Tuesdays with Tom: Anchorman is a Mount Rushmore 21st Century Comedy
Reliving one of the funniest films ever made, plus thoughts on hot dog drama, Chicago accents, the Bulls garage sale, and record-setting travel
Bob Dylan once wrote “the times they are a-changin.” Ron Burgundy never heard that song. He missed a lot of other things in his journey to the Channel 4 News desk in San Diego. My mom took me to see Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy for my birthday in 2004. I’m not sure if she enjoyed the film, but I howled with laughter for roughly the entire screening at the AMC in the North Riverside Mall. I knew that my sense of humor had been permanently altered watching Anchorman. I’ve recited lines from this movie for two decades. Is this the funniest movie of the century?
It’s a miracle that Anchorman made it to the big screen. As a USC student, Will Ferrell studied journalism and always had a fondness for local news anchors. When Adam McKay and Ferrell were on Saturday Night Live, they came up with a script called August Blowout. The story was “Glengarry Glen Ross meets a car dealership” and was built around a 1970s local anchorman. Ferrell was delighted by the over-the-top machismo and casual sexism of typical anchors in that time. It was a subculture ripe for satire. In a re-written script called Action News Man, Ron Burgundy’s news team experiences a plane crash. The group tries to make their way back to civilization, all while running from a buffoonery of ninja star wielding orangutans. Somehow, there was a musical number involving sharks.
Surprisingly, DreamWorks Pictures did not want this version of Anchorman. In fact, they turned down over 20 different pitches of the movie before reluctantly agreeing to a Judd Apatow produced film. Even with the Apatow touch, the final script was described as “a 9.8 on the absurdist scale.” It was enough to get DreamWorks on board. It didn’t hurt that Will Ferrell was a hot commodity at the time. Old School and Elf supercharged Ferrell’s film career and, despite the wild premise, the studio was willing to trust the McKay-Ferrell-Apatow connection with Anchorman.
With Ferrell locked in as the main character, the rest of the cast needed to live up to McKay and Ferrell’s golden standard for improvisational comedy. Many actors auditioned, including John C. Reilly, Bob Odenkirk, Amy Adams, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Ben Stiller. The core roles of the news team eventually went to Paul Rudd, Steve Carrell, Dave Koechner and Christina Applegate. The Channel 4 News team is an Olympic-level group of absurdist weirdos. It starts with Ron: the epitome of the air-headed, egotistical manchild. Champ Kind, the sports guy, is even more sexist and full of himself, but comes with a dark side. Brian Fantana is the man on the street. He’s a ladies man, supposedly, and his pornographic mustache is era appropriate. Weatherman Brick Tamlin defies logical description. Despite their hilarious flaws, they stumble into functionality as a local news team.
Real life newsman Bill Kurtis opens the film with a narration. Ron Burgundy is on top of the world. He reads the news to San Diego every night, partying with his co-workers and yucking it up. Ron warms up with verbal non-sequiturs like “the arsonist has oddly shaped feet” and “the human torch was denied a bank loan.” He’s got it all, or at least he thinks he does. His life turns upside down when he meets Veronica Corningstone. Ron tries his usual tricks on her, but he quickly realizes this woman is different. She doesn’t cater to the stereotypical 1970s man. He’s perplexed and mesmerized by this bold departure.
We take for granted how quickly Anchorman embedded itself into the comedic lexicon. When you hear people say “I’m kind of a big deal” or “Great Odin’s Raven!”, you don’t think twice about where it comes from. The movie is a never-ending assault of nonsensical dialogue. It’s beyond quotable. Anchorman is a referential gospel for an entire generation. Watching the movie for the umpteenth time, I found myself repeating almost every line word for word. Ron’s casually, confident idiocy is the driving force. He believes that diversity is an old, old wooden ship and that San Diego is German for “a whale’s vagina”. Anchorman instantly establishes a tone of unpredictable wackiness.
There’s a real story sandwiched into this 94-minute odyssey of gut-busting one-liners and ridiculous comedic fantasies. Beneath Anchorman’s farcical improvisation is a layered tale about resisting societal change, the fragility of male egos, the cutthroat nature of TV journalism and, improbably, evolving your limited worldview. It’s a testament to Ferrell’s performance that you root for Ron in spite of his alarming character traits. Ron gets hard at the office. He fights a woman and calls her a “pirate hooker”. Burgundy terrorizes everyone he encounters with his incredible self importance. And yet, you want him to succeed.
Ferrell is far from the only standout. Veronica is a treasure in her own right. She’s the anti-Burgundy: intelligent, prepared and empathetic. She’s funny, too. The Channel 4 News station is a coterie of demented people. Fred Willard as Ed Harken, the station’s boss, slowly oozes insanity throughout the entire movie. The running bit about his son causing public chaos is too good. Chris Parnell’s tearful rant about Ron’s “poop mouth” is delivered with Oscar-worthy commitment. Kathryn Hahn is criminally underused, but makes an impact. Judd Apatow and Adam McKay make a quick appearance. Don’t forget about Seth Rogen.
