In a just-published interview in British GQ, slimmed-down True Detective star Vince Vaughn says that anyone and everyone should arm themselves (including elementary school teachers and administrators) to prevent the next school slaughter. Which would at least allow for the potential of daily Sam Peckinpah gunfights at the O.K. Corral. Vaughn also wants everybody to have a pistol or rifle in order to “resist the supreme power of a corrupt and abusive government.” So if the government gets too pushy or malevolent Vaughn and his pallies are going to disappear into the forest and become Wolverine-like guerillas? Guns are a fetishy appendage for right-wingers — fantasy metaphors for individual strength and the potential to resist born of wild-west machismo. On top of which everyone walking around with a weapon would mean a lot more people getting plugged, not less.
On the other hand Vaughn is an Edward Snowden admirer, which is good: “Snowden is a hero. I like what he did. My idea of treason is that you sell secrets to the enemy. He gave information to the American people. Snowden didn’t take information for money or dogmas.”
His partly Dylanesque answer about why he’s starred in some many shitty big-studio comedies: “I’m not blaming anyone else but myself here. The machine can make you idle. You read a script and then you agree to a role, then soon enough you’re on set looking at a scene that has had all the juice and the life sucked right out of it. You become a hired gun doing a very inoffensive PG-13 movie and, well, you kind of just go along with it. Like anything in life you’re either growing or you’re dying. When you get too comfortable you start to decline.”