SEPTEMBER 2022:

BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO WHEN YOU ARE WINNING TIME…

Before Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty had even aired its first episode on HBO, the series became infamous for the biggest breakup since Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. When Adam McKay bought the rights to Jeff Pearlman’s book, Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s, his friend and business partner, Will Ferrell, a huge Lakers fan, wanted to play the role of Dr. Jerry Buss, the quirky owner of the Los Angeles basketball team during the Showtime era and was partly responsible for saving the team from a slow death and turning them into a championship-winning team. And he figured it wouldn’t be hard to get the role if Adam McKay was the one hiring the cast. But when McKay was tapped with directing the pilot of the series, he had other plans for the starring role of the Lakers Owner, and actor Michael Shannon became the Angelina Jolie to McKay and Farrell’s longtime friendship and partnership coming to an end.

THE END IS THE BEGINNING IS THE END…

In order to discuss the end, we must go back to the beginning of Adam McKay and Will Ferrell and their friendship that eventually became a business partnership with Gary Sanchez Productions. It all began shortly after McKay joined an experimental The Second City troupe and later cofounded the Upright Citizens Brigade with Matt Besser, Horatio Sanz, and Ian Roberts. Before it became a multi-city institution, the idea behind the UCB was to create scripted pranks and street theater, but it would usher in a new vanguard of comedy through Second City and be responsible for such comedian greats as Steve Carell and Amy Poehler.

MCKAY’S CAREER HIVE…

And in 1994, McKay who often remained behind the scenes writing for the UCB and The Second City decided to help produce and perform in a The Second City production called “Piñata Full of Bees,” which featured McKay as Noam Chomsky teaching a room full of schoolchildren the real history of America. American audiences loved the show, it was a success and proved that America was ready for a weirder brand of comedy that Chicago had to offer. The success of the show got the The Second City troupe an invite to perform “Piñata” at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The show bombed and it bombed badly, but not before it drew the attention of Saturday Night Live founder Lorne Michaels, who offered Adam McKay an audition to be on the NBC sketch comedy show. McKay said yes to the audition but only if he could audition as a writer and not a performer. McKay told Charlie Rose in a 2010 interview that “it was the smartest move I ever made.”

You can watch the skit for “Piñata Full of Bees” from The Second City here:

You can watch the 2010 Interview with Charlie Rose and Adam McKay here:

LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT’S ADAM MCKAY…

McKay was hired as a writer for SNL in 1995, making it indeed a smart move. This same week that he was recruited to write for SNL, a comedian from Los Angeles who had a Peter Sellers quality was recruited by Michaels to be a performer on the sketch comedy show, that comedian’s name was Will Ferrell. The first collaboration of McKay and Ferrell together was an SNL skit written by them, a VH1 Storytellers parody in which Ferrell played Neil Diamond and describes ghoulish stories behind some of his most beloved hits, for example, “Forever in Blue Jeans” was about the time Diamond killed a drifter to get an erection.

You can watch part of the SNL VH1 Storytellers parody of Neil Diamond here:

You can watch the GAP Commercial feat. Will Ferrell as Neil Diamond here:

COMEDY HIVE-MINDED…

McKay felt unrestricted in his writing ability at SNL and would eventually become the head writer and started writing film shorts for SNL. It was through filming one of those film shorts, “Old Glory Insurance,” about a scam policy for elderly people who fear being attacked by a robot, that McKay knew he wanted to make movies. When he arrived on set to film the short and there was a threatening 1950s robot and an 82-year-old woman in a perfect wardrobe, it clicked that making movies was what he wanted to do all day with his life. McKay left SNL in 2001 and in 2002, Ferrell followed behind him and left SNL, and he started Gary Sanchez Productions with McKay in 2006 and it became the umbrella company for all of their collaborative productions together, such as The Other Guys, The Campaign, and Tammy.

You can watch the SNL Film Short, “Old Glory Insurance” here:

You can watch the 2010 Official Trailer for The Other Guys here:

You can watch the 2012 Official Trailer for The Campaign here:

You can watch the 2014 Official Trailer for Tammy here:

ANCHOR MAN AWAY…

The first film script they wrote together was for a film called August Blowout, about a used car lot, the script was rejected by Paramount studios and McKay and Ferrell went back and wrote Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. McKay now refers to those days as the glory days of their partnership when they would laugh and joke and barely make it through filming a scene due to uncontrollable laughter and hysterics. Anchorman and its sequel, Anchorman: The Legend Continues were written shortly after Ferrell had left SNL, where he was known for impersonating former President George W. Bush, and so his straight-faced idiocy worked out perfectly for his role as Ron Burgundy. McKay and Ferrell would follow those films up with McKay’s biggest film opening ever to date, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. The NASCAR comedy would also form another lasting friendship and partnership in Ferrell‘s life with the hiring of John C. Reilly while doubling as a Rorschach of the country’s political divide during the Iraq War, without ever actually mentioning it. To this day, Talladega Nights is still considered to be the funniest movie McKay and Ferrell made together. But even though the film made $163 million, McKay felt like he needed to be making more serious films discussing such things as the American political climate at the time.

You can watch the 2004 Official Trailer for Anchorman here:

You can watch the 2013 Official Trailer for Anchorman 2 here:

You can watch the 2006 Official Trailer for Talladega Nights here:

AT A CREATIVE CROSSROADS…

In 2008, McKay, Ferrell, and Reilly made Step Brothers, but it wasn’t until after they produced the Broadway show, You’re Welcome America. A Final Night with George W Bush, featuring the return of Ferrell as former President Bush, McKay’s film career really started to take off and he began producing more and more movies and TV Projects, that often didn’t include Ferrell, even if Ferrell’s name was attached to the production as an executive producer, like HBO’s Succession, which was cast and is produced by McKay. Ferrell was more interested in making the comedies he was starring in rather than the work it would take to produce films and TV Projects, as McKay was doing.

