By Chris Ryall
September 1, 2003
Dropping Anchor: Wherein Chris Ryall visits the set of Will Ferrell's upcoming ANCHORMAN and then checks out an Askew-less Jason Mewes in new DVD release R.S.V.P.
Anchorman
Ron Burgundy is the best anchor of his day. His day is the mid-`70s, a time period that has seen a rise in the feminist movement. This has resulted in Ron Burgundy being joined by ambitious anchorwoman Veronica Corningstone. Ron is okay with this, see, as long as Veronica sticks to her "woman's work," covering cat fashion shows or cooking segments (basically, everything Ron would never cover. That role in Los Angeles seems to be played by Warren Wilson on WB's 10:00 news, but there's someone in every city who gets the undesirable assignments). Veronica, a product of her day, refuses to just sit back and look pretty and cover the fluff. Which, of course, means war.
Ron Burgundy is actually former SNL player and future ELF, Will Ferrell, and Veronica is former Kelly Bundy, Christina Applegate. And this whole scenario is the set-up for ANCHORMAN, a movie Ferrell co-wrote with a member of the comedy troupe Upright Citizen's Brigade. Surrounding the two leads is a pretty solid cast of players, too: THE DAILY SHOW's Steve Carrell, SNL's Chris Parnell, Fred Willard and Vince Vaughn as Wes Mantooth, a competing network's lead anchor. It's also got Kevin Corrigan, Chuck D and Maya Rudolph as members of the radical underground group The Alarm Clock, which becomes the big news story of the day.
DreamWorks invited some of us to visit the set of the movie up in Glendale last week (no pics of the cast in their period attire was allowed).
Upon being brought in, we were told that DreamWorks is no longer saying this movie is set in the mid-`70s. They don't want people to fixate on the sets and the clothing and hairstyles (although all are pretty funny) as much as they just want people to know that the movie takes place sometime in between 1960 and 1980. You know, that period of time when guys were allowed to be sexist pigs and slap girls on the butt for a job well done and smoke and drink off-camera. The movie is basically one clueless, sexist guy's response to the onslaught of feminism. Although, since it's Will Ferrell we're talking about, that's entirely too serious a description.
I talked a bit to Kevin Rubio, a nice guy who's written a few STAR WARS stories for Dark Horse Comics. Also in attendance were folks from EW and E! Online and Greg from Greg's Previews at Yahoo! Movies; also, our own Michael Dequina and a few others who I'm blanking on. The set was built inside a huge old furniture warehouse. We were brought through to one side, where the office sets were built. Across the way, where the first scene we saw was being shot, was the newsroom. We met Shauna Weinberg, one of the executive producers on the movie. The scene we were going to watch on the monitors, she explained, was a kind of showdown between Farrell's character and the station manager Ed Harken, played by Fred Willard. Ferrell's character ran afoul of Christina Applegate's, and she tricked him into reading something on-air that results in him getting axed. See, Ron Burgundy is a great newsman when it comes to sounding believable off a teleprompter, but he has no clue what he's actually reading. He just knows inflection and intonation, so when she sabotages him and he reads...well, something that's too funny to spoil here, Willard's character goes to fire him.
They ran through the scene two or three times as it was written, and that's where the real fun started. Ferrell and Willard improvised the scene in numerous ways, each one funnier than the last. If there's ever two people you'd like to watch improv a scene, it's these two. A lot of the cast has been improving the entire movie, Shauna told us. So much so, in fact, that there's talk of releasing (as a joke) a 7-1/2-hour "director's cut" version of the movie on the DVD, just so they can include all this footage.
After the scene wrapped, Fred Willard came over to talk to us. His character, he explained, is a bit of a jackass, but slighly less of a jackass than Burgundy and his news team [made of people named Brick Tamland (Steve Carrell), Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) and Champ Kind (David Koechneer)]. He talked a bit about working off a script and then improvising a scene versus BEST IN SHOW and other Chris Guest movies, where he works completely improvisational, working off nothing more than an outline. We got him to talk a bit more about BEST IN SHOW, where he admitted that he watched a lot of tape of Joe Garagiola annoucing dog shows. Garagiola's tendencies to say things like "people are leaving like the concessionaires are selling fire" inspired him to come up with his own non-sequitors ("he jumped on that other dog like she was made of ham," "how much do you think I can bench-press?"). He also raved about working wth Ferrell, saying he's rarely worked with anyone as gracious and friendly as he.
 |
 |
We checked out the news desk after the scene wrapped (um, yay?) and waited for the next scene, a boardroom scene where Christina Applegate's character was being introduced to the news team for the first time.
