ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

“INVITES ARE FOR LOSERS”

On the surface, weddings may be all about bringing together families and friends to celebrate a couple’s love, but for most single attendees these often elaborate parties are equally notable for their open bar and the opportunity to meet a new love interest. It was this single guy’s perspective on attending weddings that initially inspired Wedding Crashers.

“The idea for Wedding Crashers started with an invitation I received for one of my friend’s weddings a few years ago,” says producer Andrew Panay. “I began thinking back to my college days when I crashed a couple of weddings with a buddy of mine because it was an easy way to meet girls. I thought it could be a great backdrop for a film – two guys who crash weddings to meet girls until one of them breaks all the rules and falls for one of the bridesmaids, but has lied about who he is for an entire evening.”

Panay developed the concept with Peter Abrams and Robert L. Levy, his partners at Tapestry Films, before eventually hiring the writing team of Steve Faber & Bob Fisher to bring the story to life.

“We felt within the concept of wedding crashing there was a lot of strong material which could be turned into a really funny story and script,” says producer Peter Abrams. “We were looking for writers and Andrew Panay had met with Steve Faber & Bob Fisher on a script called We’re the Millers which we all thought was incredibly funny, witty and smart. We told them about the basic storyline for Wedding Crashers and they immediately ran with the idea.”

Faber & Fisher instantly clicked with the concept, but quickly realized that they would need to expand the story beyond a tale of just a couple of guys on the make.

“After we were pitched the basis for the film, both Bob and I agreed that we needed to create a world that was funnier than simply a couple of young guys crashing weddings all the time,” says Faber. “We thought, ‘What if they were older and really shouldn’t be doing these types of things?’ Weddings are the ultimate in forced bliss and we came to the creative conclusion that these guys really needed to be experts in the art of wedding crashing, so we devised dozens of rules that they always adhere to.”

Fisher adds, “We also knew we couldn’t sustain an entire film with just wedding crashing, so we thought that it’d be a good idea if one of the guys were to fall for a woman at one of the weddings. We wanted the characters to be caught in a place where their lives could be really affected by the choices they made.”

In the film, John Beckwith and Jeremy Gray are best friends and partners in a Washington, D.C. divorce mediation firm where they use their unique brand of negotiating to help couples realize that the end of their marriage is not to be blamed on each other, but should be blamed on the institution of marriage.

“John is a man who’s really had enough with the lifestyle he is leading and feels that he is not following his own bliss,” says Faber. “He doesn’t realize this, of course, until he meets the woman of his dreams. Jeremy, on the other hand, lives more in the moment, steamrolling from one wedding to the next, one sexual encounter to another, without ever really looking back.”

The film’s producers were thrilled with the layers that Faber & Fisher added to their original concept.

“Steve and Bob did a great job with the script,” says Andrew Panay. “They created these incredible characters and a really funny story and were able to mix the wedding crashing concept with the dynamic of meeting girls who change their lives.”

New Line Cinema also clicked with the Wedding Crashers pitch and quickly set up the project. Faber & Fisher then delivered a hilarious first draft of the script that landed on the radar of director David Dobkin. Once Dobkin was on board, he enlisted actors Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, who he had directed before (Vaughn in Clay Pigeons and Wilson in Shanghai Knights).

“I had just finished working with Owen and did my first film with Vince, so I thought it would be amazing if I could find a script that would enable me to pair these two guys up together on screen,” says Dobkin. “The Wedding Crashers script crossed my path and I could hear their voices in the screenplay. Luckily for me, both Owen and Vince were really into it and loved the characters in the film.”

For Vince Vaughn, the script represented exactly the kind of comedic material he enjoys.

“I have always liked films that have a story within the comedy which is based in reality and human circumstances,” says Vaughn. “I loved the concept - two guys going to weddings pretending to be people they are not in order to meet and hook up with girls. You’re following these extreme characters through situations we’ve all thought about or have done on a smaller scale. It’s an exaggerated circumstance, but one that is completely relatable – crashing a party that you’re not necessarily invited to.”

For Owen Wilson, Wedding Crashers offered the opportunity to reunite with director Dobkin and Vaughn.

“I liked the way David worked on Shanghai Nights and remembered how comfortable he made me feel creatively on set,” says Wilson. “I worked with Vince on Starsky and Hutch, but we didn’t have many scenes together, so it was a really enticing prospect to do a buddy comedy with him.”

In approaching their roles, Vaughn and Wilson agreed with Dobkin that one of the keys to the film was ensuring that their characters be likable.

“John and Jeremy’s fun-loving nature was an element of the characters that Owen, Vince and I talked about very early on,” says Dobkin. “We all felt that it was very important for their characters to be sympathetic as opposed to dark and predatorial. Being the life of the party is what attracts the women, but these characters really do love the food, the bands, entertaining the kids and dressing up in their suits.”

