Swingers

Released 1996
Stars Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn, Ron Livingston, Patrick Van Horn, Alex Desert, Heather Graham, Deena Martin, Katherine Kendall, Brooke Langton
Directed by Doug Liman

There are countless young men like the heroes of "Swingers," who are so near to stardom they can reach out and touch it, and so far away they can't afford to pick up the check. "Swingers" is about a loosely knit group of friends who hang out in Hollywood and hope to make it big in the entertainment industry. One of the guys, named Trent (Vince Vaughn), uses the word "money" as an adjective: "That's really money. They'll see how money you are." This is inspired, since in Hollywood absolutely everything comes down to money. Intelligence, beauty, talent and fame go through a kind of universal currency exchange, and come out converted into money, less 15 percent.

The film's hero is Mike (Jon Favreau), who wants to be a stand-up comic but has no job prospects. Mike mopes about Michelle, the girlfriend he left behind back East, and Trent spends long hours with him in the coffee shop of a Best Western, advising him that you cannot get a woman to come back unless you're willing to forget her, after which, of course, you don't care if she comes back. The movie follows Mike, Trent and a shifting cast of friends through several days, during which they drive through the Hollywood Hills looking for parties at which Trent promises there will be lots of "honey babies" to pick up. 

They say you should write about what you know. Doug Liman, who directed "Swingers," and Favreau, who wrote it, obviously know a lot about young guys in Hollywood sitting around in coffee shops talking about making it in show business. If you had entered that Best Western coffee shop a year or two ago, you might actually have seen them planning this movie.

Summary written by Roger Ebert