Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, conceived by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay and finally released in July 2004 after seven years of development, is one of the last classic Hollywood comedies, long since fully saturated into American pop culture. A couple of months ago I was in a cab and one of the DJ’s on the radio said he was going to San Diego that weekend; his co-host: “Say hi to Ron Burgundy for me.”
It’s been over a decade since McKay and Ferrell botched the release of Anchorman 2 (it was, inexplicably, barely advertised), but the character and the 2004 film endure in the public consciousness. Saul Austerlitz recently wrote a book about the making of Anchorman and its ongoing influence; Kind of a Big Deal traces the film’s origins as August Blowout, a black comedy about a car dealer in the vein of Robert Zemeckis’ Used Cars, through to its Alive!-esque story of a plane full of newscasters stranded after a crash resorting to cannibalism after mere hours, through its production all the way to McKay and Ferrell’s acrimonious 2019 split. McKay passed him over for a dramatic part in favor of friend and former co-star John C. Reilly; Ferrell, one of the only “Frat Pack” members to never succeed in anything dramatic, was so hurt he terminated their relationship.
Not that there’s anything left to squeeze—the era of Anchorman and Talladega Nights and Step Brothers ended a long time ago, before 2015, and even if Ron Burgundy continues to show up at sporting events and on live television occasionally, the joke’s over. It’ll still be a few years before people can watch Anchorman with fresh eyes in public (they still watch it now, alone; but maybe they got burnt out and don’t remember how good it is). Ron Burgundy exists in the same space as “EPIC BACON” and “FAIL” memes; he’s beyond passé. One doesn’t bring him up, nor McKay’s film, in mixed company.
The most exciting bit in Austerlitz’s book involves a third Anchorman movie, one readily available and far better than the 2013 sequel: Wake Up, Ron Burgundy is a feature-length alternate version of the first movie, with a completely different plot and different takes for repeated scenes. Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) begin the movie together, and because the movie was cobbled together from alternate takes and a cut subplot about a bozo revolutionary group called “the Alarm Clock,” it feels like an obscure 1970s movie: McKay and his editor couldn’t convince the studio to pay for additional music or sound effects, darker intonations and scenes are used, Bill Kurtis does an entirely different narration explaining the film’s lopsided feeling (“this is the chaff from the wheat”). The arc of almost every Hollywood movie since the widespread adoption of test marketing is gone here, a distinction made even clearer by Anchorman’s sturdier construction.
They’re only a few minutes apart in length, both under 95 minutes, and by far the best products of the “Frat Pack” era of American comedy, one which will not return with Ron Burgundy, but hopefully someone or something else as ambitious and excited about comedy as McKay and Ferrell were 30 years ago.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter and Instagram: @nickyotissmith