Dobkin adds, "having worked with both Owen and Vince separately, I was excited by what the creative potential would be with the three of us together. I am a strong believer in maximizing a film's potential through script development. Owen and Vince always make significant and substantial contributions to story and character. With Owen you get the added heavy artillery of ideas one can expect from an Oscar nominated screenwriter. And Vince is without a doubt as sharp and inventive as anyone when it comes to working a script."

With Wilson and Vaughn signed on, the filmmakers turned their attention to casting the supporting roles in the film. First order of business was finding an actor to play the role of the powerful and prominent Treasury Secretary, William Cleary.

“Secretary Cleary is the linchpin of this movie,” says Dobkin. “The way you cast the role dictates if the film is going to be a little bit of a classier comedy with some intelligence, or if it was going to be a very broad comedy with little intelligence. The film’s basically about these two guys who go to the Treasury Secretary’s mansion to scam on his daughters, so I felt the character better be somebody that John and Jeremy were scared of because it would raise the stakes of the comedy.”

In Dobkin’s eyes, there was only one perfect choice for the role.

“Christopher Walken was my first choice because he has a certain intimidation factor about him, but more importantly his performances in Catch Me If You Can and The Dead Zone have a certain warmth to them that I wanted to inject into the character. Chris also has an unbelievable sense of comedic timing and could create laughs out of a role where there wasn't necessarily a lot of comedy written on the page. Once we got him on board, it really galvanized the casting process.”

For Walken, an Academy Award-winning actor whose film resume is as diverse as the many memorable characters he has portrayed, the role of Treasury Secretary was one that caught him a little off guard.

“I was really surprised when I got the call to see if I was interested in the film,” admits Walken. “When you combine my own personality and background with the kinds of parts I’ve played in the past, it doesn’t lead me to believe that I would be cast as a political figurehead who’s entrusted to control and keep up with the country’s money. I have always played characters a little bit on the outside, so it’s a nice change of pace to play a family man with three daughters.”

“MAKE SURE SHE’S SINGLE”

It is at the lavish wedding of the Treasury Secretary’s daughter Christina that John and Jeremy – posing as brothers John and Jeremy Ryan, venture capitalists from New Hampshire – decide to pursue Christina’s sisters Claire and Gloria Cleary. For Jeremy, Gloria is just another potential conquest, but John is immediately enamored by Claire’s classic beauty and elegance.

Finding an actress to play the headstrong Claire proved to be a long journey that resulted in the casting of Rachel McAdams, who starred in last summer’s hit films The Notebook and Mean Girls.

“I never stop casting because if I cast the movie correctly, I’ve done half my job already,” says David Dobkin. “Hundreds of actresses auditioned for the role of Claire, but none of them really captured the essence of the character. I was an hour from going to the studio and presenting my top two choices when Rachel McAdams came into my office. I just loved her energy immediately. I threw her a couple of curve balls just to see how good she was and she nailed both of them, which made my decision really easy.”

Even McAdams was surprised at how quickly she landed the role.

“I was really surprised to get the part because it all happened so fast,” says McAdams. “I loved the script and laughed out loud when I read it. Claire has grown up in a world of privilege, but somehow has managed to stay pretty grounded despite her very eccentric family. She meets Owen’s character at her sister’s wedding and finds him charming and interesting because he doesn't take himself so seriously, and is terribly funny and witty.”

While John runs into a road block in his pursuit of Claire – her blue-blooded boyfriend Sack – Jeremy is almost too successful in his seduction of Gloria, played by Isla Fisher, the youngest and most “adventurous” of the Cleary daughters.

“Jeremy sees Gloria and kind of fancies her so he presents himself in a certain way to hook up with her,” explains Vaughn. “He plays his hand very well and she ends up becoming extremely attached very quickly, which really scares him because her father is the Treasury Secretary and his taxes haven’t been in line for years.”

Vaughn continues, “John doesn’t have a chance to connect with Claire in the way that he wants to, so he accepts an invitation to spend the weekend at the Cleary estate, which infuriates Jeremy because Gloria is very clingy and thinks that she loves him.”

Actress Isla Fisher agrees with her co-star’s assessment of her character.

“I think it’s fair to say it’s love at first sight for Gloria when she meets Jeremy,” smiles Fisher. “She’s very young and impressionable and Jeremy is a real ladies man who woos her with all sorts of romantic stories. Gloria is swept off her feet by his dashing good looks and becomes very much a woman obsessed. She’s a bit like a spoiled kid with a new toy who just wants to snap its head off she loves it so much.”

Director David Dobkin was thrilled with the chemistry between Vaughn and Fisher.

