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The actor was also impressed with co-star Mike Ditka’s improv acumen. “Mike was whacko,” laughs Duvall. “I could say anything I wanted to him in a scene and he’d always come back with something great. He was fearless!”
Duvall, an actor known for his stellar dramatic portrayals, reveals he takes the same approach to comedy: “The meanings are lighter—everything is lighter—but you still have to play it real.” That’s also one of the many reasons Duvall admires co-star Ferrell. “Will is so in touch with himself. He acts like he would in real life, without commentary or forced behavior. It’s made him a wonderful comedian.” Ferrell returns the compliment. “Bob’s a master. He approached his role from a place of reality, as opposed to, ‘Gosh, wouldn’t it be funny if I said or did this?’ He provided a really fun contrast. For as over-the-top as my character gets, he just plays Buck very real, which makes it twice as funny.” Concurs producer Miller, “Duvall’s comedic instincts are freakishly good. To him, there’s no difference between comedy and drama. Watching his comedic choices, you’d swear he was doing it his whole life.” Mike Ditka proved another natural actor who borrowed from reality—his reality—to play himself. “It was easy,” he admits. “I just highlighted some of my more notable characteristics—like chewing gum, wearing sunglasses and smoking cigars. It was my version of ‘method acting’!” “Ditka doesn’t even know what a good actor he is,” notes director Dylan. “He gets warmed up and then he’s off and running. He’s a funny, quick and creative performer who gives as good as he gets.” Ferrell also got a kick out of working with Ditka and enjoyed one scene in particular. “At one point, my character’s ego gets so big that he starts ordering his assistant coach [Ditka] to run and get him a juice box. But I’m not just ordering, I’m yelling—about four inches from his face. Mike won’t do what I want, so I fire him. Now, that was fun.” “It was pretty surreal,” the actor recalls. “I mean, I hadn’t played tetherball since, like, sixth grade, and who am I playing against now but Robert Duvall. It was almost like a Western showdown, but instead of guns, our weapon of choice was a tetherball. It was another great example of how the father and son get way too serious about a kids’ game.” Though Ferrell describes Phil and Buck’s relationship as “classic love/hate,” he explains that the men are “just so totally opposite, they can’t help but approach everything differently.” Adds Duvall, “Buck definitely loves Phil, but he’s one of those macho guys who likes his own way—and always gets his own way—so there’s not a lot of room for what anyone else wants or needs. He’s not a bad fellow, per se, just extremely ‘limited.’” The film’s many comic moments aside, Ferrell feels the real message of Kicking & Screaming hinges on this often difficult father/son connection. “Family relationships don’t have to be perfect,” observes Ferrell, “as long as you can find a way to make them work in some kind of positive way. It’s about accepting each other for your differences and for who you really are.” Coincidentally for Ferrell, while filming a movie about fathers and sons, his first child, Magnus, was born. “It’s kind of special that, whenever I’m on a soccer field now, I’ll have that amazing memory of my son’s birth,” beams the actor. “I can’t wait for the day we’ll be able to sit and watch this movie together.” Filming began in February 2004 on the Universal Studios back lot, where production designer Clayton Hartley created the film’s key location—the soccer field. “The movie is set in a suburb of Chicago which, coincidentally, is where I’m from,” says Hartley. “I ended up assembling our little movie world based on my own small hometown and some of its surrounding communities.” Hartley designed the soccer grounds to resemble a multi-use field that would be built by a park district. He explains, “It’s very common in the Midwest to have a soccer field on one side, a baseball diamond on the other, with a field house, snack shack and bleachers there as well. We also put up lots of trees indigenous to Illinois, to hide the California hills and Universal’s City Walk in the background.” Hartley adds, “We also put up some façades of homes and a bit of a small town, to give the hint of a neighborhood beyond the field.” All the film’s soccer scenes were shot first for practical reasons. To maximize the available time with so many children (the movie’s 12 soccer teams consisted of 14 boys each), the