Kind of a Big Deal
How Anchorman Stayed Classy and Became the Most Iconic Comedy of the Twenty-First Century
1 of 1 copy available
From the author of Generation Friends, featuring brand-new interviews with Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, a surprising, incisive, and often hilarious book about the film that changed comedy, Anchorman.
It’s been nearly twenty years since Ron Burgundy burst into movie fans’ lives, reminding San Diego to “stay classy” while lampooning a time gone by—although maybe not as far gone as we might think? In Kind of a Big Deal, comedy historian Saul Austerlitz tells the history of how Anchorman was developed, written, and cast, and how it launched the careers of future superstars like Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, and Paul Rudd, also setting the stage for a whole decade of comedy to come and influencing films like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Talladega Nights, Knocked Up, Superbad, and so many more.
But Kind of a Big Deal isn’t only a celebration of Anchorman—it’s also a cultural analysis of the film’s significance as a sly commentary on feminism, the media, fragile masculinity, 1970s nostalgia, and more. Featuring brand-new interviews with stars such as Will Ferrell, director Adam McKay, and other key players, the book includes insider commentary alongside updated pop-culture analysis. And it also shares surprising stories and facts: from the film’s original conception as a plane crash/cannibal comedy mashup to the surprising, real-life newscaster who inspired the character of Veronica.
Overall, this is a celebration of a movie that millions love—but it’s also an unsparing look back at what has and hasn’t changed, since the 1970s and since 2004. Perfect for fans of the film and anyone who cares about comedy today, Kind of a Big Deal proves that the movie was, and is, exactly that.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
August 22, 2023 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593742617
- File size: 286728 KB
- Duration: 09:57:20
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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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.
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