Will Ferrell & Cast Interview, Step Brothers

We do some parenting and chat with two very dysfunctional brothers! MoviesOnline caught up recently with Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, and Adam McKay at the Los Angeles press day to talk about their new film, “Step Brothers.” The trio teamed up last on the box-office smash “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.”

In “Step Brothers,” Ferrell plays Brennan Huff and Reilly plays Dale Doback, two ridiculously immature grown men who still live at home with their single parents. When Brennan’s mother, Nancy (Mary Steenburgen) marries and moves in with Dale’s father, Robert (Richard Jenkins), Brennan and Dale are forced to live under the same roof as step brothers. As their narcissism and downright laziness threaten to tear the “new” family apart, these two middle-aged slackers orchestrate an insane plan to bring their parents back together. To pull it off, they form an unlikely bond that finally might just get them out of the house.

Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly and Adam McKay are fabulous guys and we really appreciated their time. Here’s what they had to tell us about their new movie:

(Will brings in a big bowl of salad from the buffet table to the press conference.)

WILL FERRELL: If anyone feels hungry during this time, you can grab handfuls.

JOHN C. REILLY: If anyone needs flashbulbs, we have extras.

WILL FERRELL: It's my famous Kansas City Chopped Salad.

ADAM MCKAY: Do you want to announce the cookbook?

JOHN C. REILLY: We're excited about the movie.

WILL FERRELL: I've got a bigger announcement. I'm coming out with a cookbook, mostly on salads on Bantam Books. It's a terrible cookbook, actually.

MoviesOnline: Do you have siblings and what did you do to them when you were growing up?

JOHN C. REILLY: I do have brothers and sisters and a lot of things depicted in the movie are things that happened or I witnessed.

WILL FERRELL: The drum set, right?

JOHN C. REILLY: The drum set was one of them, yeah. Although I haven't talked to my brother yet about it (laughs). I have to get around to that.

WILL FERRELL: The incident (referring to the nutsack on the drum) didn't happen?

JOHN C. REILLY: No I was never caught but I was accused of nicking drumsticks. Things were touched when I wasn't there, but it never turned into the brawl in the front (yard) with the hose on us.

ADAM MCKAY: Will actually had a brother who had a beloved fish tank. He was accused of playing with it and messing with it and then he rubbed his nutsack on the fishtank. There's a little bit of truth to it.

WILL FERRELL: And on the fish.

MoviesOnline: WILL, AS ONE OF THE PRODUCERS, DID YOU FEEL YOU NEEDED TO SAVE MONEY BY ACTUALLY USING YOUR NUTSACK?

JOHN C. REILLY: The whole purpose of this question is so he (Paul Fischer) can say the words nut sack in a professional setting.

WILL FERRELL: It feels good to say it, doesn't it? We spared no expense. We
flew in…

ADAM MCKAY: …genitalia actors and experts There's a guy named Maddy Terroff who works out of Germany. We brought him in with his team.

JOHN C. REILLY: We said who’s the best nutman in the business?

WILL FERRELL: He's one of the world's best.

ADAM MCKAY: We spent $3.4 million on that nutsack and the nutsack team, body doubles, special lighting that catches hairs on testicles. That part of the movie took 8 days.

JOHN C. REILLY: That's who designed the ballsack. The guy who constructed it is a guy named Guiseppi Giordo who did the balls for Zorba the Greek and a lot of big classic movies. He did Rock Hudson in Giant, he did his balls for that one. He’s an old Hollywood craftsman kind of guy.

WILL FERRELL: It was fun because we saw the new and the old meet together. There were screen tests for the nutsack.

JOHN C. REILLY: I got up close to the nutsack that was used. It was a beautiful strawberry blond.

MoviesOnline: Was there a nutsack wrangler?

WILL FERRELL: He was part of the team.

ADAM MCKAY: A very aggressive gentleman who wouldn't let anyone within 10 yards of it.

WILL FERRELL: Ironically, that's my CB handle, nutsack wrangler.

