Vince Vaughn & Cast Interview, Wild West Comedy Show

"Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights -- Hollywood to the Heartland” chronicles Vaughn and the comedians’ journey as they travel more than 6,000 miles and perform 30 shows in 30 consecutive nights in cities across the U.S. The documentary gives audiences a rare opportunity to experience Vaughn and his team as they bring their unique styles and perspectives to regional audiences throughout Western, Southern and Midwestern states.

With rousing onstage performances and behind-the-scenes interviews, the engaging grass roots documentary breaks down the true essence of each comedian’s life-altering experiences, and the personal and professional challenges that will unite four comics, one movie star and legions of fans from Hollywood to the Heartland.

Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days and 30 Nights -- Hollywood to the Heartland Tour” is the first documentary film release from Wild West Picture Show Productions. It’s directed by Ari Sandel and produced by Vince Vaughn. Executive producers on the project are Peter Billingsley, Victoria Vaughn and John Isbell. John Pisani and Sandra Smith serve as associate producers. Dan Lebenthal edited the project.

The genesis of the movie came in the summer of 2001 in New Orleans when Vaughn decided to host a live comedy show at the French Quarter bar One-Eyed Jacks. That night would eventually lead to similar shows in Dewey Beach, Maryland during the production of "Wedding Crashers” and in Chicago during the production of "The Break-Up.” It was during the preparation for the Chicago show – a benefit for the Army Emergency Relief Fund – that Vaughn first entertained the idea of taking the show on a full-blown tour across the country.

"I really wanted to take a high quality show to places that normally didn’t get live variety shows,” explains Vaughn. "Growing up in Illinois, you usually had to go to New York, Los Angeles or Las Vegas to see a show. I thought it would be fun to bring the show to smaller towns like Little Rock, Lubbock, El Paso and Tucson. Also, selfishly for me, I love driving through America and seeing different landscapes and cities that I have never been to before.”

"The type of show we are doing just isn’t done anymore,” says Vaughn. "It’s a different skill set and a different feeling to perform live on stage. I really enjoy interacting with and relating to a live audience. Performing improv and sketch comedy every night would provide me that opportunity.” With comedians Bret Ernst, Sebastian Maniscalco and Ahmed Ahmed having all performed in the Chicago and Maryland comedy shows, Vaugn tapped the trio along with John Caparulo to join him on his Wild West Comedy Tour.

Although the four comedians Vaughn selected for his tour were all close friends and regulars at the Comedy Store on the Sunset Strip, the foursome’s comedic style and material is as diverse as their backgrounds: Egyptian-born Ahmed Ahmed’s material focuses on his lifelong struggle with racial stereotypes; Sebastian Maniscalco’s insightful observations on the absurdity of the modern man are influenced by Midwestern values; acerbic wit is the calling card of small-town Ohio boy John Caparulo; and Italian alpha male Bret Ernst specializes in high energy, physical comedy.

Vaughn, Ahmed, Caparulo, Ernst and Maniscalco are five very funny guys and we really appreciated their time. Here’s what they had to tell us about their recent adventure:

Q: Can you talk about the experience of doing this movie and then seeing the final product?

AHMED AHMED: Vince came up with the idea. It was kind of last minute. It was like this idea came up and he said, ‘You guys want to go on a tour?’ and like maybe a month later we were on this bus. The experience was great being able to perform in front of really large crowds. We weren’t expecting it to be a movie to be honest with you. We were just going show by show. We really weren’t looking at the outcome of the tour. We were just like ‘Let’s try to be funny every night.’ And then we finished the tour and we were like ‘Okay. That was great. I would do it again.’ And they had cameras on the bus and they shot the whole thing and then it was cut into this film and they showed it to us and the next thing I know it’s a movie. It was really just a blessing to be part of the whole experience.

JOHN CAPARULO: The surprising thing for me really was I remember when we were out on the tour. We were just out there living our daily lives on the bus, you know, which is pretty boring. I’d get up at 2pm and I had breakfast and did the show. I remember thinking when we were on the tour ‘Are they going to have enough footage to make anything with this?’ And I remember they told me when they were getting into the editing process, they were like ‘Oh, the first cut of the movie was 4 hours long’ and I’m like ‘Okay! I guess we had enough footage.’ So, yeah, that was the surprise to me. We made a movie. [Laughs]

Q: When did you guys bathe?

