Guest Post: 'Swingers'

Amanda from The 90-Minute Movie explains why the 1996 classic is so money

It’s a very special edition of Do You Like Apples today! We’re extremely fortunate to have

Amanda Kusek

, writer of the terrific newsletter The 90-Minute Movie, contribute a guest post! Amanda’s newsletter is a celebration of all kinds of short movies, and she picked a banger to recommend today: the 96-minute classic buddy comedy Swingers.

We have been fans of Amanda’s newsletter for a long time, so it’s a thrill to have her as a guest. If you enjoy this post, don’t hesitate to subscribe to The 90-Minute Movie. You’ll find tons of short runtime movies with smart and engaging writing to go with it. This should be the easiest decision you ever make.

OK, Amanda, over to you.

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Welcome to The 90-Minute Movie, a newsletter dedicated to movies you can watch without disturbing the guy sitting in the aisle seat at the theater. (He hates that you have to pee.) 

I am so happy to be guest posting on Do You Like Apples. It was one of the very first newsletters I followed when I started writing on this platform and Drew and Billy have been nothing but welcoming to me. I know it seems like movie stacks are a dime a dozen on here but even just two years ago there weren’t that many of us. Writing for these guys feels like I am a part of a cool secret club. 

Sort of like a club that Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn might frequent in Swingers (1996, 96 minutes)... (See what I did there? I promised myself I would be smooth as silk for this guest post and I think it’s working.) I have loved Swingers for a very long time. Even though the first time I saw it was sometime in 2006, the posters, the catchphrases, and the swing culture it introduced were everywhere when I was a kid. It couldn’t be avoided. Even at 10 years old, I knew what this movie was. I lied about seeing this movie. It was that important to the culture at the time. 

These days, the making of Swingers is basically a Hollywood fairytale. Actor/producer/director and all-around fabulous guy, Jon Favreau, wrote the script in two weeks as a test. A test script! I’ve got about 15 of those buried on a couple of dead laptops. He drummed up about $200k to make the movie because a young director had a friend of his father cough up the cash. That baby director was Doug Liman (you know, of The Bourne Identity fame). Favreau cast his friends, whose characters were loosely based on, and the rest is history. It made $4 million at the box office and comfortably slid into our lexicon (“Vegas, Baby!”) and culture (Big Bad Voodoo Daddy). 

Most endearing to me is Swingers’ low stakes. Mike (Jon Favreau) is relatively new to LA, trying to make it as an actor and comedian. He’s also trying to nurse his broken heart after breaking up with his long-term girlfriend. He is simply trying to get over her and find someone new. He’s supported by a group of equally lost, but much more confident, friends who pull him out of his crappy apartment and take him to Vegas, to LA clubs, and to the golf course. Together they roam and comb the streets of LA looking for women, looking for a good time, and trying to help Mike heal. 

There is Trent (Vince Vaughn) who is gregarious and loud and treats women like things to be collected. He’s looking for a good time and believes the fastest way to get over someone is to get under someone else. Sure he loves his “babies” for what they are, but he never goes deeper than that. He’s an alpha and he wants Mike to be one too. “You’re so money, baby,” he says, “You’re so money and you don’t even know it!” His aggression is balanced out by Rob (Ron Livingston) who listens to Mike sensitively and knows his own heartbreak. And then there’s Sue (Patrick Van Horn), the only LA native of the group, who tries to navigate the expansion of his world and the addition of more sensitive men (like Mike and Rob) to his friend circle. Named after the Johnny Cash song in order to make him tougher, Sue stands out in the group with his quiet, brooding brand of masculinity. 

If you’ve never seen it, you’re probably wondering how a movie seemingly about nothing, has become a cornerstone of pop culture. And that is because Swingers explores the complexity of all relationships. On the surface, it appears to be a movie about a bunch of guys in their twenties trying to get laid and trying to understand women. (And that is how it was marketed.) But it’s more about male friendship than anything else. Mike and his pals navigate what it is to be honest with one another and care for each other. This level of sensitivity and emotional intelligence from men was fresh and new in 1996. 

A pivotal moment for the friend group is when, after a night out, Sue pulls a gun on a group of guys in a parking lot. This is as serious as Swingers gets. Everyone is holding their breath. Sue’s friends are genuinely shocked that he is even carrying a gun. They all come out unscathed and the friends scatter, offput by Sue’s behavior. Before he goes, Mike tells Sue he’s living in a fantasy. “Things are different here. It's not like New York, Mikey,” Sue argues. Mike retorts, “Here it's easier to avoid trouble. [...] In New York the trouble finds you. Out here you gotta go look for it…” Sue goes on to drag Mike for his obsession with his ex-girlfriend and inability to land a date in LA. Feeling vulnerable, thanks to the gun, the guys fall back on jabbing at each other’s weaknesses. Trent is unable to diffuse the situation, much to his frustration. Of course, he’ll befriend the guys later on because he has what kids these days call “rizz”.

This type of storytelling is timeless. Navigating friendships in your twenties has no decade. It’s a precarious time for most people. We’re asking massive questions of ourselves and our values (Who am I? How do I fit in the world?) while sucking down as many mind-altering substances as we can. Favreau manages to capture that feeling and make it tangible. Re-watchable. The limited budget also helps to encapsulate our early twenties in a way that money never could. They shot Favreau’s own shitty apartment instead of finding something nicer, they shot in bars full of regular people instead of shutting them down. Liman was scrappy - even resorting to using a fridge to light one of the apartment scenes. This lack of expense and the willingness to just get the movie made is the spirit of Swingers and is what so many people love about it. 

Even rewatching it now in my mid-thirties (as a woman, mind you) I still feel connected to it in the same way I always have. And that’s what makes it a great movie. Even though it captures a small group of people, in a small moment, it says so much to so many. Namely, that we’re all messy in one way or another, but our relationships (especially those with our friends) will stabilize us. If you still haven’t seen Swingers it’s not too late. Frat comedy it is not. And all that aside, it is the movie that launched a thousand careers (or four, but you know what I mean.)