In 2005’s Wedding Crashers, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn play John and Jeremy, two divorce mediators who crash weddings to meet women. The romcom/bromance flick also stars Christopher Walken, Rachel McAdams, Isla Fisher, Bradley Cooper, and Will Ferrell in a memorable cameo role. Here are some facts about the movie to read before you get the meatloaf.
1. IT REALLY ALL STARTED WITH A WEDDING INVITATION.
Producer Andrew Panay (Serendipity, Van Wilder: Party Liason) received an invitation to a friend’s wedding, triggering memories of his college days when he and his friend used to crash weddings. Panay developed the concept with his partners at their production company before hiring Steve Faber and Bob Fisher to write the screenplay. Panay met Faber and Fisher when they were shopping their script We’re the Millers (2013). It was the writers that came up with the idea for one of the crashers to fall for a woman at one of the weddings.
2. IT WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN TO BE SET IN BOSTON AND CAPE COD.
But producer Peter Abrams knew it would be too cold to shoot in Boston or Cape Cod in March and April, so director David Dobkin (Shanghai Knights) suggested Washington D.C., where he grew up. The director added moments from his earlier days into the movie. “Many times in my youth I sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial finishing off a long night with a bottle of champagne or wine as the sun was about to rise over the Washington Monument,” Dobkin reminisced.
3. OWEN WILSON WASN’T COMFORTABLE WITH THE ORIGINAL SCRIPT, SO HE AND VAUGHN CHANGED MOST OF IT.
“When I first read the script, I wasn’t comfortable. It was a funny concept and story, but part felt corny,” the star told New York magazine in 2005. Wilson, Vaughn, and the writers changed the arc of Jeremy’s romance, and got rid of a “Graduate-like” wedding scene with John and Claire (Rachel McAdams).
4. JANE SEYMOUR BEAT OUT RAQUEL WELCH TO PLAY KATHLEEN.
Seymour had auditioned for the first time in 30 years to win the part over the likes of Welch. She said the script was the “funniest thing” she had ever read. Seymour, who was 54 at the time, also took part in her first ever topless scene for the movie.
5. HUNDREDS OF ACTRESSES AUDITIONED BEFORE RACHEL MCADAMS READ FOR CLAIRE.
Dobkin claimed he was one hour from going to the studio to present his top two choices when McAdams arrived in his office. “I was really surprised to get the part because it all happened so fast,” McAdams said.
6. ISLA FISHER WATCHED FATAL ATTRACTION AND THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE BEFORE HER AUDITION FOR GLORIA.
It helped her think about how to make someone “really psycho and funny and aggressive and sexual, but also make her sweet enough that you still like her and think that she’s endearing in some way.” She also used a friend’s “crazy eye” and a “really bad” laugh to get the gig.
7. THE FIRST WEEK OF SHOOTING WAS THE OPENING MONTAGE OF ALL THE DIFFERENT WEDDINGS.
All five of them, as principal photography began on March 22, 2004. McAdams’s first scene was dancing with noted mover-shaker Christopher Walken. “My first scene was dancing with Christopher Walken—no pressure, right?” she said. “I had been practicing with a choreographer during pre-production because I knew he was a really good dancer, but it was so nerve-racking on the day because I assumed there would be a whole bunch of people dancing and it turned out to be a whole ballroom full of people watching us dance the polka. I did encourage him to do some solo work and he broke out a few times, which made it a lot of fun for me.”
8. A WEDDING CONSULTANT WAS HIRED FOR AUTHENTICITY.
Wedding planner Lovelynn Vanderhorst was hired as a technical advisor to ensure accuracy. She admitted in the movie’s official production notes how hard it was to stop people from crashing real weddings. “The hard part for me is usually a client will say, ‘I don’t know who that person is, can you go find out?’ Usually they’re not invited and I have to ask them to leave. But at one wedding, it ended up being the groom’s uncle and the bride was really embarrassed. That’s why, I hate to admit it, but it wouldn’t be as hard as you think to crash a wedding.”
9. OWEN WILSON CAME UP WITH THE ’10 PERCENT OF OUR HEARTS’ LINE.
“You know how they say we only use 10 percent of our brains? I think we only use 10 percent of our hearts” came to Wilson after the whole sequence was finished. “At about the same age as I was interested in petrified wood, I was just fascinated with this dumb idea that we only used 10 percent of our brains,” Wilson explained about the thought process. “I was always thinking, ‘Man, if I could only use 20…'”. Wilson told Dobkin his idea, and Dobkin made a last-second setup to shoot the scene again.
According to Jane Seymour, Wilson also came up with the idea for her character to call him a “pervert” at the end of her seduction scene. Wilson also added to the two rules mentioned in the original script. “…I noticed over the course of the movie that whenever Vince was on one of his rants, he would throw in rules to support whatever argument he had,” Owen told IGN. “And so I started to figure that out and I started to throw my own rules into the mix. And eventually it got to rule 87: Don’t quote a rule to another. Don’t go throwing rules in another wedding crasher’s face.”
10. MCADAMS LISTENED TO FLEETWOOD MAC BEFORE EMOTIONAL SCENES.
She played “Landslide” on her iPod to prepare. Wilson and Vaughn heard and sang it, straight-faced, before Jeremy and Gloria’s wedding scene. McAdams said, “It totally took me out! But whatever works.”
11. THEY MADE FAKE PURPLE HEARTS AVAILABLE FOR PRINTING ON THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE.
After some complaints from a congressman, producers took it down. “If any movie-goers take the advice of the ‘Wedding Crashers’ and try to use fake Purple Hearts to get girls, they may wind up picking up an FBI agent instead,” said Rep. John Salazar, D-Colorado.
12. JOHN MCCAIN GOT IN TROUBLE FOR HIS BRIEF CAMEO.
McCain and James Carville appeared briefly in the first Cleary wedding. He donated the $695 salary to charity, and his aides claimed he had “little idea” of what the film would be like when he agreed to make his cameo. McCain, who was awarded an actual Purple Heart, didn’t comment on the Purple Heart controversy, but commented on the criticism he got for appearing in an R-rated film after earlier hosting congressional hearings that criticized Hollywood for marketing R-rated movies to kids. “In Washington, I work with boobs every day,” the senator joked on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
13. IT CHANGED BRADLEY COOPER’S CAREER.
Cooper (Sack) said as much on his Inside the Actors Studio appearance. “On Alias, I played the nicest guy in the world and then I would try to audition for movies after that and the feedback was like ‘Wow, Bradley’s such a nice guy,’ ‘Yeah, I don’t really see him in that part,’ and after Wedding Crashers, ‘Bradley? Yeah, he’s an a**hole.’”
14. NO, VINCE VAUGHN DOESN’T HAVE THAT PAINTING OF JEREMY MADE BY TODD.
“I’m not sure where that painting is. But it will always be in my heart,” Vaughn wrote in a Reddit AMA in 2013, despite it being claimed elsewhere on the internet that Vaughn had kept it. He also said the running gag of his character getting referred to as “baba ghanoush” stemmed from an inside joke.
15. THERE WAS BRIEF TALK OF A SEQUEL.
Vaughn, Wilson, and David Dobkin came up with an idea where John and Jeremy would compete with an “ultimate wedding crasher” played by Daniel Craig. But nothing came of it. “Wedding Crashers came out at a time when people weren’t doing lots of sequels,” Dobkin explained.
February 10, 2017 – 10:00am