By Christina Radish

Will Ferrell at the premiere of "Semi-Pro" held at the Mann Village Theater in Westwood, Calif. on February 19, 2008.

Co-stars Will Ferrell and Andre Benjamin (aka Andre 3000 of Outkast) spoke with MediaBlvd Magazine about what it’s really like to play basketball in those short shorts.

MediaBlvd Magazine> Will, you were an ice skater in Blades of Glory, and you drove race cars in Talladega Nights. How hard was it to obtain a basketball physique for this film?

Will Ferrell> Stereotypically, I pretty much have a basketball physique, to begin with. So, it didn’t take that much sculpting. But, Jackie Moon is a player from a different era, when players were a little more voluptuous. He’s a little more curvy.

MediaBlvd> Can you talk about wearing short shorts vs. long shorts for basketball? Were there any problems on set with the short shorts?

Will> I think Andre and I had the shortest shorts, which a lot of our fellow teammates refused to wear.

Andre Benjamin> And, they kept pulling them down. Actually, we had to do two weeks of basketball training, so I went ahead and got it over with and wore my shorts during the two weeks of practice.

Will> That’s how dedicated Andre was.

Andre> I did it so I wouldn’t feel self-conscious the day we were shooting. I didn’t feel funny because Clarence didn’t care about the shorts, so why should I?

Will> But, I did have to wear a special pair of underwear because, when I went into a defensive stance, there was a potential for things to happen.

MediaBlvd> Will, when you saw yourself in the costume, hair and make-up, what did you think?

Will> I felt completely at home. It obviously looks funny, but in looking at a lot of the reference photos of the League and the period, it’s not that far from the truth. So, I love the fact that it really is historically accurate and humorous looking, all at the same time.

MediaBlvd> Would you be caught dead in anything you wore in the movie?

Will> I might start wearing neckerchiefs now, in my personal life. I think that’s a nice piece of accouterment. If you have any unsightly blemishes, a weird Adam apple or a hickey, it can cover it up.

MediaBlvd> Andre, what did you think of the ‘70's fashion in the movie? Did you keep that burgundy coat that you wore?

Andre> I thought they were pretty outrageous. You don’t get a chance to walk around in those clothes, every day. Film is your chance to go back to that time. The 70's style is what it is. A lot of the stuff wouldn’t work, right now. And, no, I didn’t keep the coat. The material was hideous. It was in good shape, though. It had nice lapels.

MediaBlvd> Will, how does your improv background work, when you’re making a film like this? And, Andre, what is it like to be around all of those actors, when they are improvising?

Will> We’d start filming the scenes as written, and then slowly throw some zingers in there. I really try to change it up whenever I can.

Andre> I really wasn’t too intimidated. When I auditioned for the film, I had to walk into a room and audition with Will. So, once I got over that, it wasn’t too bad. And then, with music, you freestyle a lot and you just throw ideas out. And, when you read the script, you want to make your character as real as possible, so sometimes you just go off on a tandem and you keep going. You’ve got film, so why not? Just keep recording it.

MediaBlvd> How difficult was it for Kent Alterman to keep everyone on track during filming?

Will> Kent had the unenviable task of herding all of us. You’ve got 10 guys on a basketball court and about 1800 extras, and every time he yelled, “Cut!,” we just wanted to start shooting the ball and running around, and doing bits at the scorers table. It was tough, sometimes.

MediaBlvd> Who herded the bear?

Will> We did something unusual, that’s never been done before. We went wild. There was no bear trainer. We captured a bear. In fact, most of the production was devoted to trapping the bear. That’s why this was a 9-month shoot. Six of those months, we had to trap a bear up in the Sierra Nevadas. The first bear we got wasn’t big enough. We didn’t like it, so we released it, in Burbank somewhere. We finally found our hero bear and, that day, we just rolled film and let it do it’s thing.

MediaBlvd> This movie has some great music. What is your favorite party song?

Andre> This may sound really corny, but Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”

Will> “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” by Cyndi Lauper, is my favorite, too. I also love “Hava Nagila,” anywhere I hear it.                       

MediaBlvd> Did Andre help write the Jackie Moon song, “Love Me Sexy,” for the film?

Will> In terms of the song, we tried to get Andre. He flatly refused. No, that was the work of Scott Armstrong, a little bit of myself, and Kent, and Nile Rodgers.

MediaBlvd> Since you did play a lot of basketball during the making of this film, were there any sports injuries or sore muscles?

Will> There was a full-time training staff. It was pretty intense. So, we were always getting worked on, and stuff. I actually faked an appendectomy, at one point, to get out of filming.

MediaBlvd> Will, you’re known for making these movies with sports themes. What do you think it is about sports that makes it such ripe territory for parody? And, will you tackle college football at all?

Will> Unfortunately, the college football parody I’m doing is actually a drama, taking an in- depth look at the problem with steroid use. It’s not a fun movie at all. Although, there might be a few laughs. But, this is actually just coincidence that these three movies lined up the way they did. While I love combining sports and comedy together, only one of those was my idea, and that was the NASCAR movie. Otherwise, I was asked to be a part of the others. That having been said, it’s a great framework to do comedy in. You can parody the sport. With this movie, you can also parody the era. And, at the same time, you have a built in arc that’s fun for the audience to watch. They get to watch this team of losers try to attain the lofty goal of fourth place.

Andre Benjamin at the premiere of "Semi-Pro" held at the Mann Village Theater in Westwood, Calif. on February 19, 2008.

Will> My motto is, “Just try to get out of bed.” I just lie there and go, “Just try get out of bed.”

