Will Ferrell Land of the Lost Interview

Coming along with him for the adventure are crack-smart research assistant Holly (Anna Friel) and a redneck souvenirist (Danny McBride) named Will. Chased by T. rex and stalked by painfully slow reptiles known as Sleestak, Marshall, Will and Holly must rely on their only ally--a primate called Chaka (Jorma Taccone)--to navigate out of the hybrid dimension. Escape from this routine expedition gone awry and they're heroes. Get stuck and they'll be permanent refugees in the Land of the Lost.

Based on the classic television series created by Sid & Marty Krofft, Land of the Lost is directed by Brad Silberling and produced by Jimmy Miller and Sid & Marty Krofft.

Will Ferrell is terrific in Land of the Lost and we really appreciated his time. Here’s what he had to tell us about his new movie:

Q: How did it feel to invent and sing the theme song for the movie?

WILL FERRELL: That was actually a pretty cool moment for me having been such a fan of the show as a kid. We also shot a really great teaser trailer that they never used where it was just me in silhouette, black, playing the beginnings of the song and then saying, “That’s all I got.” And then, “Go see Land of the Lost.” Yeah, it was fun. It was also fun to actually play a banjo for whatever the three chords I had to learn to do that. I thought that was a really smart kind of way to pay homage to the theme song by the fact that he’s trying to make amends with the group with this stupid song he’d figured out while he was sad by himself. So I love that scene.

Q: How much input did you have in the script because a lot has changed from the show with Holly and Will? Also, part of the fun of the show was the bad special effects. Did you ever discuss doing maybe one bad effect as homage to the show?

WILL FERRELL: One meaning where it’s terrible? No, we knew the Sleestaks would be slow, we would maintain that, but for the most part the decision was made early on to make the effects part be updated and a cool thing as opposed to a kitschy thing, and along with getting to build all the sets and everything, that was really a neat aspect that they decided to add in. But, yeah, there was a decision early on to make that be the great part and then have the comedy bounce off of that.

Q: What about the changing of the characters?

WILL FERRELL: For whatever reason, we just thought it would give us a better platform for the comedy. Instead of having my character saddled with these two kids, it just seemed like it was more opportunity to have Will be the character that Danny brought to life, and to have a little bit of a potential love interest, and that sort of thing. We just thought we’d mix it up.

Q: How was it working with Brad Silberling?

WILL FERRELL: It was great. I’ve known Brad in passing for a long time. In fact, I did this movie The Suburbans with Amy Brenneman, his wife, a long time ago, and it was really fun to get to know him on a professional level and get to work with him. I’ve been a fan of his work and, when we were meeting with potential directors, he immediately set himself above everyone in a way just because he was like, “You know, whether you hire me or not, you should use these two stages at Universal (studio) because they are the biggest.” He had so much knowledge about how to shoot this film, and he was so willing to like, “If I don’t get the job, that’s fine, but here are the things you should probably do to make sure you do it the right way.” We were so impressed by just how he had the whole thing laid out, because we were kind of looking at maybe some more comedy guys who didn’t necessarily have a handle on a movie of this scope and, in the end, I think we made the best decision, because Brad obviously was okay with anything we wanted to throw in comedically. He’s got, I think, a better sense of humor than he gets credit for, for the types of movies he’s done, so it was a great marriage actually. Plus he was able to attract someone like Dion Beebe and Bo Welch to do the production, so he put together this team of amazing people that I think another director might not have been able to do.

Q: Was it difficult for you guys to get the comedy to come with this much CGI?

WILL FERRELL: It was hard at times, yeah, because you’re obviously running from point A to point B. It’s something that I wasn’t used to and I find in watching the movie you kind of see moments after the fact. We’re like, “Oh, we could have made a joke maybe here,” or something like that, so that was a little difficult, but for the most part the script was pretty well set going into that.

Q: The humor is pretty edgy. How young an audience do you anticipate this is for?

WILL FERRELL: I don’t know. We obviously didn’t want it to be kind of a Disney film in a way. We wanted the humor to be cool and kind of pushing that PG-13, or fulfilling that PG-13 thing, but kids are pretty sophisticated. I’m going to say I think this movie’s appropriate for six years and above.

Q: Six-year-olds know about tapping ass?

WILL FERRELL: Yeah, sure, bring your six-year-old. No, probably a sophisticated eleven-year-old, ten-year-old, that sort of thing. That’s when I’m proud about this movie in the sense that it is a more family movie than I’ve done in awhile and yet I feel like it’s still got some original, sophisticated jokes that you’re not going to find in a movie in a similar kind of vein.

Q: It’s been so long since anyone has done Polish jokes. Have they come back around?

WILL FERRELL: Yeah, probably.

Q: Are you expecting any kind of blow back from the Polish community?

WILL FERRELL: I would be flattered if there was. Yeah. I know, it’s so funny. It made us laugh, the fact of reintroducing that in it, and especially that Rick Marshall would use that as a reference. It’s like in his nerdy mind it would be like, “It’s a pretty funny reference, right?” But that’s funny that you’d pick that out.

Q: Was Chaka’s grabbing Holly’s breast in the script?

