As competitive and cutthroat as Hollywood can be, it can also be a place where deep friendships can be forged. Not the kind of buddies like the “We’re the most successful, talented, good-looking and famous–let’s be best pals” breed, of the present Ocean’s Eleven variety, or even the old school Rat Pack, but the bonds formed through long days of auditioning, taking day jobs and hoping for that one big break–and even more rare, the alliances that last as some of the friends succeed wildly while the other still struggle.
That’s the sort of tie that’s endured between actor Vince Vaughn, actor-writer-director Jon Favreau, child star-turned-producer Peter Billingsley and standup comic Ahmed Ahmed, who all met during their salad days trying to make it in showbiz in the early 90s and stayed tight during the unpredictable ebbs and flows of their careers.
Today the old gang is back together again in Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show, which documents the 30-city comedy tour across America Vaughn organized and hosted in 2006, and they explored their own long roadtrip to success together with Hollywood.com.
Peter Billingsley: I met Vince on the Afterschool Special, and actually I met Ahmed Ahmed then as well, who was an extra in that, and we all became friends. And at the time, Vince was one of the smartest, certainly funniest guys that I had met, and it was a question of ‘when’ with him, not ‘if.’ And Vince would go out for a lot of stuff like a lot of actors do, and he would get really down to the wire, down to the wire and just wouldn’t get it.
Ahmed Ahmed: We just always had this great friendship, and just have always supported each other. I think we’re just sort of cut from the same cloth. We all have no similar upbringings, but our parents instilled in us respect and hard work. Vince is really close to his family, as am I, and so is Peter. So I think the family values has a lot to do with it, with us being supportive of each other. [PAGEBREAK]
Vince Vaughn: 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 in Ahmed was here’s this guy who’s Egyptian and wants to be an actor. There’re no parts for him, but it’s just his tenaciousness that I really responded to. I knew what it felt like to feel like boy, there’s not an easy way in, but you really want to try to work at something.
Billingsley: We’ve really formed a friendship, and that was what was first and foremost. And I was trying to transition at that point in my career and producing it into stuff, and we just really became great friends and then had an opportunity to work again later. [PAGEBREAK]
Vaughn: With Peter: 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 younger. And you don’t have a normal kind of maturation process where you have normal social playground stuff. Everyone kind treats you really well and then 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,’ or ‘Let’s go do something.’ And he’d say, ‘I have to work from 10:00 to 6:00.’ I’d say, ‘Peter, you got nothing to work on.’ He’d say, ‘Well, I’m writing a screenplay. I’m going to try to put something together,’ for years with no results. And so for me, I found it easy to root for,
Jon Favreau: With Vince, there were a lot of hard luck stories with him–like the Buffalo Bills. He’d get there. He’d get to the Super Bowl. And it’s tough when you’re a good-looking guy. And he wasn’t really playing off his comedy. He was never sent out on that kind of role. I’d be sent out on all the funny stuff. He’d be sent out on all the good-looking parts, and then you can’t be the lead, because the lead’s going to be a star. So you’re going to be the unlikable competitor to the lead, like he was in Rudy. And then that’s the part that’s not that important usually, and he got trimmed down. It certainly didn’t showcase his skills, but he was always very, very funny behind the scenes.[PAGEBREAK]
Billingsley: [When] these guys met on Rudy–and we were just telling stories about it, calling up the bell hop and having fun, and just stuff that young guys do to have a good time–there was really a genuine friendship, and that’s what really started it, and then I think the work has grown from there…They made a decision to sort of control their own destiny and said, ‘Hey, let’s make a film.’
Favreau: When I wrote Swingers, it was very much in the voice of what he was, an exaggerated version of that. And then, we tried to get the movie set up, and somebody wanted to buy it. And we did readings trying to keep everybody in the cast. Then when I finally did the deal I was like, ‘It has to be me and Vince,’ and that was part of the deal. And then we did it very inexpensively because we didn’t have a lot of star power to draw funds, and that became a calling card.
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Vaughn: With Favreau, what we accomplished with Swingers try to provide opportunities if someone was kind of trying hard and working in that way. There’s something about that that’s motivating and inspiring to me.
Favreau: Off of the dailies of Swingers Vince got a holding deal with the television network, the Warner Brothers network–The Frog, remember? And he had some sort of holding money, and it was like we hit the Lotto. It was like when Joe Pesci gets made in Goodfellas. We were all celebrating, and he was taking us all out to dinner because he had whatever it was, $50,000 or a $100,000. It was more than we’ve ever seen. So we were all really enjoying life, and then Swingers hadn’t even come out yet. Then he did a pilot and then all of a sudden [Steven] Spielberg offered him Jurassic Park 2, and that’s when he almost couldn’t do it because of his holding deal. And I think Spielberg got on the phone. He did that, and then so there was a big, big thing with him at that point. Then there was sort of a lull. He was doing a lot of roles that he was getting a lot of recognition for critically, but nothing really popped until he started doing the comedies again. [PAGEBREAK]
Billingsley: For a lot of us it was nice to see, because Vince is so funny. He is so smart and he is just so naturally funny in life that it was just a matter of time for when he’d start doing his comedies. And I think this movie is more of a return to the spirit of Swingers. This is not a studio-financed movie. This is really based on an idea that he had. Everyone in this movie who has worked on this movie is either family or friends, have all known each other for years, and pooled together our energies and our resources to do something different and to do something special that we really thought we could achieve kind of a different special movie with this. Because a lot of people said, ‘You know, Vince, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to go on the road and live in a bus for a month.’
Ahmed: I think we all had certain visions we were going for that we also supported. Peter has become a really successful producer, aside from his acting and stuff. And I would say Vince has done extremely well for himself. And for me, it was always a dream of mine to achieve a certain amount of success as a comedian. [PAGEBREAK]
Favreau: I think when you share a common experience, whether it’s a good or bad one like we both did with the experience of Swingers and our lives changing at the same time, there’s not a lot of people who could relate to that. And you share that, and you sort of mature at the same rate. We’re very different people, but we share a very similar perspective on life and certainly on comedy and on movies…I know that when Vince comes into the editing room, what he likes I’m going to like. And he helps keep me true to what I do, and I like to do the same with him as I collaborate with him on projects. So I think we help steer each other a little bit and help sort of recalibrate the other person as you sort of get lost in going out to that big world with a lot of different voices.
Vaughn: I don’t have a lot of friends in Hollywood necessarily. But Jon’s a guy who I met, and we both kind of shared ideas and really like to collaborate, so I think we share tastes and the stuff that we like to do. And he’s a great guy; Jon’s a great father, and he’s funny. And he’s a guy I’ll go to with whatever I’m doing, and I’ll ask advice and say, ‘What do you think?’ And I do the same for him, so I think it’s grounded in a place that we both started with each other, and also I feel like he elevates me as well.
Ahmed: There’s that support, coming down to the comedy clubs and stuff, watching me night after night [laughs] trying to work out a joke or whatever and a year later, turn a corner and find a new angle or a good story. And just having him there in the trenches with me was always really a great feeling to have a friend like that come down and support you. So we always just had a sort of mutual respect and support for each other.[PAGEBREAK]
Bonus Round Question For Favreau and Vaughn: How often do you guys get pitched to make Swingers 2?
Favreau: Not that often. People say they want it, but they don’t want it. They don’t want it.
Vaughn: You know, he wrote a screenplay for it, honestly. And it was done before the movie ever came out, and it was actually excellent. But once the movie came out and became what it was, we sort of felt like maybe we’re better to leave well enough alone and then went on to do a different one, which was Made. Favreau had a great concept for it. I always tell him he should publish a script sometime.
