Will Ferrell Skates Ahead with New Comedy

DATE March 23, 2007 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Comedian and actor Will Ferrell talks about his
career
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, TV critic for the New York Daily
News, sitting in for Terry Gross.

My guest today, Will Ferrell, broke out on "Saturday Night Live" doing comedy
that not only was intensely physical but that seemed to embrace, rather than
avoid, the potential for embarrassment. Ferrell spent seven seasons on "SNL,"
playing everyone from George W. Bush to James Lipton, and in my opinion did
Lipton better than Lipton does. At the same time, Ferrell started appearing
in comedy films, taking supporting roles first then graduating to leads. He's
appeared in the movies "Old School," "Elf," "The Producers," "Anchorman,"
"Talladega Nights" and "Stranger Than Fiction," which is now out on DVD. IN
his new movie, "Blades of Glory," he and Jon Heder, from "Napoleon Dynamite,"
play rival figure skaters who team up as the world's first male figure skating
duo. Here's a clip from "Blades of Glory."

(Soundbite of "Blades of Glory")

Mr. JON HEDER: So, coach, I was thinking about the music for our routine.

Unidentified Man #1: Really?

Mr. WILL FERRELL: We're going to skate to one song, one song only: "Lady
Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas.

(Singing) "What you going to do with all that junk, all that junk inside my
trunk? I'm going to get you, get you drunk. Get you drunk off my lady hump.
My hump. My hump. My lovely lady hump."

Mr. HEDER: I'm not skating to anything with references to "lady humps." I
don't even know what that means.

Mr. FERRELL: No one knows what it means, but it's provocative.

Mr. HEDER: No, it's not.

Mr. FERRELL: It gets the people going."

(End of soundbite)

BIANCULLI: "Stranger Than Fiction," Ferrell's previous film, featured an
equally bizarre premise. Ferrell played a tax auditor for the IRS, a guy with
a very stable routine in life, who suddenly wakes up and hears a voice in his
head. Eventually he figures out that the voice he is hearing belongs to
famous novelist Karen Eiffel, reading from her work in progress, and he is a
character in her novel. Disturbed that this writer is controlling his
destiny, he tries to track her down. Terry spoke with Will Ferrell last year
when "Stranger Than Fiction" was released. In this scene, he visits the
office of Karen's publisher and tries to get some information from a
receptionist in the lobby.

(Soundbite from "Stranger Than Fiction")

Mr. FERRELL: (As Harold Crick) I need to speak to Karen Eiffel.

Unidentified Actress #1: (As receptionist) I'm sorry?

Mr. FERRELL: (As Harold Crick) Karen Eiffel. She's one of your authors. I
need to talk to her. It's urgent.

Actress #1: (As receptionist) Well, sir, she's not here.

Mr. FERRELL: (As Harold Crick) No, no, I know. I need to find her. I need
to know where she is.

Actress #1: (As receptionist) We're just the publishers.

Mr. FERRELL: (As Harold Crick) Right. Of course, but there must be a way
that I can contact her.

Actress #1: (As receptionist) We have the address where her fan mail is sent.

Mr. FERRELL: (As Harold Crick) No, I can't send mail. It's urgent.

Actress #1: (As receptionist) How do you know her?

Mr. FERRELL: (as Harold Crick) I'm her brother.

Actress #1: (As receptionist) Her brother?

Mr. FERRELL: (As Harold Crick) Her brother-in-law.

Actress #1: (As receptionist) She has a sister?

Mr. FERRELL: (As Harold Crick) No, I'm married to her brother. Not in this
state. The one over...

Actress #1: (As receptionist) Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave.

Mr. FERRELL: (As Harold Crick) No, OK, listen. I'm one of her characters.
I'm new. I'm in her new book, and she's going to kill me. Not actually, but
in the book. But I think it will actually kill me so I just--I need to talk
to her and ask her to stop.

(End of soundbite)

TERRY GROSS, host:

Will Ferrell, welcome to FRESH AIR.

Usually, you know, you play somebody--well, often you play somebody who's very
kind of uninhibited and kind of extreme and extroverted in a lot of ways...

Mr. FERRELL: Right.

GROSS: ...and in this, you're somebody who lives a very regimented kind of
life. You count your toothbrush strokes.

Mr. FERRELL: Yes.

GROSS: You count your steps to the bus and you arrive at the bus at the exact
time every day. Could you relate to that kind of character at all? It's so
different from what you usually do.

Mr. FERRELL: Yeah, it was--well, that was kind of what appealed to me to
begin with was I'm usually playing characters that are so over the top, so
kind of, you know, I guess, fantastical in a way, and this--I loved the
thought of playing someone just really real and kind of muted and yet it's
still a comedic role so, you know, I still kind of had to be funny. But, you
know, at the same time, I enjoyed it too because I kind of identified with the
way this guy lived his life because I've often had conversations with my wife
about the fact that if I wasn't doing what I was doing as an actor or
comedian, that I do have some aspects of my personality where I could kind of
live somewhat a solitary existence. I don't know what that says about me but
I, you know, I don't need a lot of things. You know, if I just had some books
to read and, you know, a source of income and could go to the movies every
once in a while, like that would be OK, too. So I kind of tapped into that,
and also, you know, I had a period of time, kind of post-college, when I moved
back home for three years, a long three years, and I worked as a bank teller.

