Owen Wilson made a pretty good penny for starring in Wedding Crashers. And this makes sense given the fact that the movie was incredibly successful and has gone down as one of the best comedies of the 2000s. While the movie has some aspects that we're tired of seeing in romantic comedies and buddy-movies, it also broke a few molds. One of the most exciting sequences in the movie, the "Shout" wedding montage, set-up both the characters and the world of the movie in a way that was unique and ultimately awesome.
But according to a fascinating oral interview by Mel Magazine, the creators of the movie claim that this hilarious montage was easily the hardest aspect of filming. Here's why...
The Challenge Of The "Shout" Wedding Montage
If you don't remember, the montage, which is as long as its featured song, The Isley Brothers' "You Know You Make Me Want To Shout," occurs early on in the movie. It shows the array of weddings that Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn's characters (Jeremy and John) crash as well as all of the beautiful women they meet, flirt-with, and hook-up with. It's hilarious and awesome, but it was a nightmare to film.
"With a lot of comedies, the trick is to set it up early as a comedy — to have good jokes work early on, so that people know they have permission to laugh," editor Mark Livolsi said of Wedding Crashers' premise. "You can run into trouble when you have something that’s maybe not a comedy, but just comedic, and there’s nothing comedic in the first act. You have to set that stuff up, or people don’t understand what they’re supposed to be watching. So that opening montage sets a tone: You have fleeting glimpses of nudity, and you understand what you’re watching is an R-rated comedy."
According to Owen Wilson in the DVD commentary for the movie, the montage took a whopping two weeks to shoot. Director David Dobkin had a very specific image for it all.
"He impressed upon me that he wanted it to be this amazing never-before-seen montage. We’d get all of the wedding crashing out of the way and satiate the audience so that he could get on with the plot," Mark explained.
"That montage wasn’t written as long as I shot it," director David Dobkin said. "I knew I needed it, though. I wanted to open the movie with something that felt like a comedic action scene, where at the end of it you’re like, 'That’s awesome, you got me in my seat, let’s go.' I wanted this incredible volume of weddings — an incredible repetition of champagne popping and [fake] names, and it was all detailed."
Usually, a montage such as this is given about a day or two to film, but this one took way longer, and that put the rest of the movie in jeopardy and even got the studio concerned about the future of the movie.
"I knew I was going to put myself in an incredibly difficult position to finish the rest of the movie if I took the entire first week to do that," David explained. "And I remember on the fourth day of shooting the guys were like, 'Haven’t we already done this?' The studio also was like, 'What, you’re still shooting the montage?' But I understood that there’s only so much sand in the sandbox, and I pushed a ton of it right in the front of the shoot for this montage. I knew that everything else was going to have that much less time [to shoot], but I also knew that it was something that, if it ended up later in the schedule, no one was going to ever give me the time back. There were many nights when I was like, 'Do I do this? Do I not do this?' But I just had to explain to people what this film’s concept was — you had to show [Vince and Owen’s characters], and it had to be entertaining."
Thanks to the magic of filmmaking, a lot of this was able to be accomplished in some truly interesting ways. For instance, they would rent out a big conference room and completely change its decor so it looked like it could be multiple locations. One day it was an Indian wedding, the next it was a Jewish one.
The Use Of "Shout"
The song "You Know You Make Me Want To Shout" by the Isley Brothers was always David Dobkin's first choice for the sequence.
"In fact, it was filmed to [the song] so that was pretty much a no-brainer," Mark said. "I put together a serviceable version, and then when David came in, we started his cut. At that point, he started to dig into it, and we started to have a little fun. He wanted to use the part of the song that’s the breakdown and start to intersperse little pieces of life in there: Vince jump-cutting himself and gorging himself on cake and talking to other people at the tables. It’s a lot of nonsense, but it had a feeling of reality to it, so that it wasn’t just about the seduction of the girls. It was important that the audience understand that they weren’t doing this as just predators trying to achieve this goal. They really, truly enjoyed [weddings]."
Of course, this was one of the biggest concerns from a marketing and ethical perspective. They didn't want these two guys to come across as too creepy, sleazy, or misogynistic... Although, people still argue about this. But David and the writers are certain that their characters weren't just crashing weddings for the women. They loved the dancing, hanging with the kids, making friends. It was about so much, including beautiful women.
"That’s the distinction. It’s not misogynistic and, in fact, what it’s doing is replicating a real seduction, which is, 'I want to go to bed with you, but I have all these walls up. Can you make me laugh, make me attracted to you and find a way to make this really fun so we could get to the good part?' That’s a seduction," David explained. "So, if I can seduce the audience — if I can make them laugh and be entertained and think these are okay guys — by the time they’re dropping the girls in the bed, it’s a magic trick. That was the whole idea."