production week was scheduled for Tuesday through Friday. To further expedite matters, director Jesse Dylan put the soccer scenes in Coach Metcalfe’s capable hands. “It was so important that the soccer be absolutely right, I completely entrusted Dan to oversee it all,” tells Dylan. “He made just an enormous contribution to the movie.” On shoot days, Metcalfe had three things in mind: “I had to make sure the players involved knew what they were doing—the moves, the pattern of play and so forth. I then filled in the background players to make sure their action was within a game setting. Finally, I combined the main action with the background to ensure it all worked cohesively.” In filming those scenes, Dylan and director of photography Lloyd Ahern had to be extremely efficient in their coverage. Explains Ahern, “Between the shorter daylight in February and the limited amount of time the kids were allowed to work per day, we really had to be prepared. There wasn’t a whole lot of room for error.” As a result, they used at least three cameras at all times. This helped them blanket the action, covering the soccer play and the related dialogue. Besides their A, B and C cameras, Ahern also employed a Steadicam for close-ups of the action, a “doggy cam” to follow action below the waist and a “lipstick cam” to capture the soccer ball’s point-ofview. With the soccer scenes now guaranteed to look good, the players needed to look sharp as well. That’s where costume designer Pamela Withers-Chilton came in, conceiving colorful, specific uniforms for the film’s 12 soccer teams. Though most soccer uniforms are limited to primary colors, she discovered a process wherein she could digitize any color she wanted. “This really gave me a wide palette to choose from to help distinguish each team,” she says. Withers-Chilton designed the two “starring” teams, Phil’s Tigers and Buck’s Gladiators, to match their personalities. “I picked light blue for our hero team, the Tigers, because it was a good, sweet color for them. I used black and gray for the ‘enemy’ Gladiators to give them a scary, more intimidating look,” she explains. The designer also created a progression for Phil’s uniforms as the Tigers’ coach. “I started him off in weekend street clothes, like khakis and a plaid shirt. Then, as he gets deeper into coaching, he wears a succession of tracksuits. By the time Phil makes it to the championship—and he’s kind of lost his mind—we put him in a light blue track suit with bold, dark blue tiger stripes and a roaring tiger on the back. It looked really hilarious and, of course, Will really went with it.” After filming two months on the field at Universal Studios, Kicking & Screaming moved some 20 minutes away to Pasadena, which doubled for a Chicago suburb. Clayton Hartley chose houses there for Phil, Buck and Mike, each befitting their personalities. “A stately colonial house matched Buck’s strong will and bravado,” describes Hartley, “while a big, sprawling estate epitomized the larger-than-life Mike Ditka. A smaller New England-style home typified Phil’s more humble character.” Hartley also chose the interior of Burbank’s landmark Smokehouse Restaurant for the site where Buck throws the soccer season kick-off party. Hartley asserts, “It was a great location for this scene because it really looked like an authentic Midwest suburban steak house. I could totally see someone like Buck choosing it.” Universal Pictures Presents A Mosaic Media Group Production of A Jesse Dylan Film: Will Ferrell and Robert Duvall in Kicking & Screaming, starring Kate Walsh and Mike Ditka. The music is by Mark Isham. The costume designer is Pamela WithersChilton. It is edited by Stuart Pappé and Peter Teschner. The production designer is Clayton R. Hartley; the director of photography is Lloyd Ahern, ASC. The executive producers are Charles Roven, Judd Apatow and Daniel Lupi. Kicking & Screaming is produced by Jimmy Miller, written by Leo Benvenuti & Steve Rudnick and directed by Jesse Dylan. ©2004 Universal Studios. www.kickingandscreamingmovie.comReturn to "Kicking and Sreaming" Index
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And, though a creative, looser style added a special dimension to the film’s humor, the actors agree that rooting their performances in reality helped keep the comedy honest, relatable and, most of all, funny.
Ditka enjoyed the scene, too, happily reasoning, “I’ve been fired before in real life, so it didn’t bother me too much.” Another favorite scene of Ferrell’s was a tetherball face-off between Phil and Buck. 