Vince Vaughn Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ

it was like a thing that would shoot out the dodge balls and super fast so for some reason they had cranked this thing up to like the highest speed but in the movie you're not going to really read that so they put me in front of it they're like we're going to hit you a few times you're going to catch it and the first thing came and it was so kind of powerful i go guys this is crazy like no one's going to be able to tell if the thing's going 80 miles an hour or 60 miles an hour or 40 i said you got to tone this thing down like this is dangerous only to come to find out that the great justin long had already been there for an hour getting hit by this machine at full speed multiple times swingers i like john right away he was um you know very funny he was with the improv olympic in chicago and i was with that same improv company prior to him uh being there i had already moved to l.a so we had a lot of common ground do you think that we're going to vegas mike vegas you think we get there by midnight money we're going to be up 500 by midnight vegas baby vegas was funny because john wrote the script and a lot of the jokes and funny lines that i had said in real life were in the movie so a lot of the expressions and things that are in the film was stuff that i used to say just joking around with him but yeah the character was sort of based on inexperience of john did go through a breakup when he moved to town and i definitely took him out that was the neighborhood i hung out and i used to love to go see those old big bands and swing bands and all those places where i lived in that area so those were the places i would go to a lot of the ex-punk bands started playing swing music it was incredible to go see these 15 piece bands play original swing music and it's you and me and the bottle makes three tonight finish you and me and the bottle makes three tonight so i definitely took john to those neighborhoods and out to those places and then with girls and stuff it was i was encouraging to him about you know dating and this kind of stuff in a positive way that stuff was all true but then for a comedy it's you know over exaggerated not everything that happens in the movie was what happened in real life so there was a lot of you know the comedic styles of trent the phraseology the way that he talked was all you know characters i would slip into at times when you're joking around or expressions i would use there's nothing wrong with letting the girls know that you're money and that you want a party ready to order yeah that stuff was all stuff that i had actually said so it was kind of odd in reading it originally because a lot of the the jokes and stuff were just stuff that came from us hanging out and things that i said the lost world jurassic park greenpeace uh which were there women 80 female greenpeace yeah it was a different experience for sure i always liked steven's movies uh you know as a kid so many of them whether it was e.t or close encounters or jaws were so impactful so i remember meeting him and talking film with him a lot we would have these meetings and we'd just talk about old westerns or movies and he was very generous he was very engaging with a much younger person who was excited about the films but we would just sit and talk about these things and hear his perspective so it really was a lot of fun and then going to do the movie was a very different experience as you said swingers we kind of shot that thing we didn't have permits you know we were kind of stealing shots and then obviously you go to a budget of a film that kind of is allowing of everything [Music] jeff goldblum was great julianne moore was great we had a pete possible wait who i liked very much was in that film and it was just a different exercise you know being able to look at something that was not a dinosaur and pretending it was was just you know an exercise in imagination psycho it was like a warhol painting almost i had like gus's movies like drugstore cowboy in private idaho so it was more about working with him than it was even doing psycho at that age i didn't really think about remaking a movie so much it's like you know an artist would cover a song and then another artist would cover a song and this was a movie that gus liked so it was really exciting to go work with him and then once the process started it was odd because there was moments when we sort of were going to do it as a shot for shot and then there was times when we would drift where it wasn't exactly that it was an interesting exercise as an actor to explore because there were certain times we were looking to match you know what was done and you had to find your own internal way of getting there without it feeling you know like you're just sort of executing it and so the exercise of that was really interesting and i kind of enjoyed doing it i thought it was um just like an interesting and interesting uh experience to have old school well i was on the page todd's a terrific writer and great with comedy so the part that was interesting was the studio didn't know if i could do comedy because at that point i had done a lot more having done swingers and then lost world i just sort of instinctively gravitated to more kind of character-based stuff and returned to paradise or clay pigeons i had been doing much kind of more smaller indies but i hadn't done a lot of mainstream comedy so i think he maybe had to show them an interview i did on a talk show or something to make them comfortable that i could do the comedy so that was that was interesting for me because i had sort of come from comedy max can you hear muffet for me we are going to get so much ass here it's going to be sick i'm talking like crazy like boy band-ass the fun of that character for beanie was really you know you you love your friend a