You look at the way Vince Vaughn talks, he should be on stage telling stories to amuse audiences. He does participate in his Wild West Comedy Show, but not as a stand-up. The documentary follows a standup tour he put together for Ahmed Ahmed, John Caparulo, Bret Ernst and Sebastian Maniscalco. Vaughn appears in sketches and road segments, but lets the comics perform. Here, when he spoke, it overshadowed everyone else.
CraveOnline: How did it feel to see the final product after doing the tour for a month?
John Caparulo: The surprising thing for me really was I remember when we were out on the tour. We were just out there living our daily lives on the bus, which is pretty boring. I’d get up at 2 p.m. and I had breakfast and did the show. I remember thinking when we were on the tour "Are they going to have enough footage to make anything with this?" And I remember they told me when they were getting into the editing process that "Oh, the first cut of the movie was four hours long" and I was like, "Okay, I guess we had enough footage." So, yeah, that was the surprise to me. We made a movie.
CraveOnline: When did you guys bathe?
Sebastian Maniscalco: Bathe? I was constantly washing myself throughout the tour.
Bret Ernst: Everyday. We had a shower on the bus and we also had a hotel room when we would go to the city that we would shower in.
Ahmed Ahmed: The venues had showers too.
CraveOnline: Ahmed, you just finished The Axis of Evil comedy tour, which was harder, your audiences in the Middle East or the audiences in America?
Ahmed Ahmed: One wasn’t harder than the other because the material translated. I did my act in English in the Middle Each and I did it in English here. It translated pretty similarly to both audiences.
CraveOnline: Vince, how did these guys end up on your radar so that you recruited them for this tour?
Vince Vaughn: Well I had known Ahmed. In fact, Ahmed and I had become friends at the same time that I became friends with Peter Billingsley which was that After School Steroid Special. Looking back on it, it’s kind of like looking at The Outsiders. Who would have thought that all these guys would have come from one particular special? Ahmed, there weren’t a lot of parts for him so he sort of turned to stand-up comedy as an avenue for expression because there weren’t a lot of parts for Egyptian kids. I’d have to go watch him like a friend in need. Every month it’d be like, "I gotta watch him tell that joke again." But as I went down, he started to get better because he started to talk about himself and his families and these kinds of things that Ahmed really became excellent at what he does. In going to watch him, I watched these guys as well and my favorite comedians and the one thing they all had was they were talking about real life experiences and sometimes stuff is not that flattering whether it was relationships or family situations but they had a sense of humor about themselves. There was kind of a connection to a movie with old country western songs. There’s comedy in that. You’re talking about what you know. It comes from a genuine life experience and audiences I think, if you’re being authentic and truthful, especially stuff that happens everywhere – relationships or parents stuff or brother or sister stuff, those kind of things – it’s relatable. That’s universal, that’s translatable anywhere. And so I thought, "Well, let’s do a show. It’ll be kind of fun. I’ll improvise. I haven’t done that in awhile." I did originally for a friend of mine in New Orleans just to help him out with his venue and it went tremendous so I started doing more shows as sort of benefits shows. I did some for the Army Emergency Relief Fund and the response was always good so I thought this would be kind of fun to go on the road. I’d like to play a bunch of different places, take a variety comedy show which you haven’t seen in awhile and go to some folks’ backyards that don’t get shows like this usually. Give them something fun to see where you don’t have to go to Los Angeles or New York or even Chicago to some degree or Vegas and I kind of thought of the idea and I thought let’s film it. I knew it would be a movie obviously and we thought let’s shoot some venue special and then we’ll have cameras. But I didn’t know what the story would be. I knew that it would be funny as it is but I didn’t know quite what it would be. You didn’t know what would happen as far as when we ran into the hurricane stuff that happened down there and meeting their families. What is that going to be like exactly? You don’t know and so the editing process for something like this becomes like screenwriting when I’ve done that because you have all this footage but you really have to kind of say, "What is the story within this that’s the most compelling?" And for me, kind of the underdog story of these guys and sort of their journey in realizing that their comedy came from real life experiences sort of became the most interesting thing as well as the special guest stars and the stuff that’s fun.
CraveOnline: Was the autographing of boobs a nightly thing?
Vince Vaughn: I think that was John.
John Caparulo: I envisioned the breasts.
Vince Vaughn: Sometimes you get asked stranger things than that to autograph. It’s kind of a dealer’s choice I think.
John Caparulo: You know the weirdest one for me was some dude. First of all, it was a dude, but second of all, we would autograph people’s T-shirts because we would sell Wild West T-shirts outside. It was like, "Hey, here you go!" And some guy just had me autograph his shirt like you’re wearing. It was a nice shirt. He could probably wear it to a job interview or something. It’s not going to look good with my autograph on it but alright. It just felt weird.
CraveOnline: What was the most memorable venue you performed at?
Bret Ernst: The Ryman.
John Caparulo: Yeah, the Ryman.
Bret Ernst: The Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville because you could just see all the old history there. And I’m a big Elvis fan and I know he was on that stage. So it was just awesome.
John Caparulo: I’m telling toilet jokes with people sitting in church pews so that’s pretty cool.
