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From Wikipedia
Born: Vincent Anthony Vaughn, March 28, 1970 (1970-03-28), Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
Occupation: Actor
Years active: 1989–present
Vincent Anthony "Vince" Vaughn (born March 28, 1970) is an American film actor. He began acting in the late 1980s, appearing in minor television roles before experiencing wider recognition with the 1996 movie, Swingers. He has since appeared in a number of Hollywood films, mostly comedies. Considered a member of the "Frat Pack", he is known for his fast-talking, sarcastic delivery.
Biography
Early life
Vaughn was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Vernon Lindsy Vaughn, a salesman for a meat company, and Sharon Eileen (née DePalmo), a
Canadian-born real estate agent and stockbroker once ranked as one of the United States' top money managers by Bloomberg Wealth Manager magazine.[1][2]
He has two older sisters, Valerie and Victoria. He was raised "both Protestant and Catholic" by his Catholic mother and Protestant father.[3][4][5]
He has Italian, Irish, German and Lebanese ancestry.[6] His parents divorced in 1991. He grew up in Buffalo Grove, Illinois where he played football
and wrestled.[7] He then moved to Lake Forest, Illinois, where he graduated from Lake Forest High School in 1988, with award winning writer Dave
Eggers, sports agent Rob Pelinka (represents stars such as Kobe Bryant), fellow actor Don Tiffany and famous international photographer, Michael
Stahlschmidt . He developed an interest in theater at a young age. He decided to
become an actor in 1987, after being involved in a car accident which derailed his chance at athletic success.
Career
In 1988, Vaughn was cast in a Chevrolet television commercial, and subsequently moved to Hollywood. Although he appeared in the 1989 season of
the television series, China Beach and in three CBS Schoolbreak Specials (in 1990), he was a struggling actor and faced many rejections. His first
film role was 1993's Rudy, but Vaughn did not receive wider success until his role in 1996's Swingers. Swingers was released in July 1996, and
became a successful independent film. Afterwards, director Steven Spielberg cast Vaughn in the blockbuster The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which
gave him increased exposure. From there, Vaughn went on to appear in several films of varied success, including playing Norman Bates in the 1998
remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. In 2000, he starred in The Cell with Jennifer Lopez, and in 2001, appeared in Made, another film penned by
Favreau. Vaughn also appeared in Dwight Yoakam's directorial debut movie South of Heaven, West of
Hell.
Since Vaughn's role in the successful 2003 comedy, Old School, his profile skyrocketed, and his notoriety improved. In 2004, he appeared alongside Ben Stiller in the hit films Starsky & Hutch and Dodgeball, and had roles in 2005's Be Cool, Thumbsucker and Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
Also in 2005, Vaughn starred alongside Owen Wilson in the comedy Wedding Crashers, which grossed over $200 million at the United States box office. After this series of roles, Vaughn was dubbed one of the Hollywood Frat Pack, a group of actors who frequently co-star in film comedies. In 2006, Vaughn starred with Jennifer Aniston in the comedy-drama The Break-Up (also with Favreau).
In 2007, Vaughn starred in a comedy called Fred Claus, in which he played the sarcastic, wild-at-heart older brother of Santa Claus (Paul Giamatti). Fred Claus was directed by David Dobkin, who previously directed Vaughn in Wedding Crashers, and co-starred Elizabeth Banks and Kevin Spacey. Next, he momentarily moved from comedy to drama in Sean Penn's critically acclaimed film Into the Wild, a film about the adventures of Christopher McCandless, which was also a best-selling book by Jon Krakauer. He played the role of Wayne Westerberg opposite Emile Hirsch as McCandless.
On October 15, 2008, TV Guide reported that Vaughn has signed on to co-star in Couples Retreat, a comedy chronicling four couples who partake in therapy sessions at a tropical island resort. Malin Akerman will play his wife.[8]
Personal life
Vaughn dated two of his The Break-Up co-stars: actress Joey Lauren Adams during the filming of 1999's A Cool, Dry Place[9] and Jennifer Aniston
between 2005 and 2006. His relationship with Aniston began the summer after her separation from husband Brad Pitt. Due to the media firestorm surrounding
it, along with Pitt's relationship with Angelina Jolie, Vaughn and Aniston's relationship was showered with tabloid attention. Rumors about the
relationship included the couple moving to Australia,[10] and a possible engagement. In the fall of 2006, Vaughn filed a lawsuit against three
tabloid magazines, accusing them of falsely claiming that he had been unfaithful to Aniston, thus tacitly confirming their relationship.[11] By
December 2006, both Vaughn's and Aniston's reps confirmed that they had broken up. On March 5, 2009, it was announced that Vince and Canadian realtor
Kyla Weber are engaged. Weber's father confirmed the story[12] Vaughn is also a
registered Republican, having voted for George W. Bush in both elections in 2000 and 2004 as well as John McCain in 2008.
