Will Ferrell, known for his sophisticated, subtle, and — let’s be honest, pretty hilarious — work in Zoolander, Anchorman, and Talladega Nights, wants to do a satire about America’s relationship with Mexico. In an interview with The Guardian, Ferrell discussed his taste in political comedy, and revealed that he and Anchorman director Adam McKay have an idea “for a film about two guys who go down to defend the border [with Mexico].” The project sounds a bit like the English version of Ferrell’s Spanish-language — and better-than-you-might-expect — Casa De Mi Padre, or possibly a down-South version of The Other Guys, though it will undoubtedly stir up a lot more angry Facebook statuses.
But as Ferrell sees it, getting a strong reaction is part of the job. “All we try to do is to hold up a mirror to what is going on,” he told The Guardian. And if that mirror reflects some ugliness? Well, Ferrell doesn’t like to question that goal. In response to a question about critiques of the racism and homophobia in Get Hard, Ferrell put the audience’s reaction first:
It didn’t feel like a thing for that film, But I noticed it, say, at an early screening of Get Hard at the SXSW film festival last year. The movie played through the roof. And then the first question that comes up in the Q&A with our director is: “Boy I loved that movie, I laughed hard, but the movie is totally racist, how did you get away with it?” And then that’s the headline that gets carried — wherever we went it became a question we had to answer. Those things have a life of their own. The moviegoing audience, the people who watched it, never even mentioned it.
So are you ready for an unapologetic satire of border politics from Will Ferrell? Remember that Adam McKay also directed The Big Short. So, you know, this could go in a lot of different directions.
