The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub speaks with Will Ferrell, Harper Steele, and director Josh Greenbaum for their documentary
Will & Harper
.

Will & Harper
is a documentary about the evolving friendship between Will Ferrell and longtime friend and collaborator Harper Steele.
Ferrell, Steele, and Greenbaum discuss the impact of the film opening up conversations about trans people.

The years of Saturday Night Live,with sketches written by Harper Steele and starring Will Ferrell, for many of us, are the greatest years of the show — those special years with Cheri Oteri, Molly Shannon, and Ana Gasteyer. When Norm MacDonald dead-panned the news, the catchphrases were ripe, and The Roxbury Guys did that neck thing everybody liked to copy. Now, 30 years into their friendship, Ferrell and Steele are bringing a new kind of project to audiences around the world.

Directed by Josh Greenbaum (Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar), Will & Harper is a documentary about the evolution of Steele, the former head writer for SNL, and Ferrell’s relationship after Steele transitions. The documentary is poignant, caring, and above all else, extremely funny. After setting festivals ablaze with fabulous reviews, Will & Harper is now streaming on Netflix.

To celebrate the documentary’s debut, Ferrell, Steele, and Greenbaum were kind enough to sit down with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, where they talked about working with 98-years-young Mel Brooks, being surprised by Kristen Wiig’s beautiful song, favorite SNL skits, Weintraub’s bootleg Step Brothers t-shirt, and how you have most likely met a trans person before in your life.

A Dollar A Day Keeps Will Ferrell Away
“That could have been super ugly.”
Image via Sundance

COLLIDER: Will, how do you feel when someone is wearing a bootleg T-shirt to an interview with you?

WILL FERRELL: Nothing makes my blood boil more. You think I’d be flattered by it.

I have an asterisk! I know you don’t get paid for the licensing, so here’s a dollar now.

JOSH GREENBAUM: Now he’s feeling good!

HARPER STEELE: Normally, it’s 35 cents.

Now I want to know if it’s better that I’m wearing the bootleg shirt.

FERRELL: I love it. I love it so much.

STEELE: Well done. That could have been super ugly.

FERRELL: Beautiful George Washington. Look at this.

STEELE: He gets violent! That could have been really ugly.

GREENBAUM: Yeah, it could have been ugly.

In all seriousness, I’ve worn this shirt around the planet, and you have no idea how many people have come up to me. I’m like, do they know Collider? It’s never that. It’s always, “Are we now best friends?” or “Can we go do karate in the garage?”

STEELE: Okay, but are we gonna stop talking about Will’s career?

FERRELL: It’s a big career! It’s a pretty big career.

An SNL Retrospective With Will Ferrell and Harper Steele
“Robert Goulet is a special sketch for me.”
Image via NBC

Now, I wanna talk about the two of you together because you have made me laugh so many times. From Eurovision to SNL, you name it. I wanted to say thank you sincerely.

STEELE: Oh, you’re welcome.

When you think back on the SNL days, what’s your favorite collaboration? Is there a sketch for each of you?

STEELE: Huh. That’s a tough one.

FERRELL: I know. The irony is– Did we collaborate that much?

STEELE: We didn’t collaborate that much. I put Will in everything I could.

FERRELL: You cast me a lot.

STEELE: I cast him a lot, but when we collaborated, we failed. But the Robert Goulet is a special sketch for me. It’s wacky, it’s Will, it’s fun. I did a lot of George W.

FERRELL: You might wanna search up a little ditty called “Bass Off.”

STEELE: Oh, “Bass Off!” I love “Bass Off.”

FERRELL: –between me and Jack Black

STEELE: That was a good one. There’s a history there.

FERRELL: Harper wrote it, but I gave her the ending.

STEELE: Yeah.

FERRELL: They’re having a bass off in the warehouse. Someone says, “Do you smell smoke? Then we cut to a little model of the warehouse, and it was on fire.

STEELE: Typical sketch ending. I didn’t have one. Will goes, “What if we just say you smell smoke?” Then I cut to a small model and blow up the building.

I do not know if you were involved in “Mr. Tarkanian?” It was with Pierce Brosnan?

FERRELL: Oh, that was the travel magazine.

Where you were doing cocaine and speed all day.

FERRELL: Yes. No, that was not– [Laughs] I killed Chris Parnell with a trident.

STEELE: Oh my God.

It was fantastic.

Director Josh Greenbaum on ‘Spaceballs 2’
Image via MGM

I’m so excited and also a little nervous with Spaceballs 2. You’re playing with something cherished. What is the status, and what was it about this material that said, “Oh yes, let’s go do this?”

GREENBAUM: The status is great. We have an amazing script. The reason I, of course, said yes was because Mel [Brooks] is fully involved. Working with Mel at age 98, he is a joy to be around. He is still as sharp and as funny as he ever has been. So, it’s going well.

Yeah, I love that man.

‘Will & Harper’ Is Very, Very Funny And Opens Up Conversations
“You want this movie to speak to a Ricky Bobby fan who’s got a trans kid.”

