Will’s not so strange after all
When Will Ferrell calls, it’s hard to know what to expect.
Will he be an unpredictable comedic maniac who spews jokes faster than Robin Williams and Jim Carrey combined? Or perhaps he’ll assume the arrogant attitude of a $20-million-a-movie star with little time for inane questions from some reporter.
It turns out he’s none of those things. There’s something down-to-earth, relatable, even sweet about him – qualities that illuminate his latest turn as a kindhearted but desperately dull IRS auditor in “Stranger Than Fiction.”
It marks a departure from most Ferrell fare, including his recent racing comedy, “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” in which he ran around a NASCAR track in his underwear screaming, “I’m on fire!”
It’s a little surprising, then, to hear Ferrell say he could see traces of himself in his “Fiction” character, Harold Crick, a quiet man who ekes joy out of counting every stroke in his morning teeth-brushing ritual.
“Just after college and before I started making the leap into comedy and acting, I didn’t know what I was going to do,” the “Saturday Night Live” alum recalls. “I had a job as a bank teller, and I was living at home again.
“I’ve often thought that if I wasn’t doing what I get to do and if someone said to me, ‘You can be comfortable and can work in a steady job and you don’t get to have a family,’ I’ve often thought I could kind of live that life.”
In “Fiction,” that kind of life takes a drastic turn for Harold, whose reliably routine existence is shattered after he begins to hear an author’s voice (Emma Thompson) narrating his behavior – and, most alarmingly, announcing his imminent demise.
It’s tempting to suggest that this is a completely out-of-left-field choice for Ferrell, 39, but that’s not entirely true.
He made a name for himself on the big screen by starring as a beer-funneling frat guy (“Old School”) and an oversize Santa’s helper (“Elf”), but he also has appeared in a Woody Allen film (“Melinda and Melinda”), a musical (“The Producers”) and last year’s little-seen indie drama “Winter Passing.”
Ferrell still feels connected to the hilariously clueless characters he has brought to life.
Asked what might happen if Harold from “Fiction,” Frank the Tank from “Old School,” Buddy from “Elf” and Ron Burgundy from “Anchorman” got together for dinner, he laughs for a few seconds before answering.
“I think Ron Burgundy would try to take over and try to profess that he knew how to order all these fancy wines, and he would get all the names wrong,” Ferrell says.
“Harold would probably be reading a magazine during the dinner and not really say a whole lot. Buddy would just ask a million questions of everyone and everything. He’d probably be fascinated at some pretty chandelier and commenting on how beautiful it was. And Frank would be ordering six beers at one time.”
He chuckles again. “Yeah,” he concludes, “it would be a fun table to watch.”
The birthday bunch
Author Kurt Vonnegut is 84. Comedian Jonathan Winters is 81. Actor Stanley Tucci is 46. Actress Demi Moore is 44. Actress Calista Flockhart is 42. TV personality Carson Kressley (“Queer Eye For The Straight Guy”) is 37. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio is 32.