Before that, we talked a bit with Ferrell and (first-time) director Adam McKay. McKay is also the co-writer, with Ferrell, on this movie -- the two had worked together for years on SNL. Without quoting the guys, it's pretty impossible to give a fair estimation of the banter, but Ferrell was very funny, very deadpan and quick-witted. The two seemed very comfortable together, and they sounded like they were having a great time on the movie. From everything down to figuring out the most ridiculously "macho" names for the news team (as mentioned, Brick, Champ, Ron Burgundy and Burgundy's chief competitor, Wes Mantooth, played by Vince Vaughn) to just making Ferrell's character as clueless as possible, the thing plays like an extended SNL skit that actually could sustain itself over 90 minutes, unlike a lot of actual SNL movies.
In talking to Steve Carrell (who you might know from BRUCE ALMIGHTY but hopefully you also recognize from THE DAILY SHOW, maybe the best-written show on TV these days), he also raved about Farrell. I know on sets like these, everyone has nice things to say about everyone (keep in mind that I've never been on a set with Cybill Shepherd), but everyone seemed very genuine in their like and admiration for Ferrell. Which is nice to see--a seemingly nice, likable guy might actually live up to the hype off-camera, too.
 |
 |
There was an afternoon scene with Christina Applegate, too, but I had to leave before that point. Still, getting the chance to see Ferrell and Willard do their thing was enough to hook me on the idea of this movie, and the rest of the cast only strengthens that. The movie's due next year, although there's no announced release date yet. But from all indications, this, and November's ELF, will continue Ferrell's successful post-SNL career. As a fan, that's just nice to see. Chris Kattan, it's your tur...well, never mind.
R.S.V.P.
R.S.V.P. (a.k.a. STICKS AND STONES) is a fun little thriller that I only watched because of Jason Mewes's participation in it. I mean, being honest, I can admit that I probably would not have taken the time to watch what
It starts out looking like any other pedestrian serial killer flick -- a killer with a razor breaks into an apartment, kills the couple within (complete with a cutaway to blood splashing across a fan, a serial killer movie staple) and then scrawls a nonsensical message on the wall in blood.
Of course, this is all set-up -- this murderer is the topic of discussion in a college course about same. A couple students, Jim and Nick (Daniel Joseph and Rick Otto) discuss the killer's methods, and whether or not "thrill-killing" is more impressive for the killer's ability to evade capture or for the style of the murders themselves. The discussion carries out into the campus courtyard. Nick seems just a bit too into it -- we soon see that he's a real sociopath with barely a handle on his murderous impulses. He's a spiritual cousin to AMERICAN PSYCHO's Patrick Bateman. They join up with a few other friends on campus, including Jordan, a girl Nick and Jim are both interested in. They're all a-buzz about the big blow-out party Nick's throwing at his rich uncle's house.
The conversation carries on further as they join their professor, Hal Evans (Glenn Quinn, from the first season of ANGEL) at a bar and discuss proper serial killing targets--homeless people and prostitues are too easy, they say. But enough for now--it's time to party.
Nick is setting the house for the party when the first guest stops in...they call him "Terry" but you won't see anything but "Jay" when he walks in. And the filmmakers pretty much play him as "Jay" -- he's the group's stoner friend, he of the big baggie of weed and witticisms. Which isn't challenging to the guy by any means, especially after he showed a lot of growth in JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK. On the other hand, even if the dialogue isn't quite to the level you're used to hearing him speak in films, it's fun to see Mewes back on camera and doing his thing. Kevin's recent announcement that he's got a part for Jason in RANGER DANGER should come as good news to anyone who'd like to see a bit more from the guy.
The party begins in earnest, with a good dozen guests arriving (among them veteran character actors Jonathan "WISEGUY" Banks and Grace Zabriskie. As the attendees get more and more inebriated and start to spread out throughout the house, Nick fights off his urges with less and less success. The guy really needs to kill some people.
And so, he does. See ya, veteran character actors.
The other guests don't suspect anything yet. Jim never quite makes it to the party for some reason (the reason being his rival for Jordan's affection, Nick, saw to it that Jim won't be at any more parties). The talk turns back to killing (well, bull-fighting, anyway), and whether or not killing done neatly and artistically can be considered art. Nick, as one might expect, has strong opinions on the subject. The act of killing, he says, is addictive. Speaking of which, Nick hasn't killed anyone in a few minutes--time to fix that.
