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News by Tom Woodward of dvdactive.com
"Universal Home Video has sent over an early look at the artwork for The Break-Up which stars Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn. I'm afraid Universal has yet to officially announce this one, so we're unable to bring you too many details at this time. However, we are able to confirm that the disc will include an alternate ending, over fifteen minutes of deleted and extended scenes, and some outtakes. Retail will be $29.98. a HD DVD version will also be available for $39.98. We'll bring you further details shortly."
Release Date: September 26, 2006
Click image for bigger picture of DVD case
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Tue Aug 1 07:15P on More Max
Mon Aug 7 09:15A on More Max
A Cool, Dry Place
Tue Aug 1 01:30P American Movie Classics
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Wed Aug 2 10:00A on HBO
Wed Aug 2 07:15P on HBO
Fri Aug 4 02:10P on HBO Zone
Sat Aug 5 12:20A on HBO Zone
Sun Aug 6 09:00A on HBO
Sun Aug 6 06:15P on HBO
Tue Aug 8 07:20P on HBO Zone
Domestic Disturbance
Thu Aug 3 01:45A on TBS Cable
The Ellen Degeneres Show (repeat of June 2 show)
Check local listings here
Tuesday, August 1
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Sat Aug 5 08:00P on HBO
Sun Aug 6 04:40A on HBO
Tue Aug 8 12:00P on HBO
Tue Aug 8 09:00P on HBO
Paparazzi (short cameo)
Tue Aug 1 10:00P on Thrillermax
Fri Aug 4 05:05P on Thrillermax
Mon Aug 7 07:30P on More Max
Rudy
Tue Aug 1 08:10A on Starz Kids and Family
Tue Aug 1 01:30P on Starz Kids and Family
Tue Aug 1 07:35P on Starz Kids and Family
Fri Aug 4 09:00A on HBO Family
Fri Aug 4 07:00P on HBO Family
Sun Aug 6 07:00A on Starz Kids and Family
Sun Aug 6 02:15P on Starz Kids and Family
Sun Aug 6 09:20P on Starz Kids and Family
Wedding Crashers
Thu Aug 3 12:15P on More Max
Thu Aug 3 09:00P on More Max
Sat Aug 5 03:20P on Cinemax
Sun Aug 6 12:45A on Cinemax
Mon Aug 7 05:30P on More Max
Zoolander (short cameo)
Sun Aug 6 12:00P on Comedy Central
Sun Aug 6 06:00P on Comedy Central
A run of hit comedies has made Vince Vaughn one of Hollywood's most bankable stars. Adam Rynne meets the man who's put a smile back on Jennifer Aniston's face
28 July 2006
Actors have voices. Of course, they have faces also, but unanimously, it is the way that they intonate, utter, relay and convey that becomes - if perhaps subconsciously for an audience that is staring upon a widescreen facade - characteristic and influential. And Vince Vaughn has a voice that almost sounds unlike any other.
He leans on certain syllables with a seemingly haphazard inconsistency, allowing sounds that the rest of us would normally accentuate come out untouched, before taking the last letter of the final word in his concluding sentence and elongating it out into a lingering drone.
There is no sense to the way that his voice goes up and down at will, no pattern to jump aboard. So that his pragmatic deduction that "people are just doing their jobs. They're trying to sell a magazine or they're trying to sell a TV show" becomes a rollercoaster of breathless rhythm and timbre. He speaks inordinately quickly and with a disregard for conventional punctuation until the closing sound is delivered as smooth and never-ending.
He never appears to need a breath and, as he soars, stays high and then plunges down into a stretched dip, it all becomes rather hypnotic.
"You really can't moan about it," the remarkable voice starts. "I mean, my outlook on it has always been that people are just doing their jobs. They're trying to sell a magazine or they're trying to sell a TV show. It's not personal.
"They do it to anyone, whether it's an actor, a musician or a politician. If you realise it's not personal, you don't take it personally. And I really just sort of laugh at it. I'm always curious to see what I've been up to lately or what the next big plan is.
"It's a bit ridiculous," he continues, as I start to feel like Mowgli in The Jungle Book having just encountered the spellbinding snake with the captivating voice (I wonder if my eyes are doing big, hurdy-gurdy circles and swirls).
"There's such a fascination these days with the celebrity side or the success side. Even outside of acting there's such a focus on success, on accomplishing, on money, but not really a focus on working hard or doing a good job on something.
"When I started at 18, there was only one show in America called Entertainment Tonight that was on for half an hour and was about celebrity lives. Now, there's like seven shows. There's entire networks dedicated to it and, sadly, I think a lot of the younger kids are choosing to be actors or musicians, not because they want to act or be musicians, but really they're just looking to be famous. And I would really caution them that that's the kind of the stuff that you deal with that's not the most fun side."
