Vince Vaughn interview for Domestic Disturbance

October 29, 2001

Putting the Disturbance in ‘Domestic Disturbance’
Vince Vaughn has a history of playing crazy characters

By ED SYMKUS
SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Source: http://www.townonline.com/

Vince Vaughn says he chooses his roles on a case-by-case basis.

Vince Vaughn, a big, strapping, gangly guy, sits in a small room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston with a lit cigarette gripped between his fingers. It’s difficult to tell if he’s nervous or tired; perhaps it’s a mixture of both. His eyes are puffy and he can’t stop moving his legs — they shift back and forth and he rapidly taps one of his feet.

But the co-star of " Domestic Disturbance, " working opposite John Travolta — Travolta is the hero, Vaughn is the heel — brightens up noticeably when asked how he goes about his craft, how he convincingly manages to make Rick, the stepfather character who comes between Travolta and his son, more and more threatening as the film goes on, even though it wasn’t shot in sequence.

" To a large degree it’s an impossibility to shoot in sequence, " he says. " But sometimes it works in your favor if it’s not. If you’re familiar with the material — and you’ve obviously looked at the material on your character — then whatever scene you jump into you can commit to that reality. You just have to trust that whatever is going on that day is what’s most consistent for the truth of the piece. So sometimes it’s easier to shoot where you’re going — the final ending — and then shoot earlier stuff and you discover things that make you say, ‘Wow, so that’s what makes me go there.’ "

Vaughn, 31, knows a lot about playing the bad guy. He’s done it before, as Lester, the sparkling-eyed killer in the little-seen " Clay Pigeons " and as Norman, the dead-eyed killer in Gus Van Sant’s remake of " Psycho. " Yet he’s still probably best known for his first feature, " Swingers, " in which he played Trent, a lady killer of a different sort, actually not a killer at all, but a self-described lothario. And he’s played a straight up hero opposite Vincent D’Onofrio and Jennifer Lopez in " The Cell. "

His choices for roles, he says, have come on a case-by-case basis.

" Sometimes it’s the material, " he explains. " But in the case of ‘Psycho,’ it was Gus. I wanted to work with Gus. And ‘Domestic Disturbance’ was very much about me working with John. I thought I messed up when I met with him. At the first meeting I said, ‘You know, I grew up on you. I love your stuff.’ I thought maybe that wasn’t the best thing to say.

" But I also thought the scenario was interesting, " he adds. " In that when a parent gets involved with someone romantically, they have a courtship period and a time to get to know each other, and then both the significant other and the child are thrown into a very intimate situation but with no time to choose that. What I liked about the script was it wasn’t gratuitous and didn’t rely on shocking the audience about how despicably violent I was with the child. It was more about what could happen. It was a threat. "

Known for his skills as an improvisational actor, Vaughn has found that different directors give him different amounts of leeway in approaching his roles.

" I think improvisation can give an energy and spontaneity to a performance if things are happening for the first time or if emotions involved in a conflict are discovered while that’s going on, " he says. " That’s my way of working. And I think there are marvelous actors and storytellers that work in the other way. It’s a style thing. It’s funny, sometimes you get hired on these bigger things and they love what they’ve seen you do or that energy you’ve had. But when you get there, they don’t want that. So it’s like, ‘Why did you hire me in the first place? You know what I do, and that’s how I go about it.’ But they have a controlling point of view of their movie and how they see it, and on a bigger film a lot of times the focus is a concept, so what I’ve done doesn’t really fit into the movie. But as an actor it’s not my job to worry about the movie and its conception. So it’s freeing in a way. I worry about my part and how I’m fitting into the director’s movie. "

Vaughn will go on and on about his work, but is a little shy on the personal stuff. So even though it’s public that he was romantically linked with actress Joey Lauren Adams for a while, he doesn’t talk much about his love life today. But he does offer a revealing look at his upbringing, when he was raised in a house full of women.

" It was my dad and mom and two sisters and a grandmother, " he says. " I think I might have an edge over other guys in understanding women in that you have a way to relate and communicate with women that’s not sexual, so you’re able to have conversations in how they think. So I think that, even in meeting girls, I never put a lot of pressure on myself, which a lot of guys do normally. Because I just saw it as conversational. I never saw it as an intimidation thing. Of course there’ve been times when I was very young and I had my first crushes, and I didn’t know what to do with the emotion. And still, even now, if I get a big crush, I can be all shy with somebody. "

But he’s not at all bashful in talking about the difficulties he went through as a kid in school in the suburbs of Chicago.

" I had to go to a class an hour a day for learning disabilities, " he says. " But it was like we were 12 and playing Candyland. It wasn’t like we were having any big therapy, it was more of we can’t deal with these kids all day, let’s give the teachers a break from them. But I wasn’t ever disruptive. It was more sort of not being able to fully focus or concentrate on what was being discussed in class. And if there were teachers with rules, then I would question things. But it was only because I didn’t understand some rule. And they didn’t want to take five minutes out to explain it to me during class. I wasn’t a troublemaker. In English class or history class I would do very well, but in science or math it was very hard for me to grasp things. I moved slowly at it. "

But he sure moves quickly from one movie to the next these days. He’s got a great cameo as one of Ben Stiller’s brothers in " Zoolander. " And his mind is set on another role opposite Stiller next year — the big screen adaptation of the ’70s TV show " Starsky and Hutch. "

" I’m not sure about me, " he says. " I’m pretty sure it’s happening for Ben but I don’t know yet if I’m going to be Hutch. It would be fun to go blond and sort of commit to like the groovy ’70s of it all. I think it would be funny. It might happen, but I’m just not sure yet. "

" Domestic Disturbance " opens nationally on Nov. 2.

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