In 2001, while filming Domestic Disturbance, Vaughn was arrested for getting in a fight with a man coming out of a bar. Vaughn counts Hollywood's Velvet Margarita Cantina as one of his favorite local haunts.
Vaughn is also an avid fan of the Chicago Bears, the Chicago Cubs and the University of Notre Dame, all of which are featured prominently in his film The Break-Up. Similarly, Vaughn played a small part in the movie Rudy.
Vaughn is part of the U.S.O. tour. He has visited soldiers all over Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Iraq. He lives in Chicago.
Awards
2006
People's Choice Awards, USA Favorite On-Screen Match-Up for: Wedding Crashers (2005) Shared with: Owen Wilson
MTV Movie Awards Best On-Screen Team for: Wedding Crashers (2005) Shared with: Owen Wilson
Teen Choice Awards Movies - Choice Chemistry for: The Break-Up (2006) Shared with: Jennifer Aniston
ShoWest Convention: Special Award - Comedy Star of the Year (2006)
2007
33rd People's Choice Awards: Favorite Leading Man
Spike TV's First Annual "Guys Choice" Guy Movie Hall of Fame" for Swingers along with Jon Favreau
Filmography
Rudy
At Risk
Swingers
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
The Locusts
Psycho
Clay Pigeons
A Cool, Dry Place
Return to Paradise
The Cell
The Prime Gig
South of Heaven, West of Hell
Domestic Disturbance
Zoolander
Made
I Love Your Work
Old School
Blackball
Starsky & Hutch
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Thumbsucker
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Wedding Crashers
Be Cool
Paparazzi
The Break-Up
Into the Wild
Fred Claus
Wild West Comedy Show
Four Christmases
Couples Retreat
References
1. "Rush & Molloy" (column), "Vince Had to Deal with Mother of All Swindles". New York Daily News, June 16, 2006.
2. Parry, Ryan (2005-08-29). "Vince was a scrawny class clown. Girls didn't fancy him; EXCLUSIVE: SHY PAST OF JEN'S NEW MAN". The Mirror.
Retrieved on 2007-12-10.
3. Webb, Cynthia L. (1998-11-03). "VINCE VAUGHN: SERIEL KILLER". Associated Press.
4. "Vince Vaughn: Playing Kooks is OK with Him". Associated Press at VinceVaughn.com. Retrieved on May 24 2006.
5. Washingtonpost.com: Live Online
6. ""Vince Vaughn: Company"". Vincev.com. Retrieved on May 24 2006.
7. "People Magaine:Vince Vaughn". People Magazine at people.com.. Retrieved on March 10 2009.
8. Trio of Ladies Going on Couples Retreat" TV Guide. October 15, 2008. Retrieved on October 15, 2008.
9. ""Vaughn and Adams Reunited for The Break-Up"". ContactMusic.com.
10. ""Aniston and Vaughn to Move to Australia?"". Hollywood.com.
11. "Vince Vaugh to tabloids: Watch it"". CNN.com. Retrieved on October 18 2006.
“You don't worry about being liked. You have to be yourself.” - Vince Vaughn
“Whenever you're scared of something, don't let that define you. We all feel it, but step up.” - Vince Vaughn
“If I'm not interested in a woman, I'm straight-forward. Right after sex, I usually say, 'I can't do this anymore. Thanks for coming over!'” - Vince Vaughn
“The last book I read was the book I've been rereading most of my life, The Fountainhead.” - Vince Vaughn
“I'm into the Play Station now and I just got the Super Nintendo. I like the sports a lot, like hockey and football. I recently got into these solve-a-mystery games. They're like a bad drug. They just chuck two weeks out of your life.” - Vince Vaughn
“Part of the reason I did this is I love interacting with the audience and it's live, and I love to see people, go places and interact with people, ... In doing movies, you're sort of on a set, doing scenes, but there is a big part about getting up in front of a crowd and interacting that I really enjoy and haven't done in a long time.” - Vince Vaughn
“I thought it would be fun to start in Hollywood and take a road trip to a lot of the great places in California.” - Vince Vaughn
“My sense of humor has served me well.” - Vince Vaughn
“You know, you can't take it too serious, ... They're looking to sell papers. Create a story. I don't take it personal.” - Vince Vaughn
“Nothing wrong with having pretty girls around, it always makes the day go faster.” - Vince Vaughn
Vince Vaughn on His Character: “I kind of thought of always like the friend, the big lovable friend who kind of loves life. Like loves to eat, like a big kid. I just thought of myself as a big, innocent kid. I really do love weddings. Yes, I want to meet the girls and that’s exciting, but I want to go with my friend and I want to laugh and I want to go eat cake and I want to dance and I want to make the wedding fun. I want them to have a good time at the wedding. I’m not trying to ruin their wedding. I want the groom to have a good time. I like to commit in that moment like we’ve been friends forever and I’m happy for you. There’s something almost insane about it. Why does he love that feeling of creating that in his life?
