Too Much Information? Or Seven Years and Became My Teachers
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S T Y L E 生活時尚 15 TAIPEI TIMES • WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2008 [ ART JOURNAL ] Will CONTINUED FROM P14 Only the path wasn’t that long, he points out, a touch shamefully. And there weren’t many rejections, either. He joined the LA comedy troupe the Groundlings in the early 1990s. Within three years he was a regular on the TV show Saturday Night Live, where Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy and John Belushi started out. What about working the circuit, I ask, and paying your dues? He laughs. “I got SNL with a bit of a guilty conscience. There were people who had been at the Groundlings for six Too much information? or seven years and became my teachers. For me to then get picked for SNL after three years ... I was, like, ‘Um, sorry I got this.’” He looks embarrassed. “I felt like a mouse who found this hunk of cheese that nobody else got.” Above: A woman walks past works by artist Tracy Emin titled, from Ferrell describes starting on SNL in Tracey Emin’s retrospective at left to right, Volcano Closed, Something I’ve Always Been Afraid Of 1995 as “a very scary dream come true.” the Scottish National Gallery of and Star Trek Voyager, at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Adam McKay, who joined the show’s Art. The first retrospective of work by Emin, the enfant terrible writing team in the same year, remembers Modern Art has attracted more British artist, opened at the museum last month. PHOTO: AFP meeting Ferrell. “The other writers and than 13,000 visitors in the three Left: Emin�s When I Think About Sex I Think About Men, Women, I thought Will was the straight man. It Dogs, Lions, Group Sex (and I Love You All), on display at the Scottish wasn’t until the first read-through that weeks since it opened. But it’s National Gallery of Modern Art. PHOTO: AFP I thought, ‘Holy crap, he’s amazing.’ He also drawn scathing reviews could do all these characters, he was a Damien Hirst, associated with the Young British Artists great straight man, and then he proved he from some prominent critics group that emerged in London in the 1990s. could write. The writing staff fell in love Her eye-opening works have made her a household with him very early on.” BY LUCie GOdeaU name and brought financial success — millionaire Ferrell contributed scalding impres- AFP, EDINBURGH advertising guru Charles Saatchi, a major collector of sions of George Bush and Ted Kennedy, contemporary British art, has repeatedly snapped up and created Gene Frenkle, a fictional her pieces. member of Blue Oyster Cult, whose inept he first retrospective of work by Tracey Emin has gradually become part of the art cowbell playing repeatedly spoils the Emin, the enfant terrible artist who has establishment — she became a member of the Royal group’s attempts to record (Don’t Fear) T made a career out of intimate personal Academy in 2007 and represented Britain at the the Reaper. The character appeared in only details including her own unmade bed, has opened Venice Biennale last year. one sketch, but turned out to be Ferrell’s to mixed reviews. But she still draws stinging reviews from some most popular creation. “Even now, people As well as My Bed, a mess of vodka bottles, critics. present me with cowbells to sign,” he says, cigarette butts and dirty underwear, Tracey Emin: “By the end of this show, I felt as if someone had sounding bewildered. 20 Years also features Conversations With My Mum, been shouting at me down the phone for a couple of McKay believes Ferrell’s persona a video of her talking to her mother, and It’s Not the hours — a kind of emotional earache,” the Guardian dovetailed neatly with the mid-1990s mood Way I Want to Die, a model of the roller coaster in newspaper’s reviewer wrote. of the show. “The cast was this really her hometown of Margate. The Times was hardly more flattering — “What well-adjusted group of people. It wasn’t The show, at the Scottish National Gallery of distresses me far more than Emin’s taste for the the crazy, drug-addled SNL of the 1970s Modern Art, has attracted more than 13,000 visitors obscene ... is her amazing, unshakable faith in her and 1980s. We had the advantage of seeing in the three weeks since it opened, but many critics own importance,” its reviewer said. Visitors to the what fame had done to those people have been scathing, accusing her of being unsubtle Edinburgh show were divided in their reactions, who had gone before. The new intake and self-important. meanwhile. was made