Will Ferrell and Jon Heder: "Glory" Hounds

Will Ferrell and Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder are at their comic, goofy best when put in fish out of water situations. Well, can you imagine a more "stranger in a strange land" arena than an "Olympic" ice rink for these two? Jon and Will in spandex? That's Blades of Glory.

Imagine sitting down in the same Beverly Hills hotel room with these two funnymen. It's a riot. Picture Jon looking very preppy in white shirt with stripes and Will in shorts and brown jacket. Oddly, their hairstyles are now switched from those in the film. Jon's hair is very dark brown and Will's is longer and curly like Jon's in the film. Okay, now that we know who is who, pull up a chair for some pretty hilarious and light raunchy gab on costumes (crazy ones), stunts and learning to skate (at one point Jon broke his ankle).

TeenHollywood: Will, when you're done with your hair, can I just borrow it?

Will Ferrell: Absolutely. You can borrow it now. Let me get it off. [He tugs.. whoops, it's not a wig].

TeenHollywood: How important is the hair of the characters?

Jon: I loved it. I love hair. It's very important.

Will: I would say the same thing.

TeenHollywood: How does it help you find the essence of your characters?

Jon: I think so much of the look, obviously including wardrobe, but the hair is a huge thing because it's basically the frame for your eyes and that's the window to your soul is what they say.

Will: I'm about to cry right now.

Jon: I always love messing with my own hair. As much as I can, I don't normally like to wear wigs. If it's just scheduling reasons, but yeah, we did extensions and played around with it. It's always fun getting into the character that way.

Will: Plus, really very few of us have a job where you can get paid to come up with a crazy hairstyle. So it's always fun if you can add that extra dimension of your look and hair is a huge part of that.

TeenHollywood: Okay, this movie is about two male skaters pairing up and some of the lifts are pretty risque. Did you set any boundaries on touching?

Jon: The contract said, "No less than 2 centimeters."

Will: I had a restraining order against his crotch. We really didn't talk about it, did we?

Jon: I think, all in all, it ended up being mostly effects.

Will: That was a stunt crotch. I don't think I touched his crotch. Movie magic.

TeenHollywood: Will, you get to do some guy/gal touching with Jenna Fischer in the film. You do it all!

Will: Well, the boob grabbing. That was ad-libbed. I just thought, 'This will be fun, I'm just going to do it' and 80 takes later . . . [Laughs] I had to get it right. And, it remained in the movie.

TeenHollywood: Did you guys know each other beforehand? You have such a great rapport. Did that happen as soon as you met?

Will: [looking mooney-eyed at Jon for effect] It was instantaneous, wasn't it?

Jon: I was just [in awe]. When we first met, it was on the ice and we were on level playing ground. All bets were off. I think we were just scared.

Will: Yeah. We met in the parking lot of Pickwick Ice Rink in Burbank. It was like, 'Hey, nice to meet you.' 'Yeah, you too.' 'This should be fun, right?' 'It's going to be hard, huh?' 'You don't know how to skate, do you?' 'No.' 'I don't either.' 'Okay, I'll see you later.' [Laughs] That was kind of it.

Jon: I was like, 'I've got to lift you?'

Will: 'No, I think I will be doing the lifting. I have to lift you.'

TeenHollywood: Now that you did learn to skate, who loves it and who hates it?

Jon: I love it.

Will: He does. He loves it. I don't hate it.

Jon: He doesn't hate anything.

Will: But, yeah, I haven't skated since the movie. But, he's only skated once.

Jon: I've gone only once since because I've been busy.

Will: He's a big talker. He was like, 'I'm going to skate all the time.'

Jon: And, I am. I'm going to. [Laughs] And, by all the time, I mean that I'm going to try to make it a regular, once a month to semi-annual thing. [Laughs]

TeenHollywood: Will, can you tell us something about Jon that we would not know? And, Jon can you tell us something about Will?

Will: Let me see . . . Jon has a twin brother. Did you know that?

TeenHollywood: I did.

Will: Oh, shoot! [Laughs]. Well, his twin brother is really mean. Jon's nice, but this guy -- he scares me.

Jon: He's the evil one.

Will: He's the evil one. And, he would come to set and he wouldn't even talk to me. He'd just sit across the room and go (does an evil laugh). I was like, 'What is he doing?,' and Jon was like, 'That's just my evil twin brother, don't worry about it.'

Jon: Will doesn't grow facial hair. It's all down here (points to Will's chest). He never had to shave.

Will: True. For some reason, the beard follicles are actually right here so I grow a chest beard. So, I have to shave that down. So, those are two things.

TeenHollywood: Will, when you get a script, do you immediately try to find the scene where you get to take off as many of your clothes as you possibly can? We see you in the semi-buff in a lot of films.

Will: No. I actually hope that there isn't [a scene like that]. I gave it to Jon this time. But, yeah, in this one, I kind of do a version of it with the tattoo thing, which I thought was really funny that I reveal this stupid life story through tattoos. [Laughs] But, we got to make some crazy, funny tattoos. That was amazing. And, in fact, we were just laughing that Jimmy [Jon's character] has no sense of the fact that there's this gross guy with his shirt off. He's just wrapped in the story, like 'Really, wow, cool. What's that one?'

Jon: And then, Chazz [Will's character] gets the tattoo of Jimmy.

TeenHollywood: Will, were you tempted to keep that one for awhile?

Will: I was. That was the funniest thing. The make-up tattoos are so real looking and they last for a good couple of days, so I would forget. On the weekends, I'd have these weird tattoos. My wife would be like, 'Oh, gross, what is that?' 'It's just a wolf. I'm the lone wolf.'

TeenHollywood: Could make for some kinky fun! So, the spandex skater costumes vs. the elf suit -- compare and contrast.

