Courtesy of Sundance Institute
PARK CITY, Utah—Will Ferrell and his dear friend Harper Steele began working at Saturday Night Live the same season, nearly 30 years ago.
Ferrell was cast as a performer, and Steele was hired as a writer. The early buzz on Ferrell was that he was a “dud,” Steele says. But Steele understood the now-SNL legend’s peculiar gifts, writing many of Ferrell’s most famous sketches, the beginning of a creative partnership and deep friendship that has lasted decades and bled over into Ferrell’s movie career. The most ridiculous, head-scratching projects he’s acted in, Ferrell says—an Icelandic pop star in Eurovision Song Contest; Lifetime movie A Deadly Adoption; Casa de mi padre, a comedy that is entirely in Spanish—Steele was behind.
It’s their penchant for collaborating on surprising, out-of-left-field projects that took the friends to the Sundance Film Festival, where Will & Harper had its world premiere Monday night. The screening was soundtracked by an audience duet of roof-shaking laughter and silent, moved sobs—culminating in multiple standing ovations that left the Anchorman star wiping away his own tears on stage. It’s common to feel a certain electricity when a film plays well at a festival. What happened in the auditorium Monday night felt more like a kinetic warmth, as if loveliness could be somehow tangible.