You can watch the 2008 Official Trailer for Step Brothers here:

You can watch the 2009 Official Trailer for You’re Welcome America here:

You can watch the 2018 Official Trailer for Succession, Season 1 here:

HEADING DOWN DIFFERENT PATHS…

McKay’s biggest concern while he was involved with Ferrell in Gary Sanchez Productions was that their business partnership would not screw with their friendship, but the levies of their friendship would indeed begin to crack in 2015 when McKay co-wrote and directed his first noncomedy, The Big Short, based on the best-selling book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, written by Michael Lewis about the 2008 financial crash. It would also be McKay’s first film that was politically centered and featured voiceovers and editing to explain and criticize for the viewers the capitalist system that nearly destroyed the American financial market. The film starred top-tier dramatic actors such as Christian Bale and Brad Pitt but didn’t star Will Ferrell. The film would go on to gross $133 million and be nominated for five Oscars, including a win for Best Adapted Screenplay.

You can watch the 2015 Official Trailer for The Big Short here:

You can watch the edit feat. Margot Robbie in The Big Short here:

CONVERGING PATHS GO THEIR SEPERATE WAYS…

The film would bring McKay and Ferrell to a crossroads in their partnership at Gary Sanchez Productions. But going their separate ways career-wise would prove to be more complicated since the two shared a manager, Jimmy Miller, who McKay felt was standing in the way of his blossoming film career. Miller would frequently ask McKay about his next film with Ferrell and eventually, McKay explained that he was going in a different direction creatively with his work and that he would no longer be needing Miller as his manager and dropped him in 2015 and began his next film, Vice, about former Vice President Dick Cheney, played by Christian Bale, that premiered in 2018.

You can watch the 2018 Official Trailer for VICE here:

IT WAS FUN WHILE IT LASTED…

Meanwhile, Will Ferrell was struggling to get his comedy Holmes & Watson, about Sherlock Holmes, with John C. Reilly starring as John H. Watson, completed. The film was a Gary Sanchez Production that was written and directed by Etan Cohen but needed a post-production resuscitation McKay stepped in to try to edit and failed to save despite the attempt. McKay and Ferrell had discussed breaking up the production company at least three times at Farrell’s suggestion, but it wasn’t until 2019 that they finally decided it was time and released a joint statement announcing their split from the partnership. And as much as McKay had hoped the friendship would be unaffected by the production company, it appeared their friendship was in dire straits after the breakup when the conversation between them ending the business partnership didn’t go well.

You can watch the 2018 Official Trailer for Holmes & Watson here:

WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS…

The final break in their friendship would come shortly after when McKay began making Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. After their production company was dissolved, McKay moved the series and its production under his new production banner, Hyperobject Industries. When the series was being cast, McKay could never see Ferrell in the role and explained as much when Farrell had a conversation with him about starring in the series as Dr. Jerry Buss. He explained to him that he wasn’t right for the role and that he was going to hire Michael Shannon for the part instead, Ferrell was not only devastated as a huge Lakers fan, but he felt betrayed in a way by his longtime friend and seemed to end the friendship after the hard discussion.

FATES SECOND CHANCE, OR NOT…

Shannon would leave the series during the beginning of the production due to his creative differences with McKay over breaking the fourth wall throughout the series. Ferrell heard the role of Buss had once again been on the table but also heard that John C. Reilly, Ferrell’s best friend, had been hired to replace Shannon in the role, without McKay telling Ferrell first. Ferrell was infuriated, and that was the official end of their friendship. McKay has written emails to Ferrell to try and salvage some part of the longtime friendship but has never gotten a response back from Ferrell.

When asked about how he dealt with the entire situation surrounding the casting of Dr. Jerry Buss, McKay said:

“I fucked up on how I handled that, it’s the old thing of keep your side of the street clean. I should have done everything by the book. In my head, I was like, ‘We’ll let all this blow over. Six months to a year, we’ll sit down, we’ll laugh about it, and go, It’s all business junk, who gives a shit? We worked together for 25 years. Are we really going to let this go away? But Farrell took it as a way deeper hurt than I ever imagined and I tried to reach out to him, and I reminded him of some slights that were thrown my way that were never apologized for, the whole time it was like I was saying it out loud, ‘Let’s not become an episode of Behind the Music. Don’t let it happen.’ And it happened.”

– Adam McKay to Vanity Fair (November 29, 2021)

You can read the full Vanity Fair interview with Adam McKay below:

WHEN HE’S WRITE HE’S RIGHT…

McKay ultimately decided on the right casting choice to produce a successful series rather than sustaining a longtime friendship, and I am not sure if the success of the series was worth losing their friendship, but I do believe that had Ferrell been cast in the role of Dr. Jerry Buss, the series may not have been as successful and would likely have been panned by critics for casting Ferrell in a role he wasn’t suited for. I do not think the series would have been as good if John C. Reilly was not cast in the role. He has fit like a perfect glove in the part, and he also is great with the fourth wall breaks when talking to the viewers, Shannon’s reason for leaving the role.

MY WINNING REVIEW…

There is no way to know for sure if I am right and if the series would have bombed with Ferrell in the role, or if HBO would have decided to distribute the series with Ferrell attached to it, either way the series turned out to be a TV ratings hit and has been renewed for a second season that has begun production just recently. John C. Reilly is one of the reasons the series has been a hit and my review is to watch the series and see for yourself that McKay ultimately made the right decision in the casting of the controversial role of the former Lakers owner, Dr. Jerry Buss, even if it did cost him a lifelong friendship in the process.

All ten episodes of Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty are available to stream now on HBOMAX.