Ashton Kutcher Rewatches That '70s Show, Dude Where's My Car, Punk'd & More

This isn't real!

[Ashton laughing]

I feel like when we cut it together

we made Drake look

a lot tougher than it may have gone down.

But I- I don't remember.

It's been so long.

I can't recall...

exactly what happened.

Maybe he knows.

[static crackling]

Hello, I'm Ashton Kutcher.

And I am here for Vanity Fair's Scene Selection.

Let's check it out.

[upbeat music]

The first one we're gonna watch is a cult classic,

Dude, Where's My Car?

Clickety, dickety, dock.

[VHS fast-forwarding]

♪ Here we go ♪

♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪

♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪

[engine revving]

♪ Here we go ♪

Fabio, man.

Fabio.

What do you wanna say?

When I was in Iowa,

somebody came up to me

and asked me if I ever thought about being a male model.

The only male model I knew was Fabio.

And I was like, I don't think I look like Fabio.

Like I don't think that

that's really even a job that you can have.

And when Fabio showed up on the set,

I told him that story.

And I think Fabio may have looked at me and been like,

No, you're not like me.

♪ 'Cause I wasn't cool enough ♪

♪ Trick ♪

♪ Things ♪

♪ Things ♪

♪ C'mon, c'mon ♪

I remember Danny Leiner,

the director who passed away,

laughing so uproarious at the scene when we shot it.

And just how much delight he took in filming this.

♪ The little things, little things ♪

♪ They always hang around ♪

♪ The little things ♪

At that time I think I was 20,

I couldn't grow facial hair to save my life.

But Sean Scott had one hell of a beard.

Like, it was unbelievable.

There was so much stubble.

How did anyone kiss a guy with that much stubble?

And from that moment on,

I really sympathize with anyone

who kisses a guy with stubble

because it's really unpleasant.

Like, it's like kissing sandpaper.

I mean, he might have had the greatest lips in the world.

I'll never know.

♪ Little things ♪

♪ They try to break me down ♪

The screenwriter was Phil Stark

who was also a writer on That '70s Show.

Phil's a really interesting guy.

He's now, I think he's like a psychologist.

So you know, if you ever need some dude therapy

you could go talk to old Phil Stark.

Now we're gonna jump

back in time a few decades to That '70s Show.

[VHS tape fast-forwarding]

Well, I have a date too.

Who is it?

What's his name?

His name is...

not important.

I mean, I think I'm like 19

and Mila's like 15 when we're doing this.

I'm like 20 and she's 15.

We're so young.

That's all I see.

What's important is

he's better than you

in every conceivable way.

Damn, Jackie. That could be anybody.

Yeah.

I don't remember shooting this.

It was 25 years ago.

It's funny, someday my kids are gonna have to watch this

and they're gonna be real confused

about what was real and what wasn't real.

And then we'll have to walk them through it.

Terrifying to think.

We're gonna jump ahead a little

to Two and a Half Men.

Let's take a gander.

[VHS tape fast-forwarding]

She's wondering, Why did he spell his last name?

Maybe I should know who he is.

So now she's taking out her phone and Googling me.

Oh, I tried that once and I dropped my phone

in the toilet.

Fortunately it was right after a courtesy flush.

My guy, John Cryer.

Every one of those Hughes movies

that John Cryer was in when I was a kid,

I watched like every single one of them.

So the idea that I was actually in a scene,

let alone a show, with John Cryer is bonkers to me

'cause he's so brilliant and so wonderful

and such a kind human being.

The first hit on my name is the Forbes 500 website

at which point in time,

she finds out exactly how much money I make.

She forgets to go to the bathroom,

along with everything she learned in Sunday school,

slaps on some lipstick

and comes back into the bar.

Wow.

She probably unbuttons one button on her blouse.

And-

You know what, I changed my mind about that drink.

Having done That '70s Show,

I knew what a great life doing a sitcom was

and being into sitcom and how much fun it is

and how much of a family you build

when you're shooting on set.

There was obviously all of the sort of

perception of what was happening there.

And then there was a reality of what was happening there

which is a family that liked making people laugh

and liked creating comedy.

And that was desperate to play.

And I got to join that group and be a part of that

and share scenes with John Cryer

on a regular basis for a couple years.

And it was just pure delight.

Let's check out No Strings Attached.

That was a good one.

[VHS tape fast-forwarding]

What are you writing?

Hi. How are you doing?

And then a winky face.

No, Adam, it's after 10:00 PM.

Come on, the where are you text is like saying,

Hey, I want to have sex with you,

but I just need to know how drunk you are.

Did you fuck Emma and then bring her a balloon?

Luda.

So this was written by Liz Meriwether

and the screenplay was just fantastic.

Like the notion of giving someone balloons

after you hook up with them,

like a bouquet of carrots and making a period playlist

and like all of these just wonderful, thoughtful,

but quirky interesting sort of angles

that the character takes.

It was just brilliantly written

and then directed by Ivan Reitman, who was a legend

before I ever had an opportunity to work with him.

To go from a position of power to something like,

Where am I? Why don't you check your underpants?

Yeah yeah.

Don't write that.

I would never write that.

