cover story - WILL FERRELL

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Will Ferrell has a degree in sports information from the University of Southern California. Recently, he’s made a big part of his career out of what could be called sports disinformation.

Following the soccer comedy Kicking & Screaming, the NASCAR comedy Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and the figure skating comedy Blades of Glory comes Semi-Pro, a basketball comedy and Ferrell’s fourth athlete spoof in as many years.

Moon is a typical Ferrell doofus, a guy who has more confidence in his abilities — and appeal — than he probably should, and who is over the moon when word comes that the NBA will absorb some of the lesser league’s teams. So he has to figure out how to make his misfit-manned Tropics attractive to the bigger, better-established organization.

“The ABA was kind of a stepchild/sister basketball league to the NBA in the ’70s that had all of these outlandish characters and crazy, small-market teams,” Ferrell explains. “Another reason why sports movies are great is because there’s already a built-in arc. It kind of tackles all of those big issues of winning and losing and friendship and things like that. So it’s a great world to create a story in. And then when you add that you’re going to be funny about it, you can make fun of real sports movies at the same time and, obviously, poke fun at the game.”

Sometimes, though, that kind of comedy can feel bittersweet to a true athletic supporter. After training with some of the best competitive skaters for Blades of Glory, for example, the actor felt guilty deriding the absurdities of such a difficult — though admittedly, often ridiculous — sport.

Ferrell felt much more at home on hardwood than he did in rinks.

“It’s a lot more comfortable than ice skating,” Ferrell admits. “I played a lot of basketball in high school, and on and off since.”

These days, when he’s not training to trash a chosen sport, the Orange County, California, native mostly keeps in semi-shape by jogging. (Ferrell and his Swedish wife, Viveca, have run in the New York and Boston Marathons). Then there are two young sons that keep him on his toes.

“I’m trying to work at home a lot,” says Ferrell, meaning L.A. “Semi-Pro was shot up near Dodger Stadium, which is 15 minutes from my house. So we’re managing to keep everything somewhat balanced.”

Wacky as he often acts, Ferrell appears to be pretty even-keeled for someone in the crazy-making world of showbiz. Some credit for that goes to the example set by his father, Lee, who played saxophone and keyboards for The Righteous Brothers but raised his children under conventional suburban circumstances.

Ferrell was funny growing up, but didn’t think seriously about pursuing comedy until after college. “I was pretty comfortable making an ass of myself from the get-go,” he admits. “But I’m kind of atypical, in that I was never the class clown kind of guy who needed the attention. At the same time, if someone dared me to do something outlandish, I was like, ‘Well, what’s the big deal? Yeah, I can do that.’ And the next thing you know, I’d be running around in my underwear somewhere.”

After college, Ferrell joined the L.A. improv troupe The Groundlings, and like many of its members eventually graduated to an SNL spot. Not considered much special when he started on the show in 1995, he’d become its highest paid and most versatile Not Ready for Primetime Player by the time he left seven years later.

Ferrell didn’t exactly follow the Eddie Murphy trajectory from SNL to instant movie success, either, struggling in such underwhelming films as A Night at the Roxbury, Superstar and Boat Trip before hitting it big as the over-age frat boy in 2003’s Old School.

Ferrell’s hits since then, from Elf and Anchorman on, have required him to act similarly stupid. Yet he’s found quite a range of behaviours and fresh humour within that deceptively narrow definition. Although it may look like it on the surface, Ferrell claims that he doesn’t pander to any kind of core audience.

“I’m very thankful that I’ve had some success and I have some fans,” he says. “But in a weird way, I’m never trying to please them. I’m just trying to do what I think is funny. Because if you start making decisions based on demographics, you’re just going to have these homogenized things that don’t really work for anyone.”

One area where Ferrell is thinking outside of the box is on the outrageous Funny or Die website (funnyordie.com), where he’s appeared in subversive (and popular) video vignettes involving drunk baby landlords and violent environmental zealots.

He’s also not shy about making cameo appearances in movies starring other comedians (Wedding Crashers, Starsky & Hutch, The Wendell Baker Story), thereby cementing his status as a member of the Frat Pack, that loose conglomeration of the era’s hottest comic actors which includes Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson and Jack Black.

But what about breaking out of the funny end of the business? Ferrell sort of tried it a few years back with Winter Passing and Stranger than Fiction, which earned him solid critical acclaim but fewer paying customers than his laugh riots usually do.

“Well, I’m actually not going back to drama or comedy. I’m going into Mexican soap opera. That’s my next move,” Ferrell cracks.

“I mean, comedy will be the thing that I probably ultimately and predominantly do. In fact, I’m really not getting sent any more dramatic scripts since Stranger than Fiction. To tell the truth, I haven’t been getting sent any. I still mostly just get comedies, and I never want to force that issue. I’d like to continue to do some of that stuff, but we’ll just see what happens.”

As for sports comedies, even their biggest fan seems to understand when enough is enough. “Is there any sport that I’m not going to make a comedy out of,” Ferrell asks rhetorically. “I knew that would be a question. It’s kind of a shame that I’ve made so many. It will be now written that there’s a Will Ferrell sports movie anthology in the works. But no, there aren’t any more on the horizon.”

Bob Strauss is an L.A.-based entertainment writer.