But I think he’s so kind of innocent and happy, and even like how I deal with Owen [Wilson] when things go bad is like I’m mad, I want to go home, the sleepover’s over here. It’s very much like a big child and I think that they’re forgiven for some of their shortcomings because there is such an innocence and genuineness to them. But when they’re forced to respond to some of their ill behavior, they do ultimately change and evolve. But yeah, it was more kind of that big, lovable friend and he’s just kind of like a big kid.”
Vince Vaughn’s Take on Weddings: “I do like weddings, even more so now because it’s all perspective, isn’t it? If you look at it from the good side of it, there’s something really fun, there is something optimistic - if only for that night. Even the most sarcastic people don’t really say, ‘This is never going to last.’ That night, there’s something kind of hopeful. So I like the optimism of a wedding. And the coming together of families and within one family, people who haven’t seen each other in a long time. It’s a celebration.”
Changes to the “Wedding Crashers” Script: “The writers wrote a great script and the concept was great, but me and Owen did customize a lot of the lines and do stuff. A lot of it we had done, or we would do prior to shooting. It wasn’t like we would make up the lines as we shot. We would sit and write, come up with stuff prior to shooting the scenes.”
On His Reaction to the Dinner Table Scene: “It’s one of those scenes that you don’t know. This could be really funny or this could be really not funny. So you just have to go for it. There’s no half-assing it with a scene like that so you just have to really go for it. But you don’t know and when you’re doing something like that, you can’t look for set laughs, you can’t look to this. You would have to stay in the moment and as stupid as it sounds, just try to be as connected to that as you can. But you can’t have anything enter your mind except this is happening and then I’m in this moment.
David [Dobkin, director] did a great job of putting it together. So much of it is the editing. If it was edited differently, it could come off really poorly I’m sure.”
Does He Ever Get Embarrassed by Scenes?: “I think prior to doing them, you have self-consciousness and that’s kind of the work that you put into it. It’s like when you play a sport, which I was never very good at, but it’s an analogy anyway. But if you play a sport and you don’t know your plays, you’re nervous. You don’t know where to go. You’re hesitant. You’re thinking, you’re in your head. But if you know what you’re supposed to do, you’re just reacting and muscle memory.
The same thing is true [with acting]. I’ve had a lot of scenes I’ve looked at on pages and go, ‘Jesus, what am I going to do here?’ But you just do so much preparation in your mind that when you get there, you’re not thinking of those things. You have to do enough work that you’re just reacting.”
Playing Big, Broad Moments Mixed with Dramatic Moments: “So much of it is tone, informing the audience that the movie can go either direction. In ‘Dodgeball’ it’s very different because in ‘Dodgeball,’ I’m kind of a lead that’s the sane man in the insane world. I’m more like Dorothy in that movie. So I’m kind of reacting to everything. And in this movie, I’m more like the tin man because I’m more like I can be a little more crazy or a little more motivated because it’s not my burden to carry the movie in a way where you see the movie through my eyes.
My favorite kind of comedy was always like ‘The Bad News Bears’ or ‘48 Hours’ because comedy really comes out of awkwardness or pain, or things that are uncomfortable so it feels good to laugh. My favorite thing in ‘Swingers’ is when Jon Favreau makes that phone call over and over because you know what it feels like. It’s painful, but it also makes you laugh. So I think even in a movie like this, it’s a fine line between tension and laughing at it or feeling kind of awkward.”
Will Vaughn Still Be a Party Animal Into His 60s and 70s?: “If there’s a God, let’s hope so. I don't know. What I liked about this, my favorite scene or one of my favorite scenes, is that scene at the Lincoln Memorial with the guys realizing we’re getting older. We’re not in our mid-20s, we’re in our mid-30s and it’s not really the same. So that was something for me, those kind of moments that then get real. I think something works in that, me and Owen are older and have played these personas younger, that it works in that moment. Our screen history helps us there.”
