‘Wedding Crashers’ cinematographer scolded Vince Vaughn for partying too much

Life imitated art when Vince Vaughn was filming “Wedding Crashers.”

In honor of the film’s 20th anniversary, cinematographer Julio Macat is recalling the moment on set when he had to scold Vaughn, 55 — for excessive partying.

“I gave him sh-t one day because he was partying a little too hard,” Macat, 68, said. “He showed up one day and you know, I’ve seen one bag under the eye, I’ve seen two bags under the eye.”

“So first time I saw three bags under somebody’s eye and I go, ‘Vince, you got to get some sleep man. This is insane!’” Macat recounted.

“He got mad at me,” Macat said about Vaughn. “Like, ‘Oh, you know, you do your f–ing thing.’”

However, their banter “was all in good fun,” Macat noted.

“I think he’s a really good guy,” the cinematographer added. “We call each other cousins.”

In the 2005 comedy directed by David Dobkin, Vaughn and Owen Wilson play divorce mediators who crash weddings to meet and seduce women.

Macat was blown away by Vaughn and Wilson’s improv during shooting.

“To do improvisation and to do that kind of acting on each other, there’s very few actors who can do that successfully,” Macat stated. “Improv is really tough. Any actor will tell you that to do it and not be dragging on or with uncomfortable pauses is a real trick. And these guys were masters at it.”

“Vince and Owen had such a chemistry about them. And they were so on top of each other in a really good way that what we found out pretty soon was that the rehearsal was the best take,” he revealed. “And then you keep trying to chase that to try to grab the same moments and the same moments of freshness.”

Macat also spoke highly about his experience working with the film’s other famous stars.

“Bradley Cooper was really trying. It was like if he was playing tennis, he was trying to hit as hard as the guys,” Macat said about Cooper, who had a supporting role as Sack Lodge.

“He was really approachable and really appreciative whenever we came up with a shot for him,” Macat explained. “He was like, ‘Oh, great, great. Yeah.’ He raised his game.”

“Rachel McAdams was awesome,” Macat added about the Oscar nominee, who played Claire Cleary. “She was really in tune what she was trying to do.”

The David Dobkin-directed comedy also featured Christopher Walken, Jane Seymour, Isla Fisher and Keir O’Donnell.

In Aug. 2024, Vaughn — who has also starred in raunchy films such as “Old School” and “Couples Retreat” — explained why he thinks R-rated comedies are now on life support.

“They just overthink it,” he said of Hollywood during a “Hot Ones” appearance. “And it’s like, it’s crazy, you get these rules, like, if you did geometry, and you said 87 degrees was a right angle, then all your answers are messed up, instead of 90 degrees. So there became some idea or concept, like, they would say something like, ‘You have to have an IP.’”

Vaughn cited the board game Battleship as an example of IP that became a “vehicle for storytelling” due to its recognizable name.

“The people in charge don’t want to get fired … so than they’re looking to do something great, so they want to kind of follow a set of rules that somehow get set in stone, that don’t really translate,” he went on. “But as long as they follow them, they’re not going to lose their job because they can say, ’Well, look, I made a movie off the board game ‘Payday,’ so even though the movie didn’t work, you can’t let me go, right?’”