Budget and gross; knife skills; expanded Vaughn role; therapy premise; Bogotá objections; Fight Club shirt; reused helicopter shot; 50 drafts; TV pilot and sequel ideas
A 2007 ABC pilot written by Kinberg and directed by Liman starred Jordana Brewster and Martin Henderson; it was pitched as Married with Children with guns and was not picked up. — Bill Simmons
Subsequent sequel ideas are described as eventually becoming Keeping Up with the Joneses, with uncertainty about whether Pitt and Jolie would have participated. — Chris Ryan
Steve Carell, definitely: the movie becomes a smash hit and he has The Office, the pinnacle of anyone's comedy career. — Bill Simmons
Apatow is a no, to be litigated later; one could argue Knocked Up. — Bill Simmons
Catherine Keener: after a decade as a respected indie actress peaking in 8mm, a smash hit makes this as good as it gets; she was also in Capote that year as Harper Lee, which is called a good call. — Bill Simmons
Virgins in general prompt jokes about Last American Virgin, a Virgin Week with Last Temptation of Christ and A Midnight Clear, and making Craig watch with Liz; that movie ends with James Ingram. — Bill Simmons
The Six Million Dollar Man action figures are definitely at Apex Mountain. — Sean Fennessey
Paul Rudd is first a no, but he gets praise: Brian Fantana in Anchorman, carrying stretches of this movie, his SmartTech meltdown and his souls-connected poker speech; one voice says you could make the case this is his Apex. — Sean Fennessey
Counter: Ant Man, from about 2014 or 2015, was great and a huge hit; the other host just doesn't like comic book movies and is teased about Munich. — Bill Simmons
Malco: 'Yeah. Has to be.'
Tech stores like Best Buy are raised as an Apex for that era; the reply calls it one of the speaker's unanswerable questions, with SmartTech badly run like a Boston chain and Circuit City, stores run by jackasses, as with Vince Vaughn's character in Old School. — Bill Simmons
Asia's ironic phase: not the band's Apex, since the speaker says they won four or five Grammys one year, but the move into ironic 'Heat of the Moment' appreciation 20 years later; the hosts joke they are already in their own ironic phase. — Bill Simmons
Favreau is picked; without this movie he might not have had a career, he made his own destiny by writing it and getting it made, and after The Mandalorian he is among the five most important people in Hollywood. — Sean Fennessey
Vaughn is picked because he leaps off the screen at ten times the wattage of anyone else. — Chris Ryan
The question is split into who won the movie itself versus long-term success; long term is called easily Favreau, since Vaughn was too charismatic not to make it, while Favreau was 300 pounds in Rudy three years earlier with mixed acting results. — Bill Simmons
Co-winners have happened before; the framing is Vaughn as micro winner and Favreau as macro winner. — Bill Simmons
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
The hosts say that after the script they held full-cast readings for potential buyers for a year, compared with Jason Reitman's readings. — Bill Simmons
Vaughn is quoted that buyers missed the universality: a breakup, coming of age, a journey with friends, wanting to meet someone. — Bill Simmons
The hosts say they paid most for Dean Martin, with half a million dollars in music licensing against a quarter-million production cost. — Bill Simmons
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. — Bill Simmons
The Vegas exterior is said to be the Stardust and the interior the Glitter Gulch; gulch never works. — Bill Simmons
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. — Bill Simmons
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. — Bill Simmons
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. — Bill Simmons
Vaughn apparently really gave Favreau a version of the bear speech, and the story of leaving a girl behind is autobiographical for Favreau. — Bill Simmons
Liman is quoted from the oral history that Jason Priestley wanted Vaughn's part and could have raised a million and a half; Livingston is quoted that Vaughn was the last approved because they wanted a poster name. — Bill Simmons
Priestley, though loved on his TV show, could not have played the part; that would have been a disaster. — Bill Simmons
The hosts say distributors or money people wanted Depp to play Trent. — Bill Simmons
Favreau is said to have pushed hard to direct but, like the Good Will Hunting guys, knew starring was their break; he became co-producer and let Liman direct. — Bill Simmons
They may have butted heads, with Liman called famously difficult; Favreau's storyboard sketches in the oral history closely match the film, and Favreau has been diplomatic. — Sean Fennessey
Opening credits; Vaughn and Favreau careers; This Place Is Dead Anyway guy; Vegas baby Vegas; Mikey-as-loser jokes; PG-13 line; Marty and Elaine; party-to-party convoys; diner hangouts; music; Vaughn-Favreau dynamic; Doug Liman; Ron Livingston and Heather Graham casting
The opening credits and their pictures of LA. — Bill Simmons
The careers of Vaughn and Favreau, which in 2003 might have seemed stuck after a grand slam out of the gate. — Bill Simmons
