Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show Press Conference
What’s been the impact on the comics from doing this movie? Has it changed anything?
Sebastian Maniscalco: “For myself, I did a Comedy Central special. I filmed an hour-long DVD. It’s opened up a lot of doors for me. The last 2-1/2 years I just keep pinching myself because, for myself, it’s been kind of like a dream come true to just perform in front of these large audiences and have a major motion picture coming out with Vince Vaughn and my parents in the movie also. Not too many people can say, ‘My parents are in my first movie.’ They’re loving every minute of it. For myself, it’s opened up a lot of doors. I just pray every day that this [continues]. It’s been a great ride.”
Bret Ernst: “A lot of things have happened to me because you have the heat of the tour and then you have the heat of the movie. It’s almost like that Advent calendar and now it’s Christmas Eve. And now you’re like, ‘All right, now Christmas morning is happening. I can’t wait to see it and see what happens.’ As comedians, it’s not based on how talented you are. It’s pretty much based on how many tickets you’re going to sell as a comic. Visibility is the best thing you can get as a stand-up comedian. I always said the only reason I would want any type of notoriety was so I can get a lot of stage time. You know what I mean? It seems like once this happened, then people are like, ‘Okay, well now we can put you in the club.’ And what’s great is all the hard work that you put in for the 11 years I’ve been doing stand-up, now that you have the visibility because of the movie, you’re in the club. That’s when your talent meets the hard work and the opportunity and then boom! That’s all you can ask for as an artist and this movie has provided that.”
Can you talk about the interaction with director Ari Sandel, how he shot everything, and working with these different personalities?
Vince Vaughn: “For me, I was not a good student. I had learning disabilities. I was bright, but I learned in different ways and some things came easier. I wasn’t a great athlete, but acting was always something that I really loved. But it took a lot of hard work. In fact, because I did have some learning disabilities, it seemed like a lot of things were hard work. So the one thing I really responded to with Ahmed was here’s this guy who’s Egyptian and wants to be an actor. There’s no parts for him, but it’s just his tenaciousness that I really responded to. I knew what it felt like. ‘Boy, there’s not an easy way in, but you really want to try to work at something.’
The same for Peter [Billingsley]. A lot of child stars, when they get to a certain age it’s very difficult because no one wants to see you anymore because you’re so recognizable for what you did [when you were] younger. You don’t have a normal kind of maturation process where you have a normal social life, playground stuff. Everybody kind of treats you really well, and all of a sudden people don’t want to be around you. And Peter’s work ethic to become a producer and get involved behind the camera was like nothing I ever saw. I’d say, ‘Let’s go to the race track. Let’s go do something.’ And this guy would say, ‘I have to work from 10 to 6.’ I’d say, ‘Peter, you got nothing to work on,’ and he’d say, ‘Well, I’m going to write a screenplay. I’m going to try and put something together,’ for years, with no results. So, for me, I found it easy to root for [these people].
And then as I was able with [Jon] Favreau, what we accomplished with Swingers was to try to provide opportunities if someone was kind of trying hard and working in that way. There’s something about that that is motivating and inspiring to me.
Ari Sandel was a guy that Peter gave an early opportunity to and worked with Peter on an early TV show that they did when Ari was starting off. When we first initiated the tour, Ari was just a hired cameraman the first day on the bus. He was not the director of the film. He was a guy with a camera. …As I said, we put together in 6 weeks. Originally I said to Peter, because Peter had done so much different stuff - he produced Made with me, Dinner for Five, The Break-Up, he produced Zathura, and now he’s done Iron Man. He’s producing Four Christmases with me. But he also produced this TV show and sort of was a mentor to Ari about how to get field segments and stuff. As we were there, so much of Peter’s day became about putting together the technical show and making sure stuff was running that I came to Ari, who I really liked his short film obviously which everyone knows of now which won the Academy Award. I said to him, ‘Will you direct this movie?’ He was thrilled, of course. I said, ‘We’ll talk to you at the end of the day and talk about sort of what’s going on and go get footage.’ He worked really hard and did a good job.
My style, where I come from in the creative process, is the best idea wins. I don’t need to be right. I don’t need anybody else to be right. I need whatever is right for the movie. I really like the collaboration where if you have an idea, we’ll throw it up there. I don’t want to debate it for 45 minutes. ‘Let’s see, let’s go, let’s watch it, let’s watch.’ I feel like when people feel included, they feel like they have a voice. They feel incentified. They’re excited. You’re getting the best ideas. So Ari was a huge component and very much a part of the idea, but so was Peter Billingsley and so was my sister and so was the editor, Dan Lebental, who cut American Pimp which was a great documentary. He cut The Break-Up. He cut Elf. So really what you see as a final result, I think, is better than what any one of us could have done. It really became a true collaboration with all of us.”
How did you feel about the Swingers routine?
Vince Vaughn: “What I kind of liked about it was it was kind of that simple comedy set up where I’m kind of tough on Justin [Long] and kind of not giving him an out, and then the fun is at the end he gets to humiliate me. I always knew Justin did a really good imitation of me that was not flattering and that was kind of funny at my expense. I knew that like, okay, we could be tough on him at the beginning because he’ll do a good job of making fun of me and that’ll make everyone happy.”
