How Anchorman Stayed Classy and Became the Most Iconic Comedy of the Twenty-First Century
June 5, 2023
New York University writing professor Austerlitz (Generation Friends) delivers an amusing examination of 2004’s Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, a spoof on 1970s newscasters. Interviews with star Will Ferrell, director Adam McKay, and other major players detail how the film got made, starting with Ferrell and McKay’s meeting in 1995 while working on Saturday Night Live, the energy of which McKay, the show’s head writer from 1996 to 2001, sought to capture in Anchorman by allowing the actors to improvise. Austerlitz’s thoughtful discussion of whether it’s “okay for us to enjoy Ron and his friends being objectively terrible” successfully interrogates how the film, in attempting to skewer the male bigotry of the 1970s, sometimes succumbed to bigotry itself (in Ben Stiller’s portrayal of a stereotyped Hispanic news anchor, for instance). However, Austerlitz overreaches in positing that “Anchorman has multitudes buried in its depths,” crediting the movie’s portrayal of misogynist newsmen with foreshadowing the #MeToo movement and positing that it’s “the film that, more than any other, has defined the course of twenty-first-century comedy to date.” Though Austerlitz doesn’t always persuade, this has enough behind-the-scenes insights to satisfy fans.