It was more about trying to crack each other up with the corny stuff we came up with 
Owen Wilson got an Oscar nod in 2002 for co-writing The Royal Tenenbaums with pal Wes Anderson. Still, he's best known for being in front of the camera in comedies like Zoolander, the result of another fruitful friendship with Ben Stiller. Last year they starred in Starsky & Hutch before Wilson returned to his roots in Anderson's The Life Aquatic. Now he re-teams with David Dobkin - who directed him in Shanghai Knights - for the boisterous Wedding Crashers opposite Vince Vaughn.
So the idea for The Wedding Crashers is based on the dating exploits of your producer Andrew Panay?
Yes and we're hoping that this is going to set off a whole wave of copycat wedding crashers so give us due credit.
Would you be happy to have your own wedding crashed?
It depends on the person. If some of the people who worked with me on this film crashed the wedding - and they would have to crash because they wouldn't be invited - I would probably let bygones be bygones and welcome them and shake their hand so they could see I'm not holding a dagger or something.
Have you ever lied or used corny lines like your character to pick up a girl?
Um... Not so much lying the way these characters do. With the pickup lines it was more about trying to crack each other up with the corny stuff we came up with. You know like the part where they say, "We only use 10 per cent of our brain, but I think we only use 10 per cent of our hearts"? I think we'd already finished filming that sequence and, I don't know, I was just sitting around and I thought of that and I went and said it to David and he laughed and then he set up the shot so we could shoot it and insert it back into the thing. But I don't know where that line came from. Probably it was from when I was a kid and being interested in the idea that, 'If only we could only unleash that other 90 per cent of our brains...'
Do you think filling up that other 90 per cent of your heart will be made easier after this film?
Yeah, I guess some days I like to kid myself that, 'Gosh, I guess girls are able to see what a nice guy I am, or better able to see what a nicer guy I am than when I was 23'. But then I got a cynical guy like Vince, saying, "Don't kid yourself, Owen. You're not any better looking than you were at 23 and you weren't that great then."
A good sense of humour is more important than looks...
Girls always say that!
At least you got to fondle Jane Seymour's breasts...
Well that's what the script called for. Actually Vince was very worried about me that day. Instincts will kick in so David used some tranquillisers on me that day. He kept me heavily sedated. I was like [Jack] Nicholson in [One Flew Over The] Cuckoo's Nest. I didn't know where I was, but luckily Dr Quinn was safe that day.
You've said you liked working with director David Dobkin on Shanghai Knights because he allowed you to improvise. On this film you did a bit of rewriting, so did that mean you didn't need to improvise?
A lot of times I find that it makes it more exciting. Once you've written the line 15 times in a script it doesn't feel as funny, so it's kind of nice to have an atmosphere on set where you feel you can improvise. Because I'd worked with David before I felt comfortable trying things, but a lot of the stuff we'd done was worked out before.
When you're coming up with the funny stuff, how confident are you that an audience will go along with it?
I think the way that it worked on this movie is that you'd come up with something and you'd run it by David to see if you could get him to laugh, or go by Vince's trailer and see what he thought of it. If those guys gave it the go-ahead then you know it's all right. Or sometimes you'd just try to spring it and either the crew would be into it or you'd see that David just wasn't into it and you'd try something else. But I think that's the best feeling as an actor: to feel it's loose enough that you can try stuff. I've been lucky in that people I've worked with are usually open to that.
We keep hearing the term Frat Pack referring to you and your brother Luke, Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell and Jack Black. How does membership to this club work?
Yeah, I've seen that written in some places. I think the way it works is that when you're casting a movie, you usually want to work with people that you believe in. There's a couple of people where it seems like they've worked together and there's been some sort of overlap but I think it's less a sort of sinister clan and more of, like, wanting to bet on someone who you believe can be funny. I think that's the way it happens.
You've got The Wendell Baker Story waiting in the wings - how did you like being directed by your brothers on that?
I had more of a problem with my younger brother directing me. I could kind of accept it from my older brother [Andrew], but Luke? There was something hard to stomach about Luke giving me line readings and so I asked him to communicate any of his direction to Andrew and that's the way it worked. We just showed the movie in Maui. There's a Maui Film festival - it's an incredible film festival - and they showed the movie outside on a big unbelievable golf course on, like, the 18th tee I think. I don't know when it will be coming out here, but it turned out really well I think. Luke and Andrew both did a really good job.
Wedding Crashers is released in UK cinemas on Friday 15th July 2005.