GROSS: Oh, really?

Mr. FERRELL: Yeah. And I was kind of Harold Crick in that way. I kind of
just, you know, I was just starting to explore, you know, taking theater
classes and standup and those sorts of things, but for the most part I was
kind of back at home, driving from point A to point B and counting money, and
I didn't have much of a social life because a lot of my friends had gone on to
real jobs and things like that. So I was able to kind of draw on that period
of time as well.

GROSS: Did you do shtick when you were a bank teller? Did you like
impersonate your version of what a bank teller would be?

Mr. FERRELL: No, in fact, I was so--I found the job so nervewracking that I
got so quiet because I had to focus with every aspect I would make one
transaction and then shut my window down for 15 minutes to make sure
everything was still there. And one day it slipped out that I did standup
comedy, and one of the managers came up to me and just stared at me. It was
like, `You're funny? I don't believe it.' And I said, `Well, yeah, I can be.'
But I go, `You'll have to come see a show.' And so it was kind of my alter ego
that outside of work I had this place to kind of, you know, go crazy up on
stage.

GROSS: Now in "Stranger Than Fiction," your character's dream is to play
guitar, and as the movie goes on, he becomes a little more uninhibited. He
gets a guitar, and there's a scene where he--where you sing and accompany
yourself on guitar, and it's really--it's kind of nice. Usually, you sing in
your movies. There's usually a point where you sing.

Mr. FERRELL: Right. You're right.

GROSS: You did a lot of that on "Saturday Night Live," and it's almost always
a parody of some sort.

Mr. FERRELL: Right. Right.

GROSS: But in this, you're kind of singing for real...

Mr. FERRELL: Yeah.

GROSS: ...as a very inhibited person who's opening up for the first time...

Mr. FERRELL: Right.

GROSS: ...and is very tentative about singing. Do you love to sing?

Mr. FERRELL: You know, I--yeah, I do. I mean, I come from kind of a musical
family. My father is a musician so we--my brother and I--kind of grew up
around music a lot. I mean, I don't love to sing in the sense of, `I'm such a
good singer, listen to me sing,' or you know, I'm not--I don't brag about it
but, yeah, there's something--you know, it's nice. I sing, you know--we have
a two-and-a-half-year-old son now, and we're playing music with him all the
time, and, in fact, he tells me a lot of times in his two-and-a-half-year-old
way to stop singing, so he doesn't like it so much. But I love--yeah, I think
music is such an important part of kind of family life.

GROSS: Do you think having a father who was a performer made you any more or
less inhibited or uninhibited?

Mr. FERRELL: I would say definitely more uninhibited, only because he, you
know, when I kind of decided--when I was taking classes at the Groundlings
Theater in Los Angeles, which is an improv and sketch comedy group, and I kind
of sat down with him and said, `Hey, Dad, I think I want to give this a shot,
you know, and try to make a living at this. Do you have any words of advice?'
And he said, `You know, if it was based on talent, I wouldn't worry about you,
and you have a lot of talent, but there's a lot of luck involved and just know
that.'

Now that may come off as kind of weird advice, but for some reason, I found it
really comforting that it was such a crapshoot that I might as well go for it,
you know. I might as well be completely uninhibited and have a great time
because it's a little bit like playing the lottery and you don't know. So for
some reason, those were words of great comfort that I wasn't totally in
control in a way, and so that allowed me to just have a great time with it,
and he always said, `You know, if it gets too hard at a certain point, you
know, don't be afraid to change and do something different.'

GROSS: Well, you said, you know, this kind of freed you to be completely
uninhibited, and you really seem to be completely uninhibited as an actor and
even just like the thing that most people are inhibited about their body.

Mr. FERRELL: Right.

GROSS: You've done such funny things, you know, like streaking nude in "Old
School," and back on "Saturday Night Live," there were a couple of shows, a
few shows, you know, where you'd be like naked except for like a--sometimes
like a patriotic...

Mr. FERRELL: Jockstrap.

GROSS: ...American flag jockstrap.

Mr. FERRELL: Yes, exactly, right.

GROSS: And...

Mr. FERRELL: One of my finer moments.

GROSS: ...and this was all about inviting the audience to laugh at how you
looked. It was not about...

Mr. FERRELL: Yeah.

GROSS: ...showing off your body. It's about...

Mr. FERRELL: No.

GROSS: ...being laughed at.

Mr. FERRELL: Yeah, it was--I mean, it's also too about just, you know, if
you're going to do comedy, especially on a show like "Saturday Night Live,"
why not commit to being as extreme as possible when it's appropriate, when it
calls for it. You know, I've now kind of worked myself into a cor--well, not
a corner, but I now get the question, `Oh, well, you know, is it a
prerequisite for you to strip down to your underwear in a movie?' or this and
that. And it really isn't. I'm not such an exhibitionist that I'm working on
something and I'm like, `Guys, page 32, I haven't gotten in my underwear yet.'