Anchorman is pillared by four moments of madness. The first one is when Ron takes Veronica out on the town. Ron delivers an impromptu jazz flute solo, stomping his feet from table to table, to the extreme delight of Fred Armisen as jazz club owner, Tino. Can you blame Veronica for wanting to go to Pleasure Town after that? The second pillar is Ron translating the meaning of love to Champ, Brian and Brick through an acapella rendition of Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight.” Has puppy love ever been described with such hilarious inaccuracy? The third pillar: Jack Black punts Ron’s dog Baxter off a San Diego bridge. It’s the worst moment of Ron’s life. He handles Veronica’s ascendence to lead anchor with unbelievable immaturity. Tits McGee was on vacation.
The fourth and final pillar takes Anchorman out of the Milky Way. Early in the film, Ron and the team run into a rival news team, led by Vince Vaughn as Wes Mantooth. After Champ threatens to take Dorothy Mantooth to a nice seafood dinner, Wes is incensed. He plots a swift revenge. This manifests into one of the most unexpected cinematic moments ever. The Channel 4 guys meet Wes’s team again in an alley. Suddenly, they’re joined by several other San Diego news teams, ready to fight to the death. It’s a cameo-laden disaster. People are set on fire. Brick kills a guy! Ron is unfazed by it all. “That escalated quickly” is all he has to say afterwards.
Unless you’re really invested in the birth of a baby panda, there’s no real stakes in Anchorman. Ron gets Veronica back and achieves his dream of becoming a network anchor. It’s foolish to assume he’s learned many lessons, but there’s some genuine growth. The only thing that might stick is Ron understanding the phrase “when in Rome” and that women should be treated as equals.
But unlike the cologne Sex Panther, Anchorman works way more than 60% of the time. Anchorman is Caddyshack for the Millennial generation. It gathers the greatest comic actors of its time to tell its silly story and lets them run amuck. Anchorman is a collection of sketch-like scenes, with god-tier improv, and its sole mission is to make you die laughing. Does it make sense? Not really. Does it matter? Absolutely not.
Initially, the critics did not embrace Anchorman. “It is not as maniacally uninhibited as Old School or as dementedly lovable as Elf” wrote A.O. Scott in the New York Times. I’d beg to differ. It was a modest box office success, collecting $84 million and barely cracking the top 30 highest grossing films of 2004. I doubt even McKay, Ferrell and Apatow expected how cultish the following for Anchorman would become. It wasn’t for everyone, but the target it did hit was an all-time bullseye. The movie’s unforgettable quotes became a love language for millions. Before the rise of social media, Anchorman was the verbal meme of the 2000s. Its greatest moments were shouted at people endlessly and the characters became instant icons.
They had so much fun making Anchorman that they had enough footage for a bonus movie: Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie. The outtakes are among the best ever. In 2013, they made a sequel, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. It’s a bloated mess, but it shows flashes of the brilliance from the original. There have been some diminishing returns for these re-treads, but the legacy of Anchorman is as vibrant as ever. Everyone involved seems to agree it is the greatest thing they’ve ever worked on. Ferrell says that Ron Burgundy is his favorite character to play. He has gleefully brought Ron Burgundy to a smattering of talk shows and public events. Ron never disappoints. It’s the signature performance in the amazing career of Will Ferrell.
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy has a strong claim as the funniest movie of this century. It is peak silliness and its cultural impact has far outlasted its flimsy premise. I will never forget how hard I laughed in that movie theater and the dozens of times I re-watched it on DVD. Anchorman indelibly shaped my sense of humor. It still makes me crack up all these years later. So many movies try to impart life lessons. Anchorman makes no such demands on its audience. It is pure lunacy wrapped up in a wildly appealing hour and a half of jokes.
Anchorman isn’t just a thrilling comedy experience. It’s like being indoctrinated in a global inside joke that gives you instant credibility with strangers. I’ll never tire of hearing the quotes. They simply don’t make many comedies like Anchorman anymore. In a world overwrought with intellectual property and bad corporate synergy, the daring originality of Anchorman shines even more brightly in 2024 than it did in 2004. Watch it. Drink it in. And above all else, you stay classy, San Diego.
Tom’s Thoughts of the Week
In the last two episodes of Friday Night Beers, Vince and I drank Yard Work and Zombie Beast. With Yard Work, it was the show’s first Kölsch and we analyzed who is high brow, middle brow and low brow in the world of entertainment. We went nuts on Greek mythology in the Zombie Beast episode, as the beer hails from Greece. I learned something shocking about ancient Greek men from Vince in that one. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast here and follow our Instagram page for relevant updates!
