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Show Monday, Oct. 24, 2011 SpecialFeatures Page 7 Will Ferrell's road to the to BY PAUL FARH I The Washington Post LOS ANGELES - How do you discover your inner goofball? For Will Ferrell, the eureka moment came relatively late, years after the other boys had learned the joys of disrupting class. He was a high school senior, a conscientious student and a jock (basketball captain, baseball player, kicker on the football team), much too popular and well adjusted to crave class-clown validation. But then a friend asked him and a buddy to work up some shtick for the morning P.A. announcements to help sell Class of '85 T-shirts. "They were like old radio skits," recalls Ferrell, brightening at the memory. "We'd do voices, like the old Irish Spring commercials." Here Ferrell adopts an Irish brogue: 'You smell like a bucket of vomit. Why don't you wear this - your senior-class T-shirt!" Ferrell loved it. More important, the other kids loved it. Even the teachers at University High in Irvine, Calif., in the heart of Orange County, started egging him on. Ferrell started staying up late to write more bits, skipping his homework. He and his friend started performing sketches from "SCTV" at school assemblies. More hilarity, more praise ensued. You already know where this leads. A few years later, post-college, Ferrell has become a member of the Groundlings improv group in L.A. He gets a tryout with Lorne Michaels and "Saturday Night Live" - and kills. About 6,000 distinctive Ferrell characters and bits follow: Harry Caray, Craig the Cheerleader, James Lipton, Alex Trebek, George W. Bush, More Cowbell. With his "SNL" cowriter (and now collaborator/ business partner) Adam McKay, Ferrell goes on to make movies, including their absurdist masterpiece, "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy." They also write a Tony-nominated Broadway show with Ferrell as Bush, "You're Welcome, America," and start a comedy Web site, Funny or Die. Which kills, too, thanks notably to "The Landlord," a short video starring Ferrell and McKay's 2-year-old daughter, Pearl. Not incidentally, it all leads to Ferrell's selection as the recipient of the 2011 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. The Kennedy Center will hand the award to Ferrell on Sunday night in one of those made-for-TV gala-specials (it will air on PBS stations on Oct. 31), putting Ferrell's name alongside such former winners and comedy legends as Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Neil Simon and Carl Reiner. Pretty sweet. Or as This is where Angie's wedding ring WILL FERRELL AND CHERI OTERI as the Spartan Spirit would have been if she hadn't lost it at cheerleaders on "Saturday Night Live." Ferrell is to be awarded the 2011 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor Sunday. Lorne Michaels, producer of SNL, says of Ferrell: "He was never funny at someone's expense. There's not a trace element of cruelty or meanness in Will." The Washington Post. the beach on her honeymoon. It would Ferrell-as-Lipton might say, "Scrumtrulescent!" At 44, Ferrell's still on the young side to be joining comedy's Hall of Elders (on the other hand, Tina Fey, Ferrell's former "SNL" running mate, was just 40 when she received the same honor last year). But it's hard to dispute Ferrell's gifts as a comic actor and writer. As McKay points out, Ferrell has played the full range, from subtle to slapstick to utterly bombastic. He's been the damaged manchild ("Elf," "Step Brothers"), the aggressive dope ("Old School," "Wedding Crashers"), the pompous and oblivious alpha male ("Anchorman," Bush). McKay and Ferrell have started working on "Dog Fight," a satire in which Ferrell plays a Southern politician running against a candidate played by Zach Galifianakis. "Will doesn't want a formula," McKay says. "He's actively looking to screw with his own formula for success." If that weren't enough, Michaels, who's been managing star egos like a lion tamer for decades, says Ferrell is that rare comedic commodity: a low-maintenance mensch. "People adored working with him" at "SNL," says Michaels, himself a Twain recipient. "He was never funny at someone's expense. There's not a trace element of cruelty or meanness in Will." On this day in mid-October, Ferrell seems as sunny and mellow as the 90-degree heat warming Southern California. He's unshaven, and pads around his office, a restored 1920s-era building off Melrose Avenue, in cargo shorts, Adidas and a USC T-shirt, which is approximate- ly the same attire of the young staff bouncing around the corridors. Ferrell and McKay decided to call their company Gary Sanchez Productions, which they tell visitors was the name of their mutual hero, a legendary Paraguayan placekicker who played for the Vikings and Chiefs in the NFL. It's a goof - they just