GROSS: You act without vanity. You're willing to do anything to commit to
the part and get a laugh, but you often play people who are very vain.

Mr. FERRELL: Right.

GROSS: And that was certainly the case, like in "Anchorman," where you
play...

Mr. FERRELL: Yeah.

GROSS: ... a local anchor who really thinks he's, you know, Edward R.
Murrow or something.

Mr. FERRELL: Yes. Exactly.

GROSS: He's usually covering, you know, the zoo story or the latest
development at the zoo.

Mr. FERRELL: Right. Right.

GROSS: And there's a great scene where the new female anchor, you have a
crush on her. She's played by Christina Applegate.

Mr. FERRELL: Right.

GROSS: And you invite her to your office and what you really want to do is
like show off, like your great body, so you've taken off your shirt and you're
sitting on a stool...

Mr. FERRELL: Mm-hmm. And I...

GROSS: ...with handweights.

Mr. FERRELL: Lifting weights.

GROSS: And you're lifting weights...

Mr. FERRELL: Yes.

GROSS: ...to show off, like your great, like chest and arm muscles...

Mr. FERRELL: Show off the guns. Yeah.

GROSS: You show off the guns, exactly.

Mr. FERRELL: Yes.

GROSS: And she comes in thinking she's going to have a meeting with you. Let
me play that scene.

(Soundbite from "Anchorman")

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. FERRELL: (As Ron Burgundy) One thousand one, one thousand two, ahhhhh!

Ms. CHRISTINA APPLEGATE: (As Veronica Corningstone) Mr. Burgundy...

Mr. FERRELL: (As Ron Burgundy) One thousand three...

Ms. APPLEGATE: (As Veronica Corningstone) Helen said that you needed to see
me.

Mr. FERRELL: (As Ron Burgundy) Ahhhh! Oh, Ms. Corningstone. I wasn't
expecting company. Ahhhh! Ohhh! Mmmm. Just doing my workout. Tuesday's
arms and back.

Ms. APPLEGATE: (As Veronica Corningstone) Well, you asked me to come by,
sir.

Mr. FERRELL: (As Ron Burgundy) Oh, did I? Ohhh!

Ms. APPLEGATE: (As Veronica Corningstone) Yeah.

Mr. FERRELL: (As Ron Burgundy) Ohhhhh! Ohhhh! It's a deep burn. Ohhh! So
deep. Ah! Oh, I can barely lift my right arm because I did so many. I don't
know if you heard me counting. I did over a thousand.

Ms. APPLEGATE: (As Veronica Corningstone) Ohh.

Mr. FERRELL: (As Ron Burgundy) You have your uvulus muscle connects to the
upper dorsimus. It's boring, but it's part of my life. I'm just going to
grab this shirt if you don't mind. Just watch out for the guns. They'll get
you.

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: That's really funny. You know, it's--and, of course, you don't have
like those rippling muscles in the movie.

Mr. FERRELL: No, not quite. Yeah.

GROSS: But the funny thing is, you know, like you were an athlete when you
were in college. You were...

Mr. FERRELL: Yeah.

GROSS: ...a varsity football...

Mr. FERRELL: High school, yeah.

GROSS: OK, yeah. Football player. But a lot of actors who probably never
were athletes like work out to have those like rippling abs, and you know...

Mr. FERRELL: Right.

GROSS: ...like big muscles. They look great but--so I'm just kind of
interested in how, you know, as somebody who was an athlete when you were
younger...

Mr. FERRELL: Right.

GROSS: ...how you dealt with the whole like working-out-muscle thing.

Mr. FERRELL: Well, you know what's funny is I'm still fairly athletic. I
mean, I kind of have to work out just to look fat.

GROSS: Would you stick out your stomach so that, like in certain scenes,
you'll look out of shape, just a little bit?

Mr. FERRELL: No, that just kind of happens that way. Yeah, I mean, I still
am a pretty adamant, you know, runner and...

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. FERRELL: ...you know, I still--I love kind of exercising and this and
that, but there is--yeah, there's something about my physique that no matter
how much in shape I'm in, it doesn't quite photograph that way but, yeah, you
know, it is, it's funny. I don't know, it's kind of my protest to this whole,
you know, kind of cultural thing now where we have to work out, we have to
stay--you know, it's all about body image and this and that, especially in Los
Angeles, and you know, I don't know, it's kind of, I guess, for me, my kind of
celebration of the average guy and that that can be...

GROSS: Oh, yeah, right.

Mr. FERRELL: ...you know, funny, and that sort of thing. But you know, it's
also funny from a character standpoint that a guy like Ron Burgundy can be so
vain and he still looks like that, you know, with his shirt off, so...

GROSS: Is that how you see a lot of what you do, as a celebration of the
average guy?

Mr. FERRELL: Yeah, that and, you know, we love--you know, my writing
partner, Adam McKay, we wrote--he wrote and directed "Anchorman," and we did
"Talladega Nights" together. We're endlessly fascinating with kind of the
average guy but also kind of this character we like to call this man, someone
with unearned confidence.