Andre> Mine is, “No matter how bad it looks, it’s probably going to be better to tomorrow.”

MediaBlvd> Who is your favorite professional basketball team?

Andre> To be honest, it sounds crazy, but I’m not a big basketball fan. I’m more of a football fan. So, I don’t know anything about who is good right now.  I’m from Atlanta. But, the Hawks are playing pretty good right now. They need new uniforms, but they’re alright.

Will> I’m a Laker fan, born and raised in Southern California. And, we just made the deal of the season.

MediaBlvd> Is there something that you think should become an official Olympic sport?

Will> I hate the Olympics, and all the countries getting together.

Andre> I’m a big football fan.

Will> Olympic football?

Andre> Yeah, why not? Arena football ain’t getting it. I get depressed when football season is over, so maybe we need something.

Will> What I’d love to see in the Olympics is for them to open the age group up to small children. I would love to see a lot of the events done by small children, like power-lifting, the javelin throw and shot-put. It should be children vs. adults, in an open age class.

MediaBlvd> Who committed the biggest pranks on set?

Will> One of the members of the Tropics -- the tallest one, Rasheed -- missed almost an entire day of filming because he didn’t think he was needed, even though it was a team locker room scene. When he finally showed up, we wrote a two-page monologue for him to do, and we said it was okay for him to hold it in the frame because we could always just take it out. It was based on Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. And, I just started crying, I was laughing so hard.

Andre> I felt bad for him. I really did. He didn’t have any lines, throughout the whole movie. And, he really studied hard. He was trying.

Will> The sheet was shaking in his hand. And then, he maintained that he was in on the joke all along because he’s from New York. So, we went along with that.

MediaBlvd> What was your favorite day of filming?

Will> The day we played the prank on Rasheed was a fun day. I enjoyed some of the days when we were actually playing in the games. We had something like 15 choreographed plays that we had to run and set up because you can’t just roll the basketball out there. You’ve got to concentrate on where the plays are going to be, so that you can set up the cameras and everything. A lot of the time, we’d run a play and then they’d just say, “Whatever happens, whether you make a basket or not, we’re just going to do free-play for the next three minutes and, literally, see what happens and see if we get anything.” After lunch, I remember I was still digesting a bean burrito or something, and I went down, with 1,800 people there, and actually made a shot, and the crowd went crazy. I felt like a real basketball player.

Andre> And, he had a wife that had sex with everybody. That got cut out, but there was a scene where we were on the bus, and she was showing her chest to everybody.

Will> That was a fun day.

MediaBlvd> What was the most enjoyable promotional stunt you did?

Will> I loved all of them. If you look at what they were doing in the ABA, that’s how the League survived. They did all these stupid promotions, just to try to get people in. I thought each of them were a funny version of what they did then.  

MediaBlvd> How do you get funny on set, especially on days when you don’t feel like being funny and making jokes?

Will> There are days when you show up and you’re not feeling totally on your game. But, that’s why it’s fun to work on comedies because, for the most part, you have a blast every day.          

MediaBlvd> Will, how did those Pearl videos come about on the Internet, and why did you stop making them? Did you ever imagine that they would become as popular as they did?

Will> That’s my friend Adam McKay’s daughter. We actually needed some content to launch the website, Funny Or Die (www.FunnyOrDie.com). It was all Adam’s idea. And, we took an hour or two, one day, shot that and put it on with the launch of the website, and just laughed that so many people saw it. It was completely surprising. We stopped because Pearl got too outrageous with her demands and attitude. It was very messy.

MediaBlvd> Andre, can you talk about your new solo album, and what fans can expect from it?

Andre> I’ve only written two songs in my head. I haven’t even started recording them. I’ve just been tinkering around. I’m excited to see what it’s going to sound like, myself. Maybe the release will be this Fall. Who knows.

MediaBlvd> You’ve done just about everything -- you’re a clothing designer, cartoon creator, actor and musician. How do you balance all those different careers, and what motivates so much artistic divergence?

Andre> It’s really whatever is going on at the time, whichever way the wind is blowing. I guess what drives it is just creativity. I like to make stuff. At the end of the day, if I can have something in my head and actually see it be produced and come to an end point, that’s the joy of it. It’s all creative-based. As long as I can be creating something, or doing something that seems cool, I’m good.

 MediaBlvd> Has any of this other artistic inspiration you’ve been involved with brought anything to your music?

Andre> Not really. They all relate, in some way. I wouldn’t say one helps out in another field. They’re all just ideas.

MediaBlvd> What is the next project you have coming up?

Andre> I have Battle in Seattle, with Charlize Theron, Woody Harrelson and Michelle Rodriguez. It’s about the riots and protests that took place in 1999, in Seattle. That’s coming out in April. I play a protester, by the name of Django, who keeps protesting fun. He keeps it light-hearted, even when he’s getting arresting.

Will> I have Stepbrothers, coming out in July, with John C. Reilly. And then, there’s a passion project of mine -- the Lee Iacocca story. It’s 10 years in the making. I get to play one of my heroes, Lee Iacocca.

MediaBlvd> Will, because you are changing the tone of Land of the Lost, are you still going to keep the creatures that were on the show?

Will> Everything is going to be ramped up a little bit. The kitsch of the physical production of the TV show is being thrown out the window. The dinosaurs and everything are going to look very realistic, or as realistic as we think dinosaurs should look. Even the Sleestaks, and things like that, are all going to be real creatures, as opposed to in the show, where you saw a guy in a costume with a zipper running up his back. What I’m trying to say is that you will not be able to see the zipper. We’ll CGI it out. We might CGI the zipper in later, in post, if the audience misses it.