WILL FERRELL: No, no, that was always in the script that he kind of quickly figured out that oh, is this the way you communicate with women, by grabbing their breasts? He’s kind of sly and a little touchy feely. No, we just thought from the TV show, not that it’s really a reference for the majority of the audience probably, but we just thought that would be a funny place for Chaka to go. But then Jorma did such a great job. When I first meet him and he steals my wallet, he kind of came up with a lot of like – [he] just started touching me everywhere he could, so he was kind of adding all that too and it was really funny to play off of, like Rick thinking, “Oh, he’s just saying hello,” and not really knowing what is this guy doing? So, yeah, some of that was added by Jorma.

Q: As a kid, you either loved or hated Chaka. I loved your remark about wanting to eat him. Did you not like him as a kid?

WILL FERRELL: No, actually I think I was pretty enamored with the fact that this early man-creature became friends with the kids in the show, even though I remember thinking, “God, he looks freaky.” But no, I think I liked him. I think I liked him fine.

Q: Had you thought about the number of direct references from the original series that you wanted to make? Was there room for a Bill Laimbeer (played a Sleestak on TV series) cameo at some point?

WILL FERRELL: (laughs) Yeah, that would have been a really deep undercover reference, yeah. Bill Laimbeer and there was another guy who played at UCLA who was a Sleestak too. The story is Laimbeer and this other kid at UCLA were like college players and this was like a summer job for them to walk around in Sleestak outfits. No, that would have been good.

Q: Was there too much ‘inside baseball’? Were you like, “This is too much of a reference that only Gen X audiences will get?”

WILL FERRELL: The only other references I think we had were the original Will and Holly meeting us at the end of the movie, which there’s a whole part where we return back to the La Brea Tar Pits, but that ended up getting cut for time. So that was going to be a little homage to them.

Q: Did you film it?

WILL FERRELL: We did, yeah, and outside of getting Sid and Marty in a Sleestak outfit or something like that, or having them just walk through the background shot, I don’t know if we had any other obscure ones that we decided not to do.

Q: Was there always going to be Matt Lauer?

WILL FERRELL: You know what, I’m trying to think, I’m trying to think if that was in the first draft or if that was something that came around in rewrites that I would kind of be on a talk show. It might not have been, because originally – you know what, I think in the original draft that I was on like a Charlie Rose with a panel of like Al Gore, Stephen Hawking and myself. And Hawking starts to go after me and discredit me and then we get in this fight where I actually try to lunge at Stephen Hawking, which is really funny, great idea on paper, and then you start to make the phone calls and people are like, “No, we don’t want to. We’re unavailable.” So then it became well, maybe there’s a better [way] – and then that became a really easy Today Show, and they were really up for it, and Matt was totally game, so that became the plan B which worked  beautifully, so much so that we went back. Going back on the show is actually a re-shoot. We added that because the front part worked so great, and he was game. I think he got such a kick out of it when we ran the spot during the Super Bowl, and so, yeah, I think now he’s already getting people on the street going, “Hey, suck it!” which is like a badge of honor for him.

Q: Was the scene adlibbed where he was interviewing you?

WILL FERRELL: The first scene, no, there were a couple of little moments, but for the most part it was scripted. But we were so impressed because, as you see in the movie, he’s so at ease at snapping into being himself, which a lot of people, and it sounds like a silly thing to say, but “just do what you normally do,” a lot of times people get stiff and they start to act and he was so real. And when I did little things like I keep showing him my book, he’s like, “Stop it, okay?” He would just throw those things in, but the ending scene where he tackles me, he said, “You know what? Let’s do one more take,” and then he just did that, which was great, and I’m trying not to laugh because I am so surprised that he’s like tackling me. That was brilliant, that was great. He totally faked us out, he’s like, “I think I messed up that line,” and the next thing I know he just tackled me. So it was really fun to kind of see him take advantage of that.

Q: Jody Hill says there’s going to be a second season of Eastbound & Down. Are you going to come back? Is your character going to show up again for Season 2?

WILL FERRELL: I would love to, but it’s up to the guys. I think the direction they’re talking about going with the second season, which I don’t want to spoil, is something that wouldn’t lend itself to my character reappearing.

Q: Could you do someone else with a different wig?

WILL FERRELL: I could, maybe I could just become – I would be up for that too, especially where they’re planning on going with the show. Yeah, they’ll probably start, hopefully, those guys are busy up until probably next year, January, February, when we’ll start filming, and then put it out again in the spring.

Q: You shot the first season of Eastbound after Land of the Lost, right?

WILL FERRELL: Yes.

Q: Did working with Danny so closely on Land of the Lost influence how you guys worked and your chemistry on Eastbound?

WILL FERRELL: It definitely made it so much more comfortable for sure. I think we had already had the talks with them as producers about Eastbound before Land of the Lost, before Danny got cast, so that was already, oddly enough, in the works. But yeah, obviously having spent three, four months together, it made it great just to show up in North Carolina and we got to play around. Danny, Jody and Ben and the crew they have are just a bunch of funny, smart guys, and it was great to go down there and see because they employed a lot of the guys they had worked with at the School of the Arts in North Carolina, so a lot of their crew and everyone else, it was a real family affair, and I think it shows in the series.

