|
|
|
Will Ferrell at the premiere of "Blades of Glory" held at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, Calif. on March 28, 2007. |
The Paramount Pictures film Blades of Glory centers on the comic travails of two disgraced world champion figure skaters who must overcome their considerable differences and get back in the game by becoming the first competitive male pairs figure skaters in history. When macho, swaggering Chazz Michael Michaels (Will Ferrell) and former child prodigy Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder) decide to set aside their long festering hatred of one another, they join forces as the first male/male figure skating pair to compete in the history of the sport.
Will Ferrell and Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) talk to MediaBlvd Magazine about learning how to skate, getting out on the ice in front of a stadium full of people and what it was like to wear all of that spandex.
MediaBlvd Magazine> You guys have such a great rapport on screen. Did you know each other beforehand, or did that just happen as soon as you guys met?
Will Ferrell> It was instantaneous, wasn’t it?
Jon Heder> When we first met, it was on the ice and we were on level playing ground. All bets were off. I think we were just scared.
Will> We met in the parking lot of Pickwick Ice Rink in Burbank. It was like, “Hey, nice to meet you.” “Yeah, you too.” “This should be fun, right?” “It’s going to be hard, huh?” “You don’t know how to skate, do you?” “No.” “I don’t either.” “Okay, I’ll see you later.”
Jon> I was like, “I’ve got to lift you?”
Will> And, I said, “No, I think I will be doing the lifting. I have to lift you.”
MediaBlvd> Now that you have learned how to skate, who loves it and who hates it?
Jon> I love it.
Will> He does. He loves it. I don’t hate it.
Jon> He doesn’t hate anything.
Will> But, I haven’t skated since the movie. And, Jon has only skated once.
Jon> I’ve gone only once because I’ve been busy.
Will> Jon’s a big talker. He was like, “I’m going to skate all the time.”
Jon> And, I am. By all the time, I mean that I’m going to try to make it a regular, semi-annual thing.
MediaBlvd> What was it like performing in the stadium with crowds, and how much of the ice skating did you really do?
Jon> I was kind of nervous. I started getting used to being in front of other people. I remember the first time when we started shooting the skating stuff. We knew the routines, but then you have all these extras. It was the real deal. I didn't want to mess up. Once we started going, it was fine.
Will> We worked with this woman, Sarah Kawahara, who is a big time skating choreographer. You could actually see some of the other coaches, who were former pros, get nervous around her. She does all the Disney on Ice shows. You’d be like, “I nailed that,” and coaches would say, “It was better. You're gonna get there. Make sure you point your toe.” The director would be like, “It looks fine,” and the coaches would say, “Don't tell them that.”
Jon> I tried to do as much of the skating as I could. Obviously, we had doubles to do the really cool spins and the jumps.
MediaBlvd> Can you each tell your fans something about the other that they would not necessarily know?
Will> Jon has a twin brother.
Jon> Everybody knows that.
Will> Well, his twin brother is really mean. Jon’s nice, but his twin scares me. He’s the evil one. He would come to the set and he wouldn’t even talk to me. I was like, “What is he doing?,” and Jon was like, “That’s just my evil twin brother, don’t worry about it.”
Jon> Will doesn’t grow facial hair. It’s all on his chest. He never had to shave.
Will> For some reason, the beard follicles are actually right here, over my breasts, so I grow a chest beard, and I have to shave that down. And, I’m left-handed.
MediaBlvd> Jon, can you talk about your kiss with Jenna Fisher (The Office), who is your character’s love interest?Jon> In the script, it was a sweet, innocent kiss. But, when we were just talking about the characters and how neither has ever had experience with the opposite sex, for good reasons, we just thought that neither of them would know what they’re doing and we should make it the most awkward kiss ever, where she’s a little bit more excited and she gets into it a little bit more. Jimmy is still trying to go by what he watches in Backstreet Boys videos. We didn’t really rehearse it. When we shot it, we decided to just go for it and see what happened.
