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Kings & Queens of Comedy

Coming up with a great comedic idea and a still photograph is still one of the most challenging experiences that I have in creating. The picture needs to be completely readable without words. There needs to be a wink to it or a gaffe, if you want to go so far, but it has to be immediate. And part B, which is probably even more frustrating and difficult, is convincing the comedian that you’re as funny as they are. So, Jerry Seinfeld was probably one of my first comedians to collaborate with, and what he taught me about comedy was to study silent movies because there’s always a story of a visual, and there’s always that one moment, which is the big punchline. I was really amazed by that because he was a fan of Harry Langdon, and he was a fan of Buster Keaton, and the list goes on. But it makes a lot of sense because you’re really not dependent on what a comedian is used to, and that is the spoken word. Physical comedy is the introduction into creating a great, simple comedic photograph. That’s as basic as I can get about it. From Jerry, I had the opportunity to move on to a great performer like Will Ferrell. Will Ferrell’s timing is everything. It’s a delivery. It’s an expression. It’s playing a character. So, you already have all that built into the formula. Now, you just have to come up with the idea. I’d worked with Will a couple of times in the past, and his publicist Matt Labov at the time and Will would listen to my long lists of ideas, and they would pick one or two. And that’s where I would finalize the concept. So, with the upcoming shoot with Will, I passed a bunch of ideas, and Matt stopped me and said, “hey, Will has an idea he wants to entertain, and we think it’s pretty good”. I was like, “wow, I can’t wait to hear this one”. And Matt goes, “How about Will giving birth to a chimp”? And I thought, Well, okay, that’s pretty good. So, I called up my friend, Gabe Bartalos, who’s an incredible prosthetic and special effects artist, and he made me these Planet of the Apes masks. We enlisted a couple of people that were crew members, and we created a surgery room with doctors also very Planet of the Apes, brought in a live chimp that he was giving birth to. Will got into the stirrups and gave birth to a chimp.