Will Ferrell

Interview By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

Only select few performers can not only truly dominate the world of comedy film, but do more than just make people laugh. Currently, in this pantheon, the top comic actors include Adam Sandler, Vince Vaughn, and Jack Black.

But no comic actor currently has made the kind of impact Will Ferrell has. Like many rising comics, he made his impact on NBC's Saturday Night Live from 1995 to 2002.

Ever since, Ferrell has starred in a string of hit comedies from A Night At The Roxbury to Old School to Elf to Anchorman to Talladega Nights to Blades Of Glory. Unlike most comic actors who rely chiefly on crudity and a sort of ADD-ridden zaniness, the now 41 year-old comic actor has an added edge to his comic appeal, genuine heart and emotion.

It's this more genuine likeability that Will hopes will win audiences over again in his latest comedy Step Brothers, which he stars with John C. Reilly and also co-wrote with director Adam McKay. It tells the story of Brennan and Dale, two ne'er do well adults who are forced to live together after their parents marry. We asked the former SNL star how much, if any, inspiration for the film stemmed from personal experiences with his own siblings.

'[John and I] keep getting asked, 'What in the movie really happened to you'' and I don't think any of it did,' he replies, 'But everyone has, if you have brothers and sisters, similar-like tales of being picked apart or having to share stuff, fights, all those things. So we kind of collectively threw all that into the script.'

We also wondered just was the worst thing he had ever done to his own siblings.

'I threw a hardball off my brother's head,' Ferrell recalls, 'That was the big one. One of the most devious things I did at the time was I found in my brother's wallet and it had an Indian head nickel and I went, 'God, I want this!' And I knew he didn't know because he was young enough at the time that he hadn't known the value of it, so I took the wallet and pretend-buried it in the front yard.'

'I said, 'Hey, you want to dig around for stuff''' he continues, 'I started digging and I was like, 'Matt, look what I found' An Indian head nickel,' and he went, 'Whoa! My lucky day!' Yeah, that's terrible. It was not funny at the time. Yeah, it was terrible at the time.'

His character Brennan is a 39 year-old who still lives at home with his mother. We asked Ferrell if this particular aspect of the character was loosely based on his real life experiences.

'I probably did what was common for a lot of people, move back home after college for three years,' Ferrell says, 'I had a very lenient mother who said, 'OK, you could live back at home. We'll treat it like you're at graduate school.''

'So I lived at home when I was trying my hand with all the comedy stuff, driving back and forth from LA to Orange County, but there were huge gaps when nothing was going on,' he adds, 'She would write me little letters like, let's get control of your life here.'

Leaving the nest later in adult life has become more and more commonplace in America. Will claims that he uses Step Brothers as an opportunity to satirize the trend.

'We wanted to, obviously as a comedic performer, enjoy that and celebrate it, but at the same time, we wanted to poke fun at it and point out that it's messed up,' he explains, 'People wanted us to turn it around to a point where it became unreal, but we got to the point where we got to that in the story and we realized we had to make that decision. What are they actually going to do and the thing that made us laugh the most was that the achievement was 4% improvement, which is really more real in a way and makes fun of it.'

On the surface, the idea of two grown men bickering and behaving in a fairly infantile manner towards one another may seem like more than the average viewer can swallow. However, Ferrell believes the pairing up with John C. Reilly and their on-screen chemistry overcomes any potential character flaws.

'In terms of style and performance, John and I both approach comedy the same way, which is why we work so well together, in terms of playing it very real and earnestly,' Will notes, 'That was a conscious choice that as long as you saw the sweetness in these guys, they really were trying, in their own mind, to succeed, but they're a day late and a dollar short.'

Will also claims that while Step Brothers won't resolve the characters' circumstances in the most traditional happy fashion, he is very confident the audience will appreciate the evolution of the bond between the two stepbrothers over the course of the film.

'We don't have an amazing, fantastic ending, but I think it is beautiful,' Ferrell believes, 'These guys overcome their fears and Brennan all of a sudden sings this opera song you're not expecting. They're still excited that there's a ship in the backyard. We don't even make it clear whether they moved out still, but it's just like, OK, this is just the way these guys are, we love them for who they are and their individuality, and it's kind of about acceptance in a weird way.'

Producing the film is Judd Apatow, who has built an impressive track record, including with films he himself has directed, like The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. We asked Ferrell he believes this particular comedy lives up to the Apatow name.

