Vince Vaughn thinks studio executives are too in their heads when it comes to making the kind of R-rated comedies that made him famous.
While being the latest to face the “Hot Ones” challenge with host Sean Evans on Thursday, Vaughn said execs “overthink it” when it comes to putting out hard-R comedies like “Wedding Crashers” and “Old School.”
“They just overthink it,” Vaughn said. “And it’s like, it’s crazy, you get these rules, like, if you did geometry, and you said 87 degrees was a right angle, then all your answers are messed up, instead of 90 degrees. So there became some idea or concept, like, they would say something like, ‘You have to have an IP.’”
Watch the actor’s “Hot Ones” interview in full below:
Vaughn pointed to seemingly nonsensical IP like “Battleship” becoming “vehicles for storytelling” because it was a recognizable name. He added that when he was coming up, the “IP” was skipping school, growing up or, in the case of “Old School,” returning to college as an older person. The IP was the universal experience.
“The people in charge don’t want to get fired moreso than they’re looking to do something great, so they want to kind of follow a set of rules that somehow get set in stone, that don’t really translate,” Vaughn said. “But as long as they follow them, they’re not going to lose their job because they can say, ’Well, look, I made a movie off the board game Payday so even though the movie didn’t work, you can’t let me go, right?’”
Despite all of that, Vaughn feels like the winds are changing and there’s hope for more movies like the R-rated comedies of old.
“People want to laugh, people want to look at stuff that feels a little bit like it’s, you know, dangerous or pushing the envelope,” he said. “I think you’re going to see more of it in the film space sooner than later, would be my guess.”
Vaughn was on “Hot Ones” promoting his upcoming Apple TV+ series “Bad Monkey.” He plays a former Miami cop who gets wrapped up in a murder mystery in the adaptation of Carl Hiassen’s novel.
Watch the full “Hot Ones” interview in the video above