JOHN C. REILLY: Remember how nervous people were around the dogs? We had to have the dogs on the set the same day as the nutsack. He was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, get that dog away from my nuts.”

ADAM MCKAY: We had two nutsacks, each at a cost of $400,000. One of the dogs ate one of them.

JOHN C. REILLY: They eventually passed. They were made out of silicon.

MoviesOnline: WHY DID WILL SING AND JOHN PLAY DRUMS? DID WILL REALLY SING THE SONG AT THE END?

WILL FERRELL: That's 100 percent my voice, thank you.

ADAM MCKAY: It's nice, they're so skeptical.

WILL FERRELL: It just kind of came out organically in the story even though John's probably the better singer in real life.

JOHN C. REILLY: Who's counting? You did a beautiful job with the song, Will. I watched you record a version in the studio, so I'm a witness that it was Will. Then we had playback music only and he performed it live on the set.

ADAM MCKAY: That's what's in the movie, that's him doing it live.

WILL FERRELL: For real.

MoviesOnline: JOHN, DO YOU ACTUALLY PLAY DRUMS?

JOHN C. REILLY: Only my brother's when he wasn't home. I learned to play the drums for a movie called "Georgia," years ago. And I've kept up with different musical endeavors. I can't play the drums as muscularly as Dale does.

MoviesOnline: DO YOU KNOW ANYONE LIKE THESE GUYS AND WHEN DID YOU LEAVE HOME?

WILL FERRELL: When did I leave? In terms of leaving I left home for college, and then I immediately moved back home, and lived at home for three years, so I guess that part is taken from my life. (He forgets the first part of question.)

(McKay and Reilly tick off several related questions.)

WILL FERRELL (cont.): I think kids should move out of the house when they feel ready. For some, that's a 5-year-old child, they're ready. For others it's a 52-year-old man.

JOHN C. REILLY: I have a 6-year-old who's got a part time job.

WILL FERRELL: And I have a Korean half-son who's 68-years-old and he is a real... It's tough to budge him, to wake him up.

JOHN C. REILLY: And you don't speak Korean.

WILL FERRELL: I don't speak Korean. He also suffers from sleep apnea so it’s very hard to wake him up.

ADAM MCKAY: We have a dead uncle who still lives with us. He never moved out. He's stopped being a burden but he still lives with us though. Parks himself in front of the TV.

MoviesOnline: IS THERE A REAL GUY THIS IS BASED ON?

WILL FERRELL: It's not a real guy. We had so much fun working on "Talladega Nights," the three of us, and we really kind of made a pact, a blood pact, to work on something else together, and I think it was John who was really the catalyst, who said let's really make a concerted effort. You work on films with people, you have fun experiences, and then you say let's do it again and it slips through your fingers, so we really made a point to sit down and meet. I think we had a couple of dinners where we threw out a bunch of different ideas and had some really good ones. And it was Adam who called both of us the next day, and said: “I just thought of this other thing. What if you guys are two 40-year-old guys who live with your single parent. They meet each other, get married and you're forced to be stepbrothers.” We both were like, well that's the idea. So.

ADAM MCKAY: Then we looked into it and found there's a real dynamic going on, that it's like the increase of adult children living at home has gone up drastically in the last 10 years. Oh my God, this is actually real. I think that it's since 1995 it has gone up 70 percent - adults living at home. So that made it a little bit more legitimate.

MoviesOnline: HOW PRECIOUS WAS THE SCREENPLAY AND HOW MUCH DID YOU AD-LIB?

WILL FERRELL. The three of us got together to kind of put the story together which was kind of arced all over the place, and then Adam and I kind of honed that into the actual working script. But, you know, it was the usual mix. Adam's one of the few directors where we do the take once and then we begin improvising whether we want to or not. It's unusual because most directors have you work on the scene until you have it down and then maybe you try an extra take, just for fun. We almost invert it and start exploring things...