Vince Vaughn and Pick-Up Lines He’s Actually Used: “We were much geekier than that in that when I would go out with my friends and stuff, you’d kind of get bored sometimes so you’d say, ‘Well, let’s give each other lines that you have to say,’ like raise the degree of difficulty. You have to say these lines and you can’t back off of them. You can’t be like, ‘Oh, my friend made me say that line.’ You have to own it as if that’s who you are.
We’re talking, ‘Excuse me if I appear to be squinting but I was up really late last night painting miniature elves. I love being in this room.’ You’re just kind of like, ‘What?!’ Or, what are some other ones we would say? ‘You know, sometimes when I’m out in public and there’s a lot of people around, I get really nervous and tense, I just picture myself swimming with dolphins and I start to calm down and relax.’ Just really kind of odd things and you’d be surprised sometimes like, ‘What? What does that mean?’ and sometimes they’re like, ‘Totally.’”
A Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau True Pickup Story: “When I was younger, we would go out and sometimes, there’s a couple occasions me and Favreau would even full on play - we were more like comedy, you know, geeks, so we’d go out and play characters sometimes just to make ourselves laugh.
Here’s [a story] that was interesting. Me and Favreau went out one time. Me and Favreau never got girls together really. One time we both picked up girls together. Separately, we got girls but together it never really worked out for us. It was jokes, jokes, jokes. One time we played this thing and I was playing it like I was really sensitive and I want to be in relationship. He played it to the extreme that he doesn’t care about relationships. He’s a sex addict, he wants to have sex, he wants to have sex, he wants to have sex. We’d talk, I’d be like, ‘You’re such an animal. I can’t believe you would sleep with that girl.’ He’s like, ‘Well, what about you? All you want to do is hold her and comb her hair.’ ‘Because I respect her, because I respect her.’ And the girls were more drawn to his character. They liked that guy more. They liked the guy that was more kind of like just like whatever.”
Vince Vaughn on Starring in an ‘R’ Rated Comedy: “It’s good to be in one, man. I tell you, it’s like I grew up, I loved these rated R comedies like ‘Animal House’ and this stuff. So for me, if you’re going to do an adult-themed movie called ‘Wedding Crashers,’ well, what are you going to do? You gotta get into it and it’s fun to get into it.
There’s a lot of pressure not to make rated R movies and if you do make rated R movies, there’s a pressure to be shocking just for shock’s sake. And we don’t want to do that either. I don’t want to try to out gross everybody. That’s not my style. I don’t want to go and just be shocking to see if I get a response. If it makes sense within the course of the film, then it’s great. So this movie wants to be R for language and also for like the dinner table scene, and the tying up scene and that kind of stuff. I think you’d just have a glass of milk if you didn’t have that stuff in the movie.”
Vince Vaughn on His Return to Comedy: “I’ve never planned stuff. Even when I broke from ‘Swingers,’ I was offered mainly comedies but I just didn’t like any of them. None of them made me laugh. It just wasn’t my taste, so I liked ‘Return to Paradise’ and I liked those movies and I wanted to do those movies. And then ‘Old School’ came along and I thought it was funny. And then I realized from the studios that they didn’t think I was good at comedy. They didn’t remember that I did comedy. There was a hard time for me to get a chance to do comedy. And now it’s like I’m getting offered a lot of comedies, but it was never kind of a planned thing.
[Next up] is a romantic comedy for me, so I like to change it up and do different stuff to stay motivated and to grow and to keep working.”
On His Upcoming Romantic Comedy: “It’s a comedy called ‘The Break Up.’ All the romantic comedy scripts that you get always have a really dumb concept for some reason. It’s like if you marry her, you get a million dollars. Or hey, I know, I’ll do a report in my magazine on the dating habits of New Yorkers. Or something insane. There’s always a concept.
I kind of like the movie ‘The Odd Couple’ so I thought why not do a movie called ‘The Break Up’ where it’s kind of a buddy film. But this is more
of a traditional romantic comedy where you have a couple that bought a condo together, they split the mortgage, it takes both of their jobs to
pay for it, they’re not married and they break up and they’re kind of stuck in this place together, both wanting to get out but what happens? Not
boy meets girl or whatever. I want to come out like around Valentine’s Day because I always hate Valentine’s Day. Any guy hates Valentine’s Day.
