Adam McKay Says ‘Anchorman’ Is the Type of Thing He Would Have Gotten In Trouble For Writing at ‘SNL’

Will Ferrell has certainly been making the rounds as Ron Burgundy to promote the upcoming Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues,  and now director Adam McKay is talking more about the long awaited sequel. In an extended editing room interview on Collider, McKay and his editor Brent White talked about making their longest film ever (the first cut was 4.5 hours), why Seth Rogen is useless in a test audience, and not over-using Steve Carrell’s Brick character:

He’s definitely the Harpo Marx of the team in the sense that he has no rules whatsoever to him.  He can step out of scenes.  He can comment on scenes.  He can look at the camera.  SO he’s got this magical power.  And then rhythm-wise, he can just get laughs.  He has one line in the movie that’s not even a joke and it gets a huge laugh.  He just says something and the crowd goes crazy.  We actually did a pass where we would go through and look at Brick and take out anything that’s mediocre […] sweaty, and we’re like, it should only be high quality when it’s Brick.

McKay also talked about what a surprise hit the original film was back in 2004, and the extra pressure it put on the sequel.

It made it harder to do the second one because a lot of the comedy has been co-opted in commercials and kind of other styles in other comedies.  We really had to write this script over and over again to make sure we had original things.  It made it a little harder, but at the same time without a doubt, it was great to know your 2 AM flights of fancy other people think are funny.  Things I used to get in trouble for writing at SNL, suddenly other people like it.  It was nice.

Check out the rest of the interview on Collider here.

Adam McKay Says ‘Anchorman’ Is the Type of Thing He […]