“Vince is a powerful actor and I wanted his character to get hooked into somebody that audiences would believe could run him into the ground,” explains Dobkin. “Isla Fisher was the only actress we saw who was sexy and could go toe-to-toe with Vince. She has a real fiery side to her, but she also has this real soft, sweet side as well, which is exactly what I wanted.”

While John can’t seem to get a moment alone with Claire, he also can’t seem to escape the advances of her mother Kathleen Cleary, who loves young men almost as much as she loves a good martini.

“The role of Kathleen was the last one cast because it was difficult to find an actress who could match up well with Christopher Walken, but also someone who exuded the sex appeal to play a vixen type of character,” says producer Andrew Panay. “We went against the grain a bit in casting Jane Seymour, who has never really played a role like this before in her career.”

Seymour jumped at the chance to take on the role.

“I love being in comedies, but I've only been allowed to do it a few times,” says the actress. “Kathleen is very flirtatious and doesn’t have a good marriage. She has been married for 30 years and faithful for two of them so she is always looking for distraction, either with the bottle or with a young handsome man. At her daughter’s wedding, the combination of champagne and the sight of Owen Wilson’s character is more than she can possibly handle and she just has to have him.”

Producer Peter Abrams says it was clear early on that Seymour was perfect for the role.

“We needed someone who was very elegant and beautiful with a lot of experience,” says Abrams. “The fact that she has an English accent was also great because it fits right in with the Washington, D.C. society types.”

When John and Jeremy arrive at the Cleary estate they can’t escape the presence of Claire’s alpha-male boyfriend Sack, played by Bradley Cooper.

“The Clearys march to the beat of a different drummer,” says Cooper. “Sack is Claire’s soon-to-be fiancé and a member of the Lodge family, a pillar of old-school East coast money. He isn’t threatened by John and Jeremy at first, but when things start to go crazy for him he can't really understand why these two guys are suddenly being accepted into Claire’s world. It feels like his whole paradigm has shifted and he really starts to unravel a bit.”

Casting the role of Sack was no easy task.

“We talked a long time about what the character of Sack should be like and we seemed to cast for a long time before Bradley Cooper walked in the door,” recalls David Dobkin. “He was so good that when he walked out of the room I said, ‘Make him an offer.’ I pushed him to be really big and he stayed so grounded and real that I knew he was going to be fun to work with.”

Making his feature film debut in the role of Todd Cleary, the family’s emotionally tormented gay son, is Keir O’Donnell.

“Keir’s first audition was on tape and when he came into the room for his callback, I said, ‘Just do what you did before on tape,’” remembers Dobkin. “Then I gave him a little bit of direction and he didn’t lose any of the syncratic rhythms or beats he had built into the character - things like rubbing his shoulder and twitching. Although he has never been in a film, he is really talented and what he brings to the role is sure get a laugh almost every time he comes on screen.”

O’Donnell clicked with the quirky nature of his character.

“Todd is always rebelling against his family and has some really dark secrets he is harboring,” says O’Donnell. “The first time you see Todd he’s sitting on a dock, throwing rose petals in the water and yelling at the ocean. It doesn’t take long to realize that this kid has some major issues with society and life in general. He also has a crush on Jeremy and thinks they have a moment at the dinner table which results in a really funny compromising situation in the bedroom.”

The senior member of the family is Grandma Cleary, the sharp-tongued mother of Secretary Cleary whose diminutive size and old age is unceremoniously accompanied by her poorly timed crass comments and crude behavior.

“Grandma Cleary is like Rose Kennedy,” laughs actress Ellen Albertini Dow, who also played the memorable role of the rapping grandma in The Wedding Singer. “She is the head of this big Catholic, political family and feels that she is old enough to tell everybody off and doesn’t take anything from anybody. I’m a typical mother who thinks that the woman their son marries is just not good enough for him and she has always felt that her son William could have done better than Kathleen.”

“Ellen was perfect for this character because we needed someone who looked like this sweet little grandmother, but could turn on a dime and blurt out the most profane, inappropriate comments,” says producer Andrew Panay.

Rounding out the stellar cast of Wedding Crashers are Ron Canada as the Clearys’ longtime, pot-smoking, Jamaican butler Randolph; Henry Gibson as the family priest Father Gibson; Carson Elrod and Josh Wheeler as the conniving Cleary family friends Flip and Kip; Jenny Alden as Christina Cleary; and Geoff Stults as her new husband Craig.

“Properly casting a film is 90% of the battle,” says producer Peter Abrams. “We were also incredibly fortunate to have people like Christopher Walken, Jane Seymour, Bradley Cooper and Henry Gibson - who are all great actors in their own right - to play supporting roles because it elevates the film to another level.”

Andrew Panay adds, “It wasn't just about who was great, but it was also about what combinations of actors worked together and how it affected the specific look of the film we wanted.”