Even if you’re in love, you can’t win on Valentine’s Day. If you’re married, you can’t win on Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is like the thing
you want to avoid at all costs. If you’ve been dating for two months, what do you get him? Do you get him something? What does that mean? So I
want to come out like, ‘This Valentine’s Day, The Break
Up.’”
Vince Vaughn on His “The Break Up” Co-Star, Jennifer Aniston: “She’s great. She’s funny.
One of the things, too, I liked in this movie was a lot of times in these comedies, girls are stuck laughing at what the guy says, whether the guy’s funny or not. But Isla [Fisher’s] funny as hell in this movie and my character’s like the crazy, zany character, but by default I become the straight man when I’m in scenes with her. And she kind of becomes the comic relief and I’m the guy kind of going, ‘This guy’s normal, she’s off the hook.’ And I kind of liked that she got to be really comedic and driving and be really funny with it.
Same in ‘The Break Up.’ Jennifer gets to be really funny. She is really funny and she’s also a good actor. Favreau’s going to be in the movie playing my best friend. Vincent D’Onofrio plays my older brother. Cole Hauser plays my younger brother. John Michael Higgins - very good actors in the movie - plays her brother, Jennifer’s brother. Justin Long from ‘Dodgeball’ is in the movie. Jason Bateman is in the movie.”
Vince Vaughn on Working on “Mr and Mrs Smith” for Director Doug Liman: “Doug did ‘Swingers’ and he called me and asked me. He kind of wrote me in. He said, ‘Will you do a cameo in this movie?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ And then he said, ‘Well, will you do a couple more days?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, sure.’ Next thing I know, I’m in the trailer for the thing. I don’t even take billing on the movie because I kind of wanted to be a fun surprise for everyone.
But I really like Doug. I respect Doug as a filmmaker. Doug has a way of making a movie work. He’s not someone who’s always understood in his journey by people, but he’s four for four in my opinion. He does have an intelligence there that is not conveyable in a traditional way but [he’s] effective. I felt very confident that the movie would be worthwhile. And I like Brad [Pitt] and I like Angelina [Jolie’s] work and for me it was fun to go and get to play around. I got to write a lot of the scenes I did in that movie.”
Question: What’s the trick to playing a villain in a comedy?
Vince Vaughn: I don't know. I saw this character in this movie really as kind of the foundation of the movie, something to service the movie. I never liked in comedic movies where the villain's kind of petting some strange breed of animal. You just don't take them seriously at all. But at the same time, you really can't play it extremely heavy because it doesn't belong in the movie. It's from a different movie. So I saw Reese very much as someone who would be grounded. The plot of the movie isn't the focus. The focus is more sort of the circumstances that these characters get in. At the same time, you have to cut to the antagonist and check in with that because it's ultimately how you tie the movie up.
So I sort of treat it like just kind of do your background, know who your character is and then be present within the scene and play it simple and real. Sometimes it would lean more on the comedic side, like if you're pointing the gun at yourself and that kind of stuff, but still be based in reality. And then sometimes, when you shoot the guy, I think it's important because you tell the audience that someone can die in the movie. It is possible for someone to die, so you can't completely not take it seriously.
Question: Is he the baddest villain you've ever played?
Vince Vaughn: No. Norman Bates is kind of a bad villain. I think Lester Long is probably the baddest villain I ever played.
Question: How do you develop the unsympathetic portrayal of these types of characters?
Vince Vaughn: I'm always more interested in that because I like doing stuff that's kind of more extreme. It's make-believe and it's more fun to play that. The main thing I've always done is you really don't put a judgment on it. It's like in life too. You don't worry about being liked. You have to be yourself. So when I play a character like that, he always thinks what he's doing is fine. It's the same thing as Swingers in a way for a guy that's comedic and likeable.
He's so committed to how many days you wait to call a girl back and this kind of stuff, but it's funny. And in this thing, he's like, "Okay, look, I'm not going to kill him again. Are you happy? Let's move on, let's talk about something else." So he doesn't put a judgment on things that most people would, and that's where the comedy or the unlikeability comes from. Obviously if he's doing this stuff, he feels all right about it.
Question: Where did the sense of playing unlikeable characters come from since Swingers?
Vince Vaughn: Just really loving acting and wanting to do something that's different. My favorite time in film for me as a kid was the movies that were made in the '70s. A lot of those characters, even the protagonists were very flawed or - antihero's not a totally fitting word - but not people that were okay, this is a good guy or this is a bad guy, but people that had good pros and cons about those sides of them. So for me it's more fun. It's always fun to play someone who's more extreme than someone who's straight down the middle.
