In the Oscar short-listed feature doc, when Will Ferrell finds out his close friend of 30 years is coming out as a trans woman, the two decide to embark on a cross-country road trip to process this new stage of their relationship in an intimate portrait of friendship and transition. Director Josh Greenbaum discusses his film with Oscar-nominated director David France (How to Survive a Plague, 2012).
“Will and Harper makes you feel better. It just makes you feel better. It doesn’t necessarily reach areas that you needed fixed, but at the end of the film, and I don’t know how you did it, you just walk away feeling better about humanity, better about the country – certainly America – better about the possibility for people to learn and expand,” comments France at the beginning of the their FYC chat.
Greenbaum then sets out to distil the essence of the film. “Will and Harper have a beautiful and unique and special friendship, one that I hope everyone in the world gets to experience at some point in their life,” he says. “And hopefully when you find a friend in a friendship like that, you foster it, you nurture it and you hold onto it. And obviously in their case, they, they met their first day at Saturday Night Live 30 years ago. They formed a common bond quickly over their taste in comedy. I think I’ve said it before, but comedy is clearly their love language. It’s how they connect, and you see that throughout the film. And so, I think part of what I was feeling just going into the project was [to], at a minimum, capture the essence of their relationship. And again, I didn’t know exactly where their relationship was headed…”
“Obviously Harper came out, she sent a letter to Will announcing her transition and saying, ‘I hope we can still be friends. I hope I’ll still be loved – more to come,’” Greenbaum continues. “And obviously when this idea for the road trip came about, and I think you can feel it early on in the film, you sense that, ‘oh, I think this friendship is going to survive this transition,’ which I think was one of Harper’s fears. But I don’t think you know exactly in what form it will survive and to what extent it will survive this kind of next part of Harper’s life, and then therefore this next part of Will and Harper’s friendship.
“So that was certainly what I was exploring, but my hope was that the warmth of their friendship and relationship I could capture in some way on screen, as well as Harper’s love of this country and love of America, love of road trips…As a documentary filmmaker, I think what I’m trying to do is help my subjects tell their story, whatever that is, whatever their story is that I’m trying capture from behind the lens. And so there’s a lot of aspects to this story and to Harper’s story, but certainly at the centre of it is a kindness and a warmth.”
Click on the link above to watch the whole conversation between Josh Greenbaum and David France.