The actor who became famous, through Doug Liman's Swingers, for his rampant talking, rampant whining and rampant berating - the actor who has been regularly positioned onscreen as a feral motor-mouth - has now become a whole different Hollywood animal.
When the insanely dumb and extremely entertaining Dodgeball was released in 2004, Vaughn told me that he liked to keep a low profile, that when he was dating someone he didn't need to have it dissected and profiled and visualised in journals and newspapers.
He was an actor, at that time, about whom little, personally, was discussed or speculated upon. Then a couple of things happened.
Dodgeball took over $$100m - the golden milestone in the genuine creation of a top-line, commercial movie star - at the box office.
Vaughn then played a supporting loudmouth in Mr & Mrs Smith, which brought back $$428m.
Next, the Chicago-raised actor starred opposite Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers; the budget was $$40m, the return was $$283m. And so, Vince Vaughn had become a dependably and remarkably profitable comedy star, of which there is only a handful.
Just as significantly, however, Vaughn appeared to begin dating Jennifer Aniston, having met her on the set of his new picture, The Break-Up. The actress had recently - and to the disturbing and lascivious interest of global media - finished a marriage with fellow actor Brad Pitt, and anything to do with the former Friends comedienne - clothes, where she ate, whom she appeared in public alongside - had been deemed of essential importance.
Which brings us back to photographers now sifting through Vince Vaughn's rubbish, bidding wars for exclusive portraits of a couple-at-rest and, on the other side of the fence, the sale on E-bay of a jar apparently containing a quantity of Californian air through which Pitt and his new partner, Angelina Jolie, had just strolled through.
Relaxed and smoking, laid back across a London sofa, Vaughn has just attended to the matter of "people are just doing their jobs, they're trying to sell magazines..." He is unusually tall, well-dressed in a dapper suit and is both charming and easily likeable. (I overheard a breathless: "Oh my God, he's a beaut" from a small corner of ladies that he's just met).
His demeanour betrays hardly any worries, as he explains in regard to his new-found notoriety off-screen: "My grandfather was a dairy farmer, both my parents worked to support us, my sister's a school teacher. I just think there's kind of like real problems and real struggles that people go through and I think it's all a bit ridiculous. It's not that important." Many say that, but with him you believe it. Fine, let's move on.
The Break-Up is an unusual and interestingly fearless movie, almost a harking back to classic Hollywood comedy where married couples argue, try to poison each other, and remarry, all to the beat of a rat-a-tat-tat dialogue, all under the roof of a handsome and confined city apartment.
Directed by Peyton Reed (Bring It On and Down With Love), the picture tells of Gary and Brooke (Vaughn and Aniston) and the downward plummet of their two-year relationship. She accuses him of being unthinking and unsupportive; he charges her with nagging. The break-up comes. Neither wants to leave the shared apartment so both set out to undermine the confidence and security of the other.
Blending often wonderfully timed comedy with darker, closer drama, The Break-Up (which, in keeping with Vaughn's newfound capacities, comfortably passed through the $$100m at the US box-office) was something of a pet project for the actor-turned-producer.
The first picture to be put through his recently established production company, Wild West Picture Show Productions, the project offered Vaughn the potential to nurse through the Hollywood system an unconventional romantic comedy that could also take him back to the Swingers days of mass collaboration between cast and crew, irregular American movie making and on-set improvisation.
"I think I was always influenced by the American movies of the 1970s," he tells me, "which of course was influenced by the European cinema. You have much more flawed characters and a lot more ambiguity in the movie, less sort of definitive stuff.
"These two young writers," he continues of Jeremy Garelick and Jay Lavender who authored The Break-Up alongside Vaughn, "were very good, but I said, 'We just really can't go and sell this idea to a studio and have them pay us, because we'll never get this story to be told the way we want it to be told. There'll be too many voices and too many notes and we'll get lost. We'll have to sort of write it and then take it to a studio.'
"Me being an actor and coming from improvisation, I really like to improve the characters. I like to sit back and say (to other actors), 'What's your interpretation?' and I think you always want to have an environment where ideas are welcome. You get a better movie because of it."
With Vaughn's long-time collaborator Jon Favreau (Swingers, Made) starring as Gary's loyal, if easily confused best friend and Joey Lauren Adams (Chasing Amy) appearing as a mature ally of Brooke's, The Break-Up observes the eviscerating competition and terribly human ruthlessness that can define the implosion of any relationship.
Brooke appears naked and attractive in front of Gary, before allowing her new date and her ex-boyfriend to meet only a couple of minute later; Gary hosts what looks like an orgy in the apartment that he still shares with his ex-girlfriend. Attempts at a civilised co-existence descend into bitter and frequently appealing comical farce, while friends and colleagues fashion a reluctant chorus line.