The movie progresses like this for a while--Nick finding ways to manipulate his guests and separate them and knock them off one at a time. And the guests, mostly stupid and self-involved, play right into his hands.
The movie, which first debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002, has been described as a playful Hitchcockian romp, but it really feels really more like an Agatha Christie flick. The killings are all bloodless not overly violent.
Professor Hal turns the conversation back to serial killing again -- these guys seem very dis-interested in getting laid -- and the infamy that serial killers acheive. Talking about killing seems to polarize party-goers, it seems, so a fight breaks out. Hal seems to be feeding into Nick's psychosis and maniuplating him as much as Nick things he's doing the same to the party-goers.
From there...well, I'd love to tell you more, but I can't -- the disc stopped working. I made it through 17 of the film's 23 selections (according to the disc menu's Scene Index), so I have no idea if the killings continued, if the surviving friends found out they were getting picked off, if the professor helped Nick bump off these annoying people, if Jay, er, Terry, took another hit off his 3-foot bong. I'm assuming all these things, but...well, I suppose at least the faulty disc keeps me from spoiling the ending.
Up to that point, anyway, the movie was holding my attention, if not too vigorously. It was mostly a matter of wanting to see if Mewes was given more to do than be the slacker stoner, and it hadn't appeared so up to this point. Maybe he saved everyone at the end, I dunno.
If you, like me, plan to watch this only to see Mewes, know that he's not a huge part of the movie, but he's there enough to make you want to throw in a movie with Jay and Bob, anyway. Hopefully we see more of him soon.
In the deleted scenes with commentary from the director, Mark Anthony Galluzzo, he admits what I couldn't get to with this damaged disc (incidentally, this was a check disc sent from Lion's Gate, so if you plan to buy it, don't worry about the quality of the disc--this happens with review discs from all companies from time to time), that is that Hal is a killer himself who is toying with Nick, getting him to act as his protege and challenging him to come up with murders of quality and quantity. The commentary on these scenes goes on to fill in the ending for me, too, but I'll stick with not spoiling the ending for anyone.
There is also three commentary tracks on the disc, (none of them are from Mewes) and a behind-the-scenes bit on the movie's set-up.
Lion's Gate's R.S.V.P. is available now--you can buy R.S.V.P. here, among other places.
Hunted Donuts
Just a quick note about HUNTED DOWN, our Tuesday comic strip that's run here the last few months. As you might have noticed, and many of you have e-mailed me about...it's pretty much come to a standstill. None of us like leaving you hanging on a storyline, especially on an adventure strip like this one, but sometimes, it just can't be helped.
Greg Waller, the creator/writer/colorist, has one of those "good" problems to have, in that he's just gotten too busy to be able to finish it right now. Greg and his Nimbus Studios have gotten a lot more professional (read: paying) comics jobs, including his current high-profile stint on FRANK MILLER'S ROBOCOP book from Avatar. In fact, Greg's the first person other than Frank's wife Lynn Varley to color over his art in over a decade.
Greg said he really wants to finish this story, and we all want that, too, but with the work and a new wife, well, something had to give (and if it was the paying gig, the chances of his wife giving decrease exponentially). So the slot is always open to Greg if he and his crew have time to finish the strip, but in the meantime, just so you know, the good guys win!
Also, taking over that now-vacated Tuesday slot will be a strip called BROKEN DONUTS by cartoonist Sal Cipriano. DONUTS is nothing like HUNTED -- it's more a slice of urban life in New York as a group of average guys tries to score with above-average women. Rumors that the strip is partially autobiographical are, well, completely true.
If there's every any constant with a Web site, it's change, so while I hate to see HUNTED go on hiatus, it's nice to have someone like Sal to take over that spot. DONUTS debuts here on Tuesday, September 9, and we're all interested in what you think, so, as with anything here, you're invited to drop a line and tell us what you think. Meanwhile, MONKEY MAN's Brian Lynch, despite other comics work and screenplay gigs, continues to give us that strip pretty much every week since we started this well over a year ago, as well as PATCHOULI BAZAAR on Fridays for the summer. A new strip is up today, in fact, so support your local Brian Lynch--not only has he been consistent as hell, but funny as hell, too. As always, thanks for your patronage and Happy Labor Day.
Next Week: VARIETY's 10 Actors to Watch party at White Lotus in L.A.; also, Sesame Street Sings!
/chris
E-MAIL THE AUTHOR |
ARCHIVES