MediaBlvd> We have to talk about crotch proximity, since you guys got very close to each other. Did you have to set any boundaries?
Jon> The contract said, “No less than 2 centimeters.”
Will> I had a restraining order against Jon’s crotch.
Jon> I think, all in all, it ended up being mostly effects.
Will> That was a stunt crotch. I don’t think I touched his crotch.
MediaBlvd> Which was harder to negotiate, the crotch proximity with Jon, or the boob grabbing with Jenna?
Will> Well, the boob grabbing. That was ad-libbed. I just thought, “This will be fun, I’m just going to do it,” and 80 takes later, I had to get it right.
Jon> As soon as you did the first establishing shot, you had to match that.
MediaBlvd> Will, when you get a script, do you immediately try to find the scene where you get to take off as many of your clothes as you possibly can?
Will> No, I actually hope that there isn’t one of those scenes. I gave it to Jon this time. In this film, I kind of do a version of it when I show off my tattoos. I thought it was really funny that you reveal this character’s stupid life story through tattoos. And, Jimmy has no sense of the fact that there’s this gross guy with his shirt off. He’s just wrapped in the story, like “Really, wow, cool. What’s that tattoo?”
MediaBlvd> Were you tempted to keep the tattoos for awhile?
Will> I was. That was the funniest thing. The make-up tattoos are so real looking and they last for a good couple of days, so I would forget I had them. On the weekends, I’d have these weird tattoos. My wife would be like, “Oh, gross, what is that?,” and I’d say, “It’s just a wolf. I’m the lone wolf.”
MediaBlvd> How much input did you guys have on your costumes?
Will> We had a little bit of input. Julie Weiss, who was the wardrobe designer, is kind of a mad genius. She’d be like, “I found this leather jacket in the hatchback of my neighbor’s car. Try it on. You’re going to wear that today.” She really designed these amazing costumes. She would call me on the phone and ask me things like, “What would your character keep in a duffle bag?” In terms of the skater stuff, she totally designed all that.
Jon> The peacock outfit was my idea because we had seen clips and footage of other skaters, just to study and research, and Johnny Weir had this swan outfit. It was a famous routine. It was very serious. His glove was a swan, and I was like, “That would be funny to do, but do it as a peacock,” because skaters are very much like peacocks. I just remember throwing that idea out, and then, the next thing I knew, Julie had this bejeweled glove, and everything.
Will> The first time I saw Jon in his outfit, I was really jealous. I was like, “Aw, you get a gloved hand and everything. I only have fire.”
|
|
Jon Heder at the premiere of "Blades of Glory" held at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, Calif. on March 28, 2007. |
MediaBlvd> Will, can you compare and contrast the spandex skater costumes in Blades of Glory with the elf suit you had to wear in Elf?
Will> They were very similar. The elfin tights were actually quite functional. A lot of times, while we were filming Elf, it was very cold, so I was actually thankful to have them. I was thankful to have the lycra suits in this, just for the character, because they were funny looking.
Jon> It took some help to get into the costumes in this film.
MediaBlvd> How hard was it to film that chase on dry land with ice skates on?
Will> That was really hard. That was the first two days of filming, and we hadn't really worked out being on those skates at all. I had a piece of wood over the blade that was painted silver on the side so that it looked like a blade. It was the craziest way to begin a movie. I felt really beat up after those first few days, with all that physical stuff, but it was fun.
MediaBlvd> What do you have coming up?
Will> I’m filming another sports comedy about the ABA, which was a competing league in the ‘70's, with the NBA. It’s a basketball comedy. I'm this guy, Jackie Moon, who is the player/owner/coach of the Flint Michigan Tropics. I was able to buy the team with the money from my number one hit song single, “Love Me Sexy.” The true part of the story is that the NBA and the ABA merge, and they only took four teams. They were trying to play for fourth place to make it to the NBA.
Jon> I have Surf’s Up and Mama’s Boy coming out. I’m not actually working on anything right now.