Like most red-blooded Americans, I was devastated that Joey Chestnut was banned from competing in the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest on July 4th. Chestnut did eat hot dogs on July 4th with some American soldiers in El Paso, Texas, but it wasn’t televised. Chestnut ate 57 hot dogs in five minutes, which is just one less than Patrick Bertoletti ate in his 58-dog championship performance in ten minutes at Nathan’s event this year. What a flex by Chestnut! The 16-time champion recently signed an endorsement deal with Impossible Foods to represent their vegan hot dog brand. This didn’t sit well with Major League Eating. The league’s commissioner George Shea compared Chestnut’s association with Impossible Foods akin to “Michael Jordan coming to Nike…and saying, ‘I am just going to rep Adidas too.’” I can live with the Michael Jordan-Joey Chestnut comparison, but it’s incredibly arrogant of Shea to think that MLE has made Chestnut a star. It’s the other way around. Banning the most exciting and important figure in this “sport” from its Super Bowl event was a horrible call. In 2010, Shea also banned the previous hot dog champion, Takeru Kobayashi, from the contest because he refused to sign an exclusivity contract with Nathan’s. Seems like Shea is the problem here. Coincidentally, Chestnut and Kobayashi are reuniting for the first time in 15 years in a head-to-head hot dog eating contest called Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef. It will air on Netflix live on September 2. Perhaps it's better for these two icons to cut MLE out of the picture and give the people what they want.
The Chicago accent is one of the most well known in the country and yet it's somewhat elusive to describe. Believe it or not, most Chicagoans don’t sound like the famous SNL super fans or Richie from The Bear. Block Chicago finally tackled this subject in great detail. Tanera Marshall, a dialect coach from the University of Illinois-Chicago, says that “what determines your Chicago accent is primarily your background” and that there are several distinct Chicago accents. For example, Irish-American Chicagoans typically speak with a much tighter jaw (“start the car” becomes “stah-rt the cah-r”), while Italian-American Chicagoans use looser jaws (“stuh-rt the cuh-r,”). Many of us carry along the genetic dialects of our ancestors that immigrated into America. Additionally, there is a separate, Southern-like accent for Black Chicagoans, many of which are the ancestors of “Black Southerners went north to escape the segregation of the Jim Crow South.” With the “ubiquity of this media exposure” across young people, regionally specific dialects are becoming less common nationwide. However, we all have an accent, whether we notice it or not, and that sound often says a lot about who you are and where you’re from.
The Chicago Bulls finally realized what most fans knew for over two seasons. They weren’t good enough to compete and now they’re doing something about it. Of course, they could have done much more about it in February at the trade deadline. Instead, they’re off-loading their core assets in July for a fraction of the value. They got San Antonio Spurs back-up guard Chris Duarte, two second round picks and cash in a sign-and-trade featuring DeMar DeRozan. That’s not too inspiring, but they didn’t have many options. He was set to be a free agent and re-signing a 35-year-old non-star would have been a terrible decision for a team going nowhere. Trading Alex Caruso to Oklahoma City for 21-year-old point guard Josh Giddey was another below-value move. It seems imminent that Lonzo Ball and Zach LaVine will be on new teams. That’s assuming they’ll find a team willing to take them for another lackluster return of players and picks. I’ll say this much. Next year’s Bulls team will probably be very bad, but at least they’ve picked a path out of the treadmill of mediocrity. Maybe by taking a step back next year, they can take two steps forward with a lottery pick in 2025.
It feels like it's never been more expensive to fly than right now. Why? According to the Transportation Security Administration, Americans have been traveling at record levels. The 10 busiest days in TSA history have all occurred in the last two months. On July 4th, over 3 million customers were screened at TSA, setting a record for most travelers screened in a single day. In total, 71 million Americans traveled over the extended July 4th holiday weekend. “With summer vacations in full swing and the flexibility of remote work, more Americans are taking extended trips,” said AAA Travel about the historic surge. Naturally, airlines are taking full advantage of this situation. Airline ticket prices are up 25% year over year: the largest jump since 1989. The Department of Transportation pushed for increased pricing transparency and refunds for customers, but that doesn’t really address the price gouging itself. One analysis concludes that while the base fares of flights are not so outrageous, the combination of taxes and carrier fees can drive the price up anywhere from 12 percent to well over 100 percent of the base fare. Even the increase in fuel costs are “passed onto consumers, whether through an increased fare price or a fuel surcharge on mileage redemptions.” Unfortunately, there’s very little that travelers can do to combat this. Unless you are willing to significantly alter your travel plans, like flying to a less busy airport, adding stops or flexing into less desirable flight times, it’s not likely you will find a cheap flight today. I assumed that the resurgence of travel would level out post COVID-19. But we’re well past that era and people continue to travel like never before.