Question: Are you surprised at the continued cultural cache of Swingers?
Vince Vaughn: Yeah, you know, it was made in such an innocent place where sadly, in some ways, I guess, it was based on what me and Jon were going through. A lot of people at that time were making movies sort of making themselves out to be cool and tough or these things. And me and Jon really told a story that we knew that was truthful for us which was being actors that were out of work and playing a lot of video games, pretending to know a lot about girls but really not knowing all that much ultimately. So I think there's something universal that people watching it can relate to.
There's something accessible that we can understand. My favorite scene from the movie is when Jon calls that girl six times. It's so painful, but it's so relatable. I think even though the swing scene might not be as popular, though it wasn't nationwide as much at the time, those things are sort of universal so that's what sort of stands the test of time. It really is a tribute to Favreau. I think even the success of the movie Elf that did very well, that movie doesn't have necessarily the major set piece laughs that a lot of comedies have, but you very much connect to Will's character and root for him and invest in that feeling of wanting to believe in something. And that's Jon's real strong point is tracking some very simple human conditions in a very truthful way and having some people invest in it.
Question: Will you work together again?
Vince Vaughn: Yeah, we have a couple things that we wanted to do. We still have that Hassidic western about a Hassidic Jew who is a gunfighter but we haven't been able to get that set up anywhere.
Question: Are you both playing Jews?
Vince Vaughn: No, I play a guy who's from the city, who's not a gunfighter, who's wanted for sleeping with the wrong guy's wife. Jon plays a guy who's searching for the people that killed his family but he can't shoot his gun on Saturday because of Sabbath. He's a killer, he's the best gun in the West, but he plays it very dead on. So I make like I'm going to help him find these people and people come and try to kill us. I say it's because he's a Jew and he dresses like one so people want him dead. But really they're after me because this guy has a hit on me. I think it's a very smart, very funny movie.
Question: Why is it hard to finance?
Vince Vaughn: It's like getting Swingers set up at the time. There was no real female lead in Swingers. It's not a format that's been done a lot.
This even more so is an anteater in a way. Western genre's not considered popular. I think the religious aspect scares people to some degree.
Vince Vaughn
Question: How did the success of Swingers put pressure on you?
Vince Vaughn: It did pressure me quite a bit in hindsight in that once that broke, I was getting a lot of opportunities to do comedies and sort of leading men, and I sort of just rejected it because I didn't feel comfortable with it. I really didn't want to be put in a category and also I really didn't like the comedies that I was sent. I really made an effort at the time, doing Return to Paradise, remaking Psycho,Clay Pigeons trying to do types of roles and I always felt you should really be conscious of capitalizing on this momentum, people want to see you as this guy.
And I was more concerned with having a chance to do different stuff and getting a chance to really challenge myself and grow selfishly as an actor. So I responded by really pulling away from it and with The Cell, doing stuff that I thought would be something different frankly than what I was doing. So then you do that and then you get offered a lot of those kind of things, but then I wasn't really thought of in comedies. I don't know if Vince is funny, you know. So Old School was something that brought that up and I had done a lot of the other stuff so I was excited to do comedies and I've done a bunch of comedies now. Then I'll be excited to go do some different kinds of stuff.
There's an independent movie coming up, Thumbsucker, that I did with D'Onofrio where I play a debate coach who's a school teacher, very different. To me, that was always the thing. I moved out at 18. I always studied classes and trained a lot, you know. I think nowadays is such a different time because there's so many channels promoting the celebrity aspect of things. Not that there wasn't that, but I think ET was the only show on that was that way. There were no channels dedicated. So most of my friends, Jon and myself, we'd go to the New Beverly Theater constantly. We were nerdy I guess in a way. Nowadays a lot of the young kids you talk to think it's not cool to go to class or it's cool to say you didn't train. All of us, me and Jon would talk. Even the making of Swingers was really about working and trying to do some stuff.
So I never, in response to what happened with Swingers, it really took me aback. It wasn't as if I had a big studio film that gave me that opportunity. And I was very thankful for what it brought me but I remember feeling I really don't want to go and try to repeat this or worry in my head about whether stuff does well or not. I always figured if you do the work and you do your best at it, there will always be a part for you. But if you get caught up in trying to just have a movie be successful, that's a much more dangerous game, because once that goes away, you don't have the same opportunities that you would have had.
Question: Has that changed?
