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Vince Vaughn has disparaged modern comedies that attempt to be “responsible,” saying: “That feels like a snoozefest to me; a responsible comedy feels like a time to take a nap.”
Vaughn, who stars in the new Apple TV+ crime comedy series Bad Monkey, recently said Hollywood producers “overthink it” and have become too risk-averse to gamble on R-rated comedies that aren’t based on a pre-existing IP.
Speaking to Variety, Vaughn recalled the making of the R-rated 2005 comedy Wedding Crashers and said that the cast, along with director David Dobkin, had an attitude of: “Can we get away with this?”
“We would do stuff and it was fun because we were almost making a movie for ourselves to be funny and there was no ‘parents’ around,” continued Vaughn.
“I think that’s a big problem now – you’ve got to let young people go make a movie and leave them alone. They’ll figure it out in the end.”
Vaughn added: “I think the stuff that does resonate is always things that at least feel like they’re being authentic to the piece. They’re not trying to code it in a way that feels responsible. That feels like a snoozefest to me; a responsible comedy feels like a time to take a nap.”
Speaking to The Independent, Bad Monkey showrunner Bill Lawrence described the series as the sort of show “you don’t see anymore… banter-driven, R-rated comedies that actually have some real stakes.”
“I hope it works,” Lawrence said. “Because the second one works, everyone wants it.”
Lawrence drew a comparison with Ted Lasso, the hit sports sitcom he developed with Jason Sudeikis, Brendan Hunt and Joe Kelly. “I can’t tell you the amount of meetings I have now where people say: ‘Maybe you could do something like Ted Lasso’,” said Lawrence. “I like to remind them, we tried to sell Ted Lasso everywhere and only Apple bought it. Everyone else was like: ‘What is this? It’s like a 1990s sports movie?’”
In Bad Monkey, an adaptation of the 2013 New York Times bestselling novel by cult Florida crime writer Carl Hiaasen, Vaughn plays Andrew Yancy, a former Miami detective demoted to “roach patrol” as a restaurant inspector in the Florida Keys. When a severed arm turns up on the end of a fishing line, Yancy teams up with Miami medical examiner Rosa Campesino (Natalia Martinez) to solve the riddle of its appearance.
If Bad Monkey is a success, Lawrence hopes to bring Vaughn back for a second season based on Hiaasen’s 2016 novel Razor Girl. “Knock on wood, if we get a second season then Carl’s letting me do Razor Girl,” says Lawrence. “He hasn’t often written about the same characters over and over, but that’s the next book and we’ve got it. I’m really hopeful we get to keep going with this show, because the crew was awesome, the cast was awesome, and some of them are still alive. I mean in fictional life! In real life, they’re all still alive!”
Bad Monkey is on Apple TV+ from August 14.
