Embed from Getty Images
The 40th Sundance Film Festival began last week. NBC News ran a lovely article about how Sundance has showcased a breadth of pivotal pieces of queer cinema since the festival’s inception. The seminal documentaries Before Stonewall and The Times of Harvey Milk both premiered there in 1985, the latter of which is getting special screenings to mark the anniversary. Joining that legacy this year is a documentary featuring… Will Ferrell? Yes! The backstory: in 2022 Will’s fellow SNL alum and friend of 30 years Harper Steele came out as trans. Will’s response? “Let’s have people film us driving cross-country to document this transition in our friendship.” And the result is Will & Harper, which just had its world premiere at Sundance in hopes of landing a distributor. Going off of the word of mouth so far, I don’t think they’ll have a problem finding one.
Will Ferrell touched down at the Sundance Film Festival to world premiere the new documentary “Will & Harper,” which centers on the relationship between the beloved comedian and his best friend Harper Steele as they take a road trip. The two met during their days on “Saturday Night Live,” which Harper wrote for from 1995 to 2008. Harper came out as transgender in 2022.
“It was three summers ago in which Harper emailed a lot of her close friends with the headline: ‘Here’s a Weird One,’” Ferrell said at the Variety Studio presented by Audible. “She went on to explain she was going to transition and we were all of course excited to hear the news and surprised to hear the news. All of us were extremely supportive and expressed love…but that sort of opened the questions like, how can we help you? What do you need us to do?
Ferrell said he had “zero knowledge” about the trans community before Harper came out to him.
“I had met trans people, but I didn’t have anyone personally in my life,” Ferrell said. “So this was all new territory for me, which is why I think this film is so exciting for us to kind of put out there in the world. It’s a chance for all of us in the cis community to be able to ask questions and also just to listen and be there as a friend to discuss this journey.”
“It tells the story of a cis friend of a trans person who has to transition himself,” Harper added of the movie.
The official synopsis for “Will & Harper” reads: “When Will Ferrell finds out his close friend of 30 years is coming out as a trans woman, the two decide to embark on a cross-country road trip to process this new stage of their relationship in an intimate portrait of friendship, transition, and America.”
To anyone thinking (as I briefly did) “Man, Will is totally centering himself in this other woman’s story,” I’ve watched a few videos of Will and Harper talking up their film, and in many of them Will makes the joke up front about how he’s “mansplaining.” Or he goes on for a bit describing the project and how they wanted it to be a listening opportunity for the cis community, and then after a lengthy answer he turns to Harper and says, “Did I just do a good job listening there?” He’s clearly self-aware. The thing is, you can tell from their dynamic on video, less so in print, that Will is the extrovert and used to the promotion circuit, whereas Harper is more reserved, doesn’t speak as much, but when she does she lands a zinger. Usually directed at Will. I respect that. If anything it makes me now even more eager to see the movie to get to hear more from her. That may sound contradictory, but my point is that I’m all for introverts being introverts! And I hope someone shells out a lot of moolah to get this road trip in theaters/on streamers soon. Random side note: apparently Kristen Wiig wrote the end credits song.
