“Vegas, baby, Vegas!”
1996‘s Swingers is a very quotable movie. “You’re so money and you don’t even know it,” is one of the more famous lines. Whenever I watch the movie, I always laugh when Mike (Jon Favreau) reacts to Sue (Patrick Von Horn) pulling a gun during an argument in a parking lot by saying, “Haven’t you seen Boyz N Da Hood? Now, one of us is going to get shot!” But for me, my favorite line will always be Trent yelling “Vegas, baby, Vegas!” as he drives Mike to Nevada’s best-known city.
There’s a sincerity to the way Trent yells it, one that you might miss on your first viewing. Trent is the aspiring actor who is confident and who always seems to know the right thing to say and who manages to keep his cool no matter how potentially embarrassing the situation. He’s a bit immature and a little bit loud but he’s the type of friend that every group needs. Mike is a comedian who moved from New York to Los Angeles. He hosts a night at a comedy club. He also asks for an application when he goes to Starbucks. He’s just been dumped by his girlfriend and he’s struggling to get over her. He’s still in that stage where all he can talk about is his former relationship. He’s the sweet guy who makes you go “Awww!” and little else.
Trent is convinced that a trip to Vegas is what Mike needs. Mike is trying convince himself that Trent is right. It’s a long and a hot drive. When Trent suddenly yells, “Vegas, baby, Vegas!,” it’s not just his way of keeping Mike awake. It’s his way of promising Mike that things are going to get better. To Trent, Vegas is the solution to all of Mike’s L.A. woes. Once they arrive in Vegas, Trent neve stops believing. It doesn’t matter that he and Mike get exiled from the high rollers table at a casino and end up gambling with a bunch of elderly tourists. It doesn’t matter that the waitress (Deena Martin) that Trent picks up lives in a rundown mobile home. And, in the end, it even doesn’t matter that Mike ends up spending the entire night telling the waitress’s roommate about his ex-girlfriend. What matters is that Trent believes that he has the solutions to everyone’s problems. For Mike, that solution is Vegas. For Sue, it’s playing hockey. Everyone has their own personal Vegas.
Swingers is a classic example of American independent film. Jon Favreau wrote the script and based it on his own experiences as a struggling actor. The cast was largely made up by Favreau’s friends. Vince Vaughn has said that Trent was largely based on himself, which is why he asked that there be at least one scene that revealed that Trent really did care about his friends. The story is deliberately loose. Mike tries to get over his ex-girlfriend while receiving largely useless advice from his friends. Rob (Ron Livington) moves to Los Angeles and provides somewhat gentler advice than Trent. Sue pulls a gun on some wannabe white gangstas and talks about how he grew up on the tough streets of Los Angeles. (He actually grew up in Anaheim.) The effortlessly cool Charles (Alex Desert) declares every party that the group goes to to be “dead.” As a group they spend a lot of time talking about movies. They complain about Tarantino stealing from other directors before an extended sequence of them walking in slow motion down a Los Angeles street while the Average White Band plays on the soundtrack.
The heart of Swingers together is the very real friendship between the characters. with Trent holding it all together. Mike and Sue tolerate each other because they both want to hang out with Trent. Even the momentary crisis caused by Sue pulling his gun on the guys in the parking lot is solved by the fact that the guys all want to hang out with Trent as well. Problems in Swingers are not solved by guns or high-speed chases. They’re solved by video games, beer, dancing, and maybe a trip to Vegas. They’re solved by doing your own thing and not worrying about “the rules.” They’re solved by just being in the right place at the right time. They’re solved by Mike dancing with Heather Graham and then hanging up on his ex right when she’s saying, “I love–”
Today, of course, Swingers is very much a period piece. It’s a film from a time when you actually had to get in a car and drive to Vegas if you wanted to gamble. It’s a film from a period where Mike has to ask permission to use someone else’s phone to call his ex and when there was a grace period between leaving a bad message on a machine and having to worry about anyone having heard it. For me, it’s always interesting to see Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, and Ron Livingston back when they were all still so young and, in the case of Vaughn and Favreau, thin. It’s a film that celebrate friendship, love, and being young enough to still feel like anything can happen.
It’s a film that celebrates everyone’s personal Las Vegas.
