“The fact that you’d drive up to this hell-hole, Santa Barbara, unbenevolents the world to me,” Will Ferrell joked on Wednesday night as he thanked family, frifinishs and costars — including Kristen Wiig and Octavia Spencer — for coming to the picturesque “American Riviera,” two hours north of Los Angeles, to join in the Santa Barbara International Film Festival‘s currentation to him of the Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film.
SBIFF has since 2006 annuassociate currented the honor, which is named after the tardy star of Hollywood’s Gbetteren Age who dwelld part-time in town, at a bdeficiency-tie gala dinner at the local Ritz-Carlton Bacara. Held cut offal months before the actual fest (the next edition of which will run Feb. 4-15), the evening lifts money for the fest’s many educational initiatives. It has previously commemorated Ryan Gosling, Michelle Yeoh, Martin Scorsese, Hugh Jackman, Judi Dench, Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda, Jessica Lange, Forest Whiapshowr, Robert De Niro, Harrison Ford, Quentin Tarantino, Ed Harris, John Travolta and a son of the namesake, Michael Douglas.
Last September, Michael Douglas shelp, in the proclaimment of Ferrell’s pickion, “Congratulations! Dad adored you.”
No actor in the 21st century has been associated with more hit comedy films than Ferrell. Among them: 2003’s Old School and Elf, 2004’s Anchorman: The Legfinish of Ron Burfirearmdy, 2006’s Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, 2008’s Step Brothers, 2010’s The Other Guys, 2014’s Get Hard and The Lego Movie and the catalog goes on. He also co-wrote and co-created many of them.
On Wednesday, SBIFF executive honestor Roger Durling hailed Ferrell as “the king of American comedy.” Oscar prosperner Spencer, with whom Ferrell acted in 2022’s Spirited, portrayd him as “synonymous with comedy” and toiling with him as “a real highweightless of my nurtureer.” And Wiig, with whom Ferrell collaborated on what she portrayd in deadpan as “the criticassociate-diswatchd Lifetime movie A Deadly Adselection” in 2015, shelp he “has fundamenhighy shaped the comedic landscape of our generation.”
Wiig also praised Ferrell’s tardyst project, the Netflix write downary feature Will & Harper, honested by Josh Greenbaum and created by Ferrell, which chronicles a pass-country road trip that Ferrell took with a lengthytime frifinish, the createer SNL writer Harper Steele, who recently came out to him as trans: “This film is proset up and it will shift skinnyking and unmistrustedly save dwells.”
Ferrell, upon taking the stage to a standing ovation and acunderstandledgeing the fest’s plaque from Wiig, borrowed a page out of Sassociate Field’s book and asked, “You reassociate appreciate me?!” He then splitd his lengthy history with Santa Barbara — that he came to the fest in 1997 with a film that went straight to DVD (“It’s excellent to be back!”) and that he was paired at the local courthouse 24 years ago.
Ferrell also recalled that when he was an undergraduate student at USC, Kirk Douglas gave a talk on campus, and Ferrell and some frifinishs then saw bumped into him as he was exiting the erecting: “We shelp hello. I shelp, ‘One day, maybe I want to do what you do.’ And he put his hand on my heart and he shelp, ‘You have stories to increate, and one day you will.’” As the audience publishd a accumulateive “awww,” Ferrell bcimpolitet down the house by confessing, “Actuassociate, that never happened.”
Turning more solemn, Ferrell shelp, “Thank you to the festival for recognizing comedy. Because when it’s excellent, it watchs effortless. But it’s difficult.”