JOHN C. REILLY: …that really shouldn't be explored.

WILL FERRELL: But it's great, you get in a rhythm of doing that so it's a combination of... we definitely like what we wrote and then we feel that anything we can discover is just icing on the cake.

JOHN C. REILLY: Sometimes you'll do films and they'll be like (meaning a note in the script) ‘you'll improvise something funny here.’ And you read the script and it's just a weakly written scene. The reason you want improv is because you didn't do the work, but these guys, the script is always really, really funny. It's kind of sad to move away from it because it's like, damn, this is so good.

ADAM MCKAY: A lot of it is written. Sometimes you do all this improv and then you end up back at the written scene.

WILL FERRELL: We improvise a lot in the writing process so even our written scenes have a back and forth feel that make it seem improvised.

MoviesOnline: DID YOU ACT IT OUT?

WILL FERRELL: When we write, we have a trunk of silly hats and wigs. We'll put them on and have a small troupe of actors that stay in a room and we'll call them in when we want to act out some scenarios.

ADAM MCKAY: We'll smoke some opium and get loose and comfortable with ourselves. Like the mime troupe in “Easy Rider.”

WILL FERRELL: There's still a lot of salad here. No one's touched it.

MoviesOnline: DO YOU FIND THE “R” RATING MORE LIBERATING?

ADAM MCKAY: We were just tired of doing the PG-13 jump through the hoops kind of thing. We just wanted to speak freely.

JOHN C. REILLY: And make swears. We wanted to be able to make swears.

ADAM MCKAY: We decided it was “R” even before the nutsack came into play.

JOHN C. REILLY: It wasn't like we were deliberately trying to be R-rated. We just didn't want to have constraints. We know how creative it gets when you start improvising and coming up with ideas. We just wanted to feel like it could be anything we wanted it to be.

ADAM MCKAY: Whether it was nutsacks...

WILL FERRELL: Or the word, "fuck," a lot.

MoviesOnline: DO ANY OF YOU HAVE ANYTHING FROM CHILDHOOD THAT YOU'VE KEPT THAT YOU WON'T PART WITH?

(They think about this deeply, but can't come up with anything.)

JOHN C. REILLY: You have a real stumper there!

WILL FERRELL (to Reilly): Don't you have a petrified bowl of macaroni-and-cheese?

JOHN C. REILLY: Uh-huh, with an arrowhead in it.

MoviesOnline: JOHN, YOU NEVER SAID WHEN YOU LEFT HOME?

JOHN C. REILLY: I was officially allowed to leave when I was 18. But I had a job when I was 12. I did. I had a part time job when I was 12 - illegally. I was a dishwasher at this restaurant and they would wait for me to finish [school]. It was-an Eastern European restaurant on the south side of Chicago, and they'd wait for me to get there so the entire day's dishes. I'd get there 3.30 - 4 o'clock after school and the whole kitchen would be full of dishes. I was like their little slave.

MoviesOnline: CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR FAVORITE T-SHIRTS IN THE MOVIE?

ADAM MCKAY: I have to give it up to our costume designer Susan Matheson. She went above and beyond. She just looked everywhere and came with hundreds of T-shirts and it became like this whittling down process, which almost got absurd. I would get called into her office every two days to take the number from 80 to 60 and then Will would go in and take the number from 60 to 50 and then John would look at his. I think more time was spent on the T-shirts than the actual production of the movie. It was a huge process. That was Susan Matheson just showing us every possibility.

JOHN C. REILLY: You want to do retro-seeming T-shirts, like these are the same T-shirts they've been wearing since that time. But the fashion now is to have old-looking T-shirts and we didn't want it to look hipster-ish. She ended up custom-making a lot of stuff. So those pajama bottoms for Will were made out of Star Wars sheets.

MoviesOnline: DID YOU FIGHT OVER ANY OF THE SHIRTS?

WILL FERRELL: I don't think so. There were ones that were like every scene couldn't be a T-shirt so there were probably some left out of the mix.