GROSS: Yeah, yeah.

Mr. FERRELL: Which, you know, I always feel like you run into these people
who are--want to have conversations about what they do and who they are, and
you start listening and you realize, you know, you're not really helping the
world in any way. You're not helping figure out world peace or a cure for
cancer. It's really kind of lame stuff you're doing but you think it's the
best stuff in the world. So we kind of love those characters.

BIANCULLI: Will Ferrell speaking to Terry Gross last year. More after a
break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

BIANCULLI: Let's get back to Terry's 2006 conversation with actor and
comedian Will Ferrell. His new film is called "Blades of Glory."

GROSS: So when you went to, like, audition for "Saturday Night Live," the
story goes that you took a trunk, like a suitcase, of Monopoly money with you,
so that you could do what?

Mr. FERRELL: Well, I had read somewhere that Adam Sandler had gone and had a
meeting with Loren Michaels and had gone into this meeting kind of sight
unseen and had done this really funny bit where he, I don't know, mimicked
having sex with a chair or something and was hired on the spot. And I
thought, `Well, I'm going to follow that, like be funny in the room, and kind
of take advantage, you know, of the moment, kind of seize the day type of
attitude.' So I thought what would be really funny is that I walk in with a
briefcase full of toy money and just start piling it on his desk and say,
`Loren, look, we can talk, you know, until the cows come home but we really
know what talks, and that's money, and I'm going to walk out of this room, and
you can either take this money or leave it on your desk, I'll never know the
difference.' And then hopefully he'd think it was funny that I stacked all
this fake counterfeit money, but when I got in the atmosphere was so intense
that I never got to my big joke, and I just sat there with my briefcase in my
lap, which when I left, it felt insane because I was thinking, `Well, he must
be thinking, "What comedian walks in with a briefcase and just sits there,
nervously,"'

And so I never--and then we had another meeting where I tried to do it again,
and the assistant said, `Oh, leave your briefcase, you don't need that.' And
then, lo and behold, that was the meeting where he told me I had the job, and
then as I left, I gave a handful of the fake money to the assistant. It was
like, `Can you please give this to him? It's kind of symbolic and I tried to
do this twice but I could never do it, so can you give him this fake money?'
And in hindsight, he thought it was really funny that I'd tried twice to do
this gag, and it never, never kind of came to fruition.

GROSS: So what did you do during the audition?

Mr. FERRELL: When I was out, they were really kind of looking for eight or
nine brand-new members of the cast, so the first round was five to eight
minutes--you had to do a character of your choice, a political impersonation
if you had one, and a celebrity impersonation. So I did Harry Caray as my
celebrity and I did Ted Kennedy doing standup as my political impersonation,
which was terrible and...

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. FERRELL: ...then I just did this character that--it ended up actually
being on my first episode, which was this--it ended up being called the "get
off the shed" guy, who was this kind of dad, you know, having a barbecue in
his backyard who was yelling at his children to get off this shed, which it's
hard to explain, but Loren says it got me the job, so it was good that I did
it.

GROSS: So in your early days of "Saturday Night Live," did you have to be
very assertive to get material on the show?

Mr. FERRELL: Well, you know, once again, I was fortunate in that it was a
brand-new group of people, who all came in at once. So, you know, the pie
really hadn't been divvied up at that point. So everyone was really kind of
freely writing for each other, even though you really do kind of have to be a
self-starter there. You have to be able to write for yourself because a lot
of the writers won't--they don't really give you any of the character pieces.
Those are usually generated by the cast themselves, and a lot of the more
conceptual pieces are created by the writers.

So, yeah, I kind of--like I said, the Groundlings was great. I knew kind of
how to write for myself, and then as I kind of got momentum on the show, then
the writers kind of--the next thing you know, the writers are coming to you as
they view you as someone who can kind of deliver the material. So it just
kind of starts snowballing in that way. So at a certain point I was, you
know, I was fortunate in that I was always cast, you know, a fair amount of
times, you know, from the writers. But there's really no structure. That's
why you can--you watch the show and you'll see someone--an actor had a really
big show one week and then the next show, they're maybe in one thing because
it just ebbs and flows that way.

BIANCULLI: Will Ferrell speaking with Terry Gross last year. More in the
second half of the show. His new movie, opening next week, is called "Blades
of Glory." I'm David Bianculli and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of "Blades of Glory")

(Soundbite of music)

Unidentified Man #2: Side by side double axels, beautifully delivered.

(Soundbite of music)

Man #2: And, again, a male-male pair team, they're doing things that no other
pair would dare to do.

(Soundbite of music)

Man #2: Incredible.

(Soundbite of music)

Man #2: So many moves in this program I've never heard of before.

(Soundbite of music)

(End of soundbites)

(Announcements)

BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli. The new Will Ferrell
film, "Blades of Glory," opens next Friday. Terry Gross spoke with him last
year when "Stranger Than Fiction" was released, and we're rejoining their
conversation. Ferrell was a cast member of "Saturday Night Live" for seven
seasons, from 1995 to 2002.

