Changing Up the Onscreen Dynamics: In Swingers, Vaughn’s character was the one who offered his friend advice on getting over a bad break-up. In The Break-Up, their roles have been flipped around. Favreau said, “For me it was a real pleasure because it was probably the most fun I’ve ever had working with the guy. I’m usually the person either writing or directing the piece and I’m concerned about writing a role for him that he can really sink his teeth into.”
Favreau continued. “Pete [Billingsley] and Vince were working on this movie and I’ve worked with Pete a lot on Dinner for Five, on Zathura, on Elf. We’ll be working together on Iron Man as well, so we’re all sort of buddies. I work day-to-day with Pete, Pete works day-to-day with Vince. When they were putting this movie together, Pete told me that they wanted me to come out and just not worry about [anything]. Just come on out, they’ll treat me like an actor, they’ll just fly me out there, put me up at the hotel, bring me to set and it was just a real pleasure to not have to worry about carrying a movie, not worry about the story and be more of a character actor, like I sort of have been. I was [one] in Rudy, and other movies I’ve done - Daredevil, Wimbledon. I got to really just try to get under Vince’s skin, whereas usually he’s the guy who’s getting under my skin and I’m the one keeping the story on track. So it’s a real fun time reversing roles and just trying to rattle him. There’s nobody I think that can make each other laugh as much as we can with each other. I don't think I said that right, but you know what I mean.
It’s funny, and it’s funny watching him. If you look at the Made outtakes, you can see that he’s just killing me the whole time. And now I got to sort of haul off and take a few shots at him. He’s just very generous. When you’re the lead like this, you’ve got to be a very generous guy and let people come in and try to take the scene away. And it always works best when you have that gracious type of person. It’s a lot of fun, just playing around with it.”
The Vaughn/Favreau Combination: Favreau and Vaughn have such great chemistry together onscreen, it’s a shame the twosome didn’t get more time together in the finished film. Fans of the Favreau/Vaughn combo might like to know it’s all because of Jennifer Aniston that we don’t see more of the comic twosome... “Yes, this movie was originally built around me,” explained Favreau, tongue firmly planted in cheek. “Apparently, this Jennifer girl’s getting a lot of press so they just dug everything they could out of the bins to try to make the movie seem like it’s a love story when it was really me and Vince. It was a two-hander.”
So Who is ‘Johnny O’?: “My character was, I wanted to make those scenes, I wanted to take the piss out of those scenes a little bit because it was very easy for those scenes to be really heartfelt moments. Vince and I really don’t like that. We sort of share that sensibility. If you look at the last scene in Swingers, it sort of almost is going to be this Afterschool Special moment where we break down the theme of the movie and then he sees the girl making faces at him. We kind of like to pull the rug out, and so those scenes, each one of them begged for this heavy duty, real, weighted conversation about what the movie is about and we just played totally against it. Playing like that meathead was really fun and against type of the neurotic, over-thinking guy that I usually play in movies with him. So it was a lot of fun.”
It’s not hard to tell how much Favreau enjoys working with Vaughn. “What’s fun about playing with Vince is he and I have such a great rhythm together, it’s almost like playing jazz with another musician that you work with a lot. You know something good’s going to come of it and that scene [toward the end] in particular, we gave ourselves a lot of leeway. I think the movie at that moment really needed a nice little laugh in there. And whenever you have tension is the best setup for any kind of humor, so I’m very proud of it. I’m very happy with how they actually cut it together because I’ve done a lot of good stuff in other movies, but so much of it is determined in the editing room. These guys really took the time to sift through all that stuff. I know I do it when I’m directing or producing, and the fact that you’re a performer and somebody takes the time to find the best moments and build something nice is flattering.”
