Scalding Hot Takes: Between Two Ferns: The Movie
When I found out that Between Two Ferns was being adapted into a movie for Netflix my first response was “Neat!” followed immediately by “Why?”
The same question can be asked of any number of television adaptations, video game adaptations, sequels reboots and remakes. That’s why I try not to use the phrases like “redundant”, gratuitous, mercenary, self-indulgent and unnecessary. Almost by definition, the remake/adaptation/reboot is redundant, gratuitous, mercenary, self-indulgent, since it involves resurrecting something already successful in a market hopelessly over-saturated with similar re-imagining.
If they remake an old television show, or adopt a new one for film, you can reasonably assume that it will not burn with urgency and purpose, that it will instead be the product of pragmatism and commercial calculation.
Between Two Ferns consequently feels like a movie writer-director Scott Aukerman made because the opportunity to make a movie with his friends that would get a high-profile release on the biggest streaming monolith on the planet was too good to turn down, not because his muse angrily demanded that he use his art to tell this particular story.
Just as there are songs of opportunity and songs of inspirations, there are films of inspiration and opportunity as well. Between Two Ferns is a quintessential film of opportunity. It seems like Netflix gave Aukerman and star Zach Galifianakis, a few million dollars to turn the Funny or Die cult interview into a movie hoping that it might follow in the footsteps of Borat and Wayne’s World and escape the TV adaptation ghetto and become a bona fide pop culture phenomenon.
Worst case scenario a Between Two Ferns movie underperforms and Netflix has a low-budget original Zach Galifianakis movie written and directed by a major cult figure and lousy with star-power courtesy of the never-ending parade of big-name celebrities that fill out the cast in small but sometimes juicy roles as themselves, a group that includes such heavy hitters as Keanu Reeves, Paul Rudd, Will Ferrell, Adam Scott, Benedict Cumberbatch, Peter Dinklage, Gal Gadot and the proverbial cast of thousands.
With the Between Two Ferns movie the thinking seems to be less, “Why do it?” than “Why not?” It is a calculating gamble, a small, smart risk, a film of modest scope and ambition and beyond modest length with a faint whisper of a plot that mostly functions as an excuse to stick Galifianakis opposite as many famous faces as possible with a list of insulting to extremely insulting questions, then watch the sparks fly.
On Between Two Ferns Galifianakis has cultivated the oblivious, hostile character of a bitter outsider who knows just enough about the beautiful, famous people he’s talking to hate them inexplicably and unnecessarily to sourly pepper them with vicious taunts only thinly disguised as interview questions.
The goal of most celebrity interviews is to create such a sense of ease and comfort that questions are no longer necessary and a Q&A between two famous people becomes a freewheeling conversation with a life, rhythm and energy all its own. Between Two Ferns aspires for the antithesis; the goal of each interview seems to be to get the interview being interviewed so apoplectic that they’re moved to lash out, to answer the interviewer’s complete violation of social codes in kind and snap at him or storm out in a huff.
Between Two Ferns is on some level a commentary on the mindless sycophancy of the celebrity interview, that phony, chummy farce when interviewer and the interviewed alike engage in a mutually beneficial fiction that whatever is being promoted is better and more important than it actually is.
Between Two Ferns replaces the default deference of the celebrity interview with reflexive hostility. Galifianakis isn’t deferential to fame and fortune. He does not worship at the altar of beauty and youth. He doesn’t even acknowledge or respect his Uber-famous guest’s fundamental humanity and dignity, let alone give them the star treatment.
The anti-comedy tension that gives Between Two Ferns has a lot to do with proximity. These kind of insults would lose their bite and their edge if performed in a roast setting, coming from an athlete or rapper or B-list comedian in front of a drunken dais, a quippy host and the guest of honor seated nearby with an audience further relieving tension with laughter.
In question form, however, these playfully sadistic sentiments become casual taunts delivered at close range by an interviewer and master of anti-comedy exclusively focussed on ratcheting up the awkwardness to hilariously unbearable levels. On Funny or Die Between Two Ferns isn’t just extremely funny but also gutsy and bold.
The interview subjects are in on the joke, of course, but it takes chutzpah and guts to sit mere feet away from the most powerful man in the world, as Galifianakis did when interviewing Barack Obama, and pepper him with insulting statements, even in jest.
The weird danger of Between Two Ferns came in no small part from its claustrophobic nature. Famous people are used to being catered to and worshipped as God. Galifianakis doesn’t even show them basic respect yet the conventions of the celebrity interview dictate that you can’t storm out without looking like a thin-skinned diva or a drama queen.
The Between Two Ferns movie undercuts that claustrophobia by opening up the universe of the cult web series to make it more cinematic. Galifianakis isn’t just a man who makes celebrities uncomfortable in interviews as brief as they are charged with tension and hostility: he’s the protagonist of a major motion picture, like Charles Foster Kane, or Michael Corleone, or Borat, or Pat, or the Batman.
Galifianakis consequently needs a hero’s journey, and an arc, and an inciting incident and overarching goal and all of the other nonsense I’m sure they teach you about in screenwriting books. Movies also need plots, fortunately and unfortunately, so Between Two Ferns cobbles together Wayne’s World, Borat and Jimmy Glick in La La Wood.
Galifianakis stars as a fictionalized version of himself, a small town Southern weirdo whose public-access show cocaine-addicted show-business phony Will Ferrell (Will Ferrell) discovered and uploaded to his Funny or Die online powerhouse because he enjoys laughing derisively at Galifianakis, Nelson Muntz-style.
Ferrell has his famous friends endure Galifianakis’ not so good natured abuse because it amuses him and he leads a Roman emperor-like existence dedicated exclusive to his own pleasure but then Galifianakis stops amusing him. In order to realize his dream of becoming a big time talk show host he’ll need to travel across the country and interview more celebrities in a shorter amount of time for less money than ever before.
It’s not much of a plot but the ramshackle premise serves primarily as an interview-delivery device. On that level, and on a laugh level, the film delivers. The questions Galifianakis tosses malevolently at his guests/victims/collaborators have just enough of a grounding in reality to be legitimately cutting.
For a web series and film rooted in hostility and insults, awkwardness and bad vibes, and tension and weirdness, Between Two Ferns is blessed with an incongruous child-like innocence thanks to its star, who has a reputation as one of the nicest men in show-business.
Between Two Ferns never feels as brutal or as mean-spirited as it should because Galifianakis is very clearly reading incredibly mean jokes someone else rather than expressing his own thoughts or ideas. To drive home that Galifianakis the man and actor and comedy icon is a lovely human being who would never think to express these kinds of ugly thoughts in a sincere fashion the movie ends with bloopers where Galifianakis breaks characters and laughs the kind of deep, authentic, self-deprecating belly laugh that would have no place on Between Two Ferns both because it would betray the fictional nature of the interview institution and because it would break the all-important tension.
I had bifurcated expectations when it came to Between Two Ferns: The Movie. Adaptations of TV shows and web content invite low, low expectations. We expect these curious, mutated beasts to be neither nor fowl, neither television nor TV but rather a strange, unpalatable combination of the two.
But I also consider Scott Aukerman a legitimate comic genius so I had high expectations for his feature film directorial debut. On that level, I was not disappointed by Between: Two Ferns: The Movie nor was I blown away by it. I’m not sure a Between Two Ferns movie needs to exist but I’m glad that it does because it’s very funny and isn’t that ultimately what comedy is all about? Other than blowing squares’ minds and making people think, of course.
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