GROSS: One of the things you became famous for on "Saturday Night Live" was
your impersonation of George W. Bush, and, of course, in 2000 the debates
that you did...

Mr. FERRELL: Yeah.

GROSS: ...that you did with Darrell Hammond as ...

Mr. FERRELL: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Al Gore, I mean, became, like, really quite famous.

Mr. FERRELL: Yeah.

GROSS: Do you think that they influenced how people who watched the show
actually thought of the candidates?

Mr. FERRELL: I've been told as much, that we actually--I mean, well, it
was--you know, we had found out later that the Gore people showed the sketch,
the first one we did, to the candidate and to the vice president to say,
`Look, this is how you're perceived.' And so I guess, in that regard, you
know, Darrell kind of influenced there. And someone--a few people have said
to me that, you know, you made the then governor at that time come off as very
likable, even though, you know, we were kind of playing up, you know, all the
things he was known for kind of sticking his, you know, foot in his mouth for.
So I--yeah, I guess we did. It was kind of a crazy time to have all eyes on
us, you know, in that moment.

GROSS: Let's hear a short clip of you doing George W. Bush, and this is from
"Saturday Night Live." My guest is Will Ferrell.

(Soundbite from "Saturday Night Live")

Unidentified Man #3: The following is an address from the president of the
United States.

Mr. FERRELL: (As President George W. Bush) Good evening, America. I'm very
happy to be back in this country after my very successful trip in the Pacific
Rim. I'm heartened to hear that, for the most part, the people of this
country show strong support for my agenda. However, lately, there's some who
are beginning to criticize this administration. Maybe these people don't
understand. America is presently at war, not just the war on terrorism, but
we are engaged in a deadly standoff with an axis of evil. You know who I'm
talking about. Iran, Iraq and one of the Koreas.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FERRELL: (As President George W. Bush): But my axis of evil doesn't
seem to interest some people out there. Some people just want to talk about
the economy and budgets and Enron. I'll bet most of you out there don't even
understand Enron. I sure as heck don't.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FERRELL: (As President George W. Bush) It hurts my head to think about
it.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FERRELL: (As President George W. Bush) So from now on, Enron will be
part of my axis of evil.

(Soundbite of laughter)

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: That's Will Ferrell as George W. Bush.

Did you ever get any feedback from President Bush about his thoughts on your
impression of him?

Mr. FERRELL: No, I never got any direct feedback as far as I--as far as I
knew. I'm trying, I think he--you know, I--we might have talked about this
before but I did--I met him once when he came to the show and he didn't
realize that I was the guy who played him, even though it was put to me that
he was a huge fan, and so it was this very awkward situation where--and this
was during the campaign of 2000, and so it was this whole thing of, `Hurry,
rush down to the studio, the governor really wants to meet you.' And I'm like,
`OK, OK,' and then they forced me into this--you know, all these
photographers--and they're like `Go, go, go. Say hi.' And I could tell he had
no idea that I was the guy. And so we just kind of stood there, and you know,
had this awkward like--he's like, `Pleased to meet you,' and just kind of look
at me. And then it kind of dawned on him that `Oh, I think--oh, I know who
you are,' and then I had to go somewhere or something. So it was kind of
apropos, I think, in a way.

GROSS: In one of the impressions that you did on "Saturday Night Live," one
of the characters you did was James Lipton from the "Actors Studio" broadcast.

Mr. FERRELL: Yes.

GROSS: That as always so much fun. What made you decide to do him?

Mr. FERRELL: Well, you know, it was funny. I'd actually been a huge fan of
the show and had, you know, kind of had been watching it, and then one day I
was running around at the show, and there was a message at the page desk, and
one of the pages grabbed me and said, `Bill Murray called for you.' And I
said, `Really?' And so I thought, `Oh, if Bill Murray calls you, you should
probably return the call right away.' And we'd met briefly. I think he'd
hosted the show the week before. So I called him, and he said, `Hey, you know
who would be good for you to do? I've been watching this James Lipton guy.'
And I'm like, `That's so funny you brought that up. I was kind of pondering
that myself.' So I thought, boy, I'd better--because a lot of times you have
ideas where you don't--you get lazy and you don't act on it, and so it was
really a phone call from Bill Murray kind of forced me to kind of act on that.

And then, you know, it was kind of amazing how much James Lipton loved the
impression so much so that he had me come on his 100th episode as him, and we
did an interview back and forth where he asked me questions, which was very
surreal as he stood over my shoulder watching me get into makeup, saying,
`Yes! The transformation has begun. I'm watching you becoming me.' And
narrate. It was very--and he watched the whole 30 minutes it takes me to get
into that makeup, and I was like, `It's--you can go get a sandwich if you want
at some point, you know.' And he's like, `No, this is fascinating.' But one of
the many interesting things that has happened to me thus far.

GROSS: Did you notice things sitting across the table from him that you
hadn't noticed watching on TV?

Mr. FERRELL: Not really. I don't know. I think if anything I noticed was I
felt like, `God, I feel like I slightly underplay him. I could go even
bigger.'

GROSS: Let's hear you actually doing James Lipton on "Saturday Night Live."
So this is Will Ferrell.

