Vince Vaughn reflects on why Hollywood doesn’t like his comedies

‘Wedding Crashers’ actor said film execs would strict ‘rules set in stone’

Vince Vaughn has R-rated comedy movies Wedding Crashers, Old School and Swingers to thank for his fame – but he thinks Hollywood doesn’t like them.

Speaking on the Hot Ones podcast, in which celebrities are interviewed while eating hot wings that get increasingly spicier, the actor told host Sean Evans that the rest of Hollywood would “overthink” the films.

“They just overthink it,” Vaughn said. “And it’s like, it’s crazy, you get these rules, like, if you did geometry, and you said 87 degrees was a right angle, then all your answers are messed up, instead of 90 degrees. So there became some idea or concept, like, they would say something like, ‘You have to have an IP.’”

Vaughn used the board game Battleship as an example of IP, saying it became a “vehicle for storytelling” just because it had a recognisable name.

He said that certain actors in that genre of dramatic R-rated comedies would become known for playing a similar character with a storyline that had typical tropes.

The actor gave an example of the storyline “What if I got to go back and be in a fraternity, at this stage in the game” that was popular in films about thirty-something men.

Vaughn’s 1996 movie Swingers starred the actor as Trent, a smooth-talking man who tries to help his lovesick friend get over his breakup by constantly partying.

Will Ferrell, director Todd Phillips, Luke Wilson and Vince Vaughn pose at the premiere of ‘Old School’ (Getty Images)

His 2005 hit movie Wedding Crashers, which also starred Will Ferrell, Bradley Cooper, Christopher Walken and Jane Seymour, was about a group of friends who go to weddings to seek out women to have flings with.

Vaughn said the problem was that the people in charge of those movies wanted to keep their jobs by following a safe “set of rules that somehow get set in stone”.

“The people in charge don’t want to get fired more so than they’re looking to do something great, so they want to kind of follow a set of rules that somehow get set in stone, that don’t really translate,” he said. “But as long as they follow them, they’re not going to lose their job because they can say, ’Well, look, I made a movie off the board game Payday, so even though the movie didn’t work, you can’t let me go, right?’”

Looking forward, Vaughn said that he imagines that more dangerous comedies that “push the envelope” will be seen more within the film space.

Vaughn made his name with a number of popular comedies in the Nineties and Noughties (Getty Images)

“People want to laugh, people want to look at stuff that feels a little bit like it’s, you know, dangerous or pushing the envelope,” he said. “I think you’re going to see more of it in the film space sooner than later, would be my guess.”

He stars in the forthcoming movie Bad Monkey, based on Carl Hiaasen’s New York Times bestselling novel of the same name. It tells the story of Andrew Yancy (played by Vaughn), who has been suspended from the Miami Police Department and demoted to a restaurant health inspector.