News: Will Ferrell Talks Semi-Pro

We all know The Onion is a great source of news, and the A.V. Club is a great source of real news. They talked to Will Ferrell about his new film Semi-Pro, his career, his reputation and rumors that he sucks at giving autographs. Here’s a sample.

On sports comedies:

I’m trying to totally exhaust people’s capacity for seeing me in these types of movies. No, it’s luck—luck of the draw, in a way. It just kind of lined up that way. Obviously, with Talladega Nights, we wrote that as not even being a sports movie. It was more for sort of cultural observations.

As I was in Charlotte filming [Talladega], my wife and I were watching figure skating, and she literally said, “Someone should make a comedy about figure skating.” The next day, I get this call about this script, Blades Of Glory, and I was like “Oh my God, that’s ironic—and hilarious.” So then Semi-Pro comes along too, and I was like, “Oh great, now I’m setting myself up for that question.”

But we talked about Semi-Pro for six years, because Scot Armstrong, who wrote Old School, wrote Semi-Pro, and we kept in touch for a while. So I knew I would have to endure that question, but that having been said, I’ve always wanted to do a basketball movie, especially in the ’70s and in the ABA! It’s something I’ve been fascinated with.

On Semi-Pro’s Jackie Moon vs. Anchorman’s Ron Burgundy:

Burgundy is more officious, and Jackie Moon is a little more loosey-goosey. They’re similar in that they’re from the same era, and they think they’re very sexy. Jackie, yeah, of course. He’s hard to take your eyes off of. Ron is—I don’t know if Ron is that sexy, really.

On turning down a sequel to Elf:

I kept telling the studio, and obviously for them, it’s a total opportunity, you know, “Let’s make a sequel, da-da-da!” I don’t know what the sequel is. It’s like a fish-out-of-water story, and he’s now in the water. Where do you go? I go “Prove me wrong.” The script was kind of written, and I was like, “This makes no sense.” And I thought “The only way I could do this movie is to blatantly say, if I was promoting it, ‘I did it for the money. The movie is completely flawed, it doesn’t make sense as a premise. So yes, I did it for $29 million.’” Because otherwise, it would have been, “Buddy the Elf doesn’t fight for the kid, he’s kind of indoctrinated, but not really, and he’s still fascinated by an ATM!” It just didn’t work, so it was a very easy decision.

On Stranger Than Fiction:

That was actually freeing, to do a movie like that, where you could just be like we are right now, conversational and real. There was no impulse that I was fighting, to run around naked. But I also felt like that was such a strong piece of material, and with that cast, I just kind of plugged myself into that thing and followed everyone else.

On his rep at being a bad autographer:

God only knows, but it’s probably because I punched this 8-year-old kid in the face at the airport one day, and he wanted an autograph. What I love is that the poll was conducted by Autograph, and there’s even a quote in there, I think, that said: “It’s really a shame about Will Ferrell, he used to be great, and now he actually taunts autograph-seekers.” So I have no idea what I did, I don’t know how I got on the list. I sign a lot of autographs.