As we walk together Will Ferrell jokes that I need to take a blood test and sign a release form before I can interview him.
Sitting down, he then wonders if celebrities - or their PR people - ever really do that. Not require a blood test, of course, but make journalists sign something limiting their questions.
Not anybody I would interview, I tell him, and ask: Is there anything I shouldn't ask him?
"I don't think so," he pauses, pondering the question for a second - at least for effect. "Yeah, I don't think I have any Charlie Sheen skeletons in the closet."
On screen and in person the 6-foot-3 actor-comedian is a pretty likable guy, which is one of the reasons that director-writer Dan Rush and producer Marty Bowen wanted him for "Everything Must Go," which opens Friday. In the film, based on a short story by Raymond Carver, Ferrell is a top salesman, Nick, who is fired from his job after falling off the wagon. Worse, he comes home to find his wife has dumped all of his possessions on the front lawn and changed the locks on the house. So Nick isn't the most pleasant of fellows, but Ferrell, says Bowden, "has an inherent sympathy ... there's not a mean-spirited bone in his body."
"Everything Must Go," as you might guess, isn't a comedy. It's a small indie film - not necessarily the type of movie in which you would expect to see Ferrell, who has starred in hits like "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" and "Talladega Nights: The
Ballad of Ricky Bobby." But "Everything Must Go" has funny moments, and they mostly seem to flow from Ferrell's persona, although the actor never seems to be trying for them. Rush and Ferrell stressed that they wanted the comedy "to happen organically.""When Dan and I talked about where the comedy would come from, we thought it would be surprising to us because we would not ever play it for laughs," says the 43-year-old Ferrell, aware that the humor partly comes from audiences already thinking he's a funny guy. "Maybe a different actor wouldn't get those laughs," he adds.
Ferrell says that he is "definitely an absurdist at heart." As a kid growing up in Orange County he admits admiring Andy Kaufman, the late comedian who first made his name appearing during the late 1970s on "Saturday Night Live," a show Ferrell would also star on from 1995 to 2002. Ferrell says he loved Kaufman because of his commitment to a joke and "never winking at the audience."
The difference between the two comedians is that while audiences sometimes felt they were the target of Kaufman's jokes, that never seems the case with Ferrell. He has said that as a kid living in suburbia, humor was a way to break the boredom and make friends laugh.
"I'll just laugh and think of the darkest kind of joke," he says. "But I've always had sort of a sunnier disposition than most people in comedy."
Ferrell, who got a bachelor's degree in sports information from USC, says he did stand-up for a brief time but didn't like hanging out with the other comedians and began working with the Los Angeles improvisation group the Groundlings.
"My personality lent itself much more to the world of sketch where you're with a group," he says. "It's more prone to attract happier people, I guess."
But for "Everything Must Go," Ferrell had to get "in touch with my lonely side, which I've always had. I was alone a lot as a kid. And I feel kind of melancholy about it but love it, too." With this film and his edgy four-episode arc on "The Office," which ended Thursday, it might seem that the actor is exploring a more serious side, but Ferrell doesn't want people to think this is his "blue period."
While looking for something else to do that was in the "Stranger Than Fiction" mode, Ferrell acknowledges that no one "was busting down my door to bring along similar kinds of things," but if nothing else came along like "Everything Must Go" "for three or four years, that's fine, too."
He is planning to shoot a film in the fall tentatively called "Southern Rivals" with Zach Galifianakis about two politicians vying for a congressional seat in South Carolina, to be released during the election season next year. Political satire has been part of Ferrell's repertoire for years. He began doing his impressions of former President George W. Bush on "SNL," and continued on Broadway with his one-man show, "You're Welcome America: A Final Night With George W. Bush."
On Wednesday he posted a short on Funny or Die, the comedy website he co-founded, where he again portrayed Bush, this time reporting on the death of a troublesome gopher and responding to the death of Osama bin Laden from a Sizzler steakhouse in Texas.
The short had more than 1 million hits after the first day on Funny or Die and was available on other sites.
Asked if he was interested in politics or the theater of it, Ferrell replies, "a little of both."
"I love comedy as a tool to definitely be satirical, as a way to comment on things that get through all the white noise. I'm not overly political, but, yeah, I'm a little bit political," he chuckles a little mischievously. "But in terms of performance and theater, I love commenting on all that stuff if I get the chance."
Ferrell has already shot "Casa de mi Padre," a comedy in Spanish. The actor says - with help - his Spanish is fine in the movie and describes it as "a telenovela meets a Quentin Tarantino-Robert Rodriguez film," a broad satire that pokes fun at "U.S.-Mexico relationships, the drug wars and all sorts of things in a very heightened, bad-movie sort of way."
Ferrell says being a family man has "really prioritized things" in his life. In 2000 the comedian married Swedish actress Viveca Paulin, and every summer the couple take their three sons to Sweden.
"It's really an important time for our kids to play with their Swedish cousins," he says. "It's such a different experience for them outside L.A. and Hollywood. ... So literally some jobs will go away because I'm gone.
"There are some decisions like that that become very black-and-white because you don't want to lose that time with your kids."
But Ferrell is glad he got a chance to do "Everything Must Go" - even on its tight 23-day shoot - because it was with "a bunch of people who had responded to the material and were there because they wanted to make a cool movie."
But even on a small movie, that's still Will Ferrell, a big-time comedian. Does he ever feel pressure to be funny?
"It's a strange mix," he says, then pauses. "I never feel pressured to be funny in a way, which is a very un-comedian thing to say, but it's always an internal battle. I've had a certain amount of success, and sometimes it's very relaxed and I'm good at it. Other times, because I've been a success, it feels like every decision is `What if I make the wrong one!"'
As for "Everything Must Go," that decision was "a no-brainer."
Nicollette Sheridan Jessica Alba Mila Kunis Brody Dalle Sara Foster
No comments:
Post a Comment