Described by Vaughn as, "much more independent in nature, but made at a studio level", The Break-Up, deliberately shot in muted colours so as to avoid the sugary lustre of traditional rom-com, appears to be Vaughn's latest attempt at some genuine adult comedy, at some genuine intelligent filmmaking.
"I would be open to doing anything if it was good. I've been on a comedy run for a while and part of that was with everything that was going on in the world, I thought it was a good time to try to make folks laugh, maybe bring people together through comedy.
"With this movie, I wanted to do something different in this genre."
Behind the enjoyable rudimentary on-screen persona, Vince Vaughn has masked a more weighty and insightful reality. It is this astuteness that has ensured the longevity of his career. Following Swingers in 1996, a role in The Lost World: Jurassic Park in 1997, the portrayal of a caring father in A Cool Dry Place a year later and the re-interpretation of Norman Bates in Gus Van Sant's restoration of Hitchcock's Psycho, his identity is that of a flexible, interested actor.
His return to high-profile comedy, first with Old School in 2003 and then Starsky & Hutch in 2004, saw him construct for himself a position at the forefront of the new breed of Hollywood comedy actors, a troupe of performers that include Ben Stiller, Owen and Luke Wilson and Will Ferrell.
Having raised more than half-a-billion dollars with three movies, Vaughn now appears intent on revising one of film's oldest genres, the protected romantic comedy.
"If this movie is successful," he suggests, "it could open the door for other people who want to do non-traditional movies and maybe get a chance for there to be some other options out there, instead of the same story over and over again."
The Break-Up is at cinemas across Northern Ireland.
Sex and the City
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Be Cool
Clay Pigeons
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Paparazzi
Psycho
Return to Paradisee
Rudy
Swingers
Wedding Crashers
Sex and the City
(episode Sex and Another City
Wed Jul 26 11:00P on WGN Chicago
Wed Jul 26 11:00P WPIX New York
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Sat Jul 29 11:30A on Cinemax
Be Cool
Sat Jul 22 01:45P on Showtime
Sat Jul 22 10:00P on Showtime
Tue Jul 25 05:45P on Showtime
Sun Jul 30 12:30P on Showtime
Sun Jul 30 08:00P on Showtime
Clay Pigeons
Fri Jul 28 11:00P on IFC
Sat Jul 29 03:05A on IFC
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Sat Jul 22 12:20P on Cinemax
Sat Jul 22 08:15P on Cinemax
Fri Jul 28 02:50P on Cinemax
Sat Jul 29 05:45A on Cinemax
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Sat Jul 22 10:15A on Thrillermax
Mon Jul 24 11:15A on Thrillermax
Mon Jul 24 10:00P on Thrillermax
Tue Jul 25 09:30A on More Max
Wed Jul 26 09:00A on Cinemax
Wed Jul 26 08:00P on Cinemax
Fri Jul 28 08:30A on Thrillermaxx
Sun Jul 30 02:30P on More Max
Paparazzi (short cameo)
Sun Jul 30 12:30P on Cinemax
Psycho
Mon Jul 24 01:35A on Encore
Mon Jul 24 04:45P on Encore Mystery
Mon Jul 24 11:30P on Encore Mystery
Sun Jul 30 11:05A on Encore Mystery
Sun Jul 30 08:00P on Encore Mystery
Return to Paradisee
Sun Jul 23 02:40P on Showtime Showcase
Mon Jul 24 09:00P on Showtime Women
Tue Jul 25 04:00A on Showtime Women
Wed Jul 26 04:15P on Showtime Showcase
Thu Jul 27 04:45A on Showtime Showcase
Sat Jul 29 10:00A on Showtime Showcase
Sat Jul 29 09:00P on Showtime Showcase
Sun Jul 30 07:00P on Showtime Women
Mon Jul 31 02:25A on Showtime Women
Rudy
Mon Jul 24 04:25A on HBO Zone
Mon Jul 31 08:10A on Encore
Mon Jul 31 06:00P on Encore
Swingers
Sun Jul 23 02:45P on HD Net
Mon Jul 24 01:00A on TBS Cable
Wed Jul 26 11:15P on TBS Cable
Thu Jul 27 10:00A on TBS Cable
Thu Jul 27 09:45P on HD Net
Fri Jul 28 01:15A on HD Net
Fri Jul 28 02:45P on HD Net
Wedding Crashers
Tue Jul 25 07:30A on Cinemax
Tue Jul 25 02:30P on Cinemax
Tue Jul 25 10:00P on Cinemax
Photos removed at the request of the paparazzi photographer who took them. But you don't have to look far to find them again. They're all over the place.