(Soundbite from "Saturday Night Live")

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. FERRELL: (As James Lipton) On the 13th of January 1931, right here in
New York City, magic happened. An artist was born that would rival Leonardo
da Vinci or Michelangelo. But his tools would not be pen nor brush nor chisel
nor palette. His tools would be his comically oversized glasses and his soul.
So, please, welcome the greatest performer ever to have graced this earth,
Charles Nelson Reilly.

(Soundbite of applause)

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: That's Will Ferrell doing James Lipton. And later in the sketch,
Charles Nelson Reilly is played by Alec Baldwin.

So how do you study somebody like Lipton when you're doing an impersonation of
him. Like, what is your process of watching somebody, whether it's Lipton or
President Bush?

Mr. FERRELL: I usually have to just pick one key thing and then emphasize
that again and again and again and then hope that the rest kind of fills in,
but with, you know, with Bush, as I tried to work on him vocally, I really
just worked on it more from the way he kind of scrunched up his face and kind
of squinted his eyes and almost started from that approach. And with Lipton,
I just tried to overenunciate. And so I usually try to key in on one thing
where, you know, when you speak to someone like Darrell Hammond, who's still
on "Saturday Night Live," he is such a kind of a scientist about it. He can
tell you that a person has had, you know, dental work because of the way they
pop their T's and this and that. He can listen to every single thing, and I'm
not able to do that, so I would just kind of find one key thing to hone in on.

BIANCULLI: Will Ferrell speaking to Terry Gross last year. More after a
break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

BIANCULLI: Let's get back to Terry's 2006 interview with Will Ferrell. He's
staring in the new film "Blades of Glory," which opens next Friday. An
earlier Ferrell film, "Talladega Nights" about Nascar drivers, is out on DVD.
Here's a scene in which he's saying grace at the dinner table with his family
and best friend.

(Soundbite from "Talladega Nights")

Mr. FERRELL: (As Ricky Bobby) Dear Lord baby Jesus, we thank you so much for
this bountiful harvest of Dominoes, KFC and the always delicious Taco Bell. I
just want to take time to say thank you for my family, my two beautiful,
beautiful, handsome, striking sons, Walker and Texas Ranger or TR, as we call
him, and, of course, my red-hot-smoking wife, Carley, who's a stone-cold fox.
Mmmmm! Dear tiny infant Jesus...

Unidentified Actress #2: Hey, uh, you know, sweetie, Jesus did grow up. You
don't always have to call him baby. It's a bit odd and off-putting to pray to
a baby.

Mr. FERRELL: (As Ricky Bobby) Well, look, I like the Christmas Jesus best
and I'm saying grace. When you say grace, you can say it to grown-up Jesus or
teenage Jesus or bearded Jesus or whoever you want.

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: I'm wondering if some screenplays are given to you by people who
think, `Well, this needs work but he's so funny, and he's such a great
improvisor, he'll fix it.'

Mr. FERRELL: Right. Exactly. Yeah. You do get a--you do get a list of
things where it's, `You can totally rewrite it.' Which usually means it's
probably not that good. And, yeah, there is--and sometimes you can on the day
come up with a lot of stuff, but you usually have to have, you know, much more
of a backbone, much more of a game plan going in. So even though I love
improvising during a movie, I still try to have as decent a script as you can
going in. I think people think it's a magic spell, like, `Go ahead, you know,
it's OK if it's not on the page. You'll fix it on the day...'

GROSS: Work your magic.

Mr. FERRELL: Yeah, yeah, and, you know, that's hard sometime.

GROSS: Well, take a movie like your recent film "Talladega Nights," which you
co-wrote and starred in. You wrote it with yourself in mind...

Mr. FERRELL: Right.

GROSS: ...but, at the same time, did you leave things open for improvisation
within that?

Mr. FERRELL: You know we--no, we had a pretty--it was a fully realized
script, but just in the way we work, we know that we're going to at least take
a pass at the scene where we pretty much throw the dialogue out. You know, we
kind of just have a motto that funny is funny and the best idea wins
regardless of who it came from, and we just try to kind of foster an
atmosphere where everyone feels safe enough to fail and to try something as
crazy as they want to and--because we always say, `You know, we don't have to
use it if it doesn't work.' So we completely write the script but we a lot of
times will tape our rehearsal periods and kind of jot down some of the better
ad-libs and recycle those when we start filming again.

GROSS: You know on the--let's see, it's at the end of "Anchorman" over the
close credits, there's a lot of outtakes.

Mr. FERRELL: Yeah.

GROSS: And in some of those outtakes, you or another actor is doing the scene
like seven different ways...

Mr. FERRELL: Yeah.

GROSS: ...or doing like seven different versions of the punchline.

Mr. FERRELL: Right.

GROSS: Is that the way it typically works with you, that you'll test out a
lot of things and use one?