ADAM MCKAY: John wanted to be in his underwear at one point and there was a big debate. The tighty-whitey joke has been played out, it’s been done too many times, so Susan went and found the colored tighties which we decided had not been done, so you could get away with that.

WILL FERRELL: Pablo Cruise has seen one of the T-shirts in a trailer and wants to play at the premiere, which I know the studio is excited as kids love Pablo Cruise. It’s an event.

ADAM MCKAY: They're concerned about too many helicopters over the premiere party.

MoviesOnline: WHAT'S ON THE DVD?

ADAM MCKAY: We shot an extra sleepwalking scene where these guys jump in their cars and sleep-drive to a convenience store, and beat the crap out of a clerk in their sleep and eat all the food in the store. One of the favorite scenes we shot but it didn't work. What little story we had, it got in the way of. The movie was designed to not get in the way of the story but even that was too much. There's a lot of 'even that's too much' scenes. There's one that John did with Kathryn Hahn that I think might be the funniest scene we shot, but it just would not fit in the movie. John, I don't know if you want to tell them?

JOHN C. REILLY: The flying squirrel?

ADAM MCKAY: It's John being attacked by a flying squirrel.

JOHN C. REILLY: No. The last position was called "flying squirrel."

ADAM MCKAY: I thought you were lying. I was trying to back you.

JOHN C. REILLY: During the Christmas dinner when we learn at the end of the scene that the parents are going to break up, she writes on her plate ‘come outside with me right now’ or ‘meet me in the room,’ or ‘let's f now.’ We go into the other room and we're having sex right outside the doorway, like while they're continuing the scene and we keep falling into this two-way door. And I pretend like I'm helping her with her back. It escalated to the point where she was spread-eagled with her legs out and we fell over and I claimed to be doing a yoga pose with her.

MoviesOnline: WILL THERE BE A REPRISAL OF THE GREEN TEAM (SOMETHING RELATED TO WILL'S WEBSITE FUNNY OR DIE)?

ADAM MCKAY: Let's address the green team question because it's the most important. We are going to do another green team at some point but we haven't had time. There will be plenty more.

MoviesOnline: IS THAT A FUTURE FILM?

ADAM MCKAY: Why not? We’ll get that going. We’ll pitch it:  sadistic environmentalists who go around beating people up. It’s very sellable.

JOHN C. REILLY: I want to ride a killer whale in it. With a trident.

ADAM MCKAY: FunnyorDie came about when we were approached separately, Will and I, by a group from up north that wanted to do a comedy website. We just figured it would be a fun way to do sketches like we used to do on SNL and have a place for our friends to goof around and stuff. Reilly liked to play with John so he came and did a couple of funny videos with us.

MoviesOnline: WHERE UP NORTH?

ADAM MCKAY: Palo Alto. Silicon Valley. HBO just bought into the company and now we're going to do a lot of joint productions with them and we'll have FunnyorDie shows on there and we use their material on our site. It's pretty exciting.

MoviesOnline: WHAT DOES JUDD APATOW ADD AS A PRODUCER?

ADAM MCKAY: Judd's a producer on the movie, him and Jimmy Miller are the producers. We've known Judd for a long time.

WILL FERRELL: It's a carry over from working with Judd on "Anchorman" and we had a positive experience with them and then “Talladega Nights.” Judd obviously helps us with his notes but this isn't a Judd Apatow movie per se, it's more our thing.

ADAM MCKAY: He's been a producer on all three of our movies but we have our own style. If you look at his movies they're nothing like ours. We tend to be more aggressive, a little larger and a little more absurd than he is. At the same time, he's such a fan of comedy, he's able to give notes on absurd large comedy as well. He loves comedy. He's a great producer. He and Jimmy Miller have known each other for a long time and help us out a lot. You can tell, it's not “Knocked Up.”

MoviesOnline: WHAT WAS IT LIKE WORKING WITH MARY STEENBURGEN AND RICHARD JENKINS? DID YOU BOND AROUND THE DINNERTABLE?

