Harold Crick's Life Really is Stranger Than Fiction

Posted on November 13, 2006

Will Ferrell discusses his new movie, Stranger Than Fiction, with SciFi Wire. This is an absolute gem of a film that we saw this past weekend. Ferrell plays IRS accountant Harold Crick who one day hears a British woman (Emma Thompson) narrating events in his life. It appears that Harold is a character in a brilliant literary author's new novel.

The problem is that this particular author has a nasty habit of killing off her her heroes. With the help of a literature professor played by Dustin Hoffman, Harold sets out to find out if he's living a comedy or a tragedy and if he can change the ending to his own life.

This is so different from other stuff you've done, a bit science fiction, a bit fantasy-

Ferrell: It was-I mean, getting to do something like this, which is obviously a little different from a lot of the stuff I've done, in the sense that, it's just, I guess, more muted, even though it still is a comedy. It was, actually, I found it really freeing, to be able to kind of just play a character in this way, and I guess, for lack of a better term, play something as real, you know, as I've gotten to play before. And that was-you know, that was one of the things that appealed to me. The other part [was] just also being a part of this wonderful story that's so funny and different and touching and all these elements, of a completely different type of film, not only as an acting exercise for me, but also just thematically, of anything that I've gotten to do.

Emma Thompson is hilarious as the neurotic writer who has such a bad case of writer's block that her publisher sends out a troubleshooter (Queen Latifah) to help her finish the novel. She moves in and refuses to leave until the author finishes the book. We've never heard of a publisher doing such a thing, but think it's a fine idea.

Here's the trailer for Stranger Than Fiction: