Interview: Will Ferrell

We live in an exceptional time for comedy. As most movies get blander and blander, comedies get more and more ferocious. More and more talented people are coming along, and comedy actors are among the only box office stars left in a world that focuses mostly on tentpole franchise movies. At the top of the pile, we have Bill Murray, who these days takes too many chances, and Adam Sandler, who takes too few. Right near them, however, is Will Ferrell, who has found just the right balance.

Ferrell has been the star of six $100 million hits since 2003: Elf, Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Blades of Glory, Step Brothers, and The Other Guys. In addition, all of these received generally favorable reviews. (Only Step Brothers dipped slightly below a 60% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.) By comparison, there have been relatively few flops during this time.

This makes him a bona-fide movie star. But at the same time, he has taken small parts and cameos in movies, including Starsky & Hutch, Wedding Crashers, and Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie, and has lent his voice to animated movies like Curious George and Megamind.

But perhaps most admirable of all are the risky ventures that Ferrell tries, things like quirky dramas and low-budget movies: Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda, the musical The Producers (2005), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination, Winter Passing, Stranger Than Fiction (receiving his second Gold Globe nomination), and the Raymond Carver story Everything Must Go.

That's quite a career. Now Ferrell has taken another risk for his latest movie, combining his well-known man-child comedy persona with a bizarre new movie, Casa de mi Padre, shot almost entirely in Spanish, and with several Spanish-speaking stars: Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna, Genesis Rodriguez, and Efren Ramirez. (Ferrell quickly learned enough Spanish to speak his lines properly.) It's a spoof of things that most Ferrell fans won't know about: Mexican soap operas and 1970s grindhouse-style movies. The new film is full of fake sets, fake horses, and over-the-top melodrama. Its humor is very difficult to describe; it's a combination of juvenile, deadpan, offbeat, and parody. It's the kind of humor that will leave most people stone-faced in the moment, but probably laughing the next day, or upon a second viewing.

Ferrell and his team found they couldn't sell the movie to the usual buyers, so they turned it into a low-budget independent production. It will be released on a small number of screens, rather than Ferrell's usual 3000+. In addition, he has been traveling around to major cities on an exhaustive personal appearance tour, talking to every kind of journalist from large papers to radio DJs and blogs. To put it plainly, most stars of Ferrell's magnitude do not bother with this kind of promotion.

But Ferrell, who spoke with me and five other journalists in the Ritz Hotel in San Francisco, is incredibly gracious, both genuine, and genuinely funny. He describes his performance in the movie: "We're like the worst actors in the world trying for Academy Awards. That's how we played it."

Additionally, Ferrell continually tried to get the various crew members to create deliberate mistakes, such as the reflection of a bored crew in a cast member's sunglasses. "There probably could have been more mistakes," he says, "but it's hard to get professional movie people to do that. They're afraid they won't work again."

If the humor in the movie is difficult to describe, it's very difficult to laugh at, and often, it only seems funny in retrospect. Specifically, Ferrell has a knack for arrhythmic comic timing, extending punchlines well past their expiration date. "Adam McKay and I just evolved that kind of humor together," he says, regarding his longtime producing partner. "When people say, we get it... now you can stop, that's the worst thing you can say to us. I think that half the audience gets it and we're alienating the other half, which probably isn't such a good idea."

Despite all his risk and work on the movie, Ferrell says that he expects most audience members to be totally confused, but hopes that at least a few people will think it's the greatest movie they've ever seen. "It's only opening on 300 screens here," he says. "It's opening on more screens in Mexico. I'd love it if it were a huge hit in Mexico and did nothing here. That would make me laugh."

Note: See also my 2003 interview with Ferrell.