Jumping into the doc. As I said at the beginning, this is just fantastic. What does it mean to you to have put your heart and soul into this? I try not to use reviews, but it has 49 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, all at 100%. Everyone loves it.

FERRELL: It’s still early. [Laughs]

STEELE: We’re definitely waiting for the backlash. It is a movie with a trans person in it. Let’s try to remember that. No, I think we were shocked. From our experience at Saturday Night Live, we went to the floor with things and the thought it was going to fail almost every time. So, when it succeeded, it was always joyful. This is exactly what happened at Sundance. We’re sitting there going, “Well, it’s okay.” Then it did so much better than what we thought.

FERRELL: We keep talking about this. We were sitting at the beach in Santa Monica in that final scene and Josh says, “I think we got it. That’s a wrap.” We’re walking back to our cars going, “I hope there’s a movie there because I don’t know if there’s anything.” I don’t know if anything happened really. [Laughs] I know we talked a lot. We talked every day. We filled six to eight hours of driving every day. Josh did an amazing job creating this documentary that really feels like you’re watching a movie.

Image via Sundance

I’m so happy Netflix has this because the whole world gets to see it. But there are gonna be a lot of people who watch this and it’s going to be their first real exposure to a trans person. It really is going change somebody’s life with their family. Can you sort of talk about what that means to all of you? That this really could make a huge difference to a lot of people.

STEELE: Well, that’s the hope. Who knows if that’ll be the case, but that is the hope. You want this movie to speak to a Ricky Bobby fan who’s got a trans kid, a Step Brothers fan who’s got a trans kid and wants to open that discussion. We show them a sort of way to do that. I’ll back up and say for people who say, “I’ve never seen a trans person,” I might add the caveat that maybe they didn’t know they saw a trans person. So, let’s keep that in mind. However, yeah, that’s the hope. The hope is that it opens up conversations and people see that there’s nothing to fear, there’s nothing scary — this is absurd to be saying this in this day and age. But I hope they see that trans people are better than they are.

[Ferrell and Greenbaum laugh]

GREENBAUM: That’s the goal.

STEELE: I don’t know what the goal of the movie is anymore.

FERRELL: We’ve lost the thread, but it’s, dare I say it — Josh, you can say it — it’s a really funny movie.

GREENBAUM: Yes.

STEELE: It is a funny movie.

FERRELL: It’s a really funny movie!

STEELE: You say it like, “It’s a funny movie?” But that’s how we think about our comedy all the time. “Oh, it worked!”

Will, your celebrity, and the amount of fans you have, are really gonna open the door for this film for so many people who might not watch it normally.

Image via Netflix

I wanna talk specifically about the editing. I’m fascinated by editing, where it all comes together. What was it like in the editing room? You have all this footage, how long was the first cut you have where you’re like, “Oh, this is pretty good?”

GREENBAUM: We had 240 hours of footage when we got back. I think the first assembly that we put together was five hours, and I did say, “This is pretty good!” But I also knew that I don’t want to put anyone through that punishment of sitting in a theater for five hours. So we kept whittling it down, and trying to listen to what the film was telling me it wanted to be. Looking for the big moments along the journey that were more dramatic, that provided either discomfort, or challenge, or growth in their conversations. Knowing that because they’re so funny, I could always bring back and reintroduce all of the comedy that they had along the way. But anchoring it in those meaningful conversations, those meaningful moments out there in America, interacting with people, starting there, and then finally finding the film along the way.

I was so curious what Kristen Wiig’s song was gonna be. As I’m watching I’m like, “Maybe she didn’t deliver the song.” Then all of a sudden, the song’s real good. What was the reaction when you finally heard?

STEELE: We didn’t hear. We thought she wasn’t gonna deliver, just like that.

FERRELL: Same surprise.

STEELE: Then Josh, in a close-to-near, almost finished cut said, “You guys should come and watch the film one more time if you have any notes.” And there it was–

FERRELL: He surprised us with it.

STEELE: So beautiful.

Was there anything that you felt was too personal, or maybe you didn’t want in? What was it like with the edit? Because before it comes out, it can be anything.

STEELE: I think we were both impressed with Josh’s touch. As a trans woman, I suffer mildly from dysphoria from time to time. Maybe just women feel this or anyone, but there are moments of me on the camera that I don’t like looking at, and that’s still the same. But I’m not a performer and that’s just a human condition. I’m looking at myself, going, “No, you don’t look good.” But in terms of subject matter or things we were talking about, I thought Josh really handled it well.

FERRELL: There’s a bunch of big moments in the film. One of which is when we’re in Texas, after going to the steakhouse and wading our way through what was a less-than-desirable situation. I break down as we’re driving the next day, feeling like I wasn’t there for my friend, and put her in a situation that maybe we didn’t even need to go. Obviously, I remember us filming that, and when I saw it in the film, I thought, “Okay, that needs to be in the movie.” I’m okay with watching myself go to pieces. I think that was important for me to see. It’s important for the audience to see.

Will & Harper is available to stream on Netflix now.

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