Half-Assed Internet Research
Script origins; table reads for buyers; music budget; real party scene; Vegas casinos; original ending; Sundance rejection and Miramax sale; Jaws theme and Spielberg; bear speech origin
In the discussion (12)
Approx. transcript time · 01:03:45Read transcript
- Favreau is quoted that his dad gave him a screenwriting program and he wrote Swingers as an exercise, in two weeks.
- The hosts say Livingston and Favreau became friends early in LA, Favreau knew Vaughn from Rudy, and Adam Scott lived downstairs and they all hung out.
- The hosts say that after the script they held full-cast readings for potential buyers for a year, compared with Jason Reitman's readings.
- Vaughn is quoted that buyers missed the universality: a breakup, coming of age, a journey with friends, wanting to meet someone.
- The hosts say they paid most for Dean Martin, with half a million dollars in music licensing against a quarter-million production cost.
- The party scene is said to have been a real party they threw for friends without explaining; Adam Scott and Mike White of Chuck and Buck were there.
- The Vegas exterior is said to be the Stardust and the interior the Glitter Gulch; gulch never works.
- Favreau is said to have taught Heather Graham to swing dance.
- Favreau is quoted that the script ended on the Lorraine phone call and an unaffordable helicopter shot; Liman added the new ending, seeing a platonic love story between Mikey and Trent, and they scrambled to find a baby for it.
- The hosts say Sundance rejected it; a screening at the Fairfax $2 theater for about 500 people, 490 friends and 10 possible buyers, crushed, and it sold to Miramax for $5 million, premiering at the Vista.
- The hosts say they got the Jaws theme by sending scenes to Spielberg for approval, who asked about Vaughn and cast him in The Lost World.
- Vaughn apparently really gave Favreau a version of the bear speech, and the story of leaving a girl behind is autobiographical for Favreau.