JOHN C. REILLY: Talk about a family bond, I was sitting with Richard and he's from the Chicago area like I am. I mentioned to him that my dad was in the linen business and he went, "The linen business?" And we were almost done with the movie at that point. He's like “What's your dad's name? John Reilly? I worked for your father!!” We had this crazy moment where we realized he met me when I was 4 years old. He helped my dad put his boat into some lake in Wisconsin. He worked for him for a summer. Mary was just a delight. Anytime you get to hang out with Mary Steenburgen…

ADAM MCKAY: She's so cool because she's not what you think she's going to be. She seems so sweet.

JOHN C. REILLY: I knew Mary from "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," too.

ADAM MCKAY: She's got a salty mouth. That’s the first surprising thing. She curses nonstop. She's like “Oh, I have seven tattoos.” And you realize she's covered in tattoos.

JOHN C. REILLY: A lot of makeup.

ADAM MCKAY: A lot of makeup, pancake makeup, and she always keeps a little hip flask at all times. She's much different than you think. She has a problem with other women. She's like, get that bitch outta here! She's a handful.

WILL FERRELL: She’s a lovable handful.

JOHN C. REILLY: Those guys were really good sports about the improv. Neither of them had as much experience as us with tossing out...

WILL FERRELL: And I think it gives the whole premise validity that you have two great actors like that who are basically putting up with our shenanigans, yet being vulnerable about the fact that they can't quite let go of these kids.

ADAM MCKAY: It's really kind of their movie if you look at it. There really is a love story of these two people who just want to be together and these guys just won't let it happen the entire time. It's their story in the end. They learn to accept it. Richard Jenkins blew us away. Mary's amazing.

MoviesOnline: DO YOU HAVE ANY THOUGHTS OR INSIGHTS INTO THE ACTORS STRIKE?

JOHN C. REILLY: We have breaking news. I wrote it on the back of this Zantac.

WILL FERRELL: Nobody wants to strike again. It's coming down to a lot of the same issues that all the other unions have dealt with and it's the same story of everyone wants just what's fair from both sides and that's obviously a compromise. I don't have any further insight.

ADAM MCKAY: It's going to come down to what style of strike, and I've heard it's going to be 1920's ax handles. They're going back to a lot of violence.

JOHN C. REILLY: The Pinkertons, who've gone out of business, they're restarting the company just for the strike.

MoviesOnline: WHAT’S IT LIKE HAVE THOSE KIDS BEATING YOU UP?

WILL FERRELL: Humiliating.

JOHN C. REILLY: They have sharp little nails. They're heavier than they look.

WILL FERRELL: They're not afraid to bite you when the camera’s not rolling.

MoviesOnline: ADAM, YOU SAID "ANCHORMAN" WAS YOUR “UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG," WHAT'S THIS?

ADAM MCKAY: This is our "Phantom of Liberty."

JOHN C. REILLY: "Wages of Fear?"

ADAM MCKAY: This is our "Woman Under the Influence."

MoviesOnline: WHAT’S NEXT? WILL THERE BE AN "ANCHORMAN 2?"

ADAM MCKAY: Yeah. I'm going to do another movie first, but we're going to do "Anchorman 2" in a year and a half or two years.

JOHN C. REILLY: "Anchorman 2 and 3" you're going to film at the same time.

WILL FERRELL: In New Zealand.

JOHN C. REILLY: Peter Jackson's co-directing it.

MoviesOnline: Why use a Spanish song at the end?

(They debate on whether the song is Italian or Spanish.)

WILL FERRELL: It wasn't so much a conscious choice to select a Spanish song as it was to sing opera. It comes down to what's an opera song that everyone kind of hears and laughs when they hear it, and it's a pretty recognizable tune. That's basically what informed the decision. It was pretty hard to get down.

MoviesOnline: JOHN AND WILL, WHEN DO YOU GUYS ANTICIPATE YOU MIGHT WORK TOGETHER AGAIN?

