The outtakes from 'Anchorman' will make you laugh harder than the actual movie


Will Ferrell is one of the world's most prolific comedians on the scene, and Adam McKay is one of the most successful comedy directors, but there's something particularly interesting when the two come together. Sure, McKay's The Big Short was a good movie, but no movie he makes quite lives up to the level of hilarity that comes with Ferrell's improvisation.

The pair have worked together on five movies now, including Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Step Brothers, The Other Guys, and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. Still, it's their first feature film collaboration that stands out as one of the most quotable and memorable comedies in years.

It's strange to think that this movie came out all the way back in 2004, and will be hitting its 14th anniversary this year. To put this in perspective, 2004 was the same year that Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook, a year prior to the launch of YouTube, and - believe it or not - the year that Stranger Things' Millie Bobby Brown was born. Quite a lot has changed in the world since then, but Anchorman still has plenty of laughs to give as it lambasts the ludicrous macho posturing of the Channel 4 News Team.

For those who missed it when it was released, and somehow skipped it in the 14 years since, the movie sees the rise and fall of Ron Burgundy (played by Ferrell), 1970s San Diego's most popular (fictional) anchorman, after a female colleague starts to gain equal standing. Ron and his male co-workers' ridiculous response to the idea of women doing the same work as men quickly spins out of control, with plenty of room for the cast to improvise the funniest dialogue.

Given the fact that the movie runs as a series of loosely-connected riffs and sketches, in which the actors were given the freedom to ad-lib through the scene, even the work left on the cutting room floor is worth a watch. Some of the best lines, and the alternate versions, were difficult for the cast to get through, as this blooper reel shows.

Honestly, watch this video and try not to laugh:

Personally, it's always the mouth exercises that Ron does in preparation for news-reading that gets me. 'The skeleton ran out of shampoo in the shower' and 'the Human Torch was denied a bank loan' are two sentences forever burned into my brain.

How the cast and crew managed to get through anything in this script without laughing or at least smiling is a complete mystery to me. Maybe they just exhausted themselves laughing at the start of the day, so they could be professional in the afternoon?

Either way, it looks like this was the same on the set of their other movies, which you can see in Step Brothers' absolutely hilarious blooper reel.