The Prime Gig
Tue Jul 18 08:00P on WGN Chicago
Be Cool
Thu Jul 13 10:30A on Showtime
Thu Jul 13 06:00P on Showtime
The Cell
Fri Jul 21 02:00A on USA Network
Fri Jul 21 02:00P on USA Network
Clay Pigeons
Sun Jul 16 08:05P on IFC
Mon Jul 17 06:00A on IFC
A Cool, Dry Place
Mon Jul 17 11:30A on American Movie Classics
Making of 'Wedding Crashers'
Thu Jul 20 03:40P on More Max
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Thu Jul 13 04:00P on Thrillermax
Fri Jul 14 10:30A on Cinemax
Fri Jul 14 04:30P on Cinemax
Fri Jul 14 10:00P on Cinemax
Sat Jul 15 10:05A on More Max
Sat Jul 15 09:00P on More Max
Tue Jul 18 12:00P on Cinemax
Tue Jul 18 08:00P on Cinemax
Wed Jul 19 10:45A on Thrillermax
Thu Jul 20 11:30A on More Max
Thu Jul 20 09:00P on More Max
Paparazzi (short cameo)
Fri Jul 14 08:30P on Cinemax
Psycho
Thu Jul 13 04:30P on Encore Mystery
Thu Jul 13 11:10P on Encore Mystery
Tue Jul 18 02:50P on Encore Mystery
Tue Jul 18 09:40P on Encore Mystery
Return to Paradise
Sat Jul 15 09:00A on Showtime Women
Sat Jul 15 04:20P on Showtime Women
Sun Jul 16 03:20A on Showtime Women
Tue Jul 18 09:00P on Showtime Women
Sunday Morning Shootout
Sun Jul 16 11:00A on American Movie Classics
Swingers
Fri Jul 14 05:30P on HD Net
Tue Jul 18 08:00P on HD Net
Wed Jul 19 01:30A on HD Net
Wedding Crashers
Fri Jul 14 09:00P on More Max
Sun Jul 16 08:00A on Cinemax
Sun Jul 16 08:00P on Cinemax
Thu Jul 20 08:30A on Cinemax
Thu Jul 20 04:00P on Cinemax
Thu Jul 20 10:00P on Cinemax
E! Molding New Comedy Profile
By Anne Becker -- Broadcasting & Cable
Found here
E! is looking to boost its comedy profile with the launch of celebrity claymation series Starveillance, which will debut in January 2007.
The show, from Celebrity Deathmatch mastermind Eric Fogel, will offer up celebrities who have more than just feet of clay, including Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston, and Ashlee Simpson.
Adding more laughs to the lineup is a top priority at E! Networks President/CEO Ted Harbert said in announcing the show to critics at the Television Critics Association Tour in L.A..
He also pointed out that, although the network lost its video version of Howard Stern's radio show, it's still up 11% in prime time household ratings over last year. "Frankly, six months ago, I thought I'd be out here trying to spin a negative story," he said.
The ratings growth is thanks in part to strong ratings from The Simple Life's fourth season, which premiered on the network in June. E! has ordered a fifth season of the show.
He's the 6ft 5in Hollywood charmer who built his reputation on buddy movies and screwball comedies. But Vince Vaughn has swapped the Frat Pack and the fart jokes for emotional confessions about love and relationships. Does this mean he's finally ready to confess all about Jennifer Aniston, asks Carole Cadwalladr
Carole Cadwalladr
Sunday July 9, 2006
Observer
Oh, the glorious absurdity of it all. One minute, you're reading all about the is-it-or-isn't-it romance between Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn in Heat, and the next, you're at the Dorchester Hotel and Jen's swishing past you on the way to the lifts.
But, goodness, she is tiny. Even in her heels and bouffed-up hair, she's just a wee slip of a thing, about five inches shorter than she looks on screen, with the kind of micro bone structure that makes you think she might have been shrunk in the wash.
I feel like I might have accidentally fallen down an Alice in Wonderland-type rabbit hole, because hanging out at the Dorchester on the day that the publicity entourage for Vaughn and Aniston's new film, The Break-Up, sweeps into town is not much like life. It's more like being on the set of a soap opera, where there's lots of people with fabulous hair and the dialogue has a slightly strained relationship to reality.
But still, I get to stare at Jen, who doesn't seem to mind too much and gives me a bright smile, before a panicked publicist appears, attaches herself to my elbow, and steers me out of the way. Because I'm here not to interview Aniston. I'm here to interview Vaughn. And I've inadvertently broken through a Maginot line of flunkies who are attempting to ensure that they're kept apart at all times. There are to be no pictures of them together. No joint interviews. And yet just their presence at the Dorchester is causing uproar. There's a dozen broadcast journalists coralled in a suite. There's a clutch of paparazzi parked outside the front. And then, just to add to the sense of being somewhere outside the normal time-space continuum, Britain's very own Jen'n'Vince wander past: why, yes, it's Richard and Judy.
They've just done an interview with Jen, apparently, and I interrogate Judy on the grounds that if anybody knows a thing or two about the nature of celebrity coupledom, it's surely going to be her. She tells me that they'd met them at the premiere the night before and 'they were ever so charming and friendly - they just seemed like such a lovely couple together.'
