Did you ever hear the story of the “Saturday Night Live” writer who came out as transgender to his friend Will Ferrell and they took a trip across the United States to see how the country reacts to transgender people? Haven’t you done it? You should, because it’s pretty fun. And in the end it’s no joke. It takes the form of a documentary called “Will and Harper. It’s on Netflix.
Although I suspect the people behind it wouldn’t like this term, the film is unashamedly a teaching tool, aimed at a country where perhaps a third of the electorate not only has deep animosity toward transgender people but is greeted with rhetoric on a daily basis. of hatred against them. It is affecting in a discreet way, thanks to the chemistry of the personalities of the title. And it works as the kind of buddy comedy that Ferrell might have once starred in, and probably would have had to apologize for later, because buddy comedies featuring former “Saturday Night Live” cast members aren’t known for their sophisticated understanding of nuance.
Harper is Harper Steele, formerly Andrew Steele. She was on “Saturday Night Live” before Ferrell came along and championed him as a talented comedian even though no one there thought much of him when he was just starting out, which became the basis of a beautiful friendship. During the pandemic, Ferrell received an email from Steele that simply said, “I am now old and, as ridiculous and unnecessary as it may seem to report, I will be transitioning to living as a woman.” Ferrell was stunned because, as he puts it, “Andrew was an Iowa-born, 501-jeans, shit-beer, hitchhiking guy, basically a lovable curmudgeon with a super weird, creative sense of humor” (which, as he says the movie). shows us (in a way that corrects Ferrell’s perceptions without being strident) there is a misperception about the type of people who transition.
To his credit, director Josh Greenbaum (“Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar”) ultimately tips the balance of interest more toward Harper Steele than Will Ferrell. This isn’t so much a movie about a straight, cisgender person learning to accept his old friend in a new package. It turns Ferrell into an audience surrogate who has walked the path of understanding and acceptance a long time ago and, in a sense, is re-enacting it for the cameras. Ferrell says that after receiving the email he asked himself, “How long did he feel this way? What made her keep this for so long? and says that immediately after the news broke, their friendship was in “uncharted waters,” but that seems like an exaggeration for the sake of storytelling. It’s pretty clear from the way these two interact on camera, as well as a few other details, that there was never even the slightest chance that Ferrell would reject Steele or even have much trouble to overcome.
Steele’s concerns are more pressing. In fact, they are literally life or death. Steele is from Iowa and says he “loves America,” but I don’t know if they love me right now, too. He presents himself to the world differently than before, but he still loves the same things, including, in his words, “shit bars” and “truck stops” and the parts of the country where a body could disappear and no one would know. never. .
This concern becomes immediately clear when the two talk about taking a road trip. The main concern is security. Not so much the safety of these two in the context of a real-life road movie: They travel with a camera crew, one of them being Will Ferrell, and presumably the production got clearance and put up signs that said, basically, “We’re doing a movie, you give your permission to be in it when you walk into this establishment,” whether the establishment is the stadium where the Indiana Pacers play or one of the aforementioned dive bars. Steele is confused and there is an unfortunate encounter. in the game with the governor of Indiana, who acts friendly but turns out to be a huge anti-trans person who signed a bill denying teenagers gender-affirming care.
No, the concern is more about what is already happening in the United States and around the world when the people involved are not famous and do not have multiple cameras at all times, gathering footage for a Netflix documentary. “Going alongside all those brothers in a brotherly environment has been the hardest part of my transition,” Steele admits. Although in the end everything turns out quite well. And, of course, that’s the point of the exercise: to show that none of this is as important as fans make it out to be, and that if Will Ferrell can support his friend Harper one hundred percent, there’s no reason for the same to happen. The scenario cannot be repeated everywhere.