lot so that goes a long way with audiences and just in general that he's his heart's in the right place for his friend but then you just start to build things that are specific he's kind of a hustler who um is ambitious with speaker city you know trying to build this empire but it's it's it's you know speaker city speaker city which is slashing prices on everything from beepers to dvd players give a warm harrison university welcome to my pal and your favorite mr snoop dogg he was so encouraging of his friend to go and have a relationship he was sort of excited for the big parties and to get the stuff going with the college girls and stuff as a guy that was at the time was 30 but ultimately you know he really loved his wife he wasn't going to do anything to kind of jeopardize that so i i thought was fun about him was he had the support of a friend he liked to have a good time he was not completely happy in his marriage but he was ultimately a guy that valued his marriage and wanted to try to make it work that was one of the best scripts i ever read that thing changed not as much as other scripts had it was really well done and what i liked about it was in old school and then later in wedding crashers i'm not the lead so i get to be a little more wild and dodgeball the character really grounds the audience he's kind of a sane man in an insane world stiller's character's so specific and all the guys that go to average joe's gym are really specific and unique it's a bad time i could always come back so i thought that it was important for the character to kind of have this personality you know be a likable guy again very loyal begrudgingly so to the people that depended on him not that he was wanting to be there for them but he just ultimately couldn't uh help them he would rather have found a way to not have these responsibilities but once he got connected to all the guys at the gym he couldn't not be there for them and so i think for peter lafleur he's kind of the eyes of the audience you're meeting all these interesting people at the dodgeball gym you're coming in conflict with stiller and so he's sort of the grounded character on a journey that's the world is much more kind of bizarre than than he is people have different translations through different things and that's a special bond that you have with the with your mail-order wife i think that's nice thank you it's fine i remember showing up uh and they had the rosten who was the director i think played division three sports and a lot of times the case will be with guys that kind of played sports later but not like big time they overly want to do stuff like for him it was so important to overly throw the ball and overly do this there was a scene where they had this kind of like i guess you would use it for for baseballs it was like a thing that would shoot out the dodgeballs and super fast so for some reason they had cranked this thing up to like the highest speed but in the movie you're not going to really read that so they put me in front of it they're like we're going to hit you a few times you're going to catch it and the first thing came and it was so kind of powerful i go guys this is crazy like no one's going to be able to tell if the thing's going 80 miles an hour or 60 miles an hour or 40 i said you got to tone this thing down like this is dangerous only to come to find out that the great justin long had already been there for an hour getting hit by this machine at full speed multiple times so he definitely had a strong commitment to going through the pain of the of the experience wedding crashers that screenplay changed quite a bit um including the structure the original version i think was both owen and my character crossing the marriage of uh of bradley cooper and rachel mcadams it wasn't me and isla getting married and then him coming to us so we had a really good idea owen's very funny and a good writer and david's terrific so we really just kind of rebuilt it we it was an interesting time like it started with old school where we were able to do these more hard r comedies and be left alone no one was telling us you can't say that we were kind of young kids trying to make each other laugh and in doing so we're able to create something that felt authentic and crashes was the same thing we were really left alone to kind of build these characters create these flawed guys have those three weeks to sort of pitch ideas write scenes you know like the me wanting to keep the painting when i leave that was owen's idea he was like it'd be so funny after that guy drew the painting that you it means something to you now that you want to take it with you so we really use that time to kind of build the scenes out play with the structure of the movie and i think it translates you know having that time when we got into those scenes swingers was similar because we rehearsed that movie so much trying to get it made so i think having that time to really dive in and have a little bit of ownership over the lines and the dialogue i'm looking all over for you i gotta get out of here i got a stage five klinger uh i need more time did you hear what i just said to you stage five virgin klinger let's go i'm gonna start the car i'm serious let's go i think that really translated uh in the screen was a lot of fun was a lot of work but it was really enjoyable the breakup you know it was my idea of the breakup and what it was is i was being sent a lot of rom-coms i had never done one prior to it and i thought gosh you know it's always kind of the same motor these guys whatever then the guy goes and apologizes and the girl takes him back and they end up happily ever after and so i thought well how about two people that really love each other but they just don't have the skills yet either of them to make the relationship work i had found in my own life that sometimes you could