Vince Vaughn: No. I mean, this movie, I love Todd, I loved Old School. I thought Old School was very different than a lot of the comedies that had come out. And that character I liked. I tried to ground him very much in reality and play him very much finding things important to him that are somewhat ridiculous.
Question: What are you working on now?
Vince Vaughn: I'm shooting Be Cool, the sequel to Get Shorty. It's going very well. I play Raji, a record producer/promoter. Then, I'm doing The Wedding Crashers with Owen. Then, I set a movie I'm producing at MGM about toy salesmen who sell toys. Rival salesmen. I've always loved salesmen. My dad was a salesman. As an actor, I always thought there's something funny about salesmen hustling anyway. But in contrasting that, there's something funny to me if they're trying to hustle My Little Pony. It's not like a car and they talk about it just like anyone would talk about whatever their field is. They present it like seeing grown men who gamble, demonstrate the pony and how the pony walks, but also being competitive and aggressive with each other I thought was a nice contrast. Then there's a movie I set up at Revolution called The Breakup, which is a romantic comedy. I've been offered a lot of romantic comedies. I never liked any of the romantic comedies.
It's always the same shit. Oh, I don't like you. Now I love you. Now I hate you. It's gonna happen, isn't it? So I thought with The Breakup what
about a movie where from the very beginning it's the breakup, they're breaking up with each other? You have them out to dinner and have someone
say something like, "God, I'm glad your mom's not coming to visit" turning into saying, "I hate your drunk of a sister" just
saying horrible things and saying, "That's it, it's over, we're breaking up." Then, I have it so that they had just bought-- they're
not married, but they just bought a condo together and neither one wants to move out, so they agree to put it on the market and sell it. Neither
one can afford to pay the mortgage, so they agree to put it on the market and sell it, but they're sort of going through the breakup under the
same roof. Very derivative, I got the idea very much from The Odd Couple, having people put in a place and that kind of tone where
it's not War of the Roses or very dark, but they're fighting over stuff that most of us do like you didn't do the dishes or you left this here. If she's
dating, bringing someone new home or he brings someone new home or a friend's coming over, hearing her friend say that they never liked you.
Question: Won't they force you to get them together?
Vince Vaughn: Well, they might end up together at the end, but like even in The Odd Couple, the way that they handled it in those kind of movies
was never such an absolute completion. It was always more of the possibility or the potential of something. It's a much more smaller step. So,
I think if at the end of the movie, there's a potential that they'll communicate, even The Odd Couple is positive. In fact, Felix is always wanting
to be liked, wanting to be needed. He ends up with the Pigeon sisters. And he's okay, he's found a place where he's accepted, that's his journey.
He's wanted. And Oscar now wants his place clean. He has the guys come over for poker, he doesn't want them smoking and leaving stuff out. So you
just have to take a small step in a direction of growth. It doesn't have to be that they're married with a final wedding scene. I would never do
that. That's way too much. But for them to come to some kind of peacefulness or openness with
each other I think is fine. Swingers ends optimistically. It's the same kind of thing. He met a girl. It's not that he's dating her. It's not that he's
in love, but he's gotten past what was presented to him. You don't know if he ends up with her or not, but you know he's out of the rut that he was in.
Made is similar in that they don't get the money for the job but the little girl's okay, he's got the bad influence out of their life and they're no
longer trying to make money in a way that's not safe for them. So I'm a fan of something as long as it's a small step in that direction and not the absolute
completion. I think that's too far of a step to take sometimes.
Actor Vince Vaughn proves a generous and expansive host in Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland. Organizing a monthlong bus tour of concert halls in 30 American cities, Vaughn packs his bags and lives aboard the four-wheeler with a quartet of relatively unknown comedians. Hitting a different town every day, the group simply does everything it can do to entertain people while Vaughn supplements all the comic monologues with sketches performed alongside some of his famous showbiz friends.
The guest comics--Ahmed Ahmed, Bret Ernst, John Caparulo, and Sebastian Maniscalco--vary in concentration and quality, but you can see them growing as performers all the time. This full-length documentary spends a lot of time with each of them, even getting to know their parents and their hopes and dreams. Meanwhile, Vaughn is just having fun with the likes of old buddy Jon Favreau, up-and-coming star Justin Long (the young Mac dude in those commercials for Apple), and longtime friend Peter Billingsley (the child who got hit in the eye in A Christmas Story), executive producer of this film. Billingsley gamely recreates a scene he and Vaughn played together as teens in an after-school television special about steroid use--a definite highlight for Wild West Comedy Show.
