Scene One: Vince Does His Best Al Roker
If Vince Vaughn weren't Vince Vaughn, it would seem a little creepy for him to be standing around watching half-naked little kids splashing each other in a fountain in a public park. A lone male ﬁgure at the periphery, slightly pale, sweating, watching a kid in a bathing suit make for the water—probably an individual to whom Megan's Law should apply.
He's a robust character—six feet ﬁve inches, in jeans and a snap-button cowboy shirt, handsome, strong-looking—but just a little, if not depraved, nocturnal for the environment. If VV weren't VV, people would probably clutch their children and walk briskly toward safety. But since he is VV, the parents of the kid in the bathing suit ask if they can get a picture with him. And seeing that it's okay to approach, the others, until now circling warily, go in for the kill. A man from a pawnshop in a white knee-length T-shirt gets an autograph ("Sign that shit to Jackie," he says); a teenage boy in a rakishly angled White Sox cap just wants a bro hug; a middle-aged woman in fuzzy pink ﬂeece paces back and forth in tiny steps before saying, "I'm from Nova Scotia?" This, she hopes, will be dispensation enough.
"Come here, Nova Scotia," VV says, gathering her up in his arms like a sexy, subversive Al Roker. "You had me at hello."
VV undergoes a minor transformation when he's around the general public, the seekers of bro hugs and camera-phone pictures. He slips into character, distributing patter and slightly cocked affection without making anyone feel bad about asking for it.
"Get in here, sweetheart," he says to a girl in platform shoes and a miniskirt, as her boyfriend takes their picture. "She's a great girl," he says to the boyfriend, giving him a wink. "I like where your head's at."
I'm not saying there isn't a little fatigue back there behind the curtain while he's being Vince Vaughn. That, like a department-store Santa Claus who smells faintly of bourbon, he doesn't seem sometimes to be going through the motions. But it's a violation of his principles to let on as much. He believes in the covenant—he works for these people, kind of belongs to them, and so is obligated on occasion to really be that dude from the movies. It's like that scene in Wedding Crashers in which he's making balloon animals for a group of children, and one little bratty kid with blond hair says, "Make me a bicycle, clown!" And instead of hauling off and smacking the kid, he says, "All right, I'm going to make you a bicycle. But I don't want to make you a bicycle." VV gets paid to be an entertaining personality, and he'd ﬁnd it unprofessional to get pissed off when people see him and say, "Make me a bicycle, clown!"
For the full article, pick up the December 2005 issue of GQ.