Written by Will Ferrell & Adam McKay
I’m imagining a conversation, possibly taking place on the same San Diego street corner that Lester Bangs told William Miller that he missed out on Rock and Roll, only this time it’s between Adam McKay and Judd Apatow, where they are lamenting the death of the R-Rated comedy. Somewhere after the late 70s/early 80s run of Animal House, Porky’s, Stripes, Caddyshack from the National Lampoon guys, and Eddie Murphy’s immortal run of 48 Hours, Trading Places, and Beverly Hills Cop, and Coming to America studios realized that giving a movie an R rating cut their profits so significantly, that the PG-13 comedy not only became the new cash cow, but also an envelope-pushing line to toe. What could you get away with and what did you have to cut?
Somebody had to make R-Rated comedies worthwhile again, and apparently it was Judd, Adam, and Todd Philips1. Starting with 2003’s Old School, and running well into the next decade, these 3 guys would go on to write, direct, or produce dozens of the funniest and most quotable movies in a generation - all of which featured a rotating cast of the same doofusy white dudes2. But perhaps the widest reaching and most absurdist of this entire run of movies isn’t even rated R. Anchorman, slid safely into the PG-13 rating thanks to a lack of nudity and a lone, perfectly placed F-bomb.
Another trick some of these guys would figure out during the early-aughts DVD boom was to release a PG-13 cut in theaters, collect those coveted teen box office dollars, secure syndication rights, and then release an ‘Unrated’ version on DVD where you cram in all the stuff you couldn’t slip past the MPAA and you’ve got yourself even more money. This lasted well through the early days of Netflix - back when we still had to receive and return them in the mail and it wasn’t just a streaming app on every gadget we carry around with us.
The movie begins with voiceover, setting the time period of the 1970s as ‘a time before cable’ where Americans got their news from their local news anchor to stress the importance of local celebrities on the fable about to unfold. But this movie was also released at a key time in when people still had cable, before the cord cutting movement drove everybody to so many streaming outlets that we eventually just wished we could somehow bundle them all together and pay one big monthly fee. Cable and physical DVDs are a huge part of why this movie (and others like it) was so successful: so quotable, and almost completely unavoidable for more than a decade. Every shot in this movie was just begging to have white meme text laid on top of it, every line and facial expression was a reaction .gif just waiting to be shared.
There’s a scene in You’ve Got Mail where Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are talking about the Godfather, and Hanks explains (via IM) that there’s no situation to which wisdom from Godfather does not apply - and then rattles off a few hypothetical questions and some quotes that answer them. This conversation is meant to illustrate the specific gendered obsession men have with the Godfather, and while the movie is obviously still one of the best ever made, I think it has been eclipsed in that particular regard by Anchorman. Which is why I think I had such a hard time writing about this movie. I love it, and I still think it’s hilarious, but my relationship isn’t any more unique than anybody else’s. I debated doing the entire post as a series of questions/quote answers in an homage to Mario, Francis, and NY152, but that seemed tedious and probably way less funny than I thought it would be.
The only unique thing I could think of is that when we saw this in the theater, an alarm went off right after the Sex Panther scene and we had laughed so hard over some of the lines of what people thought the cologne smelled like that we missed a few of them - so when we were finally allowed back in, we were relieved that they restarted the movie a few minutes before that so we got to watch it and laugh our asses off all over again. Oh, and the nickname for one of Brian Fantana’s testicles is James Westfall - still not sure what that’s all about3.
Ferrell and McKay were both fresh out of SNL, where McKay was head writer during the same period of time when Ferrell became the breakout star. McKay came from Second City and Ferrell came from the Groundlings. Their ability to spin their borderline surrealist, almost stream-of-consciousness ideas, into fully fleshed-out set pieces, featuring songs, stunts, and cameos is something that would continue through their other movies together. Shouting alternate lines from behind camera, there was enough improvised material to create an entire second feature included on the DVD entitled Wake Up Ron Burgundy: the Lost Movie. They eventually made an earnest sequel that was a series of over-the-top versions of all the scenes in the first one. I don’t remember it being nearly as funny, and what’s more unfortunate is in the years nine years since the first movie, is the cultural window shifted away and it was greeted with an ‘oh, that came out?’ instead of a ‘you gotta see this.’ During those 9 years, McKay and Ferrell made three other movies together, basically one every other year: Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby4, Step Brothers, and the Other Guys. Depending on your mood, any of these three can elicit the same up laughs as Anchorman, but none of them - as silly and goofy as they get - match the hardcore absurdity of Anchorman.
So What did we learn?
The central conflict of this movie is that none of the four male members of the Channel 4 News Team want to allow Veronica Corningstone on the team because she’s a woman. That’s the whole movie. A series of pranks to make her not feel welcome, or qualified, or capable. Her mere presence is enough to set these alpha dudes’ words upside down, and they have absolutely no idea how to handle it - or awareness that it hardly needs handling at all and should just, I dunno, happen.
Since this movie takes place in the 1970s and is narrated from the future, when it ends, they do that thing like American Graffiti and Animal House where they tell us where everybody ended up later:
Champ becomes a commentator for NFL but is accused of sexual harassment by Terry Bradshaw.
Brian becomes the host of a show called Intercourse Island on the Fox network
Brick becomes a political advisor for the Bush Whitehouse
The NFL, Fox, and the Bush Whitehouse are not necessarily 3 of the most progressive institutions; whose actions were never all that wonderful in real time, and have only gotten worse upon further examination and hindsight. Two of these would be the main focus of future projects from McKay: Succession, the HBO series about a Murdoch-esque family-run media conglomerate that he produces, and Vice, his Dick Cheney biopic that got him nominated for an Oscar. The villains (often not the main antagonist, but instead the hidden underlying evil, secretly pulling the strings behind the scenes) of McKay’s later movies seem to be American institutions themselves, personified in rich assholes who are out to screw over regular people. It’s this tonal shift away from the absurdity of fictional American icons, to the outright insanity of real life in America. This pivot earned him an Academy Award for adapting Michael Lewis’ book on the 2007 financial crisis. Another angle of these non-Ferrell-idiot-centric movies in the back half of his directing career is how the very media that the Ron Burgundys, Champ Kinds, Brian Fantanas, and Brick Tamblands of the world helped shape, effectively launder the actions of those rich assholes screwing people over in such a way that we don’t care about them as much as we do the hilarious exploits of a local news team, or a dimwitted racecar driver, or two 40 year olds whose parents just got married. Or maybe it wasn’t a pivot at all. Maybe it’s what he’s wanted to do this whole time.
24 down, 16 to go. Next up is 2005’s The Squid and the Whale
-Barry
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Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, and director of Bittersweet Motel, lest we forget.
I hate to use the term Fr*t P*ack, because the more you try to define it, the wider the connections spread, and sooner or later you end up including Wes Anderson movies in with these, and it’s just not the same thing. I can’t explain the difference, but I know it when I see it.
Franny’s dad’s name also gets a shoutout as one of Ron Burgundy’s fists.
There was supposed to be a third movie in what would have been an ‘Mediocre American Man’ trilogy, all centered around mediocre American men with the initials R.B., but that third film has yet to be made.