The film drags a bit during the biographical material, but there are many interesting and even upbeat moments, such as the tour group turning up in the wake of Katrina’s devastation in New Orleans and helping to keep spirits up.
Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland is a comedy documentary film directed by Ari Sandel and follows the 30 day comedy of tour of several stand up comedians. It premiered September 8, 2006 at the Toronto International Film Festival. It opened in limited release in the United States on February 8, 2008.
Synopsis
The documentary follows the month-long live comedy variety tour of Vince Vaughn and four stand-up comedians in the spirit of Wild West Shows. Vaughn picked four comedians from The Comedy Store in Los Angeles (Ahmed Ahmed, John Caparulo, Bret Ernst and Sebastian Maniscalco) for the tour. The tour began September 12, 2005 in Hollywood at the Music Box Theater and spanned 30 shows over 30 consecutive nights in 30 cities across the United States. Vince Vaughn acts as emcee and performs improv sketches with surprise guests. The comedians traveled over 6,000 miles on their tour and included stops in the Western, Southern, and Midwestern states. The film highlights their performances on-stage and contains interviews with the various comedians.
Cast
Ahmed Ahmed
Peter Billingsley
John Caparulo
Bret Ernst
Justin Long
Sebastian Maniscalco
Keir O'Donnell
Vince Vaughn
Production
Vince Vaughn was a producer for the film. Vaughn's older sister Victoria was also a producer. Chris Henkel, Paul Ruffolo, Dave Rutherford, and Jani Zandovskis served as camera operators. The show director was Chad Horning. The stage manager was Jason Ruffolo.
Critical reception
The film received mixed reviews from critics. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 56% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 75 reviews, with the consensus that the film "has some entertaining moments, but is a mostly hit-and-miss documentary." Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 51 out of 100, based on 24 reviews.
Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote "It's a funny comedy, and sometimes an even better drama" and called it a "nice companion piece" to the 2002 film Comedian. Hartlaub said "The comics all have their good and bad moments, but John Caparulo is arguably the most hilarious both on- and offstage" and "the movie is best when Vaughn plays off his own pop culture stature." Hartlaub also wrote that "director Ari Sandel paces the film well."
Stephen Holden of The New York Times described the film as "more of a backstage documentary" than a concert film. Holden wrote the film "includes some moderately funny snippets of actual performances" but "we never see a complete performance or even a quarter of one." Holden called it "among the tamest tours ever filmed." Holden wrote that the tour was re-routed because it came after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. Holden wrote "In the most revealing scene Mr. Vaughn and his crew visit an Alabama trailer camp to give free tickets to the residents, many of them New Orleans evacuees who lost everything."
Kyle Smith of the New York Post gave the film one star out of four, writing "A 2 1/2-year-old collection of mediocre stand-up routines and dull backstage chatter, Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show demonstrates why comedy clubs require you to have a couple of drinks." Smith said "Only about 40 percent of the movie is even comedy; the rest consists of lots of shots of maps" and said the film was "worse than open-mike night."
Box office performance
The film opened in limited release in the United States on February 8, 2008 and grossed $464,170 in 962 theaters that weekend, averaging $482 per theater. The film grossed a total of $603,894 after three weeks in theaters.
Vincent Anthony Vaughn was born on March 28, 1970, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA and raised in Lake Forest, Illinois, USA. His parents were Vernon
Vaughn, a salesman, and Sharon Vaughn, a real-estate agent and stockbroker. They later divorced in 1991. He also has two older sisters named Victoria
Vaughn and Valeri Vaughn. Vince was interested in theater early on and grabbed a spot in a Chevy commercial. Figuring he was set, he packed his
bags and headed for Hollywood only to become a struggling actor losing role after role. He managed to hit a few spots on television, but his real
goal was to make it to the big screen. He made his first credited role in the film Rudy (1993) where he met his friend Jon Favreau, who was writing
a script detailing his life as an out-of-work actor. Vince was written into Swingers (1996) by Jon to play the character of "Trent".
He signed on just as a favor to his buddy, not realizing it would be a career changing role. Though
not a commercial success, it was a critical success in which Steven Spielberg saw him and cast him in the big budget sequel The Lost World: Jurassic
Park (1997). This role gave Vince the exposure he needed to become a movie star and, for the first time, choose the roles he wanted to take. A Cool,
Dry Place (1998) put him as a loving father, Return to Paradise (1998) cast him as a man having to make a life or death decision to save a friend, and
Clay Pigeons (1998) cast him as an interesting serial killer. He was even cast as "Norman Bates" for the shot-for-shot remake of Psycho (1998).
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