As Luck Would Have It

As Luck Would Have It

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As Luck Would Have It
As Luck Would Have It
Swingers - The Best Ever Bromance Movie?

Swingers - The Best Ever Bromance Movie?

How out-of-work actor Jon Favreau helped create a film that ought to be in every bloke’s movie wardrobe.

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Richard Luck
Oct 26, 2022
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As Luck Would Have It
As Luck Would Have It
Swingers - The Best Ever Bromance Movie?
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“I think the reason Swingers found an audience is because it’s pretty authentic,” says the film’s writer and lead actor Jon Favreau. “It’s a film about how I was living at the time I wrote it. That’s the way I dressed, that’s the music I listened to, that’s the career path I was on, that’s the success I had chasing women – it’s all up there on the screen.”

Now best known as the director of the hugely successful Iron Man, Jon Favreau was but a struggling actor when he decided to write about himself. “When you’re starting out in movies, it’s hard to find roles that are a good fit. Since I couldn’t find parts that were suitable for me, I thought I might as well write a script with me and my friends in mind”; said friends including the young Vince Vaughn, whom Favreau had befriended on the set of the American college sports movie Rudy.

Taking its title from a favourite LA hangout, Swingers is the tale of young actors chasing roles and women in the City of Angels. Our heroes include the shy, heart-broken Mike (Favreau), the charismatic motor-mouth Trent (Vaughan) and the laid-back, matter-of-fact Rob (Ron Livingston). In thrall to the Rat Pack fashions of the ’50s and ’60s, these aimless but affable men are on a ceaseless quest for the opposite sex, which is quite understandable what with them here being represented by Heather Graham and Friday Night Lights’ Brooke Langton.

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