SEBASTIAN MANISCALCO: Bathe? I was constantly washing myself throughout the tour.

BRET ERNST: Everyday. We had a shower on the bus and we also had a hotel room when we would go to the city that we would shower in.

AHMED AHMED: The venues had showers too so we would go to them.

Q: Ahmed, you just finished The Axis of Evil comedy tour. Which was harder, your audience in the Middle East or the audience in America?

AHMED AHMED: One wasn’t harder than the other because the material translated. I did my act in English in the Middle East and I did it in English here. It translated pretty similarly to both audiences.

Q: Vince, how did these guys end up on your radar so that you recruited them in particular for this tour?

VINCE VAUGHN: Well I had known Ahmed. In fact, Ahmed and I became friends at the same time that I became friends with Peter Billingsley which was that Steroid After School Special. Looking back on it, it’s kind of like looking at "The Outsiders.” Who would have thought that all these guys would have come from one particular special. And then Ahmed, there weren’t a lot of parts for him so he sort of turned to stand-up comedy as an avenue for expression because there weren’t a lot of parts for Egyptian kids. I’d have to go watch him like a friend in need is a pest. Every month it’d be like ‘Oh I gotta go watch him tell that joke again.’ But as I went down, he started to get better because he started to talk about himself and his families and these kinds of things that Ahmed really became excellent at what he does. In going to watch him, I watched these guys as well and my favorite comedians and the one thing they all had was they were talking about real life experiences and sometimes stuff is not that flattering whether it was relationships or family situations but they had a sense of humor about themselves. There was kind of a connection in the film with all kind of old country western songs and their comedy in that.

You’re talking about what you know. It comes from a genuine life experience and audiences I think, the question you asked Ahmed, if you’re being authentic and truthful, especially stuff that happens everywhere – relationships or parents stuff or brother/sister stuff, those kind of things – it’s relatable, that’s universal, that’s translatable anywhere. And so I thought, ‘Oh let’s do a show. It’ll be kind of fun. I’ll improvise. I haven’t done that in awhile.’ I did originally for a friend of mine in New Orleans just to help him out with his venue and it went tremendous so I started doing more shows as sort of benefit shows. I did some for the Army Emergency Relief Fund and the response was always good so I thought this would be fun to kind of go on the road. I’d like to play a bunch of different places, take a variety comedy show which you haven’t seen in awhile and go to some folks’ backyards that don’t get shows like this usually. Give them something fun to see where you don’t have to go to Los Angeles or New York or even Chicago to some degree or Vegas and I kind of thought of the idea and I thought let’s film it.

I knew it would be a movie obviously and we thought let’s shoot some venue special and then we’ll have cameras. But I didn’t know what the story would be. I knew it would be funny as it is but you didn’t know quite what it would be. You didn’t know what would happen as far as when we ran into the hurricane stuff that happened down there and meeting their families. What is that going to be like exactly? You don’t know and so the editing process for something like this becomes like screenwriting when I’ve done that because you have all this footage but you really have to kind of say ‘What is the story within this that’s the most compelling?’ And for me, kind of the underdog story of these guys and sort of their journey in realizing that their comedy came from real life experiences sort of became the most interesting thing as well as the special guest stars and all the stuff that’s fun. It really turned into kind of an event movie where it’s like a road trip. It’s a capsule of sort of what was going on at that time. It’s an insight into stand-ups that I don’t think you’ve quite seen before, sort of what they go through. It’s sort of became a lot of components of different things. But the idea originally when I thought of it was just to say, ‘This is a fun thing. Let’s go as many places as we can.’ And what came out of it was sort of the result of what happened. But I had the easy job of thinking of it. I only thought of it six weeks out so my sister Victoria and John Isbell and Sandra (Smith), they had to really in six week’s time find these buses, book 30 venues, convince people I was really coming, you know, what the Wild West Show was. Is Vince going to come and rope horses? What’s happening here? So they really had, as far as the logistics were concerned, a much more challenging job to put it all together.

Q: Was the autographing of boobs a nightly thing?

VINCE VAUGHN: I think that was John.

JOHN CAPARULO: I envisioned the breasts.

VINCE VAUGHN: Sometimes you get asked stranger things than that to autograph. It’s kind of a dealer’s choice I think.

JOHN CAPARULO: You know the weirdest one for me was some dude. First of all, it was a dude, but second of all, it was a guy… You know we would autograph people’s T-shirts because we would sell Wild West T-shirts outside. It was like ‘Hey, here you go!’ And some guy just had me autograph his shirt like you’re wearing. It was a nice shirt. He could probably wear it to a job interview or something. [Laughter] It’s not going to look good with my autograph on it but alright. It just felt weird.

Q: What was the most memorable venue you performed at?

BRET ERNST: The Ryman.

JOHN CAPARULO: Yeah, the Ryman.

BRET ERNST: The Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville because, you know, just all the old history there. And I’m a big Elvis fan and I know he was on that stage. So it was just awesome.

JOHN CAPARULO: I’m telling toilet jokes with people sitting in church pews so you know that’s pretty cool. [Laughs]

Q: Vince, you’ve done a lot to bring attention to the whole of America from this tour to shooting films in Chicago, what has that done to improve this sort of bi-coastal mentality?

VINCE VAUGHN: Oh I don’t know. You know I think that there are more similarities between people than there are differences. I’ve always seen myself as an American. I’m proud of where I’ve come but I believe I was given an opportunity in California that I wouldn’t have had back home so I’m very thankful. California has always been kind of a Gold Rush state where you could come out and individuals are kind of respected and allowed to be that here so there’s great things about this as well. I’m not saying you don’t have that back home but it’s definitely a place where you come to for opportunities. In a way California becomes symbolic of America at its best. It’s a place where you can come and pursue whatever your particular dreams are. I was definitely shaped from being from middle America. My grandfather was a farmer. Dad was the first one off the farm.

My other side of the family were immigrants and worked hard. But I think that’s the same in Boston as it is in Tennessee. I think that’s kind of why we have one constitution. We’re all from the same place. You might have different specific things in different places but we’re all on the same side and I think for me that was really the point of the movie on some level. I’ve always tried to be sort of including with comedy and it felt to me that some of these things that came up – be it Katrina or the war or other things – was dividing people and it felt like some of the comedy would be almost acidic or sort of against a certain side one way or the other. And I’ve come to find in my life that people shut down when you approach them that way. They feel defensive and they don’t listen. They’re less open and obviously they feel like they’re being attacked. For me personally, I don’t think I have any friends that we agree on everything but we respect each other, we listen to each other, and I’ve always learned from listening to people with different approaches so the one thing I wanted to do with the movie and what I thought that these guys had in their comedy was unify and bring people together – whether it’s the stuff Bret talks about with his family or Ahmed talks about. People from different backgrounds were laughing and enjoying and sharing because they could relate I think to the human connection of what they were talking about. So hopefully I think the film at its best is a unifying thing that makes people kind of laugh and feel closer to each other. The feeling that we would have after the show I think is very similar to what we felt like after …the feeling you have in the movie is you do kind of feel closer to the people in the group. It’s kind of a feel good feeling where you feel warm I think and open. It’s not something that makes a division.

Q: What’s been the impact on the comics from doing this movie now that they have greater visibility? Has it changed anything?

SEBASTIAN MANISCALCO: For myself, I did a Comedy Central special. I filmed an hour-long DVD. It’s opened up a lot of doors for me and the last 2-1/2 years I just keep pinching myself because for myself it’s been kind of like a dream come true to just perform in front of these large audiences and have a major motion picture coming out with VINCE VAUGHN: and my parents in the movie also. Not too many people can say ‘My parents are in my first movie.’ They’re loving every minute of it. For myself, it’s opened a lot of doors and I just pray every day that this [continues]. It’s been a great ride.

BRET ERNST: A lot of things have happened to me because you had the heat of the tour and then you have the heat of the movie. It’s almost like that Advent calendar and now it’s Christmas Eve. And now you’re like, ‘Alright, now Christmas morning is happening. I can’t wait to see it and see what happens.’ As comedians, it’s not based on how talented you are. It’s pretty much based on how many tickets you’re going to sell as a comic. Visibility is the best thing you can get as a stand-up comedian. And I always said the only reason why I would want any type of notoriety was so I can get a lot of stage time. You know what I mean? It seems like once this happened, then people are like ‘Okay, well now we can put you in the club.’ And what’s great is all the hard work that you put in for the 11 years I’ve been doing stand-up now that you have the visibility because of the movie, you’re in the club. That’s when your talent meets the hard work and the opportunity and then boom! That’s all you can ask for as an artist and this movie has provided that.

