction. You say something to me, I’m going to listen to you and I’m going to talk back to you.’ You don’t want to ever really step on anybody’s lines. If you’re listening, I’m not going to be talking over you.”
On the Set with Chazz Palminteri: Tatum and Palminteri developed a close friendship while working on the film. Palminteri’s worked with a lot of young actors over the years and had high praise for Tatum, both as a person and as an actor. Palminteri said, “I saw he was very receptive and he wanted to learn. He wanted to hear things that I had to say and when I see that, I give more. First of all, I could see that he was extremely talented and I say that very honestly because I would say something to him and he would do it immediately. And then I would forget about it and he would do it again later. So I knew right away, I said, Oh, okay, he gets it. He really, truly understands and he gets it.’ Sometimes, some actors don’t want to hear anything. He was smart enough to understand, ‘Okay, let me learn.’”
Tatum recalls, “He definitely took me under his wing. I think you’re an idiot if you’re an actor and you don’t take the opportunity to learn something from someone that has had the experience and the talent that he has and done [films] through the years and people that he’s gotten to learn from. I’m a moron if I don’t take that opportunity and I think anybody that works with him is a moron if they don’t try to just listen to him, and just listen to what anybody has to say, for that matter. I can probably learn something from somebody who just had a job yesterday. They might not be as experienced. I think you learn something from anybody, but especially from someone that has such a deep level of experience.”
The Best Part of Starring in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints: “For me, I’d probably have to say the learning experience we were just talking about. But the opportunity to do a story that is this beautiful and to have the freedom that we did when we were doing it. It just felt so kind of organic. It all just worked.”