Mr. FERRELL: Yeah, well--I mean, you know, especially in the couple of
movies that I've made with Adam McKay, there's so many times where we've just
run out of film. We never even yell "Cut," because we just keep it rolling,
and you know, `Let's take it back and start again' or `Let me just do,' you
know, if it's one certain line, `Let me just do 10 in a row and try to think
of one,' or he'll--Adam will yell out suggestions. And you know, we--with
"Talladega Nights," it was so fun because we'd wanted to work with John C.
Riley for such a long time, and John got so kind of fired up by the way we
worked that the next thing you know, John was hanging out on the set with
ideas for not even his character, for other characters, and so it kind feeds
itself in a way that, you know, the next thing you know you've got 20 extra
jokes that were never there on the script and which is such a luxury to get to
choose from.

GROSS: You made "Talladega Nights" and "Anchorman" with the writer and
director Adam McKay. How did you first start working together?

Mr. FERRELL: We were hired at the same time at "Saturday Night Live." And
Adam was--I think he became--he was like head writer by his second season and
was definitely one of the stars of the writing staff and someone who wrote
just great, interesting sketches, was kind of adept at political writing as
well. And we just kind of hit it off and we enjoyed working together because,
obviously, we shared the same sense of humor, but we worked really fast. We
would--there's a tendency at the show to kind of write something and go over
it again and again and again, and we just had this thing of it should never
take longer than an hour to write a sketch and just kind of spit it out and
have fun with it and maybe look back at it, you know, later, you know, at the
end of the night type of thing. And we found out that we kind of had just as
high a success ratio doing that than people who went over and over and over
stuff so--and then we just kind of transitioned to writing features that way,
and he's become--we've now started a production company, and he's one of the
guys I really admire artistically. I think he might be arguably the funniest
person that I know, performer or otherwise, and he's one of my best friends on
top of it. So I feel pretty lucky that I got to meet Adam McKay.

GROSS: Do you ever have anxiety dreams about your work?

Mr. FERRELL: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm always, you know--I think anyone who
has--you know, is in any sort of artistic pursuit kind of goes up and down
with the way they feel about their work. And I for the most part am a pretty
happy person but, yeah, I go through definite periods of time where I'm not
funny, I'm not good, I don't feel original, and so that--I'm always joking
with my wife that, you know, when I get kicked out of show business, I'm
always trying to think of alternate careers. And so far I've come up with...

GROSS: Bank teller.

Mr. FERRELL: ...cab driver. I can go back to bank teller. Maybe UPS, too.
UPS is high on the list. But, yeah, I definitely have anxiety, and yet I...

GROSS: So can you share an anxiety dream, like a--the kind of dream that you
have about comedy and something going terribly wrong.

Mr. FERRELL: I'm trying--yeah, if I have a specific example. Well, I'll
still have like "Saturday Night Live" stress dreams where the show has started
and I'm making a quick change backstage, and no one--the microphone in my
dressing room wasn't on, so I didn't hear that the show started, or the
speaker, I mean, and I have to run out in the middle of a sketch and figure
out where I am and things like that. I guess that's more of a different type
of stress dream. But, yeah, I don't know if I have a specific example but,
yeah, you know, I go through it.

GROSS: What's the worst thing that actually did happen to you live on the air
on "Saturday Night Live"?

Mr. FERRELL: The worst thing? I--you know what? I was doing an update
feature where on "Weekend Update" on the fake news section, you know,
characters will sometimes come out. And I was--I started--my glasses started
fogging up to where I couldn't read the cue cards, and then I started
laughing, and it was this kind of this wonderful kind of crazy situation of I
was having this laughing attack, and I can't see anything, and I literally
kind of had to just stop and wipe off my glasses and then get back to reading
the cue cards. So it was actually kind of really fun. Free fall of like,
`Oh, well, there's no way to rescue this,' but the audience kind of loves it
in a way when they're watching that happen.

GROSS: So did you stay in character while you were wiping off your glasses?

Mr. FERRELL: Yeah, I did. It was--I was--I did this character who suffered
from voice immodulation, which was someone who--I only could speak like this.
I had no control of the volume of my voice, so whether I was speaking
intimately or shouting, it was the same voice level. So I would have asides
to myself, like `Boy, I don't think'--you know, `she doesn't smell very good,'
you know. So I could never have a private moment in that I was afflicted with
this disease, and people didn't think it was a real disease, and I was the
champion of this thing. It was very--it's bizarre.

GROSS: Well, Will Ferrell, it's just been great to talk with you. Thank you
so much.

Mr. FERRELL: You, too, Terry. Thanks. It's been my pleasure.

BIANCULLI: Will Ferrell speaking to Terry Gross last year. His film
"Stranger Than Fiction" is now out on DVD. His new movie "Blades of Glory" is
opening next Friday. Coming up, David Edelstein reviews "Reign Over Me." This
is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: David Edelstein reviews the Adam Sandler-Don Cheadle
vehicle and Mike Binder film "Reign Over Me"
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

Mike Binder has directed nine feature films, although before his last one,
"The Upside of Anger," he was best known as an actor and for the cult HBO
series "The Mind of the Married Man." In "Reign Over Me," he gives a serious
part--an extremely serious part--to the comic Adam Sandler, who plays a man
whose life is destroyed by 9/11. David Edelstein has a review.

