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Will Ferrell Interview
On the verge of becoming box office gold with films like Elf and Anchorman , I got to meet Will when he was in Sydney on a junket for the ensemble coming-of-middle-age comedy Old School.
By Dylan Behan
After seven seasons on the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, Will Ferrell is the first major star of the post-Adam Sandler class to leave and "test the waters elsewhere". There have been failures before him (have you seen David Spade lately? No, neither have we), but there's also been enormous successes (Steve Martin, Mike Myers, Sandler himself).
Of his contemporaries, Ferrell seems most likely to flourish. He led his first SNL-franchise movie, A Night At the Roxbury just three years into his tenure, and now he's making his post-late night debut in the frat comedy Old School, directed by Road Trip wunderkind and Sundance-winning documentarian Todd Phillips.
Also starring Vince Vaughn and Luke Wilson, it covers the misadventures of three thirty-something career men who, in an effort to rebound from failed relationships and recapture their youth, open up an off campus fraternity for young and old. Aside from the obvious college jokes and Dean hissy-fits, the film also contains a heartfelt message about the nature of friends in the age of divorce and the virtues of growing old disgracefully.
Ferrell plays Frank 'The Tank', a formerly hard drinking pledger who, after falling off the wagon at a rowdy initiation party, streaks naked in front of a rapping Snoop Dogg. His other roles have been just as rowdy. As evil fashion magnate Mugatu in Zoolander, he screamed "Kill the Malaysian Prime Minister!" from a hypnotic video dressed as a lolly-licking school girl.
For our round table press conference last week, he was a lot more subdued, the comedian's somewhat dry sense of humour almost lost on our seven-deep gaggle of modish underpaid media writers. Spilling water on himself at the beginning, his reaction was not to scream jokes, but instead to change his shirt. A sports journalism graduate and an avid runner, he's a well-spoken, sharp-thinking genius comedian and impressionist, who like Adam Sandler before him, feels compelled to act like a loud mouthed doofus whenever the camera takes aim.
His on screen disposition has been used to his advantage however, with his George W. Bush impersonation, a mainstay on SNL, hilariously accentuating the awkward, inarticulate Texan President.
In recently politically sensitive times though, Ferrell has felt it necessary to treat the character carefully.
"We were on the air like two weeks after September 11. We didn't do him in the first show, but I think we did do him in the second show, but there was kind of a real shaky feel though as to what was appropriate and what wasn't, politically, and whether people respond to the 'thing' or not. Our first show back was really split fifty-fifty, we really just tried to keep the show light, and more based on characters and things like that."
With barely an interest in sitcoms, even as a viewer, he seems unlikely to repeat the David Spade/Phil Hartman route of forgettable TV comedy. When asked of his viewing habits, he cites movies like Animal House, Wes Anderson's work and esoteric comedians like Charlie Kaufman. Asked if he likes The West Wing, he dryly replies "I think (it) is one of the best comedies out there."
Working with Luke Wilson on Old School, brother of Royal Tenenbaums co-writer Owen, could well be his foot in the door to more demanding movie work. He hardly needs it though, with his next film Elf set to be released in the U.S. for Christmas. Directed by Jon Favreau (Made, Swingers), Ferrell plays a man brought up at the North Pole to believe he's one of Santa's elves.
Following that, he's already got Old School's studio Dreamworks onboard to finance his first entirely self-realised project.
"Old School is really beneficial for me, because it's the first thing that came out once I left the show, and it made a big enough splash in the states that I'm getting to film a movie called 'Action News: The Legend of Ron Burgandy' (note: this actually wound being called Anchorman). It's kind of a play at a seventies local news anchor, poking fun at the age of sexism. It's the first time a woman anchor comes on board and how we act like petulant babies."
Sounds like it just might work.
Old School is in cinemas now.
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Directors David Cronenberg Miranda July Walter Salles Guillermo Del Toro American Splendor Morgan Spurlock Tarnation's Jonathon Caouette What The Bleep...
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