AHMED AHMED: Johnny Carson used to put comics on his stage and they would get recognized the next morning. They’d get a TV deal or whatever so, not to compare Vince to Johnny Carson, but his endorsement speaks for itself if people like you because Vincent says, ‘Hey, I think this guy’s funny or this girl’s funny.’

VINCE VAUGHN: I don’t know if that’s true. I think that people respond to you guys because they like your stuff and for me, I got as much out of this as I gave. It was a great opportunity to travel and go play live and all those kind of things but I think the work was done by these guys. I just saw them perform but they had… Bret’s been doing it for 11 years. They were always doing well wherever they performed.

BRET ERNST: But nothing like this has ever been done in stand-up comedy.

JOHN CAPARULO: Especially in this era.

BRET ERNST: In this day and age.

JOHN CAPARULO: Yeah, I mean how many comics really get to do stand-up on the big screen? It doesn’t happen anymore so I mean the four of us were really lucky.

BRET ERNST: It’s like if you look at the 80s, to do the Tonight Show was so rare and then as comedy progressed, you have the Comedy Network now. You have five, six talk shows. You have the internet where everybody’s things are on there. Now the big screen has become the Tonight Show. I mean nobody has done this.

VINCE VAUGHN: There’s been others like "The Kings of Comedy” and stuff like that, films and stuff. I think there’s similarities. I think it has its own thing. It’s a different look at it and it’s different stuff too. But there’s been stuff I think that touches on it in different ways.

Q: Do you guys have any plans to get back on the big screen after this film?

VINCE VAUGHN: To be honest, I don’t care if these guys live or die. [Laughter] It wore me out. [Laughs] No, I’m kidding. I’d like to do stuff again. I’d like to do a tour that starts in Boston and kind of goes down through the East Coast down to Florida. I’d like to do one in the Pacific Northwest and go to Toronto and maybe go other places with it. It’s fun. It’s a lot of fun. There’s a different energy that comes off of it. But I have to wait and see what our schedule is and sort of how things translate but in and of itself, it’s a very magical special thing. The big thing is that you don’t go and try to recreate something that you couldn’t predict. You have to, I think, try to start from another place that felt authentic, if that meant getting different comics. After doing it and looking at it I’d like to maybe bring different kind of comics out as these guys did and I think there’s a tour to be done perhaps with these guys again and that could be interesting and it’s also nice to give some other opportunities to some other people. It’d be interesting. I think it would be interesting to see a female comic go on the journey.

Q: How about acting together?

VINCE VAUGHN: Acting? Yeah, absolutely. These guys are talented guys so it could happen. I’m sure they’ll have their own things going on from this and stuff that they’re doing. I like to act with people like (Jon) Favreau and that again so it’s possible.

Q: For Ahmed and Vince, you guys have known each other for a long time and then Peter and later John, can you talk about how you stay bonded through the ebb and flow of your careers?

VINCE VAUGHN: Well I heard your breath so I pulled back. That was like a tennis match where the ball went down the middle and we both looked at the other person like ‘What an idiot!’ Some doubles partners. [Laughter]

AHMED AHMED: We just always had this great friendship and just always supported each other. I think we all were cut from the same cloth. We all have not similar upbringings but our parents instilled in us respect and they worked hard and Vince is really close to his family as am I and so is Peter (Billingsley). So I think the family values has a lot to do with it and us being supportive of each other. I think we also have certain visions we were going for that we also supported. You know Peter has become a really successful producer aside from his acting and stuff. Obviously Vince has done extremely well for himself. For me, as a comedian, that was always a dream of mine to achieve a certain level of success as a comedian. So there’s that support, going back to what Vince said, and coming down to the comedy clubs and stuff, watching me night after night try to work out a joke or whatever, and a year later turn a corner and find a new angle or story and just having him there in the trenches with me was always really a great feeling to have a friend like that, that comes down and supports you. We always just had this mutual respect and support for each other in our art and our friendship.

Q: Have any of your families gotten any deals from any of this?

BF: My father thinks he should get an agent. My stepfather. He’s delusional. [Laughter]

Q: Do people recognize and approach you on the street because of this film?

