Vaughn's 'Wild West' shows 'the Middle America I know'

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With his latest film -- "Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights -- Hollywood to the Heartland" -- Vince Vaughn really is going old-school.The "Wild West Comedy Show" is a documentary of a 2005 comedy tour presented by Vaughn as a contemporary twist on Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Instead of cowboys and Indians, Vaughn took four of his favorite stand-up comedians on the road.The film chronicles their journey both on and off the stage. They traveled 6,000 miles and performed in 30 cities in 30 days. Many of the towns they visited don't have comedy acts come through regularly because the comedy clubs that flourished in the 1980s have rolled away like tumbleweeds."I think people do want to laugh now, but that being said, there's less of a comedy-club culture," says Vaughn, 37. "Comedians these days develop a following through specials on cable television or on their MySpace pages, and their fans don't have to fork over gobs of cash to see their routines. ... Out of convenience, maybe, they're not as motivated to go out."Vaughn not only wanted to get people out of their homes, he also wanted them to experience a kind of show that's rarely produced anymore."Growing up in Illinois and all my relatives being from the Midwest and the South, I felt like I'd like to take a great variety show and bring it to the heart of America," he says. "You don't have to always go to New York or Los Angeles."Vaughn previously had organized comedy shows -- often while on location shooting films -- as charity benefits."The response was always so strong I thought, why not take this thing out on the road?" says Vaughn.On the 30-day tour, Vaughn showcased the talents of comics Ahmed Ahmed, John Caparulo, Bret Ernst and Sebastian Maniscalco as well as buddies and former co-stars Jon Favreau ("Swingers"), Justin Long ("Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story"), Keir O'Donnell ("Wedding Crashers") and Dwight Yoakam ("South of Heaven, West of Hell"), who helped him with his own comedy bits."At first I would just host the show, but I wouldn't do any sketches, and people would get really mad because they thought they were coming to see me," he says. "So then I started doing sketches in between the stand-up comics."Vaughn has known the featured comedians, all veterans of the Comedy Store, for a long time. He met Ahmed when the two of them -- and actor-turned-producer Peter Billingsley -- worked on a 1990 "CBS Schoolbreak Special" warning of the dangers of steroid use."What I liked about all these comics and what I found really refreshing about them was they were very vulnerable, very genuine people," says Vaughn. "They'd be like your friends you grew up next to."In recent years, Vaughn has become known as a star of comedies, but he mixed it up more earlier in his career with a slate that included "The Lost World: Jurassic Park," "The Locusts," "Return to Paradise," "Psycho" and "The Cell.""I kinda started with comedy with 'Swingers,' and then I got offered lots of comedies after that, but none of them were really good," he says. "They weren't really my taste in that there wasn't any heart to them."So I did a lot of dramas that did well, as far as critics were concerned, but all the stuff I did was smaller, independent films."And then when 9/11 happened I thought, 'Boy, people really wanna laugh. I know I wanna laugh.' ""So I went on a run of trying to do just funnier stuff. So it was like 'Old School' and 'Dodgeball' and 'Wedding Crashers.' "While Vaughn is careful not to bash films that aren't to his taste, he says he wanted the "Wild West Comedy Show" to be an anti-"Borat.""That film just wanted to rip down America and make fun of people," he says. "That didn't sit with me correctly; that's not the people I know."This (film) showed the sides of the people from Middle America that I know, which is that they stick together; they put their differences behind; there's an optimism; there's a goodness. There's a basic quality -- people are good people in America, and that's the America that I know."(Contact Betsy Pickle of The Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee at www.knoxnews.com.)