She's as spot on as ever, of course. He's funny, she's funny. She was broken-hearted, he was single, what could be more perfect? But it's all so tricksy because they still haven't officially come out as a couple. Trickier still is the fact that the film they're publicising is all about coupledom. And it was while filming the story of a relationship's demise, last summer, that, to the tabloids' great delight, they got it together. Or didn't get it together. But, hell, probably did get it together. And this, of course, was after Jen had been dumped by Brad after he'd had a thing with his co-star, Angelina Jolie, before impregnating her and then running away to the Namibian desert.
Not even Hollyoaks would try to get away with that as a plot-line. And it leaves me with several problems, if I'm honest. Because although the film is billed as a romantic comedy, it's also terribly adult. Not in the porno sense of the word, but in the emotionally complex one. So. How precisely do you interview someone about a film about relationships, specifically about relationship break-ups? A film, moreover, that they've co-written and produced, when they're in a totally top-secret but totally public relationship with their co-star, the most famously broken-up-with woman on the planet?
With difficulty, it turns out. Not that Vaughn isn't charming. He's more than charming, giving me a rather earnest two-handed handshake of the type you'd expect from a particularly sincere vicar. What's more, when he talks it's in a rather soft and diffident vicar voice. Not vicar, actually, since he's got a distinctive Midwestern twang, but a pastor maybe, or an Episcopalian minister; but not, in any case, what you'd expect from the man you saw burying his head in Isla Fisher's bosoms in Wedding Crashers or whipping up the frat house in Old School.
'Can I offer you some water?' he asks. 'Which chair would you like? Thank you so much for coming, it's great to meet you.' It's a bit like going to meet the Fonz and getting Richie instead. Any minute now, I think, he's going to start calling me 'ma'am' and apologising for saying 'heck'.
It's really all very confusing. But then Vaughn's career is nothing if not confusing. He had eight long, hungry years in Hollywood before his best friend, Jon Favreau, wrote a semi-autobiographical script based on their friendship and turned it into 2002's indie hit, Swingers. Steven Spielberg saw it and promptly wrote him into The Lost World: Jurassic Park, after which he went on to play a string of not-so-memorable straight parts - A Cool Dry Place, Psycho, The Cell - before being rediscovered as a comedian in Old School
It was Wedding Crashers, though, which grossed more than $200m at the US box office, that propelled him into the big time, as one-half of a womanising double act with Owen Wilson. And now there's The Break-Up, in which he plays Gary, an unreconstructed feet-up-on-the-coffee-table-beer-in-the-hand sort of bloke who slowly evolves into being a more touchy-feely-let-me-cook-you-dinner sort of bloke. If that sounds crass, it's not meant to be, because it is a far more intelligent version of relationships than traditional rom-com fare.
'I think life is all about going through experiences and learning better how to communicate, and in a way this movie is a cautionary tale,' he says. 'Because even if you're in love with somebody, if you don't honour the relationship or if you're too caught up in not wanting to look foolish or not really communicating about the way that you feel, you can really do damage to the love that's there. You have to really love someone to go through hard times with them, and at the end you learn really valuable lessons. You think, "Oh I see, I was with that person because I really needed to learn this.'"
This isn't what I was expecting. Where are the fart gags? Nowhere, that's where. Gary is a breakthrough role for him in many ways. Although he's an undeniable dish - he's 6ft5in, has a handsome face and is attractively dishevelled on account of growing a beard for an upcoming part in Into the Wild - up until now he's been what Rolling Stone magazine called 'a guy's guy'. The Break-Up is the first time that he's played a woman's sort of man.
And, boy, can he talk the talk. I feel like I've stumbled into a north London encounter group.
'The easy thing is to think, well they did this wrong, and they did that wrong. And I think the harder thing to do is to take accountability and say, what could I have done better? It's always kind of painful, but I also think you can come out on the other side of it, and be better equipped at finding someone else. And usually, or at least hopefully, you start to choose people who are in a better place, too, and have learnt some things as well...'
He's almost word-perfect on all the stuff that, as a 36-year-old woman - like me - you'd hope to hear from a 36-year-old man - like him. Although there's something, perhaps, just a little too word-perfect about it for someone whose longest relationship - to actress Joey Lauren Adams - lasted just over a year and who's never been short of what used to be called 'female companionship'.
Trent, the semi-autobiographical character from Swingers, was the definitive ladies' man. And prior to Aniston, Vaughn had been through a string of co-stars (Joey Lauren Adams, as above, from A Cool Dry Place, Ashley Judd from The Locusts, Janeane Garofalo from Clay Pigeons). But you'd never know this from all his talk about communication, and emotional openness, and growing as a person. Although he does admit that he's been a bit rubbish at relationships in the past.
