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Victor Gojcaj Arrives

October 13, 2009

Recruited by filmmaker Tony Scott (Top Gun, Man on Fire, Crimson Tide) to star as one of subway hijacker John Travolta’s nasty partners in the thriller The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (available on DVD and Blu-ray from Sony on Nov. 3), Victor Gojcaj makes for an memorably imposing figure in his first-ever feature film. So much so, in fact, that the 6’4”, Detroit-born, Bronx-raised, Albanian descendant Gojcaj has already lined up his second project. And wouldn’t you know that it’s Tony Scott’s latest film, the action thriller Unstoppable!? It looks like the very successful, very prolific filmmaker has found something he likes in Gojcaj—just as the 26-year-old actor has with Scott.

 “When I first met Tony [Scott] at the Essex House in New York before Pelham, I didn’t know who he was,” Gojcaj (pronounced "Goy-Chai") told me in an interview last week. “I knew his movies Man on Fire and Déjà vu, but I didn’t know him. He was a really laid back guy when I met him---smoking a cigar, looking me over—but he had a lot of energy. And definitely a good soul.”

 

Cast as the hijacker Bashkim in Pelham, Gojcaj, a self-described “gym nut,” jumped into his first film, a $100 million-plus production, with enthusiasm and excitement to spare. Shooting in Manhattan and Queens, on the streets and in studio, Gojcaj said that he had no idea about the kind of hard work and dedication that went into making a big-budget studio film.  

 

“I worked 15 hour days, five or six days a week—everyone did. And I worked with some great people,” said Gojcaj. “John Travolta and [co-star] Denzel Washington were great—they helped me out and gave me pointers, like vets to a rookie.

 

“And Tony, he’s in his 60s and in just great physical condition,” he continued. Every day, he was the first guy on the set and the last guy to go home.”

 

Pelham’s climactic chase and shootout on the streets of New York are major action sequences that rival any of those from Scott’s previous films, particularly as they involves careening police cars, machine-gun fire, exploding taxis and Gojcaj being wired with squibs and getting riddled in a hail of bullets.

 

“Before the big shoot-out scene, Tony came to my trailer and said, ‘You guys have got only two takes.’ We were shooting in the middle of Manhattan and since 9/11, New York hasn’t really didn’t want people on the streets with guns,” recalls Gojcaj. “Tony got me pumped up and put me into the zone. He would tell me things like, ‘Vic, man, it’s you against all those guys. If you don’t kill them, they’re gonna kill you. It’s kill or be killed.’ That worked for me!”

 

Those squibs do hurt—when it was all over, my body was bruised up and I got a little glass into my head from when a taxi was exploding,” he added. “But it came out really nice, thank God.”

 

As for his latest gig, Gojcaj’s featured role Unstoppable, a thriller about a runaway train carrying toxic materials that is en route to wipe out a city if it isn’t stopped, finds him on the right side of the law, as part of the railway office team attempting to corral the lurching locomotive. Currently shooting in Pennsylvania and slated for theatrical release next fall, the film stars Denzel Washington (in his fifth collaboration with Scott), Rosario Dawson and Chris Pine.

“Tony reached out to me through his assistant and told me that it was going to be huge action movie and that he wanted me to be a part of it,” said Gojcaj. “Within a month-and-a-half, it was a deal. I have a nice role, a really decent role.”

 

And how about the possibilities of working with other filmmakers apart from Tony Scott?

 

“I’d like to see how that is, sure,” he laughed. But when you’ve worked with the best, how much better can it be?”

Posted by Laurence Lerman on October 13, 2009 | Comments (17)