See, I like to be kind of scary like, Boo!

Here comes my dick.

[Ashton laughs]

Did you have sex with a girl and give her a balloon?

I remember, uh, talking to Chris Bridges

and he was telling me how he was gonna buy a plane

and I was like, what?

Like, you are gonna buy a like an airplane.

And he was like, Yeah, Imma buy a plane.

And I was like, come on.

And I would go out to the club with my friends,

that song Move Bitch,

we'd turn it into like

a mosh pit of one another.

Just being like,

move bitch,

get out the way,

get out the way.

So I tried to do it with him and he was not having it.

I thought that that's be how he would feel about the song.

I was wrong.

So what'd you write back?

Hi.

Yeah, that could work. Yeah, it's not bad.

That's fine.

The irony of the whole thing is that

while I was making this film, No Strings Attached,

my wife was making a movie called Friends with Benefits

which was the exact same plot.

We were both making virtually the same movie.

And the way we ended up together was through a relationship

that was very much a friends with benefits,

no strings attached relationship

that became something more than that.

So, yeah...

Kind of wild to watch that.

Also in that film I got to act with Natalie Portman

who's just such a fierce human being

and a force of nature

and an extraordinary actress.

Yeah, just a fun love story.

And next,

we're gonna watch a clip

from everyone's favorite prankster show.

I don't even need to say the word.

[VSH tape fast-forwarding]

Please look after her for one second.

I gotta find the keys to this [bleep] thing.

The doors are locked.

Oh, my god.

[Ashton laughing]

How much fun is that?

That one was actually, I finished, I was like,

okay, I'm done doing this

because frankly I just wanted to get invited

to parties again.

When you're the person that does that to other people,

they're like, nah, we don't want him here.

We don't know what's gonna happen.

I think at the time, Justin Bieber was hosting the show

and coming up with most of the pranks and doing stuff,

and they asked me to come and do one more.

And I was like, Yeah, okay.

But if we're gonna do it, I'm going big.

We basically scripted what we wanted it to be.

And it had been sitting on the shelf for a while

'cause it was relatively complicated.

'Cause we had had to get the car into the parking garage

and then hook it up to a rig so the car shook

and made it feel like there was an actual

earthquake happening.

And then we had to rig every single thing

in the parking garage that you could see

that had any capacity of mobility

so that it moved as well.

And then timed each one of those hits

so that it would give the sensibility

of actually being in and experiencing an earthquake.

What do you mean the Secret Service?

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

This isn't real.

[Ashton laughing]

Having people that are in so much control

of every aspect of every day of their life

and watching them be outta control for a brief moment

is delightful.

Drake called his mom and jumped on his friend's lap.

I feel like when we cut it together,

we made Drake look a lot tougher

than it may have gone down,

but I- I don't remember.

It's been so long.

I can't recall exactly what happened.

Maybe he knows.

Maybe he would tell people, but...

♪ I'll never tell ♪

[VSH tape fast-forwarding]

You and I are gonna be in the same city for a whole week.

I know.

When's the last time that we hung out that long?

I don't know.

2008?

When you left LA because you were scared of earthquakes.

Oh hey, the Chino Hills temblor was no joke.

I learned that when there's an earthquake,

it's called a temblor and not a tremor or a trembler.

I always said it was like a trembler or a tremor.

That was like, Oh, do you feel that tremor?

No, it's not tremor, it's temblor.

Anyway, I know you have to go to work

and I wanna give you your present before you go.

So I was cleaning out this drawer.

You clean things out?

Occasionally, I clean things out.

And look what I found!

You know, what's interesting about the scene

is that Reese had already shot her side of this scene

before I shot my side of the scene.

So in this scene, I was reacting

to the performance that she had already given.

So I was trying to remember the various takes

that she had done and improvs that she had done

in order to play against it.

I know you hate mementos.

Yeah, no, I hate mementos, above all mentos.

Okay, hold on.

Here's your present.

Look.

I put this in the end table the night you stayed over

because I don't know, I thought it would be a keepsake if-

at our wedding or something.

That's how dumb I was in my twenties.

You weren't dumb.

A little bit dumb.

Because she had already recorded her side,

the timing and the space that I had

to actually deliver my side of the performance

was very concise relative to the exact amount of time

that was between her side.

Working that out in the cuts

was really tricky and complicated.

[Debbie] The best part of the whole night

was when I took all your money.

That was the best part?

I mean, it overshadowed the sex part

because you fled the next day.

Wait, hold on.

I did call you later.

Going through the pandemic,

this movie is like the movie I wanted to watch.

It's happy.

It's upbeat.

It's hopeful.

And then my entire career

when I was choosing to do romantic comedies,

I always wanted to do one with Reese.

And I'd worked with Aline quite a bit

like kind of behind the scenes,

like working out different films, scenes, things,

problems in films that I'd worked on before.

And so, the combo of working with the two of them

seemed extraordinarily exciting

and making the movie that I felt like I wanted to see,

that was an exciting opportunity.

[static crackling]

Thanks for taking this walk down memory lane with me.

This is really fun.

And, we'll see you next time.

[VHS tape rewinding]

[upbeat music]