Anchor Elf with the Cowbell Takes Center Stage

Although there are still nearly two months of shopping days before the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) officially opens, an opening salvo landed at the Ritz-Carlton Bacara this week. The occasion was the annual gala fundraising dinner and presentation of the Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film, which found the Ritz-Carlton ballroom awash in a black-tie crowd savoring an elegant surf-and-turf dinner and up-close tribute to comic actor Will Ferrell.

Past recipients of the Kirk Douglas Award and this gala tribute include Michelle Yeoh, Martin Scorsese, Hugh Jackman, Dame Judi Dench, Jessica Lange, Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, Quentin Tarantino, John Travolta and, last year, Ryan Gosling, then high on the buzz of his Barbie moment (“I’m Ken!”).

Celebrity and epicurean buzz aside, the event is an important fundraiser for SBIFFs rich educational component and program.

As SBIFF head Roger Durling said in his introduction, Ferrell has a special skill and driving mission to get his audience laughing. Durling dubbed him the “king of American comedy” and a “combination of adult and child.”

Montages during the night illustrated Ferrell’s range of characters and sometimes feral comic instincts, with clips from such career highlights, stocked with memorable characters, as Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Elf, Blades of Glory, and Barbie.

Some truth rang out from a clip from his role as the wild-maned Mugatu in Zoolander: “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!” Ferrell is also the man who put the phrase “more cowbell” into common vernacular, during his long, career-establishing run as a Saturday Night Live (SNL) cast member.

But the most recent item in his filmography takes a very different turn: the documentary Will & Harper chronicles a cross-country road trip taken by Ferrell and his longtime friend and former SNL screenwriter Andrew Steele, who came out to Ferrell as trans, had undergone a gender transition, and is now named Harper.

On hand to pay tribute to Ferrell were friends and sometime co-stars Kristen Wiig and Octavia Spencer. Spencer, who played along with Ferrell in the 2022 holiday movie Spirited, told Ferrell from the stage, “The world is a better, brighter, and funnier place because of you.”

During her introduction, Wiig commented, “Over the many years, his audience, his friends, his family have come to feel that he is our safe place in his work. We know that whatever road we take with him is a place we want to go with the ability to laugh until we cry. He holds our hand and walks us through more doors into the human experience.

“That being said, I have to mention his latest documentary. This film is profound, and it will shift thinking and save lives.”

Opening his acceptance speech, Ferrell held the award and asked, “Are you sure?” before paraphrasing Sally Field’s iconic acceptance moment: “You really like me.” Ferrell then turned local, noting, “This is a full-circle moment for me for a number of reasons. I actually was here at the Santa Barbara Film Festival In 1997, with a little film called Men Seeking Women, which went straight to DVD. I read a little blurb on it, which said ‘mixed reviews.’

“So, it is good to be back,” he said with a sly grin. “And I was married here 24 years ago, with an amazing reception in the Santa Barbara courthouse. So, Santa Barbara means a lot to us.” He launched into a story of being a student at USC and hearing Kirk Douglas speak, and afterward telling the star about his acting aspirations. In his best deadpan, Ferrell said, “He put his hand on my heart and he said, ‘You have stories to tell, and one day you’re gonna tell,’ and he walked away.”

After a beat, Ferrell added a rim shot, leaving the room in peals of laughter: “Actually, no, that never happened. Would have been such a cool story, though.”

Ferrell closed by thanking SBIFF for acknowledging the art of comedy with this tribute — in what was likely the funniest Kirk Douglas tribute to date. “When it’s good,” he said, “it looks easy, but it’s hard. This is recognition for the 20 studios and financiers that said no to us when we were shopping around Anchorman. This is recognition of when I’m sitting in my trailer on the first day of shooting on Elf in my elf suit, staring at myself in the mirror, going, ‘This better work, buddy. Otherwise, you’re done. What happened to the cool guy from SNL, now dressed up in tights in New York City like a crazy man?’”

Ferrell continued, “Thank you for awarding what I’ve always felt like I needed to bring a sense of play to whatever I did.”

The 40th Santa Barbara International Film Festival will take place February 4-15, 2025. Official events, including screenings, filmmaker Q&As, industry panels, and celebrity tributes, will be held at SBIFF’s Riviera Theatre and its new Film Center, plus the historic Arlington Theatre. Passes for the 2025 Festival are on sale now at sbiff.org.