Thank You Will Ferrell for East Bound and Down and A Final Night with W.
Before the Flight of the Conchords episode tonight HBO ran promos for a highly anticipated new series and what appears to be a farewell stage performance from our forty third President George W. Bush. Will Ferrell is involved in both projects.
Ferrell is producing East Bound and Down along with Adam McKay, McKay is involved in almost all Ferrell movie projects and also with the website Funny or Die. East Bound and Down stars the always funny Danny McBride who has been in many films recently including Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, the Foot Fist Way and the new Ferrell movie Land of the Lost. It looks like it could be a big hit and possibly hilarious. In East Bound and Down McBride plays a former washed up baseball player who becomes a junior high school gym teacher. I really cannot remember the last time I was this excited about a new comedy series. Every review I have read about this show says it is hysterical and with the people involved that is not surprising. In the promo picture below McBride looks like a combination of former relief pitcher Rod Beck and former wrestler Razor Ramon. My brother watches wrestling so that is the reason I was able to come up with that obscure wrestling reference. Mostly he reminds me of Beck though. Rod Beck is of course the greatest non-fictional baseball character of the last twenty years. He used to smoke in the locker room and he probably drank whiskey in there too. He had a similar hair style and a great fu-manchu. I would say they might have copied Beck’s style for the character, but McBride usually has a similar style in most of his movies.
Ferrell is starring in the other project which is titled You’re Welcome America: A Final Night with George W. Bush. Apparently it is a new Broadway show with Ferrell reassuming his role as George W. Normally I do not get excited about Broadway shows, but this should be interesting. Ferrell did not have the most accurate impression of W., but it was the funniest and when I think of impressions of Bush, Ferrell is the one which comes to mind, just as I will always associate Darrell Hammond with Bill Clinton.
It would seem more appropriate for Broadway show about Bill Clinton, but apparently during the opening night of Ferrell’s new Broadway show about George W. many patrons walked out of the theater as a public domain image of a penis was shown pretending to be the former President’s phallus. See more about the “dick roll” described by the gothamist. http://gothamist.com/2009/02/07/some_ferrell_audiences_unhappy_abou.php
It would be much funnier if instead of reports of people walking out of the theater the reports had been of people fainting, upon seeing the aforementioned member, such as what usually occurs at the openings of horror movies. Like the publicity horror movies gain from stories of people passing out at the premieres, the media attention this causes will likely help far more than it will hurt.
Although Ferrell usually pisses excellence some of his recent work has missed the mark. (That last line was not a reference to the penis shown in the play as I learned about that incident after the original post which included that Ferrell quote from Talladega Nights.) I was excited to see Step Brothers, but was pretty disappointed by it. See my review of Step Brothers at my old site.
HBO could use another big hit or two. Showtime has really gained on them in the last few years. They have never really recovered from the loss of the Sopranos, and although I hate to admit it Sex and the City. Flight of the Conchords is really good, but I know from trying to tell people about it that it is not an easy sell. True Blood was good at times last year, but the last episode was awful. It was as if they were intentionally trying to make you laugh at the plot. Unless I am way off base that was not supposed to be funny. From the buzz surrounding East Bound and Down and after watching the trailer it appears it will be the new hit HBO needs. It may not be as big as the Sopranos or Sex and the City, but it is the sort of thing that will get people talking about HBO again and more importantly some of them will subscribe to it.
You’re Welcome America: A Final Night with George W. Bush will be live on HBO Saturday March 14th.
East Bound and Down premieres next Sunday February 15th at 10:30 on HBO.
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