really like someone but neither you are either ready to be in something more serious or you just don't have the maturity or the skills to handle situations and you can end up kind of ruining the relationship don't tell me what i am or aren't not doing what you are not not doing don't just learn some english once you ruin it it's hard to go back like once someone feels like the other person has broken trust or let them down hurt their feelings even though you may still like them you just can't go back to that and you learn your lessons from that experience and hopefully you don't repeat the same mistakes in the next relationship so i had played a lot of characters at the time that were kind of fun but i really was driving to have this film where the guy wasn't confident or mature enough to address things well but you could tell his heart was in the right place and then the girl would be a little gamey she wasn't totally mature either it's sort of both of their faults she's manipulating the situation more than than one should they're both somewhat immature and that you would build to this moment that when the guy finally got to that revelation that he was able to go to her hat in hand which you had seen so many times that the girl had gotten to a place where it was burnt out he had let her down so many times that she just wasn't able to reciprocate in a way and that the guy in the moment would then kind of have this this wisdom and dignity to be accepting of that it was awkward there was another guy outside and he sort of really authentically you could tell he moved past his immaturities because he handled that moment so gracious and then the tragedy at the end of the movie in a way was here were these two people who both kind of liked each other but they both handled it really terribly and then obviously with the ending when they sort of see each other to realize you know you're better off at the other side of it it never feels like it when you go through a breakup like that but ultimately having gone through those experiences or sometimes the things that put you in a better place to both pick someone who's in a better place for where you're at and also have better skills not to ruin a relationship and then the question for people was well did it work out between those two or not which you know is up to everyone to decide i think if they met each other at the stage they were at once they went through the experience they probably would have worked out and and that was really the the point was that they both had come out of it even though it was painful more equipped for relationships than when the movie started and that had a big table scene that took a lot of days to film as well where john michael higgins who's terrific with john michael higgins gets gets up and sings in my face owner of a lonely heart you're every step you take you and you and that's the only way true detective you know having done swingers and roles like that the characters are very confident and they're very articulate and you know able to move with a lot of self value and then with frank what i found in that what i did was in the early stages of the piece he's trying to go corporate he's trying to go legitimate and he's using big words and stuff but i felt that the character didn't really have a grasp on it that he was over his skis and so i really tried to you know as the character come off confident and pro proficient but actually underneath it to trying to be something he wasn't so it was interesting to start that piece where you have this guy who is not really self-assured although he's this kind of foreboding character there's a rage and an anger in him you see a lot of you know hurt in him there's a little kid in there that doesn't feel loved and he's sort of you find him in a moment where he's trying really hard but he just does he has a lot of self-doubt and things are slipping away from him and then as the piece progresses he starts to become far more assured and confident he kind of reverts back to what he was trying to escape he knows who he is when he's someone who's going to be more violent or this is the way i handle things now i understand this and this is probably on where i always saw my life going he's going to protect the one thing he loves but he's prepared at that point to face to face his ends that's all rich well you know i always put a lot of research even in the earlier movies with studying you know either people or learning about different experiences for hacksaw ridge i had gone i never did a lot of press for it but i had gone a lot starting with dodgeball taking movies overseas to the troops i had gone to iraq and afghanistan and was able to show the movies which was funny i thought gosh these guys these guys and girls are stuck over here in this terrible situation well maybe these movies are funny maybe i can go take dodgeball over and show it to the the troops i didn't realize when i got there that a lot of them had copies of the movie for me this to sign even though the movie was just coming out in america because they had there was pirated versions that would get sold overseas that were like you know have someone's head in the video while they were watching the movie i just went into a very kind of deep dive about what was it like the sergeants and the drill sergeants and the preparation when it's actually wartime and how these things kind of play out and then sort of tried to build out a specific character in this situation where you're dealing with someone you know like desmond who you can tell us you know you don't even know if he's telling the truth at first is this guy even honest is he presenting what's real and then having the concern for the group at that time as your highest demand which is these kids are going over to fight and kill people they got to stay alive and this may be a hard on this