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Will Ferrell on ...

Staying in character

With a new movie and his regular gig on "Saturday Night Live", Will Ferrell bases humor on people, not punch lines.

By Jeffrey Zaslow

When Will Ferrell was about 11, he spent 1 cent and changed his life: He joined a record club. "For one penny, I got 12 albums," Ferrell recalls. One was a late-'70s cast recording of the best comedy bits from "Saturday Night Live". Ferrell was fascinated by Chevy Chase's portrayal of klutzy Gerald Ford, and by Dan Aykroyd's nasty Richard Nixon and pious Jimmy Carter. "Some of it I understood, and the rest I didn't, but I still laughed," Ferrell says.

Now Ferrell, 34, has added his own presidential impersonation to the American experience - playing George W. Bush as a good-ol'-boy dimwit - and the comedic impact is greater than ever. Previous impersonators such as Rich Little (Nixon) were happy to get a few minutes on The Ed Sullivan Show. But during the 2000 campaign and its historic aftermath, countless network and cable news shows regularly aired clips of Ferrell and SNL's Darrell Hammond mocking Bush and Al Gore. Since Bush's inauguration, Ferrell continues to be everywhere, commanding a mass audience.

In its farewell issue, the political magazine George named Ferrell one of the 50 most powerful people in politics. "He could prove to be George W. Bush's most devastating critic," the magazine predicted.

Now starting his seventh year on SNL - his other impressions include Janet Reno, Alex Trebek and Neil Diamond - Ferrell doesn't want to be known as just a Bush mimic. That's why he's using his SNL fame to branch into movies, such as the new Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, a comedy helmed by Clerks writer-director Kevin Smith.

"Will is the king of the unfinished thought," Smith says. "He's great with characters who start saying something but can't finish it. It's his appearance and his comedy, where he's always befuddled and confused."

Ferrell's comedic instincts come from surprising sources. He grew up in Irvine, Calif., the son of a keyboard player who has toured with the Righteous Brothers for 30 years. Ferrell figures he heard Unchained Melody 10,000 times while growing up, but he focused on the between-songs patter. "Bill Medley has great comedic timing," he says. "I knew the jokes were coming, but each joke was delivered as if it was the first time."

In high school, Ferrell got in trouble for doing politically incorrect impersonations on the school's intercom system. But he didn't expect to be a performer until after he got a degree in sports information from the University of Southern California.He landed a job doing sports on a local cable show but realized he had more fun taking comedy classes at a local community college. He honed his comic skills and joined the L.A. improv group The Groundlings; that's where SNL producers noticed him.

Ferrell isn't sure he'll remain at SNL for Bush's full term. He suspects Bush is ambivalent about his job and wants to stay out of the media spotlight, so Ferrell fears the president won't give him enough good material. Impersonating Bush "is difficult, especially after Clinton, who loved the spotlight. Bush likes being on page 15 of the newspaper."

The one time he met the president, Ferrell was wearing a beard for another sketch. He said he thinks Bush had no idea who he was. Those who maintain a professional interest in political humor say Ferrell has a tough task ahead of him. "He has captured the notion that Bush isn't entirely comfortable in the role of authoritative leader," says CNN analyst Jeff Greenfield. "But what if Bush grows in the job? Unlike Clinton, a politically shrewd, Music Man sort of con artist, Bush has much less guile. That's tougher."

Ferrell knows his Bushisms are being dissected, and that's one reason he'll keep developing other characters such as middle school music teacher Marty Culp. "I love quiet, boring people who don't think they're boring," he says. "There's a beauty in this lack of judgment about themselves."

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