Q: Is there a specific person you based Ashley Schaeffer on?

WILL FERRELL: They wanted him to look like Ric Flair, the wrestler from Atlanta, the Mouth of the South, so I kind of used that guy as the basis.

Q: You’ve done George W. Bush for so many years, has President Obama done anything that strikes you as funny yet?

WILL FERRELL: I’ve kind of retired from even observing him in that way. Ever since I left the show, I don’t really look at political people in that same way that I did, like, “Oh, there’s something there I could do.” So, I don’t even know. I don’t think I’ve even observed him from a comedic thing, but I would have to say not really, because if you notice, they haven’t quite found the hook with him. On a show like Saturday Night Live, they don’t really go to doing Obama sketches necessarily, so I don’t know if it’s all the stuff he’s got to deal with is just not a funny thing to comment on, or if it’s him as a character, if there’s not that much really to play off of, I’m not sure.

Q: What was it like being on Man vs. Wild?

WILL FERRELL: It was crazy. It was fun but it was one of those things that I knew I would be out there going, “Why did I do this?” mixed with at the same time I couldn’t resist. I couldn’t say no to it. We were forty miles north of the Arctic Circle in like northern Sweden, just in the middle of nowhere, making snow shoes out of birch branches and eating reindeer eyeballs and things like that. So, it was pretty intense.

Q: How long were you there?

WILL FERRELL: It was forty-eight hours. They scaled it back for me because he’s usually out there an entire week, or five days, but they made it really safe for me. I think they made sure that I had a few more of the creature comforts that I don’t think he gets.

Q: Such as?

WILL FERRELL: Such as warm clothes, come over here and you can warm your hands, like a tent, like a base camp, things like that.

Q: Who made that pitch? How did that come together?

WILL FERRELL: You know, as far as I know, I think my manager, who also represents Sacha Baron Cohen, is friends with the London manager who represents Sacha, who also represents Bear Grylls, and they were having lunch in London one day talking about various things and a guy goes, “By the way, Bear Grylls is a huge Will Ferrell fan. Would he ever want to come on the show?” And Jimmy, who I work with and happens to be a huge Man vs. Wild show [fan] was like, “That is a great idea. Let me talk to him.” So then he pitched it to me, and I hadn’t see a lot of them so I watched a bunch, and I was like, “Oh my God, this is too crazy to say no to.” So that’s kind of how the whole thing [came about] and then I think Universal loved it as a cross-promotional thing and it all added up in a way that it seemed appealing to everyone.

Q: Who wins? Man or Wild?

WILL FERRELL: Wild kicks man’s ass, and then man ends up courageous at the end.

Q: Are you developing a Sherlock Holmes project also?

WILL FERRELL: Yeah, we’re trying to develop this. We’ve got a script written by Aaton Cohen and I just met with Sacha three weeks ago and we’re talking about it some more.

Q: Would it be a comedy Sherlock Holmes?

WILL FERRELL: Oh yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah. It’s just a question of the Robert Downey Jr. one that they’ve just shot, which I think will come out during Christmas or something like that. I think everyone just wants to see – well, that one’s probably going to be a hit franchise, and whether that is something you want to go up against. Would it just inform the audience to allow for us to do a comedy version, or would it feel like oh, we’re just trying to copy them, even though I think we wrote our script before they did, or something like that. I don’t know. But yeah, we’re thinking about it.

Q: I heard you’re meeting next week about Anchorman 2?

WILL FERRELL: I thought we were. I kept saying that. I was told we were and now I’ve heard it’s too hard to get everyone together, so hopefully Adam is going to be able to talk to all the guys individually and see if there’s a time and place that we can figure out how to do this.

Q: Comedy sequels have a difficult history. Why do you guys think that you can break that curse and come back and do a sequel that’s just as good as the original?

WILL FERRELL: Oh we don’t. (laughs) We just think that it would be really fun to do. It could be terrible, but if they’re going to pay us to do it, why not, right?

Q: Is it something you’re eager to do? Is it on the front burner?

WILL FERRELL: We weren’t necessarily, and then the legacy of that movie has just kept building and building and we kind of got excited about [it] and then last year we did this Funny or Die comedy tour where I would enter every college I went to and interview either the head football coach or the president of the school as Ron Burgundy, and Adam and I got such a kick out of it. It was so much fun that we were like, “God, it’d be fun. Maybe we should revisit this.” And then [Steve] Carell said, “I’m totally up for it.” I agree, it’s hard. Sequels to comedies that have really seemed to have found a foothold in the consciousness are hard to kind of – but I think we would use that as a challenge to try to make it as the craziest sequel you’ve ever seen, just, you know, live by the sword, die by the sword kind of feel, and see what happens.

Q: Would you like to do a sequel to this one?

WILL FERRELL: I would love to. You never know, but I love working with Brad and this cast. It was so fun to actually work with a small cast. I’ve done ensemble films for so long, it was just so nice. Yeah, if given the opportunity, it would be fun.

“Land of the Lost” opens in theaters on June 5th.