Mark Wahlberg Talks to Tim Nasson about Four Brothers
New York City – It was thirty-four years ago, June 5th, 1971, to be exact, that Mark Wahlberg was born in the poor, working class section of Boston known as Dorchester. Wahlberg was the last of nine kids, (six boys, and three girls), his mother would give birth to – he, and his brothers Robert and Donnie are the result of his mother’s third marriage.
Life, at least the first half of it, was no picnic for Mark Wahlberg. The scrawny Irish ‘bad boy’ was just that. Bad, literally.
He was so mentally tortured and untamed that at the age of fourteen he dropped out of school and became what so many other children raised in tough, lower class environments become – criminal.
Mark Wahlberg, before he was even an adult – age eighteen – was arrested myriad times for everything from assault and violent hate crimes to drug dealing and stealing.
One judge finally had had enough of Wahlberg’s antics and sentenced the trouble making tough boy to 50 days at Deer Island Penitentiary. Wahlberg was only 16.
“Some kids would say ‘fuck this,'” says Wahlberg, “These are the cards I was dealt. This is what my life will amount to. What can I do about it?”
I had the chance to sit with Wahlberg on a recent, early – 9:00am – Sunday morning in a suite overlooking Central Park South in New York City’s Essex House. Although the hour was early, Wahlberg was wide awake and ready to answer – honestly – any and all questions I had for him.
“Not to sound like a saint, because I am still far from one,” reveals Wahlberg, leaning back in his chair, wearing blue jeans, a Red Sox baseball cap and a futuristic Nike wrist watch, “But those two months in jail were where I had an epiphany. I knew that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life locked up. I might have been acting like an animal but I didn’t want to be a caged one. I started lifting weights in jail and went from 130lbs of scrawniness to 170lbs of muscle that year.”
People started to take notice of five foot, eight inch Wahlberg. In a good way. His brother Donnie, who was riding the success of his group New Kids on the Block offered his little bro a chance to join them.
“That wasn’t for me,” says Mark. “It was too squeaky clean. Yeah, I wanted to cut the criminal shit out but I didn’t want to be bouncing around on stage with five or six pretty boys, either.”
Another opportunity soon arose and Wahlberg jumped on it. Donnie, knowing Mark didn’t want to join NKOTB, set up a meeting between Mark and some record producers he was friendly with, having full confidence that his little brother had the same ability as he to bounce around on stage and captivate audiences. The meeting went smoothly and Wahlberg was signed to record a rap album and christened himself “Marky Mark,” and hired a posse of dancers and back up singers, mostly black, which he named “The Funky Bunch.”
Gay billionaire David Geffen took an instant liking to Wahlberg, (in a non-sexual way), and talked his friend Calvin Klein into signing Wahlberg, who at the time was in his early twenties, to an exclusive underwear modeling contract and from that moment on, Marky Mark, or Mark Wahlberg, whatever you like, was seen on billboards across the world – arm and legs muscles bulging and another one, too, the one that was under the only piece of clothing he wore on the billboards, and magazine and newspaper ads.
I remind Wahlberg that I remembered seeing him backstage – at the Kiss-108FM concerts, which were wildly popular in Boston during the early 90s – when he was “Marky Mark,” surrounded by 350lbs, six foot, six inch, black ‘body guards,’ with a lollipop in his mouth, and baseball cap on backwards, shorts falling off his ass. Wahlberg turns beet red, and almost falls off his chair which he is leaning back on when I bring him down memory lane. “That was so long ago. I was so much different. I was even known to drop my pants on stage.” One of those years, 1992, was also the year that Wahlberg was named one of People Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful.
Mark Wahlberg may have dropped his pants on stage but went on to dropping his underwear in one of the best movies he has starred in, to date, ‘Boogie Nights,” which was based on the 70s porn star Dirk Diggler. “I certainly wouldn’t have mind showing my own cock in the movie,” laughs Wahlberg, “but I think the producers and director had the authentic Dirk Diggler dick in mind when they wrote the scene. So I had on a strap-on, well, actually, a glue-on when it came to the money shot scene.”