individual but we really need to do what's best for the unit to live and this guy's not going to be an asset to anybody he's going to get someone killed and then which was true to real life being swayed by this person's faith his belief realizing he really does have a conviction in what he's doing and to sort of be won over by this kid and ultimately the journey that desmond dawes went on was so incredible i never heard the story so it was really kind of building out you know and then finding your own individual personality with that with how you would kind of approach it and and um put yourself in those circumstances draw on cell block 99 rosalie was such a great writer and i had liked bone tomahawk quite a bit and bradley i think being a little bit different than the other character but jim was a guy who kind of knew who he was didn't feel a need to talk a lot you know wanted nice things in life and one of them being a relationship with this woman that he loves i had kind of a specific pass for him that had a lot of violence and stuff in it so that's actually the scene when reading the script that most moved me because i found it surprising and also authentic that you discover that the girlfriend is cheating or your wife as it would be and you're filled with rage and hurt and so he tells her to go inside he he he obviously feels like he can't control his emotions but he has enough wherewithal i think he's suggesting in some way that you need to get away from me because i'm not fully in control of how i'm feeling so she leaves him he's unable to process what he's feeling so he takes it out on a car which i think a moment people have been mad maybe they throw something across the room but i think his commitment to really methodically destroying the car shows a real ocean of hurt and rage and then it was the scene afterwards that i quite liked when you come to find out that there was a miscarriage and the marriage going bad he doesn't blame all of the infidelity on her even though she's the one that has you know acted out in this way he's able to hear her and recognize that some of the choices he's been making have not been up to par and what i loved was that after having this very you know honest conversation with each other he's clearly someone who's both angry and very hurt over this they decide to become closer and i really believe that i really bought in that conversation through the the way that things were discussed that those two people did become closer that they i could say wow this is interesting one could see the infidelity and the trust being broken as something that would divide them but in this case i'm really believing that they're both being able to be vulnerable and it brought them closer together and i think that's kind of zoller in his writings he he doesn't lay out set up in obvious ways where they go now i'm rooting for this character i think the characters surprise you the stories surprise you and they feel sort of um authentic but not not kind of formulaic you're gonna stop now i'm fortunate in that i wrestled uh in high school and junior high and then i boxed a little bit just really you know staying in shape but i had done it younger than i did it older just for exercise so i had a good foundation but it was demanding i loved the artistry of zoller and his commitment he really wanted to make these shots live in these shots and have it be us so it was a bit like choreographing a dance like these are not we're not going to be able to hide and just land a punch and have it work you had to really be consistent with the sequence that might be 15 20 moves and there was really not a lot of room for error so we sort of rehearsed it the coordinator was great zoller is terrific we would really practice these sequences but then ultimately when you get there on the day you kind of have to go for it you can't overthink it so you want to keep everybody safe and at the same time you want to have the right emotion going on to make the the sequence be as grounded and believable as possible and it's kind of a weird balancing act because you can't really be too in your head so there was a couple times i got caught or someone else did not not very often but we really made the decision to really go for it and be err on the side of kind of being a little bit more physical and aggressive and i think for the film it really works freaky yeah i like chris landon a lot he's really good in this genre of kind of horror with comedy which is not an easy thing to do so the butcher was fun i just try to make him specific malicious you know kind of a pleasure and hurting people enjoying it quiet and then for millie it was really just kind of you know studying girls of that age and then building a character that was unique and specific here's a girl with a turbulent home life and i think it's really relatable for all kids that age you're caught between what your parents think your life should be and what they want for you and sort of being able to say this is what i want and both knowing what that is and being able to give voice to it and she's someone i think we all can relate to she doesn't feel confident in school she's got a crush on someone who she doesn't believe would reciprocate she's got a really nice group of friends and some close relationships but she's sort of at that coming of age moment where she's learning to own her own voice and to have some belief in herself and again for comedy you're kind of i try to keep the character grounded with with real stakes but then in certain you know the over commitment to the absurd is sort of where the comedy comes from at times the um and that's really landon and the writing and the situations that he would put us in

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Id: yj0CMbbfDOg

Length: 22min 7sec (1327 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020