Posters

Ferrell feted with Twain prize

07.02.12

For Will Ferrell, the eureka moment came relatively late, years after the other boys had learned the joys of disrupting class. He was a high school senior, a conscientious student and a jock (basketball captain, baseball player, kicker on the football team), much too popular and well adjusted to crave class-clown validation. But then a friend asked him and a buddy to work up some shtick for the morning P.A. announcements to help sell Class of ’85 T-shirts.

“They were like old radio skits,” recalls Ferrell, brightening at the memory. “We’d do voices, like the old Irish Spring commercials.” Here Ferrell adopts an Irish brogue: ‘You smell like a bucket of vomit. Why don’t you wear this – your senior-class T-shirt!’ ”

Ferrell loved it. More important, the other kids loved it. Even the teachers at University High in Irvine, Calif., in the heart of Orange County, started egging him on. Ferrell started staying up late to write more bits, skipping his homework. He and his friend started performing sketches from “SCTV” at school assemblies. More hilarity, more praise ensued.

You already know where this leads. A few years later, post-college, Ferrell has become a member of the Groundlings improv group in L.A. He gets a tryout with Lorne Michaels and “Saturday Night Live” – and kills. About 6,000 distinctive Ferrell characters and bits follow: Harry Caray, Craig the Cheerleader, James Lipton, Alex Trebek, George W. Bush, More Cowbell. With his “SNL” co-writer (and now collaborator/business partner) Adam McKay, Ferrell goes on to make movies, including their absurdist masterpiece, “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.” They also write a Tony-nominated Broadway show with Ferrell as Bush, “You’re Welcome, America,” and start a comedy website, Funny or Die. Which kills, too, thanks notably to “The Landlord,” a short video starring Ferrell and McKay’s 2-year-old daughter, Pearl.

Source: Fort Wayne Journal Gazette