Will: Well, they were very similar. The elfin tights were actually quite functional. A lot of times, in that movie, it was very cold where we were filming, so I was actually thankful to have them. The lycra suits, I was thankful to have them in a different sense, just for the character, 'cause they were funny looking.

Jon: It took some help to get into. But, you didn't have to wear a dancer's belt in Elf did you?

Will: No, I did. So I had already experienced it, yeah.

Jon: So, he was totally just being nice to me when I had to wear a dancer's belt for the first time. You were obviously trying to make me feel better by saying, 'Yeah, these really suck, don't they?' You were used to them. [Laughs]

Will: I didn't want you to feel left out.

TeenHollywood: Jon, did you want to draw the line with the fluffy feather tail thing on the butt of the peacock costume [Note: this wild costume is worn by Jon in the print ads and posters for the film]?

Jon: I remember seeing it in the design, but I always forgot about it because it's so light, and I never saw it. [He twists around as if trying to see his own fanny]. People would say something and I'd be like, 'Oh, that's right, I've got feathers back there.' So, no, I did not draw the line.

TeenHollywood: The costumes in the film are hilarious and just over the top. How much input did you guys have on your costumes?

Will:We had a little bit. Julie Weiss, who's the wardrobe designer is kind of a mad genius, in a way. She'd be like, 'I found this leather jacket in the hatchback of my neighbor's car. Try it on.' [Laughs] You'd be like, 'Oh, it's perfect.' 'I knew it! You're going to wear that today.' [Laughs] She really designed these amazing [costumes]. She would call me on the phone and ask me things like, 'What would your character keep in a duffle bag?' [Laughs] 'I don't know yet. I haven't even thought about it.' She was like, 'I see you as a cross between Steven Tyler and . . .' this person or that person. But, yeah, in terms of the skater stuff, she totally designed all that.

Jon: My peacock outfit was kind of my idea because we had seen clips and footage of other skaters, just to study and research, and Johnny Weir had this swan outfit. It was kind of a famous routine. It was very serious, but the glove was a swan's head and I was like, 'That would be funny to do, but do it as a peacock.' Skaters are very much like peacocks. It was amazing. I just remember throwing that idea out, and then, the next thing I knew, she had this bejeweled glove and the eye, and everything. It was like, wow!

Will: The first time I saw him in his outfit, I was really jealous. [Laughs] I was like, 'Aw, you're a peacock. Of course. You get a gloved hand and everything. I'm only fire.'

Jon: But, he had fire shooting out of his hand. That was pretty cool.

TeenHollywood: Will, you have to run on skates on dry land. How was that?

Will: That was really hard. That was the first two days of filming, all of that chase and we hadn't really worked out being on those skates at all.

TeenHollywood: Did you have covers on the blades at all or was it just a straight metal blade?

Will: No, it was like a piece of wood that was painted silver on the side so it looked like a blade but it was still only about that much thickness that we were running around on [indicates about an inch]. And it was the craziest way to begin a movie ever. I felt really beat up after those first few days of all that physical stuff, but it was fun.

TeenHollywood: Jon you and Jenna's kiss is kind of sweet and awkward on your part but she is really going for it. How did that develop?

Jon: Well, in the script, it was like a sweet innocent kiss. We were just talking about the characters and how they both have neither ever had experience with the opposite sex, for good reasons. So when they get together, we just thought neither of them would know what they're doing and we should just make it like the most awkward kiss ever, where she's a little bit more excited, she gets into it a little bit more. Jimmy is still trying to go by what he watches on like Backstreet Boys videos. Like simple, beautiful and yeah, we didn't really rehearse it. But when we shot it, it was like all right, let's just kind of go for it and see what happens. It was really weird. There was a couple where she was like making moans like 'Ahh ahh.'

TeenHollywood: What is it like skating a performance in the stadium with real crowds, and how much of that did you really do?

Jon: Being in front of the camera is fine for most scenes. There's always a small cast and crew but this is the first movie where we have our routines planned and you have all these extras. And it was like the real deal. I got up, I was nervous but once you start going, it's fine.

Will: You don't want to mess up. We worked with this woman, Sarah Kawahara and she's like the big time skating choreographer, to the point where some of the other coaches who were former pros get nervous around her. She does all the Disney on Ice shows, everything. In your mind, you'd be like, 'I nailed that' and she was like, 'better. You're gonna get there. Yeah but make sure you point your toe.' And the director would be like, 'Looks fine.' She was almost like, 'Don't tell them that.' But it was intense.

Jon: And I tried to do as much skating as I could. Obviously, we had doubles to do the really cool spins and the jumps.

TeenHollywood: Any wire work?

Will: We flew at the end but that actually was insane. We were like 100 feet up in the air above all these people going 'ooooooo'. I was like, 'I hope these don't break!'

At this point, Will's old Saturday Night Live alum Amy Poehler, who is also in the film, walks into the room to joke with him.

Amy Poehler: Keep it down, we're trying to think out here!

Will: You are nothing but a dumb hillbilly.

Amy: Son of a b**ch. [They hug and she leaves the room... pretty funny].

TeenHollywood: What's coming up for you guys?

Will: I just started filming another sports comedy about the ABA which was this league in the '70s, a competing league with the NBA. So it's a basketball comedy. Semi Pro. I'm this guy Jackie Moon. I'm the player/owner/coach of the Flint Michigan Tropics. And I was able to buy the team with the money from my single, my number one hit song 'Love Me Sexy'. The true story part of it is the NBA and the ABA merge and they only took four teams. So we're trying to play for fourth place to make it to the NBA.

Jon: Surf's Up and Mama's Boy. I don't know when that comes out but it's all done.

The guys leave for more hugging in the hall with castmates from Blades of Glory.

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment jounralist and produced screenwriter.