"Hot Ones”: Vince Vaughn delves into why Hollywood no longer pursues his brand of R-rated comedies

Vince Vaughn thinks Hollywood studio executives “overthink it” when it comes to making the kind of R-rated comedies the actor is famously known for. 

The “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star — who made a name for himself in the late ’90s and early 2000s with several R-rated titles like “Wedding Crashers,” “Old School” and “Swingers” — shared his hot take on this week’s episode of “Hot Ones.”

“They just overthink it,” Vaughn said of execs while feasting on spicy chicken wings alongside host Sean Evans. “And it’s like, it’s crazy, you get these rules, like, if you did geometry, and you said 87 degrees was a right angle, then all your answers are messed up, instead of 90 degrees. So there became some idea or concept, like, they would say something like, ‘You have to have an IP.’”

Vaughn used the board game Battleship as an example of a nonsensical IP (which stands for intellectual property) that “became a vehicle for storytelling.” He noted that the IP during his early era in Hollywood was more meaningful and relatable — they conveyed “life situations,” as Vaughn described. He pointed to John Hughes’ 1984 rom-com “Sixteen Candles,” in which the IP was simply a girl turning 16. 

“The people in charge don’t want to get fired more so than they’re looking to do something great, so they want to kind of follow a set of rules that somehow get set in stone, that don’t really translate,” Vaughn said. “But as long as they follow them, they’re not going to lose their job because they can say, ‘Well, look, I made a movie off the board game Payday so even though the movie didn’t work, you can’t let me go, right?’”

Although Hollywood doesn’t seem to have an appetite for R-rated movies made in the early aughts, the industry should consider bringing them back for the sake of their audience, Vaughn claimed.  

Want more great food writing and recipes? Subscribe to Salon Food's newsletter, The Bite.

“People want to laugh, people want to look at stuff that feels a little bit like it’s, you know, dangerous or pushing the envelope,” he said. “I think you’re going to see more of it in the film space sooner than later, would be my guess.”

The actor conversed with Evans in anticipation of his upcoming Apple TV+ drama series “Bad Monkey.” Vaughn plays Andrew Yancy, a former Miami Police Department detective turned health inspector, who takes on a rather bizarre case involving a severed human arm.

Watch the full episode below, via YouTube: