''Someday you'll look back on all this and laugh, and say we were young and stupid.''
Suits wrinkled, shirttails peeking out, neckties undone, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson lean back on the steps of Washington, D.C.'s Lincoln Memorial in the cool twilight, swapping swigs from a bottle of bubbly.
''Cut!''
The actors barely move as crew members reset the cameras for another take. It's well before sunrise in early May 2004, and they're here in the nation's capital shooting a new comedy called Wedding Crashers. But right now there's nothing very funny about it.
''Action!'' Vaughn turns again to Wilson: ''Someday you'll look back on all this and laugh, say we were young and stupid.''
The stars are exhausted, coldcocked by the one-two punch of jet lag and an uncomically early 3 a.m. wake-up call, and every indication points to one thing: They'd much rather be in bed. Today's scene has their characters — philandering divorce mediators whose lives revolve around crashing nuptials to score sex from vulnerable bridesmaids — ruminating on their increasingly hollow existences after a long night of free love and wedding cake.
Eyes heavy, Vaughn trips over his lines, and as the takes go by the frustration builds.
''Someday you'll look back and say. . .'' DAMMIT!
As the sun comes up, it's getting harder to focus. Jet planes roar overhead, causing multiple disruptions. A bus arrives with Lincoln Memorial sightseers, and before long four score and seven tourists are scampering about, snapping Instamatics of the monuments and seeking autographs from the movie stars who are just trying to make it through a few lines of dialogue before tumbling back into the sack.
''Someday you'll look back on all this and laugh, say we were young and stupid,'' repeats Vaughn, this time nailing it.
''We're not that young,'' Wilson replies.
And comedy clearly isn't that easy.
It would have been hard to see it coming back on Wedding Crashers' relatively subdued set: What started out as a buzz-free, moderately budgeted farce has emerged as the vehicle that could just drive its stars to the upper reaches of the Hollywood A list. Which is to say that the anxiety Vaughn and Wilson encountered in Washington pales in comparison to what's riding on them now. After all, it's they who were specifically sought for the roles; it's they who imbued the film with their signature styles of humor; it's they whose mugs are now plastered on billboards, buses, and Budweiser ads; and it's they who must pack the theaters. So who knows? Someday they may look back on all this and laugh, say they were young and stupid — but more likely they'll say they were actually pretty smart.
The stars are about the same age (Vaughn's 35, Wilson's 36), and both rose to attention in a pair of 1996 cult indies (Vaughn in Swingers, Wilson in Bottle Rocket). But their careers have run in opposite directions. Wilson has an Oscar nomination (for co-writing The Royal Tenenbaums) and has appeared in a consistent streak of hits — Armageddon, Shanghai Noon, Meet the Parents, and so on — that warranted his $10 million salary on Wedding Crashers. Vaughn, by contrast, earned only around $3 million for the film, signing on shortly after Old School rescued him from a seven-year career limbo (remember A Cool, Dry Place or Return to Paradise? Didn't think so) and long before last summer's hit Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story boosted his profile.