up of anti-celebrities who Most of the works focus on the artist’s own life “Heavy, boring, rubbish” and “personal, reacted against that excess. I think people — her teenage years, being raped at the age of 13, thought-provoking, absorbing” were just two of the still respond to that in Will. He knows relationships and fears about never being a mother comments left in a visitors book. pompous big shots are ridiculous, and that — with an unblinking intensity. The show runs in Edinburgh until Nov. 9 and there’s a hard fall waiting for them. He has “Emin has turned her life into a public spectacle travels to the Contemporary Art Center in Malaga, a pretty healthy outlook on the whole joke like no other artist before her,” wrote Patrick Elliott, Spain from Nov. 28 to Feb. 22, 2009, and the Art of wealth and fame and Hollywood.” the exhibition’s curator, in its catalogue. Museum in Bern, Switzerland from March 10, 2009 While he was still at SNL, Ferrell began Born in 1963, Emin is, alongside figures such as to June 21, 2009. dallying in movies, including the deserv- edly disliked A Night at the Roxbury, in which he played a dorkish poseur whose delusions of cool are undermined by the fact that — you guessed it — he still lives at home with his parents. His fortunes changed with a part in Ben Stiller’s 2001 Curator hides Stalin mementoes from Russians catwalk comedy Zoolander. Ferrell quit SNL a year later, and the rest is a tally of The director of the Stalin museum had When Russian bombs began the fighting remain. At the galleries were sealed. But and many after suffering exile box-office figures with zeroes on the end falling on Gori, Robert weekend, workmen were outside are the tiny brick and and forced labor in the camps like never-ending smoke rings. only one thought when Russian jets Maglakelidze took a desperate clearing rubble and glass from wood house in which the of the Gulag. Anchorman, Talladega Nights (2006) started bombing the Georgian city of decision: he loaded his car several large apartment blocks young Iosif Dzhugashvili was For regional governor and Blades of Glory (2007) were all hits, with a precious consignment heavily damaged by bombing. born in 1879, and the green Lado Vardzelashvili, Stalin’s and McKay confirms that an Anchorman Gori: preserve the personal effects of the and fled along the dangerous Yet the Stalin museum railway carriage — formerly shadow lies over even today’s sequel is on the boil. While the Frat Pack city’s most infamous son road to Tbilisi. — an imposing, pale stone belonging to the Tsar events, shaping the actions of has more or less dispersed, Ferrell is tight Stowed inside were the building with a colonnade — in which he traveled to the his distant successors in the with the new comedy kings: Judd Apatow, personal effects of Soviet and a tall rectangular tower, Yalta, Potsdam and Tehran Kremlin, Vladimir Putin and who produced Step Brothers, and Seth BY MarK TreVELyan REUTERS, GORI, GEORGIA dictator Josef Stalin: his crowned with a red and white conferences in World War II. Dmitry Medvedev. Rogen, who has a cameo part in the film. military greatcoat, peaked Georgian flag — escaped You can even buy a “I think what is happening But is there a change in the offing? cap, pen, glasses, silver sword virtually unscathed. replica Stalin pipe for 12 here is part of Stalin’s legacy, In 2005, Ferrell took his first straightish and pipe — in total some 50 “We’re clearing up, there is lari (US$8.60), a small silver because Putin and Medvedev part, as a tax inspector who hears a unique items. a lot of dirt. There was thick bust for 25 lari, or a bottle of think exactly the same way voice narrating his life, in Stranger Than Maglakelidze, director dust, the halls are filthy,” Georgian wine with his portrait as Stalin,” said the young Fiction. It was a quirky film that provided of the Stalin museum in said a museum official, Mziya on the label for 20 lari. governor, whose office him with one of those semi-dramatic Gori, says bringing them for Naochashvili. “Until the collapse of the overlooks the central square roles comics love because it shows off safekeeping in the Georgian The museum was closed Soviet Union there were lots dominated by a giant statue of their range. Today, Ferrell is weighing capital was the only way to on Saturday, but managers of visitors from the whole the dictator. up other “straight” scripts. “I don’t have ensure their survival. allowed reporters to look world, about half a million a During the conflict, he this yearning to be respected or taken “I had to take the risk,” he inside parts of it. year.