Wahlberg is one of the few male kid singers cum actors who have succeeded in the movie business.
“The music business was getting me into trouble because of my big mouth,” admits Wahlberg, who was accused of being homophobic and racist by some journalists around the world. “But I liked my lifestyle, I guess, so decided to try a change of career and took up Penny Marshall of her offer on ‘Renaissance Man,’ [back in 1994 and Wahlberg’s first movie], and wouldn’t think about anything other than acting, now. I love it.”
And it shows on and off screen.
Wahlberg seems to have settled down – he has settled into a $5 million Beverly Hills mansion with his mother, girlfriend and two year old daughter. Yet, he still has his prankster and goofy side. After interviewing Andre 3000 and Tyrese Gibson later in the morning, both who are singers, one more popular than the other, and both who worked with Wahlberg on “Four Brothers,” [opening in theaters August 12th), it was evident that Wahlberg is still a class clown – and has music in his blood. “All he would do was lay farts during the shooting of the movie,” laughs Tyrese, who also was confident that Marky Mark would make a comeback. “I keep telling him to come back to the music, just like you hear on the TV commercials, ‘Come back to Jamaica.'”
Whether Wahlberg returns to music or not remains to be seen. “I don’t think so,” says Wahlberg in all seriousness.
Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, Andre Benjamin, aka Andre 3000, and newcomer, hottie Garrett Hedlund star together in “Four Brothers,” as actual brothers in the literal sense, not the ghetto sense. Their characters’ mother adopts them and the two white and two black boys grow up together, go off on their own, only to reunite when their mother is shot point blank in a hit.
Vowing to avenge her murder, director John Singleton (Boyz ‘n the Hood) juxtaposes present day Detroit slums, where their white, Irish mother lived and was murdered, and flashbacks to the kids’ childhoods. The movie, though, is not just action and blood, it is male bonding, barrels of laughs, yes, really, and replete with memorable soundtrack.
One of the funniest scenes in the movie involves three of the four brothers sharing the bathroom in one of their houses. Wahlberg’s character is the one sitting on the toilet. “That was such an easy scene to do. Growing up, we had one bathroom in our house and there were always at least six or seven people around ay any given time. I wasn’t uncomfortable in the least shooting that scene,” laughs Wahlberg.
Wahlberg is hard at work in NYC at the moment, finishing up Martin Scorsese’s latest gangster film, “The Departed,” co-starring fellow Bostonian Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson. “We just finished shooting exteriors and locations in Boston,” where the movie is based, “and are now finishing the interior shots here in NYC.”
In addition to his acting responsibilities, which include the upcoming sequel to “The Italian Job,” the aptly titled “The Brazilian Job,” since it will be set and shot in Brazil, Wahlberg also produces the popular HBO series “Entourage,” which is loosely, and he emphasizes the word loose, on his life. “I couldn’t really do too much of my own stuff and experiences with ‘Entourage’ because I would really get into trouble if I put that on screen. I would have to kill a lot of people first,” says Wahlberg.
Speaking of killing people, when I ask Wahlberg what he would do if someone assassinated his mother and the police were so incompetent, as they are in ‘Four Brothers,” that they couldn’t solve the murder, would he try to solve it and if so, murder whomever killed his mother. “I think most people would. Wouldn’t they?” he asks.
On another note, related to Wahlberg’s soul, I bring up his brush with death. Wahlberg was ticketed on American Airlines’ Flight 11 the day it slammed into the World Trade center. He was visiting family in Boston and was scheduled to return to LA that Tuesday. Instead, at the last minute, the night before, actually, he decided to drive up to Toronto from Boston to go to a screening of a friend’s movie at the Toronto Film Festival and its after party. “I don’t really think about it that much,” says a serious Wahlberg. “I am very thankful to God that I am still alive. But what about the thousands of completely innocent people that were not so fortunate that day?”
Two hours after I finish sitting and chatting with Wahlberg I bump into him as he walks into the lobby of the Essex House. We walk to the elevator together. “Not many interviews this morning?” I ask. “No, I had a few more after you,” he laughs, “and I have a lot more this afternoon. But I had to go to church. Can’t miss Sunday Mass.