made the name up - but both men were delighted when a Hollywood trade paper printed their bogus story straight up. The antic spirit born in Ferrell's senior year of high school was nurtured at USC, a school probably better known for incubating tailbacks than comedy stars. Ferrell built on his burgeoning interest in comedy by creating humorous skits for his fraternity brothers. He also found a bigger stage with the help of a humanities teacher, the late Ron Gottesman. Midway through one of Gottesman's lectures, Ferrell would casually wander into class pretending to be a campus handyman. "Excuse me, what are you doing?" Gottesman would ask, as Ferrell, smoking a cigarette, would start working away with a power drill or a bucket and mop. "Don't worry. I won't be long," Ferrell would reply breezily. He always made sure to bend over far enough so the class could take in his "plumber's crack." Another bit involved a pal who would incite passersby against Ferrell as he pushed some heavy equipment along a campus walk, his pants slung low enough to display the aforementioned crack. "Look at that guy!" his friend would roar in mock horror. "What does he think he's doing?" 'Musketeers': Long on effects, short on swashbuckling Adventure novelist Alexandre Dumas was a crowd-pleaser in his day, so he probably wouldn't mind that the latest movie based on his "The Three Musketeers" cribs from steampunk, Hong Kong action flicks and "The Pirates of the Caribbean" series. He'd just wish these borrowings were more entertaining. A rare PG-13 film that feels more like PG, the 20th or so cinematic adaptation of Dumas' 1844 novel may amuse kids who can bear movies set way back in the 17th century. The original tale's erotic intrigue has been cooled to romcorn temperature, and there's plenty of slapstick among the swordplay. Surely a movie with this much chamber-potty humor is not meant for grown-ups. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson - the "Resident Evil" guy, not the "Boogie Nights" one - this "Musketeers" generally follows Dumas' plot. But many embellishments (and occasional bowdlerizations) dramatically alter the tone. The comic-book style and 3-D CGI effects turn a story loosely based on historical events into one that's utterly detached from anybody's real life, now or then. Young d'Artagnan (dreary Logan Lerman) travels to Paris to join the king's musketeers, only to find dashing Athos (Matthew MacFadyen), brawny Porthos (Ray Stevenson) and devout Aramis (Luke Evans) in grumpy retirement. Conniving Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz) dominates callow King Louis XIII (Freddie Fox), and the rogue's private guard has supplanted the loyal musketeers. Richelieu's troops are led by eye-patched Rochefort (Mads Mikkelsen), who takes an immediate dislike to d'Artagnan. The cross-channel mission is in Dumas' book, but the mode of transportation isn't: Our heroes cruise in an airborne craft that's part galleon, part zeppelin. The three veteran Musketeers (plus the double-dealing Milady) stole the plans for this airship in the movie's zippy if preposterous prologue. That sequence, set in Venice, suggests that Athos and his pals were trained as ninjas and Navy SEALs as well as swordsmen. They arrive stealthily and crack the code that opens - what else? - da Vinci's cache of secret blueprints. To reach the vault, Milady must pirouette through a hail of bulletlike spheres, a moment that's more "Matrix" than "Musketeers." A German-French-British production, "The Three Musketeers" doesn't worry much about dialogue or accents. Perhaps expecting to earn most of their money from dubbed versions, the filmmakers allow Lerman to speak American amid a mostly British cast, and let their devious French cardinal use a Germanic lilt to deliver such feeble bons mots as "evil's just a point of view." The filmmakers do better with action scenes and production design. Thanks to a video-game approach to space and movement, neither the battles nor the buildings look remotely genuine. But the elaborate costumes and CGI architecture are impressively detailed, and there's a credible sense of risk in d'Artagnan and Rochefort's climactic duel atop - where else? Notre Dame cathedral. What's lacking is a swashbuckling sensibility. The movie needn't realistically evoke the 17th century, but it should have something of the spirit of Dumas's 1840s, or Errol Flynn's 1930s. Instead, it's blandly contemporary. This "Three Musketeers" packs all the chivalry, heroism and camaraderie of Wii Fencing. Mark Jenkins is a freelance writer for the Washington Post. "Three Musketeers" (110 minutes) is rated PG-13 for violence. have been replaced, no charge, had she bought it at S.E. Needham's Jewelers. 141 North Main • www.seneedham.com • 435-752-7149 Who's Coming to the Fair? 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