VINCE VAUGHN: It hasn’t come out yet.

JOHN CAPARULO: My sister called me last night because one of her friends called her and saw her on HBO because the HBO First Look came on so my sister called to say ‘Hey, I’m a star.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay! Good for you!’

Q: Can you talk about the interaction with Ari (Sandel) and how he came to shoot everything?

VINCE VAUGHN: Yeah. What happened was…I guess talking about that and also about our friendship with Ahmed…for me is I was not a good student. I had learning disabilities. I was bright but I learned in different ways and some things came easier. I wasn’t a great athlete but acting was always something that I really loved. But it took a lot of hard work. In fact, because I did have some learning disabilities, it seemed like a lot of things were hard work. So the one thing I really responded to with Ahmed was here’s this guy who’s Egyptian and wants to be an actor. There’s no parts for him but it’s just his tenaciousness that I really responded to. I knew what it felt like to feel like ‘Boy, there’s not an easy way in but you really want to try to work at something.’ The same for Peter. A lot of child stars when they get to a certain age it’s very difficult because no one wants to see you anymore because you’re so recognizable for what you did [when you were] younger and you don’t have a normal kind of maturation process where you have a normal social [life] like playground stuff. Everybody kind of treats you really well and then all of a sudden people don’t want to be around you. And Peter’s work ethic to become a producer and get involved behind the camera was like nothing I ever saw. I’d say ‘Let’s go to the race track’ or ‘Let’s go do something’ and he’d say ‘I have to work from 10 to 6.’

I’d say, ‘Peter, you got nothing to work on’ and he’d say, ‘Well I’m gonna write a screenplay. I’m gonna try and put something together’ for years with no results. So, for me, I found it easy to root for. And then as I was able with Favreau, what we accomplished with Swingers was to try to provide opportunities if someone was kind of trying hard and working in that way. There’s something about that that is motivating and inspiring to me. Ari Sandel was a guy that Peter gave an early opportunity to and worked with Peter on a TV show that they did when Ari was starting off. When we first initiated the tour, Ari was just a hired cameraman the first day on the bus. He was not the director of the film. He was a guy with a camera. And as we went out and got…as I said we put together in 6 weeks…originally I said to Peter because Peter had run so much different stuff, he produced "Made” with me, "Dinner for Five,” "The Break-Up,” he produced "Zathura,” and now he’s done "Iron Man.” He’s producing "Four Christmases” with me. But he also produced this TV show and sort of was a mentor to Ari about how to get field segments and stuff. As we were there, so much of Peter’s day became about putting together the technical show and making sure stuff was running that I came to Ari who I really liked his short film obviously that everyone knows of now which won the Academy Award. And I said to him, ‘Will you direct this movie?’ He was thrilled of course and I said, ‘We’ll talk to you at the end of the day and sort of talk about what’s going on and go get footage.’ And he worked really hard and did a good job. My style, where I come from in the creative process, is the best idea wins. I don’t need to be right. I don’t need anybody else to be right. I need whatever is right for the movie and I really like a collaboration where if you have an idea, we’ll through it up there. I don’t want to debate it for 45 minutes. Let’s see, let’s go, let’s watch it, let’s watch. I feel like when people feel included, they feel like they have a voice, they feel incentified, they’re excited. You’re getting the best ideas. So Ari was a huge component and very much a part of the idea, but so was Peter Billingsley and so was my sister and so was the editor, Dan Lebental, who cut "American Pimp” which was a great documentary. He cut "The Break-Up,” he cut "Elf.” So really what you see as a final result I think is better than what any one of us could have done. It really became a true collaboration with all of us.

Q: How did you feel about doing the Swingers routine 10 years later?

VINCE VAUGHN: What I kind of liked about it was it was that kind of simple comedy set up where I’m kind of tough on Justin and kind of not giving him an out and then the fun is at the end he gets to humiliate me. I always knew Justin did a really good imitation of me that was not flattering, that was kind of funny at my expense. I knew that like okay, we could be tough on him at the beginning because he’ll do a good job of making fun of me and that’ll make everyone happy.

Q: Thank you.

VINCE VAUGHN: Thank you guys very much. I appreciate it.

"Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days and 30 Nights -- Hollywood to the Heartland” opens in theaters on February 8^th.