Dirty Work: An interview With Vince Vaughn About UNFINISHED BUSINESS, His Return To R-rated Comedy
We are a year away from the 20th anniversary of SWINGERS, the comedy that made stars out of Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau. Since SWINGERS, Vaughn has enjoyed an acting career that has included holiday films for the family, critically-acclaimed dramatic roles, big-budget Hollywood spectacles and –later this year – a journey to television as one of the leads in the second season of TRUE DETECTIVE.
This March, though, Vaughn returns to the world of hard-R comedies with UNFINISHED BUSINESS, a new film about a trio of businessmen who find themselves on an international journey to secure the deal that will save their company and keep them employed. In SWINGERS, Vaughn’s character famously encourages Favreau’s to ditch the PG-13 good guy persona he’s been using, to no avail, to pick up women. “I want you to be like the guy in the rated R movie, you know, the guy you're not sure whether or not you like yet,” the character chides. In real life, Vaughn is also a believer in the power of the R rating.
“I would always prefer to go R if you’re doing anything aimed at adults – but as an actor, you’re a part of a team,” Vaughn said in an interview. “You’re not really in charge of the rating. There are things I’ve done recently that have been made PG-13 once we began production – these films were supposed to be rated R but the bar got moved.”
UNFINISHED BUSINESS, though, was developed as an R-rated comedy from the start and stayed that way all throughout production. “That part of it feels appropriate – it feels fun and it felt like a great fit for the movie.”
Vaughn has had great success with R-rated comedies in the past – OLD SCHOOL and WEDDING CRASHERS are modern comedy classics – but Vaughn said there was a time where it became harder to make an R-rated comedy. “Nowadays it feels easier to make these comedies – people are more supportive in allowing it. Because you’re dealing with subject matter and topics that are adult-driven, you want to have that freedom to think and act like adults too.”
While Hollywood’s attitude towards a film’s rating may change with time, Vaughn said that a film’s relatability is a constant when it comes to comedy.
"SWINGERS was really about a specific, relatable situation – which is about a guy getting over a breakup, getting his confidence back and meeting someone,” Vaughn said. “It took place in a unique setting – which was Los Angeles where there was a big band thing going on at the time. It’s the specifics of the world that made it interesting but the situation was something that people could relate to.”
As culture shifts and comedy styling changes, it is the relatability of what characters are going through that is going to stay consistent and drive a film’s success, Vaughn says. UNFINISHED BUSINESS is about a topic that quite a few of us can relate to – the uncertainty of employment and the fear of that one big business deal or contract that can seemingly make or break your future.
In the film, Vaughn is a small-business owner who, along with his two associates played by Tom Wilkinson and Dave Franco, travel to Europe in search of the deal that will save their company. Along the way, though, the three find themselves over their heads in wacky misadventures involving sex fetish conventions, a global economic summit and lots and lots of drinking.
At the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, fans can enjoy a drink of their choice while watching the film – something Vaughn agrees can make any movie experience better.
“It’s always nice when you can drink a beer while watching a movie,” Vaughn said. “I like to mix it up – there’s nothing like a beer, that’s always good – but I’ve been drinking vodka lately more than anything else.”
Vaughn said he mixes his vodka with some soda or a little bit of grapefruit but doesn’t have a preference on the brand of vodka.
“People always ask me what I drink – like it’s some kind of big deal – but I don’t know what it says about my taste buds but I can’t tell the damn difference.”
In a recent Reddit thread, users were asked to name their favorite Alamo Drafthouse screening and one event that popped up was actually an early screening of Vaughn’s follow-up collaboration with Favreau, MADE. The screening featured a lengthy Q&A with Vaughn and Favreau after the film – followed by an invitation from the two to the audience to join them for a drink at Speakeasy.
“I had always tracked the Alamo Drafthouse – my sister went to school in Texas, at UT,” Vaughn said. “I had always been a fan of what the Alamo was doing. When we did MADE, it was a big deal for us to include the film at the Alamo and to premiere it down there.”
Whether it was SWINGERS, MADE, CLAY PIGEONS or RETURN TO PARADISE, Vaughn credits independent theaters like the Alamo Drafthouse for giving a lifeline to the smaller films from his career.
“We were excited,” he said. “It was obviously one of those places – especially back before when social media was going on – that really gave you an opportunity to get the word out and support these character-driven movies.”
Following UNFINISHED BUSINESS, Vaughn will have a chance to really dive deep into his next character, as one of the leads of the next season of TRUE DETECTIVE. While Vaughn has made a few small guest spots on television over the last few years (some of his earliest roles were on afterschool specials for ABC and CBS), this is his first real role for the small screen – but the small screen is changing as it evolves to more closely resemble theatrical films.
“It’s an interesting moment,” Vaughn said. “Everything is kind of shifting – with TRUE DETECTIVE, writer Nic Pizzolatto writes everything. With a lot of shows, you have a room full of writers but Nic is a novelist and he writes literally the entire series. What’s interesting about television is that movies sometimes have to be structurally arranged to test with an audience or there’s a format that they fit into it.”
That’s not necessarily the case with television, Vaughn said. With television, you don’t have to follow a structure that’s easily detected.
“You have room to breathe and you have room to move the plot and really get into the character and go off on things that are interesting,” Vaughn said. “Selflessly, as an actor, I feel like the format really lends itself to having a chance to get involved and discover, as the show progresses, more interesting and complicated bits for the character.”
This new season of TRUE DETECTIVE may strike a similar tone to the last awards-winning year of the HBO crime-based series, but don’t expect a rehash of the same journey Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson went on.
“It’s an interesting world that you travel into – and the cultures that you, as a viewer, get a look into,” Vaughn said. “The characters really have a lot of things going on that are really cool and the quality of the writing and what happens is exceptional and that part of it, the tone, is similar. But it is in its own world and it is its own journey.”
A premiere date has not been set yet for the new season of TRUE DETECTIVE but audiences can catch Vaughn next in UNFINISHED BUSINESS, due in theaters on March 6 from Fox. Early shows of the comedy begin at 8 PM on Thursday, March 5 and tickets are now on sale.