Will

cover | story | WILL FERRELL
GOOD
SPORT
Will Ferrell’s fourth sports movie in four years has him playing a
’70s basketball player with a big ’fro. Funny, yes. But the amiable actor swears
this will be his last movie about athletes for a while I BY BOB STRAUSS
Will Ferrell has a degree in sports information
from the University of Southern California.
Recently, he’s made a big part of his career
out of what could be called sports disinformation.
Following the soccer comedy Kicking & Screaming,
the NASCAR comedy Talladega Nights: The Ballad of
Ricky Bobby and the figure skating comedy Blades of
Glory comes Semi-Pro, a basketball comedy and
Ferrell’s fourth athlete spoof in as many years.
The 40-year-old actor, who spent many a season on
Saturday Night Live playing a wannabe cheerleader,
says it’s a kind of best-of-both-worlds situation.
“I won’t be allowed to make a sports movie ever
again,” Ferrell cracks, with the perfect timing that’s
helped turn him into one of the most successful
comedy stars working today. “It’s funny how it just
kind of lined up that way. And yet, I’m a huge sports
fan. I love sports, so it’s been really kind of wonderful
to get to infuse my two great loves, comedy and
sports, together.”
In Semi-Pro, Ferrell plays Jackie Moon, ownercoach-player-sweaty-sex-symbol
of the Flint, Michigan,
Tropics. Never heard of them? That’s because
they’re a minor (and fictional) team from the 1970s’
short-lived American Basketball Association, which
explains the frizzed-out afro on Ferrell’s head during
interviews at L.A.’s Four Seasons Hotel.
Moon is a typical Ferrell doofus, a guy who has
more confidence in his abilities — and appeal —
than he probably should, and who is over the moon
when word comes that the NBA will absorb some of
the lesser league’s teams. So he has to figure out how
to make his misfit-manned Tropics attractive to the
bigger, better-established organization.
“The ABA was kind of a stepchild/sister basketball
league to the NBA in the ’70s that had all of these
outlandish characters and crazy, small-market teams,”
Ferrell explains. “Another reason why sports movies
are great is because there’s already a built-in arc. It
kind of tackles all of those big issues of winning and
losing and friendship and things like that. So it’s a
great world to create a story in. And then when you
add that you’re going to be funny about it, you can
make fun of real sports movies at the same time and,
obviously, poke fun at the game.”
Sometimes, though, that kind of comedy can feel
bittersweet to a true athletic supporter. After training
with some of the best competitive skaters for Blades of
Glory, for example, the actor felt guilty deriding the
absurdities of such a difficult — though admittedly,
often ridiculous — sport.
famous 40 | february 2008
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Jackie Moon (Will Ferrell)
concentrates on making a
free throw in Semi-Pro
Inset: Dick Pepperfield
(Andrew Daly) interviews
Jackie Moon