The "this place is dead anyway" guy, played by Alex Desert, says it twice when the place is not dead; nobody is paying attention to them. — Bill Simmons
"Vegas baby Vegas" was first heard here and reused liberally in columns. — Bill Simmons
The film establishes Mikey as a loser: Lisa is a Dorothy at the MGM Grand, the "not in Kansas anymore" line gets dead silence, and the comedian is the least funny guy. — Bill Simmons
Marty and Elaine look exactly the same at the Dresden years later; one host saw them play midweek last fall and jokes they may be alien life forms. — Bill Simmons
Everyone driving in their own car in a convoy from party to party, as LA was until about 2014-15. — Bill Simmons
Hanging out in diners, a top-five hangout location; late coffee and pancakes are missed. — Bill Simmons
A college diner near Holy Cross called the Heritage, where a friend always ordered the Heritage; the 101 diner near the office is the diner in the movie; diners are a lifestyle on Long Island. — Bill Simmons
The hosts say diners have taken a big hit with COVID and many in LA have gone down. — Bill Simmons
Doug Liman is called one of the 10 or 12 most successful directors of the last 30 years, a risk-taker good with actors, discussed on the Edge of Tomorrow podcast. — Sean Fennessey
Ron Livingston and Heather Graham were caught right before fame; Livingston is likable and almost the moral conscience; Graham made this and Boogie Nights within about six months. — Sean Fennessey
The drive to Vegas is a pick: he is talked into going, puts on a suit while the other holds the wheel, they scream Vegas, then the next cut is them driving sadly down the highway.
The whole blackjack scene is a pick, ending with the devastated Mike and Trent insisting he is the big winner. — Bill Simmons
That roughly 11-minute stretch runs into breakfast, with the pancakes, the age of enlightenment, and "I'm going to pull a Fredo", humming for 15 solid minutes. — Bill Simmons
Details praised: counting the money before handing it over, an amateur move; the three black chips back; the double down loss you could see coming; the look on Favreau's face. — Bill Simmons
Is it Mike's first Vegas trip? They seem secretly losers; Trent, supposedly worldly, cannot gamble, and doubling down on 11 is his only move. — Bill Simmons
The Los Feliz par-three scene is a pick: not mentioning her like not talking to a pitcher mid no-hitter, and "get there" on a putt six feet short, still funny 150 times later.
The par three looks exactly the same, down to the booth attendant, and captures struggling actors with nothing to do; opening a round there with an eight or nine is relatable.
The NHL video-game scene is called perhaps the greatest video-game scene in movie history; The Wizard is raised, but this is the first to integrate guys playing a sports game so seamlessly. — Bill Simmons
Picking Roenick was essential because he was a god in that game; Vaughn is said to be a huge Blackhawks fan. — Bill Simmons
"The Kings are a finesse team", making Gretzky's head bleed, and messing with Mikey over the delivery guy are all called lights out. — Bill Simmons
A participant who was an only child identifies with Sue: undefeated against the computer, then blaming the controller when friends beat him.
Per the Grantland oral history as told on air, they could not make Gretzky's head bleed and had Vaughn come over during editing to keep trying until they captured it. — Bill Simmons
The Heather Graham scene is a pick: he finally uses Trent's lessons, they swing dance, and cutaways show a crying, happy Trent and Sue; Big Bad Voodoo Daddy are said to have been asked on a whim and later played a Super Bowl halftime show. — Bill Simmons
The late-night diner scene is a pick, with "our little boy's all grown up" and Trent jumping on the table, said to be ad-libbed. — Sean Fennessey
The whole Nikki run, from the bar and the number to calling her machine repeatedly, is painful but amazingly well done.
Watching with a daughter who had never seen it, attention on the TV was about 80-20 versus the usual 50-50 with her phone; she was confused by the answering-machine calls.
Maybe the party-to-party bouncing, from the Dresden to Marty and Elaine and the talk of not getting a pilot, felt like a window into an unknown world. — Sean Fennessey
The whole movie is rewatchable; for one participant the video-game scene is the favorite. — Bill Simmons
Todd Phillips for one host: he is bigger than Apatow by box office though nobody thinks of him that way, his next film is a Joker movie, and he will probably be Oscar-nominated this year as a producer of A Star Is Born with partner Bradley Cooper; Cooper's Toronto premiere speech crediting Phillips's note of belief made Cooper Ali (as transcribed) and Phillips Jackson.
The Ringer ran a Mike Powell profile of Phillips at launch in summer 2016 with Cooper and others quoted going to bat for him; his real skill, learned from Ivan Reitman, is choosing people at the right time, as with Ferrell and writing for Vaughn; the vote is Todd Phillips.
Another host goes Vince Vaughn for variety, calling him incredible with every line quotable.
Tic-tac-toe, three different answers; sorry Luke Wilson; a joke about whether a note saying nobody believes in you like I believe in you should have been given in 2012 to the host then running the Triangle at Grantland.