'I've not been very good at committing myself, it's true... As an actor, you're always really nervous about continuing to work, and trying to make sure you have opportunities, so when relationships would not get easy, it was very simple for me to lose myself in my work. But then, as you get older, I think you're more open to having a friend, someone to have experiences with, and to share the ups and downs of life. I think it just comes with maturity really.'
It's a good answer and if I was interviewing him for the role of Jennifer Aniston's boyfriend, I'd tick another box here. But I'm not, and I haven't yet mentioned Jennifer, and he hasn't yet mentioned Jennifer. Although there's no doubt that she's here with us. She has a starring if silent role as the elephant in the room. A really huge elephant sitting slap-bang between us who makes asking questions tricky, as I have to mentally double check all his answers in case there's some sort of coded reference to her.
And yet Vaughn is intrinsically more interesting than just another piece of eye candy. He went to school with writer Dave Eggers and they occupy similar cultural niches in their respective fields: both achieved early success slightly outside the mainstream. And it's not the first time that he has found himself in a confusing life-art-art-life maelstrom. He was the main character in Swingers - Trent Walker. And, to a degree, Trent Walker was him. He was Jon Favreau's inspiration for the character, and, a decade ago, that character was a womanising, confident, struggling young actor. 'Swingers was based on a reality, but it's really exaggerated for comedy,' says Vaughn. 'Me and Jon never went to Vegas together, I never said, "You're the money, baby" 20 times a day. All that stuff was made up, but it came from a real-life situation.'
Spielberg was so impressed with him in Swingers that he arranged a meeting. As well as describing Vaughn as 'a film icon to be', he said, 'I found him to be so different from Trent that immediately I was struck by his ability to play character parts.'
What I can't figure out is if he's in character now. This is only one of a handful of print interviews he's doing and here we are having a nice, cosy chat about feelings and emotions.
But, the fact is, he's put a huge amount of time and effort into making a film that is all about feelings and emotions. He was only a hired hand on Wedding Crashers, whereas he was the driving force behind The Break-Up. He was, he says, exasperated with the romantic-comedy scripts he got sent. 'It was always the same thing: people were perfect, they always did and said the right thing... and I wanted to do something different, to tell a more character-driven story, like Swingers. I thought audiences would really respond to something original and fresh. The studios are kind of afraid of it, but audiences aren't really given credit for wanting something different.'
He's right, we're not. And while various critics have been snooty about it, they're missing the point. The Break-Up, for all that it's a big-budget Hollywood movie, also manages to convey the ordinary, everyday misery of what it is to be in a dissolving relationship. It's a different sort of humour than Vaughn has done before, more sophisticated and observational than his fratball efforts, where there's always one fat person to make fun of. What's more, it does manage to pull off the trick of being both funny and affecting.
It's also that rare beast: a rom-com without a happy ending. 'When I wrote the screenplay, I wrote it without a studio, and when I went to Universal, part of the reason I was a producer on it was because I knew I had to protect this movie. They said, "We want to collaborate, we want to be able to try some stuff," and I said, "Absolutely, as long as I get to make the final decision." So, we did a couple of endings, and credit to them, they said the more traditional ending didn't feel right either. And so the ending we have is true to our original intention. We wanted it to feel as authentic as possible.'
Which is perhaps one reason why, in its opening weekend in the US, it grossed an impressive $39m. That and the fact that the opening sequence is a montage sequence of stills of the kind of coupley shots that OK! would kill for: Jen'n'Vince bowling. Jen'n'Vince at a ball-game. Jen'n'Vince snogging. It's almost enough to make me feel sorry for the paps outside the hotel. One of them tells me that the first snap of them looking romantic together, 'you know, like them holding hands next to a fountain', would sell around the world for thousands upon thousands of pounds.
'What was funny,' says Vaughn, 'is that we'd just started shooting in Chicago, and we were doing those pictures all over the city, and the tabloid magazines were shooting us shooting them and then using them for real.'
But then what's real and what's not real is a pretty wobbly line. Vaughn denies the film is autobiographical in any direct sense, and that 'the greatest compliment anyone can ever give me is to say that it just looks like I'm playing myself'. Yet there's a thread that links Trent from Swingers and Gary from The Break-Up, not least in that they're both fast talkers, both have a way with women, neither are what you'd call new men, and they both, like Vaughn, like computer games. What's more, as well as writing it, starring in it and producing it, Vaughn also managed to film it in his home town, Chicago, cast his dad, Vernon, as Jennifer's dad, and have his mum, Sharon, playing a tourist. That's as well as having his best friend, Jon Favreau, play his best friend, and his ex-girlfriend, Joey Lauren Adams, play his girlfriend's friend.
