The hook for this story is that Dan Rush, the director of Everything Must Go, did something coolly counterintuitive by casting Will Ferrell as his lead, as if Ferrell had never played it straight before. It’s been a while, though, so I can see it might be hard to recall his work playing something like real human beings in Stranger Than Fiction, Winter Passing, and Melinda and Melinda.
(The links in the last sentence are to Roger Ebert’s reviews. He gave three and a half stars to all three.)
But for me this is more intriguing:
[Rush] eventually decided to break [into filmmaking] by directing commercials, assembling a spec reel and shopping it around. His work tended toward the comedic. In one spot Mr. Rush shot for the reel two men share adjacent urinals as one leans in closer and closer, gazing down rapturously at the other man’s ... Swatch watch.
Mr. Rush went on to land clients like Sony and Bell Atlantic. (His first job was one of those inescapable James Earl Jones spots in the ’90s.) As his reputation grew, he began receiving scripts for feature-length comedies. He found most of them “dumb,” though, and commercials paid well, so his dream of making movies remained unfulfilled.
I wish the reporter had dug into this. It sounds like Rush has been turning down chances to direct feature films. Who does that?
Well, someone who wants to make good movies as opposed to someone who wants to be someone who makes movies. Rush appears to have decided that he didn’t want to pay his dues doing the usual sort of Hollywood hack work. He was already doing hack work and making a good living and developing a respectable reputation while he was at it. Directing a movie can take a year, even two, out of your life. Devote two years to seeing a piece of crap to the screen and then take the hit when it bombs? Get stuck making a stupid commercial and you can shrug it off, knowing that next week you’ll have moved onto something else. By the time it airs, even you might have forgotten you directed it. Still, it’s hard to believe he could have turned down the offers. That takes a lot of willpower and courage.
Either Rush was supremely confident he was going to get his chance to make the kind of movies he wanted to make or he didn’t care if he never did. What I would like to know is, if he didn’t care, was it because he, you know, didn’t care? Or was it because he’s serious-enough of mind and purpose to believe that if the choice was going to be between continuing to do what he was doing and being able to take pride and satisfaction from that or becoming a complete hack, then there really was no choice for him.
Which would suggest that he believes that what a lot of people would regard as success, he regards as a form of failure.
Who knows, maybe it a couple of years we’ll see his name up on the screen as the director of Hangover III: Lost in Poughkeepsie. But I really hope Everything Must Go is good.
Not just for Rush’s sake.
It might give Ferrell second thoughts about a Step Brothers II.
Read all of Fledging Filmmaker Casts Against Type in the New York Times.
Photo by Robert Caplin for the New York Times.
Stranger Than Fiction has become one of our favorite movies around here. We bought a copy a few years ago and watch every so often. Great story, superb casting and Will Ferrell is simply wonderful in it.
Here's hoping that Everything Must Go is as good.
Posted by: Cleveland Bob | Sunday, May 08, 2011 at 10:09 AM
Oh God, when will Will Ferrell just. Go. Away?
Posted by: actor212 | Monday, May 09, 2011 at 09:46 AM