DAVID EDELSTEIN reporting:

Studio movies go through batteries of development people and VPs and focus
groups, so it's rare to see a film like "Reign Over me" that makes you think,
`How did this get made?' I don't mean that in a bad way entirely. There's
something enlivening about the process of puzzling over this film. The
writer-director Mike Binder is struggling to dramatize crises that are
terrible, unresolvable; to explore the kinds of emotions from which commercial
filmmakers, especially male ones, back off. "Reign Over Me" has the fullness
of a novel--a failed novel, but still.

The story turns on a heartrending tragedy five years in the past, the death of
a man's wife and three daughters in one of the planes that crashed into the
World Trade Center. Charlie Fineman, played by Adam Sandler, is in a state of
denial. Or, more specifically, a hermetically sealed daze of amnesia. We see
him through the eyes of his old roommate, Alan Johnson, played by Don Cheadle,
an affluent dentist who one night catches a glimpse of Charlie speeding
through Manhattan on a Segway and encounters him face to face a few days
later.

(Soundbite of "Reign Over Me")

Mr. DON CHEADLE: (as Alan Johnson) Hey man, it's Alan.

Mr. ADAM SANDLER: (as Charlie Fineman) Hey. How are you?

Mr. CHEADLE: (as Alan Johnson) Yeah. I saw you coming out of a paint store
a couple weeks ago and I was screaming for you, honking the horn and
everything. I stopped the car and jumped out of traffic. It was crazy.

Mr. SANDLER: (as Charlie Fineman) Oh, yeah.

Mr. CHEADLE: (as Alan Johnson) Then I tried to get in touch with you, but
nobody had any info on you.

Mr. SANDLER: (as Charlie Fineman) Oh, cool, cool. Very cool.

Mr. CHEADLE: (as Alan Johnson) How you doing?

Mr. SANDLER: (as Charlie Fineman) So we know each other?

Mr. CHEADLE: (as Alan Johnson) Are you kidding me? It's Alan Johnson,
Charlie. We went to dental school together? Burrow's Hall? I was your
college roommate, for Christ's sake. You don't remember me?

Mr. SANDLER: (as Charlie Fineman) Yeah, very cool. Very cool. Good to see
you, Burrows.

Mr. CHEADLE: (as Alan Johnson) It's Johnson. Charlie, you seriously don't
remember me?

Mr. SANDLER: (as Charlie Fineman) We were college roommates?

Mr. CHEADLE: (as Alan Johnson) Yeah. Yeah, you slept naked most nights and
you were a sleepwalker. It was the worst two years of my life.

(End of soundbite)

Mr. EDELSTEIN: This isn't a bad part for Sandler. In a way, it's not even a
stretch. His comic shtick has always depended on him living in his own head.
I think that's a form of hostility, passive-aggression mixed with real
aggression. But it's not my place to psychoanalyze him. The point is that,
in his low-brow comedies, he tries to disconnect himself from the
shin-whackings and wet showers of walrus poop, and when Paul Thomas Anderson
cast him in the romantic fantasia "Punch Drunk Love," Sandler was surprisingly
soulful as an overgrown adolescent lashing out at the world for its
unreliability.

As Charlie Fineman, he sports a Bob Dylan circa 1969 hairstyle. He mumbles.
He barely makes eye contact. Charlie refuses to acknowledge, at least openly,
the death of his family. He's dogged by his wife's parents, played by Robert
Klein and Melinda Dillon, who've clung to the tragedy and rather selfishly
feel they need his presence to help them cope. Cheadle's Alan isn't that
extreme. But he does try to ease Charlie back into the world. To bring his
old friend out, Alan even enlists a weirdly standoffish psychiatrist, played
by an oddly cast, but not bad, Liv Tyler.

Binder, to his credit, isn't glib. He doesn't overrate Freudian catharsis.
For Charlie, facing his pain would be just the beginning. But to me, the loss
is so monumentally horrible that it explodes the emotional problem-play
universe. And can the movie bear the sociological weight of 9/11? The pall
overwhelms the lighter subplot in which Alan confronts the pain in his life,
the tension with his wife, played by Jada Pinkett Smith, who resents his late
nights with Charlie, and an office crisis when a batty patient, played by
Saffron Burrows, tries to seduce him and then charges him with making
inappropriate overtures.

Charlie and Alan are supposed to help each other, and the mix of tragedy and
deadpan comedy and buddy movie inspiration is just icky.

Cheadle is a sane, watchful actor. He's wonderful. And Sandler proves he's
up to the big climactic monologue. But the film as a whole is more
excruciating than the sum of its parts. It's slick when it needs to be raw,
tidy when it needs to be amorphous, and amorphous when it needs to focus. The
terrible title comes from The Who number "Love, Reign o'er Me," and I imagine
Binder vowing to make a movie that builds to the same kind of primal rock 'n'
roll wail for connection, but the instruments he brings to the job are much
too lightweight. You just can't do primal grief with a kazoo.

BIANCULLI: David Edelstein is film critic for New York Magazine.

(Credits)

BIANCULLI: For Terry Gross, I'm David Bianculli.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.