Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly and Adam McKay Go Nuts for 'Step Brothers'
By Scott Huver, Special to Hollywood.com
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Monday, July 28, 2008
What other A-list comedy team would walk into interviews bearing a gigantic bowl of salad to share with journalists? That would be Step Brothers stars Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly and director Adam McKay (reuniting from Talladega Nights), who magnanimously offered the chilled bowl of leafy greens to reporters.
“If anyone feels hungry during this time, you can grab handfuls. It's my famous Kansas City Chopped Salad,” explained Ferrell, who had an even bigger announcement than the debut of their film. “I'm coming out with a cookbook, mostly on salads.” Pause. “It's a terrible cookbook, actually.” That was no reflection on the salad, however, as Ferrell had swiped the bowl from the lunch buffet at the Four Seasons.
And that pretty much set the tone for the chat that followed.
Getting Sacked
Hollywood.com: Do you have siblings and what did you do to them when you were growing up?
Reilly: I do have brothers and sisters and a lot of things depicted in the movie are things that happened or I witnessed.
Ferrell: The drum set, right?
Reilly: The drum set was one of them, yeah. Although I haven't talked to my brother yet about it [laughs]. I have to get around to that.
Ferrell: The incident didn't happen?
Reilly: No I was never caught but I was accused of nicking drumsticks. Things were touched when I wasn't there, but it never turned into the brawl in the front yard with the hose on us.
HW: Was any genitalia placed on other’s belongings, as in the film?
McKay: Will actually had a brother who had a beloved fish tank. He was accused of playing with it and messing with it and then he rubbed his nutsack on the fish tank. There's a little bit of truth to it.
Ferrell: And on the fish. We spared no expense.
McKay: We flew in genitalia actors and experts. There's a guy named Matty Terroff. We brought him in with his team.
Ferrell: He's one of the world's best.
McKay: We spent $3.4 million on that nutsack and the nutsack team, body doubles, special lighting that catches hairs on testicles. That part of the movie took 8 days.
Reilly: That's who designed the ballsack. The guy who constructed it is a guy named Guiseppi Jordo, who did the balls in a lot of big classic movies. He did Rock Hudson in Giant, he did his balls. A real Hollywood craftsman kind of guy.
Ferrell: It was cool because we got to see the new and the old meet together. There were screen tests for the nutsack.
Reilly: I got up close to the nutsack. It was a beautiful strawberry blond.
HW: Was there a nutsack wrangler?
Ferrell: They were part of the team.
McKay: A very aggressive gentleman, wouldn't let anyone within yards of it. That's my CB handle: “Nutsack Wrangler.”
Reilly: Remember how nervous people were around the dogs? We had to have the dogs on the set the same day as the nutsack. He was like “Whoa, whoa, whoa – get away from my nuts.”
McKay: We had two nutsacks, each at a cost of $400,000. One of the dogs ate one of them.
Reilly: They eventually passed. They were made out of silicon.