How This Iconic Will Ferrell Movie Has Influenced Comedy

Summary

• Anchorman placed Ferrell in a comedic spotlight, solidified by his unique characters and the insane cast dynamics.
• The film showcases self-aware characters with deep, absurd dialogue, setting a trend for infantile adult characters in film.
• The McKay-Ferrell partnership led to a wave of self-aware comedy movies, fostering the renaissance of oddball humor.

Let’s face it, Anchorman was kind of a big deal. It put a lot of great actors into absolutely preposterous roles and took what should have been an odd plot and made it completely insane. It was a testament to director Adam McKay and his partner-in-crime Will Ferrell.

The film was only Ferrell’s second credited writing role (after the forgettable Night at the Roxbury) but it put him firmly into the comedy zeitgeist. People wanted nothing more than to quote not just his character, but the insanely insane cast of complete misfits that somehow, through absolute kismet, fit together perfectly.

The Anchorman Team

Anchorman was the first full-length film collaboration between Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. The two had already created their website, Funny or Die which had put them firmly in the short-form comedy pantheon that Ferrell, having been on Saturday Night Live, was already a part of.

The film follows lead anchor Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) and his Channel 4 news team. They are all men, as the industry had not decided to bring women into the newsroom. This team includes:

• Champ Kind (Dave Koechner), the alcoholic and racist sports reporter who’s known for his “whammy!” catchphrase.
• Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), the team’s field reporter is lauded as quite the ladies’ man and whose impressive collection of awful cologne proves just how unsuccessful he is.
• Brick Tamland (Steve Carell), is a weatherman with diminished mental capacity and an inability to keep his continuous oddball thoughts to himself.

The four men are inseparable, their team having been together for years. They also dominate the airwaves. However, when the station hires reporter Veronica Corningstone (Chistina Applegate), the team loses their minds and vacillates between attempts at sabotaging her and trying to get her to have sex with them, all of which are to no avail. When Burgundy finds himself unable to be in the studio for the news, Corningstone is given a chance to prove herself, which she does to massive acclaim. The rest of the film follows Veronica’s attempts at sabotaging Ron, Ron’s quest to date her, and the team’s attempt to be the first to report on a Panda’s birth. It’s a strange and wild ride.

Overly Disruptive and Incredibly Self-Aware

One of Anchorman’s strangest parts is that its characters vacillate between being completely lucid and unaware. It is as if they are living in some alternate dimension where not only can they have very deep moments together, but those moments are invariably cut short by the most insane pieces of dialogue ever put to film. Consider this exchange:

Ron:
San Diego. Drink it in. It always goes down smooth. Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it San Diego, which, of course, in German, means “a whale’s vagina.”

Veronica:
No, there’s no way that’s correct.

Ron:
I’m sorry. I was trying to impress you. I don’t know what it means. I’ll be honest, I don’t think anyone knows what it means anymore. Scholars maintain that the translation was lost hundreds of years ago.

Veronica:
Doesn’t it mean “Saint Diego”?

Ron:
No. No.

Veronica:
No, that’s what it means.

Ron:
Well, agree to disagree.

This kind of pomposity and sureness in the face of stupidity and actors who take their lines seriously is a study in the pitch-perfect way such an asinine script works so well. Director Adam McKay summed it up:

“Will [Ferrell] saw an interview with a ’70s anchorman, talking about how sexist they were. And it was that tone of voice [that] he loved.”

It is that tone that weaves its way through the entire film, through every character and puts both the actors and audience in a strange meta-universe where everyone seems to think everyone else is a functioning adult when, in fact, none of them should even be wielding a blunted spoon.

Setting Major Trends

Though the film eventually spawned a sequel, its influence was felt more in the way people consumed comedy for the next 10 years. This was essentially due to the collaboration between Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. The two men seemed to have their concept of infantile adults ruling the world down pat. And it worked. The two would go on to make Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, the iconic Step Brothers, The Other Guys, and The Campaign. It was a nine-year renaissance that lasted from 2004-2013 and brought in many millions of dollars, as well as the increased fame of every actor involved.

The McKay-Ferrell partnership served as a springboard for so many professionals both behind and in front of the camera. It also gave more opportunities to directors like Judd Apatow and Paul Feig to take their oddball comedies to the next level.

This wave of movies, so undeniably self-aware, with directors and actors working at a level of combined writing and improvising that had never been seen before, was a new wave of comedy. It pulled from the strangeness of prior screwballs like Airplane! and The Cannonball Run and pulled off something nobody thought they’d see again: a return to the theater of just having fun. The actors look like they want to be there, the plentiful outtakes show that the directors are tossing in their two cents to help improve their stories, and even director commentaries are filled with amazing tidbits about just how fun these movies are to make. It was a different time.

Since then, we’ve seen many imitators, but we’ve not gotten back to that level of ingrained and sophisticated tomfoolery. It will happen again, but only when we get another push from a Ferrell-McKay-like team-up. It may take some time.