Kings of comedy

So, Owen and Vince…”
I’ve barely got the words out when Mr. Vaughn – actor, comedian and absolute giant of a man – cuts me off.
“Listen lady, I know he’s a beautiful blue-eyed boy, but if he’s invited too then whatever you’re asking, I gotta say no.”
Ah, the first of a million zings.
They call them the ‘frat pack’, the ‘slack pack’, the Swingers or sometimes, those blokes that hang around with Ben Stiller. Since 2001’s delightfully twitty Zoolander, a lad continuum comprising Mr. Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Owen and Luke Wilson and Will Ferrell have killed at the box-office, drifting promiscuously in and out of each others’ movies, tossing off testosterone-fuelled witticisms and football-in-the-groin pratfalls.
These are the frontrunners from an extended and much older frat pack family tree – a vast party when you consider the Saturday Night Live connection (from whence Mr Ferrell came), the Wilson brothers’ ties to Wes Anderson (Owen co-wrote The Royal Tenenbaums and Bottle Rocket) and Jackie Chan (Shanghai Noon, Shanghai Knights and Around The World In Eighty Days) or occasional frat visitors such as Jack Black, token girl Christine Taylor (Mrs. Stiller) and Jon Favreau (currently out in the cold following a dispute with Ferrell over the final cut of Elf).
This cabal of 30-somethings, now a semi-permanent feature in the upper echelons of Hollywood power lists, have, in common with their on-screen slacker alter-egos, taken a few years to put their world domination plans to use. While ageing gen x-ers will fondly recall Stiller’s ultimately influential directorial debut The Cable Guy and his short lived TV chat show, there were few other takers back in the mid ‘90s.
Similarly, people of a certain age will, when suitably inebriated, lovingly recreate scenes and catchphrases (again and again – aargh) from Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau’s neo-hepcat tour of the tawdry Vegas lights in 1996’s cult favourite Swingers.
“You’d think chicks would be wary after Swingers” observes Vince. “But no. I find, if anything, that they decide you’re more attractive when you’re in movies and on the front of magazines.
“I keep saying to Owen here, ‘Brother, it’s not because you’ve got more going on now than you did at 23. He has that golden mid-western boy thing going on, so he needs telling.”
“Yea”, nods Owen. “I do like to kid myself that girls can suddenly see what a nice guy I am and all I ever hear from him is ‘you ain’t getting any younger or better looking’.”
If the guys have always had a loyal (and frequently wasted) band of fans (not all of them star-stuck girls) the past few years have seen their increasingly perfected schtick hit with the mainstream.
It’s not that the Pack have sold out; they’re still trading in the same smart-dumb comedy. Breasts can be relied on to pop out, losers will triumph over guys that squished them against lockers at school, and comedy moustaches always rule. Still, their most recent goofy hits – including Dodgeball and Anchorman – seem more polished and endearingly self-deprecating than ever before. Not to mention profitable.
No wonder Messrs. Stiller, Vaughn and Ferrell are currently commanding $20 million salaries and Wedding Crashers, the latest frat exploit, is expected to be the comedy blockbuster of the season.
It certainly deserves as much. This splendidly raucous farce teams Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn as divorce mediators who tour the wedding circuit, uninvited, in order to avail of liquored-up single chicks feeling gooey on account of the festivities.
Their elaborate crashing rules – never fuck the bride, never leave alone – become redundant when a salubrious society do brings them into contact with the charming Rachel McAdams and a nymphomaniac Isla Fisher.
“These guys are at their peak”, says Crashers director David Dobkin, who’s worked with both Vaughn and Wilson before on Clay Pigeons and Shanghai Knights respectively.
“When people talk about the frat pack, what they are basically seeing are guys who are the best comic actors and who naturally want to bounce off guys who are also the best comic actors. There is method the madness. You don’t direct these guys. You coach them. I am a sports guy so that is fine with me. I have to contain their talents. Or die trying.”
“Oh yeah”, interjects Vaughn. “When David arrived on set I just said ‘Hey you with the glasses’. You just grab this bucking stallion and hang on for the wild ride, baby.”
With cinema screens strewn with the debris of underachieving blockbusters, Wedding Crashers looks set to raise the fellows’ stock even further.
While their previous efforts have reached out to the boys and revelled in the dick-waving joys of being in the company of other men, Crashers adds a neat girlie touch to the laddishness of the frat alchemy.
A perfect stag rom-com – think superior regular rom-com but with fun and swearing and tits – it’s a sure fire trans-gender bet for those feeling bummed after War Of The Worlds or fatigued by the impotency of the summer’s superheroes.
“That was a really cool thing for us”, explains Dobkin. “It was way more than a rom-com. It is, I guess, a girls’ movie dressed up as a guys’ movie in a wish fulfilment kind of way. But it never betrays its masculinity.”
Don’t imagine though, that the gang are now in sway to their inner-goddesses. Today, watching Messrs Vaughn, Wilson and Dobkin longing in their Dorchester suite, you wonder why they aren’t nestling tins of beer between their legs.
“I was heavily sedated when I had to fondle Jane Seymour’s breasts for the movie”, deadpans Mr Wilson, a charming fellow who always looks you right in the eye while speaking in his dreamy, cheerful way. “David and Vince were very worried about me that day.”
“We were”, continues Vince. “I said to Owen ‘I want you to watch the tape of Siegfried and Roy when the animal attacks. You are out of your damn mind buddy.’ You know how it is . At some point instincts take over and then you’re in trouble.”
“So David broke out the tranquillizers and I wondered around like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” nods Owen. “I didn’t know where I was that day. Dr Quinn Medicine Woman was safe with me.”
“I couldn’t stand to see him that way”, said Vaughn with an affected sob. “You know, this gorgeous guy shuffling around like that. I did the only thing a friend could do. I tried to suffocate him. I grabbed the nearest pillow and yelled I am a coming, I am a–coming.’”