JOHN C. REILLY: Well we have a long road of promotion ahead of us so we’ll be working together all summer.

WILL FERRELL: Outside of Circus for the Stars that we’re doing and the trapeze act that we’ve put together – we’re not good, we’re not going to lie to you, I’ve dropped John four times – no, we don't have any immediate plans.

ADAM MCKAY: The first one, "Talladega Nights," was such a joy. This one a little reality set in. (laughter)

MoviesOnline: DID YOU GET HURT DURING THE FIGHT SCENES?

WILL FERRELL: We got pretty banged up. That fight in the front yard was all done within the first two weeks of filming. It was just two weeks of straight fighting to start the movie which we’ve never done.

JOHN C. REILLY: Getting buried alive, fighting. It was all fun. And getting bit by dogs.

WILL FERRELL: Attack dogs. It was pretty physical.

MoviesOnline: HOW DID THE BOATS AND HOS VIDEO COME ABOUT?

JOHN C. REILLY: Two great things that go great together.

WILL FERRELL: Two status symbols. That was Adam that came up with that, I think.

ADAM MCKAY: They had the Prestige and we needed a rap and the dad had a boat.

JOHN C. REILLY: We found some ladies at the Marina to stand behind us with the most expensive bottle of white wine we could afford.

WILL FERRELL: It's the perfect example of what they think would sell or be a good idea.

JOHN C. REILLY: A lot of the stuff in the movie is all about contrasts. Mary Steenburgen is a perfect example. One of the most graceful, witty, lovely people. She had the best manners. She’s the kind of person that writes thank you notes. You know, the kind of person I wish I was. But then you get her to say a swear word and all of a sudden it's really funny. When we were deciding what their first video would be like, it had to be something that would make their parents go oh God! It was about picking something that was as inappropriate as possible.

ADAM MCKAY: They have no idea what real entertainment should be. They have such a vague notion of it. We wanted it to be way too dirty so we could get Mary to say, “That is offensive.” The whole scene was built to have her say “That is offensive.”

MoviesOnline: WILL, WHAT WAS IT LIKE WORKING ON “LAND OF THE LOST” AND DO YOU THINK IT DID JUSTICE TO THE BOOK BY SID AND MARTY KROFFT?

WILL FERRELL: I hope we did. They were on set every single day to make sure. We had a great time on the film. I think it's a great blend of paying homage to the show mixed with being a different genre, this kind of adventure comedy where we use the adventure to set up the comedy, and we were able to comment on these situations that you'd love to see characters comment on.

JOHN C. REILLY: The thing about “Land of the Lost” was...

WILL FERRELL: Wait! You weren't in it!

JOHN C. REILLY: Sorry! That was you. Can I just say, Slestack?

MoviesOnline: WHAT WERE THE SPECIAL EFFECTS LIKE ON “LAND OF THE LOST”?

WILL FERRELL: We didn't go. We did Claymation. Remember “Davey and Goliath,” the old animated show for kids? A lot of tin foil. I would sculpt dinosaur models out of tinfoil. So Universal's pissed right now to be honest. They don't like what they're seeing.

MoviesOnline: HOW COMFORTABLE WERE YOU WORKING IN THAT PARTICULAR KIND OF ENVIRONMENT?

WILL FERRELL: It was a lot of new stuff for me. Like anything else, you just learn to adapt. Luckily we built these amazing, beautiful sets so we didn't have to imagine every single thing that you would in a movie that just CG's everything. We had these amazing sets that we got to play around in. It was fun. I liked doing all the stunts and stuff.

MoviesOnline: JOHN, HOW DID THE TOUR FOR “DEWEY COX” GO?

JOHN C. REILLY: The tour went great.

MoviesOnline: ARE YOU GOING TO SING AGAIN (ON FILM)?

JOHN C. REILLY: I hope so.

”Step Brothers” opens in theaters nationwide on July 25, 2008.