His dad is, he says, his 'good-luck charm'. It was his love of Westerns that first interested him in film, and he played a part in Swingers alongside Favreau's grandmother. The pair also featured in the next film he and Favreau did together, Made. 'So, when it came to The Break-Up I wanted to put my dad in it, for luck, and because it's fun for me to watch him do a scene, and I figured, boy, you've put your dad in two movies, you'd better put your mom in one.' It's this home-spun aspect to the production that suggests that Vaughn might actually be, or least as much as anyone who happens to be a Hollywood mega-star could ever hope to be, just a little bit normal. He's close to his parents, who came from relatively humble backgrounds and never forgot it: his father was a successful businessman who had started life as an Ohio farm boy, his mother became a successful real-estate and share broker but only after she'd tried her hand at hairdressing, and growing up in well-to-do Chicago suburb Lake Forest with them and his two sisters, was, he says, 'like The Beverly Hillbillies'.
What's more, although he's at the centre of what's come to be called the 'Frat Pack', along with Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Owen Wilson and Jack Black (or as the New York Times describes them, 'the comedy mafia'), he says he likes to make films with his friends as he likes to work with actors 'I can bounce off' - roughly 70 per cent of The Break-Up was improvised.
But, oh it's so frustrating. He's a dish who's happy to talk about emotions and loves his mum. But he ought to know that a key requirement of character is that you show, not tell. And yet it's all tell with him. He talks about communication, and he gives detailed answers, just not really to the questions I ask. He doesn't banter and, when I actually get a laugh out of him - I say that I think women fancy actors who play characters they like, whereas men will fancy the axe-wielding psycho so long as she's a hottie - it feels like a minor triumph.
I'm not sure if it's because he's shy, or because he's uncomfortable, but there's a joyfulness about him on screen which he's either not willing or not able to put on in a suite at the Dorchester with the publicity circus in full swing. He was, by his own admission, wildly popular at school - the unacademic goofer-arounder. He was sent to his first drama group by his parents after he was diagnosed with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and the psychiatrist suggested Ritalin. He channelled his nervous energy into acting, skipping college after landing a break in a Chevy commercial and moved to LA at the age of 18, and he's never lost his most-popular-boy-in-the-school charisma. It carries over into all his films, but yet he's so scrupulously polite and articulate and serious about his work, I feel rather like I'm Melvyn Bragg interviewing Roger Scruton for a South Bank Show special.
And I can't help thinking I'm getting one particular Vince Vaughn here, a romantic-hero Vince Vaughn, rather than a buddy Vince Vaughn or a screwball-comedy Vince Vaughn, a suspicion compounded when he says, 'I think we have 1,000 different people inside ourselves, but what happens in life is that we all get comfortable presenting one of those to the world... and what is fun about being an actor is that you get to bring different sides to you to the surface, depending on the character.'
But then I do, actually, believe him when he says he went into acting for the acting, not for the fame and fortune. He's never hung out with the Hollywood set. He recently moved back to Chicago. And he refuses to talk about his private life, because he wants to keep it private, a stance I find hard to fault, although it is making my Jen'n'Vince: Official! scoop just that little bit harder to get.
Then he says, 'Ask me anything you like.'
So, well, it has to be Jennifer - true, or untrue? And this is his answer: 'Well, I've always kept my personal life to myself. I've never been an actor to go out and put my personal life out there. I've never been an actor to talk about politics a lot. I just see myself as an entertainer... And I feel like nowadays there's such a focus on celebrity, and such a major focus on celebrity life... And I really feel a lot of kids now go into acting because they want to be famous. And what I'd say to them is that that's really the hard stuff to deal with, and you really have to love what you're doing to put up with all of that... You know, I do really laugh at it. I do find it kind of funny, and I don't take it serious, but I definitely don't enjoy the feeling.'
Hmm. So, that's clear then. Still, he does say that 'with Jennifer what you see is what you get: she's very genuine, she's very humble, very considerate and I think that always comes across. She has a dignity and a warmth and a kindness to her, that I think comes across in her performance. You have this very flawed character on a journey, I thought it was important to have someone who you'd think, "Oh, I like her.' And I think she has a goodness to her.'
'But don't you see that's what the public is doing?' I say. 'We're rooting for her. We've watched the journey, and that's why we just want to know what happens next.'
'I think the one thing to know is that Jennifer is one of the brightest, most emotionally intelligent people I've ever met, and I think whatever experience she has only betters her. She's a very warm, genuine, happy, great person and I don't think there's anything to worry about her being able to... she'll always have an optimism and a brightness about life. I think it's just innate to who she is.'
Gosh, I don't know. Either he is a honey peach, or that's how celebrities say I-love-you-I'm-just-not-in-love-with-you these days. But still, I'd like to believe his theory that as we get older, we get better at relationships, so who knows?
