Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn are “Money” Once Again
Posted by Josh Radde (josh@filmschoolrejects.com) on December 17, 2007
Iron Man director Jon Favreau is taking another shot at acting. This time he is going to be re-joined with longtime collaborator Vince Vaughn on director Seth Gordon’s (King of Kong) upcoming comedy Four Christmases. The film is perhaps better known because Vaughn and co-star Reese Witherspoon have not been getting along together on-set. According to this article on /Film, Witherspoon likes to rehearse and get things done in one take, whereas Vaughn likes to do several takes to play with the scene and improvise. The addition of Favreau could help Vaughn’s case, because if anyone’s seen Made or a deleted scene on The Break-Up DVD, these two play off each other very well.
However, I have a few beefs with this news story:
Celebrity squabbling is not necessarily always a bad thing. It’s been long-reported that Cybil Sheppard and Bruce Willis never got along on the set of Moonlighting, but their chemistry is what made both of them stars. Axl Rose and Slash never saw eye-to-eye and still managed to create one of the greatest rock albums of the last 20 years (Appetite for Destruction). Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal hated each other but won three NBA titles together.
It’s more interesting to see people feuding, than it is to see groups who happily exist. Look at movies made by married/dating couples: Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger made The Getaway —- FLOP; Director Guy Ritchie put his wife Madonna in Swept Away -— DISASTER; Ben Affleck co-starred with Jennifer Lopez in Gigli —- {SIGH}. There’s a saying amongst actors that you don’t sleep with your co-star if you’re both romantic leads. It kills chemistry. Besides, Four Christmases is a film about a couple trying to make it to four different Christmas parties on Christmas Day because both sets of parents are divorced. That’s an awkward concept and could actually benefit from the co-stars not getting along.
Where is the director in all of this? It’s a director’s job to make sure that everyone is getting along, or at least to make sure they’re on the same page. Gordon needs to step in and say, “You two need to shut the f*ck up right now and listen to me.” Maybe with Favreau on-board, a more experienced director of actors, things will get resolved quietly.
Doesn’t Favreau have a movie to finish directing? Isn’t that movie the heavily anticipated and heavily CGI-ed Iron Man? Does he REALLY need to be dickin’ around with Vince Vaughn right now? I highly doubt Iron Man is in the can and ready for release six months before release. I think he should prioritize and maybe get back to being a sub-par actor once his previous commitment has been fulfilled.
Maybe that’s just me.
For those keeping track at home, this is the fifth time Favreau and Vaughn have appeared together, after Rudy, Swingers, Made, and The Break-Up. They are still a few films shy of competing with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson.
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