I wanted to re-watch something special for my 1500th entry. I'll speak more to how I got to 1500 in a separate entry, but it wasn't hard to choose Swingers for this honor.
I really got into films sometime in the mid-nineties when I was a teenager. I guess that's not true, as a kid I always watched a tonne of films - but it was always pretty mainstream stuff - essentially whatever I could find out the local, tiny video store. We'd rent two or three films for a Saturday night and the next morning I'd watch some of them again. What can I say, I was hooked from the start. However in my teen years that when I started to seek out films that were more than the mainstream, the indie movement with films like this, Tarantino, Kevin Smith, etc... and then that brought me further into it with people that were real hardcore indie filmmakers, foreign filmmakers, etc... but Swingers is one of those original films that I watched so much that I wore out my original VHS tape of it. I wish I was kidding about that.
For those who haven't seen it it's reason enough just to see Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau looking fresh faced and ready to take on the world. It's pretty amazing how many carries flourished out of this film - and rightly so. If you haven't seen it, it's about a guy who is trying to make it as a comedienne in L.A. while at the same time trying to get over having broken up with his girlfriend back in New York to try and make it out west.
Vince Vaughn is the unofficial leader of this hipster group and is entertaining and charismatic as hell. Favreau has such heart in this film. You want to hug him, be his pal, run around the speakeasies of L.A. with him. He's that kind of guy.
Doug Liman did wonders with the visuals of this film given all that they were up against. If you're young and interested in making your own film then this is a good one to study - in particular the commentary tracks are really quite enlightening into their process. Two of this film's producers actually teamed up and made a budgeting book using this film a lot for it's template.
This is one of my all time favorite films and it never lets me down, even on repeat viewings. I can't imagine anyone I wouldn't recommend this film too. It's pretty damn awesome stuff.
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