'Well'I don't think so,' Will replies, 'I can't really speak to Judd's other movies. Plus, in terms of this being a 'Apatow production', it's kind of the furthest from what he does. Anchorman, Talladega Nights, this movie, even when we work with him, these are all ideas that Adam [McKay] and I initiated and this one, the three of us. So, we're really kind of separate from what he does and that having been said, we wanted to make sure we took advantage of having an R-rated movie.'

Adam McKay has previously collaborated with Will as director for Anchorman and Talladega Nights. While he says McKay provided plenty of room for improvisation in Step Brothers, Will claimed he felt concern of whether or not the comedic freedom would pay off in the editing room with the final film.

'Actually, Adam just wants you to go and go and go,' he says, 'There were moments where John and I looked at each other and we're like, I don't know if half of this will be in the movie. The movie can only be but so long and sure enough, the first rough cut was four hours long. Just putting the scenes back to back, we improvised within those scenes so much that it was literally two hours of comic bits.'

However, Ferrell claims the environment did not always give them free rein.

'There was literally one day when the executives came down and were literally putting a chain down around John's neck,' Will jokes, 'It was a beautiful chain. It was like 24 karat gold and I was mesmerized by it.'

Besides Reilly and McKay, Will says he also enjoyed working with co-stars Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins, who play Brennan and Dale's respective parents.

'They were great,' he remarks, 'They're really the backbone of the movie in a way and you can look at it in a way that it's kind of their story in a weird way. They meet and they're trying to keep this relationship together, but they're phenomenal actors. I've always been a huge fan of Richard Jenkins just from everything he's ever been in and Mary, too, because they're never bad in anything.'

'We wanted really established actors to balance the comedy off of, but they're never no less funny in those parts,' Ferrell continues, 'And we're very open and loose about how crazy our style is. We just had a blast with them and subsequently, they would tell us that this was the most fun they ever had and all that stuff, so it was a great experience.'

While most comedians approach movies based on the simple punchline, Ferrell claims he takes a more nuanced approached to projecting humor on screen.

'I think, just from my personal experience, I remember very early out, I was trying stand-up comedy and I found sketch comedy and I liked the sketch so much more because it was, to me, more acting,' Will says, 'Also, my experience on Saturday Night Live, it was never, 'OK, what can I do that will be funny. Oh, I'll bang into this cabinet and that will be funny.' It was all more about organically, banging into a cabinet happens within the context of acting within the scene and that's fine, but it all still has to be approaching it like you're acting for real.'

As many comic actors such as Robin Wiliams and Jim Carrey have branched out to doing more dramatic roles, Will Ferrell has started to branch out into the genre of drama receiving critical notices for his performance in the dramedy Stranger Than Fiction. We asked Will if he found it challenging to break out of his more comedic mold in a dramatic role.

'Getting to do Stranger Than Fiction, for me, was, everyone kept asking like, were you feeling like running around and go crazy at a certain point,' Ferrell claims, 'and I was like, no, it was so freeing, because it wasn't the expectation. I could just be as real as it took for that movie and that character.'

While Ferrell has amassed a huge following that has produced an endless string of successful box office hits, his earlier release this year, the basketball-themed Semi-Pro proved to surprisingly be a box-office disappointment. We asked the actor if he was concerned at all about the success of this film in light of the recent earth-shattering box office business of the Batman movie The Dark Knight.

'I think there's always a concern,' Will believes, 'I mean it seems like now that no matter what time of the year, whatever type of movie, there's no easy slot anymore. So, we're in the thick of uncertainty.'

He jokes about this possible slight dwindling of his box-office clout as he discussed his upcoming movie, a big-screen adaptation of the classic 1970's children's series Land Of The Lost, which is set for release in summer of next year.

'Land Of The Lost, which people aren't excited about, is already filmed,' Ferrell remarks, 'I was so excited. I could not believe that show was on television. It looked so amazing with dinosaurs and it was actually serious. It wasn't trying to be silly, so I actually loved it.'

However, despite being able to be a part of movies that millions of viewers enjoy so much, Ferrell claims he himself has had little time to be on the opposite end when it comes to film.

'I so rarely get to go to the movies,' Will says, 'Lately, I've really been into the old Tom & Jerry cartoons. That's what my four year-old is watching, so I've got a heavy diet of that, heavy. I saw an hour of the Indiana Jones movie.'