I can't really say I met Vince in any meaningful sense, but I do know that he wants to be perceived as serious-minded, hard-working, sensitive and humble. And if you consider those important enough virtues to want to be perceived as having, there's an argument that you'd consider those virtues important enough, also, to actually have. And, anyway, I feel confident that a 37-year-old woman would have chucked him by now if he wasn't walking the walk as well as talking the talk. So, there it is: Jen'n'Vince: Official! It may or may not be true of course, but that's life down the rabbit hole for you...
· The Break-Up opens on 21 July
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
Hey Vince fans! Sorry for the lack of updates lately. Summer always has a way of keeping me away from the computer.
The last couple of weeks, Vince has been in South Dakota filming Into the Wild. He is playing Chris McCandless' close friend, Wayne Westerberg. This is a pretty big role and a nice surprise for Vince fans because we originally thought he would be playing the much smaller part of Jim Gallien. IMDb still lists him as Jim, but we have since learned from several sources that this is incorrect.
Locals from the filming locations in South Dakota have been stopping by the Forum and also the IMDb Message Boards to share their firsthand accounts of meeting the cast and crew of the film. Here's an article that ran in the Argus Leader on July 7th that also talks about the filming.
I just started reading "Into the Wild" and am so excited that Vince is involved in this project. It's an amazing story and it will be interesting to see him in a dramatic role again. (Speaking of which, I just watched The Prime Gig tonight. I encourage you to watch this if haven't seen Vince do drama. He's awesome, of course, and it's such a great movie.)
Also, Vince is in talks to play the role of FBI's John O'Neill in the political drama Against All Enemies, the film version of Richard Clarke's inside-Washington memoir. More about that can be found here.
In other Vince news...hmmm...nothing else really comes to mind. ;-) All I have to say is that if you're interested in the gossip that's been floating around lately, we have a discussion about it in the Forum, as well.
That's all for now. Hope you're all enjoying summer as much as I am!
By Tatiana Siegel
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Paul Haggis wants to appoint Vince Vaughn to his hot-button political drama "Against All Enemies," the film version of Richard Clarke's Washington memoir.
No offer has been made to the "Wedding Crashers" star because Columbia Pictures is fine-tuning the film's budget, but the helmer has had discussions with Vaughn about filling the role of the FBI's John O'Neill.
Sean Penn, who recently cast Vaughn in his drama "Into the Wild," has been widely reported to be on board to play Clarke.
"Enemies" chronicles how the Bush administration handled the al-Qaida threat both before and after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The former U.S. terrorism czar's story offers an insider's account of the nation's security apparatus and the maneuvers of Washington power brokers.
Longtime writer Haggis, whose directorial debut was last year's Oscar-winning "Crash," is supervising scribe James Vanderbilt as he pens the second draft of the screenplay based on the 2004 book.
Vaughn is now onscreen opposite Jennifer Aniston in "The Break-Up," which has grossed more than $114 million domestically.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
Clay Pigeons
Sat Jul 8 11:05P on IFC
Sun Jul 9 03:45A on IFC
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Thu Jul 6 09:00A on Cinemax
Mon Jul 10 06:15P on Cinemax
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Thu Jul 6 06:00P on Cinemax
Mon Jul 10 10:00P on Cinemax
Making of 'Wedding Crashers'
Wed Jul 12 04:45P on More Max
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Thu Jul 6 01:30P on More Max
Sun Jul 9 01:30P on Thrillermax
Sun Jul 9 10:00P on Thrillermax
Mon Jul 10 08:00A on Cinemax
Mon Jul 10 11:40P on Cinemax
Wed Jul 12 05:05P on More Max
Paparazzi (short cameo)
Thu Jul 6 04:30P on Cinemax
Tue Jul 11 03:00P on Cinemax
Pauly Shore Is Dead (short cameo)
Sat Jul 8 03:45A on Showtime
Psycho
Sun Jul 9 01:30A on Encore
Return to Paradise
Thu Jul 6 10:30A on Showtime Showcase
Thu Jul 6 08:00P on Showtime Showcase
Fri Jul 7 07:05P on Showtime Women
Mon Jul 10 08:00P on Showtime Showcase
Starsky & Hutch
Sat Jul 8 08:00P on FX Network
Sun Jul 9 05:30P on FX Network
Swingers
Sat Jul 8 10:10A on TBS Superstation
Sat Jul 8 08:00P on HD Net
Sat Jul 8 11:30P on HD Net
Sun Jul 9 12:45P on HD Net
Wedding Crashers
Sat Jul 8 10:00P on Cinemax
Sun Jul 9 05:00A on Cinemax
Sun Jul 9 07:00P on More Max
Mon Jul 10 10:00A on Cinemax
Mon Jul 10 08:00P on Cinemax
Tue Jul 11 02:40A on Cinemax
Wed Jul 12 09:30A on Cinemax
Wed Jul 12 10:00P on Cinemax
Zoolander (short cameo)
Sat Jul 8 09:00P on Comedy CentralSun Jul 9 07:00P on Comedy Central