IT'S ALL IN THE SUBTEXT: Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau Get MADE

By Brandon Judell

Imagine The Odd Couple as down-and-out boxers turned fifth-rate mobsters and you've got MADE. Well almost.

Director/writer/actor Jon Favreau and mere producer/thespian Vince Vaughn last teamed up for the phenomenally successful indie hit Swingers. Since that collaboration, their groupies have begged for more, and now they've got it.

The plot: Bobby (Favreau) is having an affair with working mother/lap dancer Jessica (Famke Janssen). He wants her, however, to become a stay-at-home mom. To get enough money so they can live in style, he's willing to pull a big deal for aging crime boss Max (Peter Falk). All Bobby has to do is take his not-too-swift pal Ricky (Vaughn) to New York City and do a deal with Ruiz (Sean Combs, the former Puff Daddy). What should be a breeze turns into a comic disaster especially because the two pals can't stop bickering. On top of being an irrational idiot, Ricky is also spitting out "******!" throughout their ordeal. If that weren't enough, he even throws a drink into the face of a gay bellboy (Sam Rockwell). Is this homophobia or love?

To find out, we caught up with the chipper pair in New York City. We dealt with Mr. Favreau first. Jon, who spent his early years as a fat kid, recently starred as Rocky Marciano on TV, was the voice of Jealousy in Disney's Hercules, and has his own talk show debuting shortly on the Independent Film Channel.

After taking about his career, he shares his wife "has orgasms," is "an internist who specializes in alternatives like acupuncture," and "likes Adam Sandler films."

This sounded like a good time to ask about all those "******s."

"It was intentional," Favreau explains. "Not to get too deep, but the movie's really a love story between these two male characters. The Ricky character obviously has these issues because he's like '*** this,' '*** that.' But if you look at the end of the film, we're like a gay couple raising a child. We don't curse, our bruises are gone, we're really caring about each other's feelings."

Taking a deep breath, he asks, "Is it a coincidence that Sam Rockwell comes in, and Ricky's throwing the booze at him? Ricky doesn't want to deal with things. Vince talks about how the film's like Midnight Cowboy. There you have these guys. Joe Buck's not a cowboy. He saw movies about cowboys. He's trying to be that image. He's trying to embrace that macho image that the media and movies have created.

"It's the same thing with us as mobsters in Made," he adds. "We think it's going to be one way but the mob world is not like that at all, and so it's really the emotional journey that we go on together. Once Bobby and Ricky take in Jessica's child, we become a family together. We live together. Whether it's sexual or not, it's two men having a relationship where there's a sensitive aspect to it. Not just a macho aspect. You even get to see us with a little party hats at Chucky Cheese arguing about the kid watching MTV all day. I think only without that ending, it could feel homophobic."

Favreau rises from the table, says his adieus, and in comes the unshaven Vaughn. You might recall him masturbating while eyeing a peephole in the recent Psycho remake, putting the make on Anne Heche in Return to Paradise, and cozying up to Jennifer Lopez in The Cell.

In Made, besides having to recite as many lines as Hamlet does, and faster, Vaughn has to hold on tightly to a hunky, bare-chested black motorcyclist who's speeding along the streets of the Big Apple. So why the bristle on his esteemed face?

"I look a mess," he fibs. "The problem is that I hate shaving and that kind of stuff. When you work, you obviously got to shave everyday. But when I have four to five days off, it's bye-bye razor."

Second important question: "When you look in the mirror, do you react like we do, and say, 'What a hunk!'"

Vaughn turns serious, "I don't look in the mirror and see a hunk. I think sometimes whatever impressions people had of you when you were younger sort of stick with you. I'm not a guy who dated a lot. I was sort of a late bloomer. I was painfully shy with girls. I didn't have girls swoon to me. I played with toys longer than most kids. Dungeons and Dragons. My sole focus was that stuff. At a dance when people started making out, I was like, What's going on here?"

I commiserated, noting how that sounded like the whole readership of B.A.R. Then moving on, I asked the "******" question.

"You know it's interesting," Vaughn points out, "as I have said to others, I always think of this movie as a little bit more comparable to Midnight Cowboy then it is to Swingers, although Swingers was a love story as well.

"But Ricky doesn't want to box," he notes as he deconstructs his character. "He doesn't want to work in construction. He wants to be a mobster. He's openly homophobic. Then at the New York hotel, it's 'this is a *** place.' Sam Rockwell. Throwing stuff at him. You know what I mean. And why is a gay bellboy picking on Ricky to come up to in the first place?

"Ultimately the movie ends with the children's party. Bobby and Ricky come together. They live together. They have a kid. Ricky is very much finding comfort in sort of being a housewife type, taking care of the kid. He also gets his feelings hurt. 'But you do condescend.' 'I don't mean to condescend.' 'But you do and that hurts.'

"Ricky eventually evolves. His anger, his physicalizing the violence or swearing or his need to put down other groups he does in order to make himself look okay. But he finally becomes comfortable with what his reality is. Whether it's sexual or not sexual, I don't think it's important. I think it's fair to say it's either one. Unquestionably the thrust of the film is Ricky and Bobby's relationship. Not the crime story. Not the other stuff. It's more to do with that. That's the ultimate thing. You know Joe Buck. 'That's *** stuff. That's *** stuff.' You know what I mean?"