Cliff Notes – Inside story of Wedding Crashers as it celebrates 20 years ‘Hide your bridesmaids’
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Coming-of-Age Theme: Despite its comedic premise, Wedding Crashers explores the transition from a focus on casual relationships to deeper emotional connections, highlighting the complexities of male friendships.
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Personal Inspiration: Director David Dobkin drew from his own experiences of friendship and romantic relationships, aiming to depict the emotional dynamics between men as they navigate love.
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Female Characters’ Strength: The film intentionally portrays its female characters as strong and humorous, challenging typical stereotypes and allowing women to take the lead in comedic moments.
Inside story of Wedding Crashers as it celebrates 20 years: ‘Hide your bridesmaids’
Rife for comedy, romance, hijinks and plot twists, weddings have long been the ultimate playground for movie makers — and not many have exploited it better than the 2005 box office hit Wedding Crashers.
The story follows buddies, Jeremy and John — played by Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson — who spend their weekends attending the most special day of people’s lives… uninvited.
Their playful hobby takes a serious turn when John falls for the bridesmaid Claire, played by Rachel McAdams, and agrees to a weekend retreat with her entire family. While there, Jeremy has to contend with the, at first, unwanted advances of Claire’s sister Gloria (Isla Fisher), and Owen must compete against Rachel’s boyfriend, Sack (Bradley Cooper).
Released 20 years ago this month, Wedding Crashers received generally favourable reviews from critics and became an immediate box office hit, earning more than $200 million. It also became one of the most commercially successful R-rated comedies of all time, and laid the path for further bromance films such as Superbad, I Love You, Man, and 21 Jump Street.
In honour of the film’s 20th anniversary, the director David Dobkin speaks Metro and lifts the lid on what it was really like making the comedy classic…
Wedding Crashers was intended as a coming-of-age story despite being about men in their thirties
Wedding Crashers was released in July 2005 (Picture: Richard Cartwright/New Line/Avery Pix/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock)
‘It’s about that time in your life when love becomes your primary interest over sex, and what happens to two close guy friends when one of them falls in love. John is afraid to tell Jeremy that he loves a girl because of their important bond. Part of growing up is going through this experience and coming back together.’
The film is loosely based on David’s life
‘An older filmmaker told me the first movie you make shows you can do it, the second demonstrates that you’re part of the system, and by the third one, you do one that speaks to you. I was a nerdy kid who didn’t have any game, so when my friends started to fall for girls all of a sudden, it threatened the group’s stability. When I saw that it was possible to tell that story in the movie, I chased it, because it was personal. I wanted to show how I felt about my guy friends, which is that we’re ride or dies.’
David Dobkin with the late Henry Gibson on the set of Wedding Crashers (Picture: Richard Cartwright/New Line/Avery Pix/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock)
How he chose the all-star cast that included Rachel McAdams, Bradley Cooper, Isla Fisher, Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Jane Seymour and Christopher Walken
‘Vince came as my guest to the premiere of my movie Shanghai Knights, and he was talking 100 miles an hour at me. I saw in the background, Owen was eating a carrot and laughing with his slow Texas drawl. I grabbed my agent and told them that I needed the two of them in my next movie. He called me eight weeks later to say he’d found the script.
‘When Isla, who was relatively unknown, came in for her audition, I was having a very hard time finding the person for Gloria. I was impressed by how she could make these instant, but realistic, 180-degree turns from a crazy “you’re never gonna leave” to an emotional “I love you”. Bradley was also new to the industry, but he is the only actor I’ve ever hired in an audition. I’d seen 50 other people read it, and they all were moustache-twirly bad guys, but he had the talent to make it something more.’
Isla impressed David with her range (Picture: Richard Cartwright/New Line/Avery Pix/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock)
The whole cast lived together while shooting the movie
‘We stayed at a place called Perry Cabin in Maryland, which was where we shot the wedding in the first act. It was funny to go from your bedroom to being on set.
‘We also filmed in Washington, which is where I grew up. I tailored the movie to become a little love letter to DC. It was incredible to me that Vince and Owen sat on the Lincoln Memorial steps saying, “One day we’ll look back on all this and laugh. We’ll say we were young and stupid”, because I sat there with my friends.’
Wedding Crashers was never meant to be an R-rated comedy
‘I recently watched Wedding Crashers again for the first time since its release, as my son was upset he hadn’t seen it, and that movie holds up perfectly. R-rated comedies age better than any other comedy because they’re finding humour in things that we normally find uncomfortable, and those things remain consistent, such as embarrassing sex moments.
‘At the time, executives were scared of R-rated movies as they didn’t know how to market them. I fought for it so we could push the boundaries more.’
Wedding Crashers wasn’t always going to be an R-rated comedy (Picture: New Line/Avery Pix/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock)
The dinner party scene and the opening wedding crashing montage took the longest to film
‘The cast had to sit at the dinner table for days to get that scene. It was difficult as there were so many people at the table, many reactions to capture, and we had to make it believable that Jeremy receives a hand job unnoticed.
‘The opening montage of the boys crashing multiple weddings was the first thing we shot on the movie, because I knew that when executives realised I was doing it for four days, they would say, “What are you doing?”
‘I was inspired by James Bond, as in that franchise, the ticket cost has already been earned in the first five minutes. I thought, “Why can’t comedies start like that?” This way, for the rest of the movie, you’re afforded so much leniency because everyone’s having fun already.’
The dinner party took a long time to film (Picture: New Line/Everett/REX/Shutterstock)
The female characters were intentionally the funniest
‘Women are underwritten in almost every role. If they’re not the lead, they are often reduced to terrible clichés. I wanted to make Jane, Isla and Rachel cool, funny and three-dimensional. Let’s see women get a leg up on these good-looking dudes and use their sexuality in a way that makes them uncomfortable. Women initiate the sex scenes every single time. If a man initiates a sex scene, it can’t be funny because we’re not sure if there’s consent.’
There were only two improvised scenes
‘We ad-libbed in a rehearsal room, and I took some notes, but there was hardly any improvisation on set. One of the few exceptions is when Vince is talking to the priest. That monologue got written and rewritten, but, man, he just riffed. Vince just had a couple of touchstones of what the scene was about; he loved Gloria, but didn’t expect it. That was a difficult scene in the editing room because he gave something almost completely different every time.’
The women often led the comedy scenes (Picture: Richard Cartwright/New Line/Avery Pix/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock)
The film’s marketing department had concerns
‘The marketing team worried that the main characters were predatory, that it would come across that they were lying purely to sleep with women, but I didn’t see it that way. They attend weddings because they love them. They love the fun of changing their names, dancing, the food, the music, and hanging out with the old people. When they’re at a wedding, it’s the best wedding ever, and the byproduct of that is that these girls are attracted to them, so they sleep with them. It’s the way real seduction works.’
A sequel was in the works for a few years, but they hit a major obstacle
‘About 15 years after the original, I came up with a funny and worthwhile idea based on what would happen if they both became single again as older men.
‘We were very close to making that sequel, but we all couldn’t quite see eye to eye, as there were feelings from the actors’ representatives that we could not make a movie like Wedding Crashers after the Me Too movement. That made me upset, because I’m a feminist and he movie was never offensive. It has a big heart because it understands the rules. We’ll see if we can finally get back to it someday. I always hold out hope.’
Wedding Crashers is available to watch on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video
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