CraveOnline: Vince, you’ve done a lot to bring attention to the whole of America from this tour to shooting films in Chicago. What has that done to improve this sort of bi-coastal mentality people have of either New York or LA?
Vince Vaughn: Oh, I don’t know. You know I think that there are more similarities between people than there are differences. I’ve always seen myself as an American. I’m proud of where I’ve come but I believe I was given an opportunity in California that I wouldn’t have had back home so I’m very grateful. California has always been kind of a gold rush state where you could come out and individuals are kind of respected and allowed to be that here so there’s great things about this as well. I’m not saying you don’t have that back home but it’s definitely a place where you come to for opportunities. In a way California becomes symbolic of America at its best. It’s a place where you can come and pursue whatever your particular dreams are. I was definitely shaped from being from middle America. My grandfather was a farmer. Dad was the first one off the farm. My other side of the family were immigrants and worked hard. But I think that’s the same in Boston as it is in Tennessee. I think that’s kind of why we have one constitution. We’re all from the same place. You might have different specific things in different places but we’re all on the same side and I think for me that was really the point of the movie on some level. I’ve always tried to be sort of including with comedy and it felt to me that some of these things that came up, be it Katrina or the war or other things, was dividing people and it felt like some of the comedy would be almost acidic or sort of against a certain side one way or the other. I’ve come to find in my life that people shut down when you approach them that way. They feel defensive and they don’t listen. They’re less open and obviously they feel like they’re being attacked. For me personally, I don’t think I have any friends that we agree on everything but we respect each other, we listen to each other and I’ve always learned from listening to people with different approaches.
CraveOnline: What’s been the impact on the comics from doing this movie now that they have greater visibility? 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 and 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 and I just pray every day. 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, "Alright, 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. And I always said the only reason I would want any type of notoriety was so I can get a lot of stage time. 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.
Ahmed Ahmed: Johnny Carson used to put comics on his stage and they’d get recognized the next morning. They’d get a TV deal or whatever so, not to compare Vince to Johnny Carson, but his endorsement speaks for itself. If people like you because Vincent says this guy’s funny or this girl’s funny.
Vince Vaughn: I don’t know if that’s true. I think that people respond to you guys because they like your stuff and for me, I got out of this as much as I gave. It was a great opportunity to travel and go play live and all those kind of things but I think the work was done by these guys. I just saw them perform but Bret’s been doing it for 11 years. They were always doing well wherever they performed.
Bret Ernst: But nothing like this has ever been done in stand-up comedy.
John Caparulo: Especially in this era.
Bret Ernst: In this day and age.
John Caparulo: Yeah, I mean how many comics really get to do stand-up on the big screen? It just doesn’t happen anymore so I mean the four of us were really lucky.
Bret Ernst: It’s like if you look at the '80s, to do the Tonight Show was so rare and then as comedy progressed, you have the Comedy Network now. You have 5, 6 talk shows. You have the internet where everybody’s things are on there. Now the big screen has become the Tonight Show. I mean nobody has done this.
Vince Vaughn: There’s been others like The [Original] Kings of Comedy and stuff like that film. I think there are similarities. I think it has its own thing. It’s a different look at it and it’s different stuff too. But there’s been stuff I think that’s touches an audience in different ways.
CraveOnline: Do you guys have any plans to get back on the big screen after this film?
Vince Vaughn: To be honest, I don’t care if these guys live or die. [Laughs] It wore me out. [Laughs] No, I’m kidding. I’d like to do stuff again. I’d like to do a tour that starts in Boston and kind of goes down the East Coast down to Florida. I’d like to do one in the Pacific Northwest and go to Toronto and maybe go other places with it. It’s fun. It’s a lot of fun. There’s a different energy that comes off of it. But I have to wait and see what our schedule is and sort of how things translate but in and of itself, it’s a very magical special thing. The big thing is that you don’t go and try to recreate something that you couldn’t predict. You have to, I think, try to start from another place that felt authentic, if that meant getting different comics. After doing it and looking at it I’d like to maybe bring a different kind of comics out as these guys did and I think there’s a tour to be done perhaps with these guys again and that could be interesting and it’s also nice to give some other opportunities to some other people would be interesting. I think it would be interesting to see a female comic go on the journey.
CraveOnline: Have any of your families gotten any deals from any of this?
Bret Ernst: My father thinks he should get an agent. My stepfather. He’s delusional.
CraveOnline: Do people recognize you and approach you on the street because of this film?
John Caparulo: My sister called me last night because one of her friends called her and saw her on HBO because the HBO First Look came on so my sister called to say, "Hey, I’m a star." And I’m like, "Okay! Good for you!"
CraveOnline: Amed and Vince, you guys have known each other for a long time, and with Peter Billingsly and Jon Favreau. How do you stay bonded through the ebb and flow of your careers?
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. 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 are 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. 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 a normal social like 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 gonna write a screenplay. I’m gonna try and put something together" for years with no results. So, for me, I found it easy to root for [him] as I was able with 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.
CraveOnline: How did you feel doing the Swingers routines 10 years later?
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 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 and 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.
