Portrait of actor Will Ferrell, lying on a polar bear rug, photographed at the Four Seasons hotel in Los Angeles on March 9, 2007.
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What keeps Ferrell on the mainstream side of the Andy Kaufman line is that the audience is rarely the butt of the joke. Even in Talladega Nights--in which he plays a moronic, Southern-accented titan of the NASCAR circuit--the joke isn't that people follow racing or idolize a doofus but that Ricky Bobby is oblivious to everything around him. "It's easy to take a shot at people, set yourself aside from it and say, Hey, look how stupid everybody is," says Will Arnett, the former Arrested Development star who plays Poehler's brother and evil skating partner in Blades of Glory. (He's also her real-life husband.) "Certainly there've been movies the last couple of years that have done that, but Will doesn't. He's not élitist in any way, shape or form." As lame as it sounds, Arnett believes being kind and gracious and free of neuroses is crucial to making Ferrell's comedy work. "The egg always ends up on his own face. He's incredibly sweet, and audiences can feel it."
The nexus of Ferrell's passion for awkwardness and his bias toward making people feel good about themselves is the inevitable moment in any of his films when his clothes come off. He's not ripped, more rippled. In comedic terms, exposing himself is a near Christian act of self-sacrifice. "I don't think anybody believes me, but I try not to be gratuitous about it," says Ferrell, who streaked in Old School, ran around a speedway in his underwear in Talladega, was a shirtless Bible salesman on SNL, worked out bare chested in his office in Anchorman and ... you get the point. "In Blades we do a thing where I tell the story of my life"--wearing only a towel--"with my tattoos, but that's for story purposes." He's laughing now. "I'm trying to think. Do we do it in Semi-Pro? No, I think I'm fine. Oh, there's one photo of me with a basketball in front of my crotch, just lying on a bench, which is a replica of a real photo, and, um, so that'll probably be in the movie. Who am I kidding?"
The exposure in Blades of Glory won't take anyone by surprise, nor will the plot, but there are plenty of moments when you feel the electricity of Ferrell making things up on the spot. "There's a scene when he's on a treadmill, trying to lose weight while the other characters are having dinner," says Will Speck, who co-directed Blades with Josh Gordon. "There was a lot of plot in it, but then we realize that Will's actually going to have Jon [Heder] throw food at him and that he's going to eat while on the treadmill, while singing songs, and then you just sort of hope you have enough film."
Ferrell calls these improvised moments "the times when I feel like I do have some sort of skill," and his peers marvel at the ease with which he carries them off. "When he did the song at the Oscars with Jack Black and John C. Reilly," says Apatow, "he had people over at his house. He didn't even tell them where he was going. He just slipped out and said, 'Oh, I gotta go do this thing.'" "Well, that is true," says Ferrell, "but I literally live up the hill from the Kodak Theater, so it was just clocking in, clocking out. But before we went on, Jack, John and I all did the 'Do you have diarrhea in your pants right now? Yes. Diarrhea? Check. Three diarrheas? Good. O.K., let's do this!' But if I make looking like an idiot seem easy? Well, that's a success in my book."