Jon Favreau: "Swingers" To "Iron Man"

Welcome to younghollywood. com.

Hey guys, I'm here John Favro.

Young Hollywood.

We're big fans.

Yes, you're featuring me.

I am part of Young Hollywood.

Well, it's not about age, it's about attitude, John.

Oh. That's I'm used to being Young Hollywood.

Now I'm in my 40s.

Now I'm on now I'm a guest on Young Hollywood.

No, we just love you all around.

Good.

Now, I was just thinking back.

You've got to be a video game fan because I remember in Swingers, I think you guys are playing NHLs.

Yes.

We're playing Pong.

Pong.

I thought it was hockey stuff.

It was I'm kidding.

So you had a good memory.

No, Pong's from when I was little.

Yeah.

Yeah, uh making a joke, but I guess that joke I'm too old to even make it.

I know Pong.

I remember Pong.

Briefly, briefly.

That's from the womb.

You heard it through the through the uh from the amniotic sack.

You heard you heard.

So are you still playing games these days?

Uh, I do.

You know, I was just playing I was just playing uh some games with my son.

Yeah.

Yes.

And what kind of games are those?

Uh, shooters, first-person shooters.

We were shoot we were shooting each other this morning.

We were actually shooting We're on the same team this morning, but sometimes we go at it.

And uh, you know, the old man can usually take him still.

It's going to be a sad day when my son is able to mop me up in Halo.

You got to show him.

You got to show him the ropes first.

Yeah, yeah.

And I can still be the man, but eventually, I'm expecting the day where he totally owns me.

And uh, hopefully, I'll be proud to hand the mantle down to him.

But for now, I'm still I'm still daddy.

Now, your progression here in Hollywood has been, like everyone's kind of favorite story.

Can you kind of walk us through like what you feel now to versus when you first kind of started out?

Well, I I tell you what's nice about it is it's you start off and you don't it seems impossible.

It seems like you're staring up the face of a sheer cliff and there's no chance of getting up.

And then you get a little break here and a little break there and you work very, very hard so when those breaks come, you actually are ready and you can make something of it.

And so my first big break was um after doing some commercials in Chicago, I got in the movie Rudy.

And then I moved to LA, got an agent, and and that led to me getting some jobs but nothing much coming of that.

Then I wrote Swingers and struggled to get that made.

And then that opened up some other doors as a writer, which later opened up doors as a director.

And eventually I got to do Elf, but this was years and years in between of working hard and being rejected and not being dissuaded from my dreams by doing that.

And then Elf success helped things and then Iron Man success helped things and and now I'm in uh a really enviable spot of having able to do, you know, Couples Retreat with my friend Vince, you know, uh writing that for him and being part of one of his films.

And then Iron Man 2 and having just done Iron Man 1 and so there's a lot of great things.

And now that the difficulty is a different one than maybe most of your audience could relate to, which is you know, I want to have time for my children and my family and I want to be a good dad and I don't want to get caught up in all the opportunities.

So there's always a challenge with every step of the way.

Young Hollywood, you are you are so money, you don't even know it.