Everybody Love Everybody: Semi-Pro 15 Years Later With Writer Scot Armstrong

Will Ferrell was, at one point, about as big of a star as one can hope to find in the world of comedy. Following his legendary stint on "Saturday Night Live," the actor had great success in movies such as "Anchorman" and "Step Brothers" in the first decade of the 2000s. But in 2008, Ferrell led an all-star cast that also included the likes of Woody Harrelson, Andre 3000, Will Arnett, and many other famous comedy faces that audiences know and love in a basketball comedy called "Semi-Pro." It was a movie with all the talent in the world which, unfortunately, didn't quite live up to expectations at the time of its release.

While the film topped the box office on its opening weekend back in March of 2008, it topped out at $44 million worldwide against a reported budget of $55 million. Critics also were not terribly kind to the sports comedy at the time. Yet, as the years rolled on, it became clear that this heavily fictionalized tale of the very real merger between the American Basketball Association (ABA) and the National Basketball Association (NBA) found its audience. Between the song "Love Me Sexy" living on well beyond the film itself, the highly-recognizable "everybody love everybody" mantra of Ferrell's character Jackie Moon, or people dressing up as the Flint Tropics for Halloween, it's clear that time has been kind to the movie.

In honor of the 15th anniversary of "Semi-Pro," I had the good fortune of speaking with its writer, Scot Armstrong, to discuss its legacy. We talked about the incredible cast the filmmakers assembled, how some of the most memorable scenes came together, the narrative behind the movie changing over time, and much more. Let's get tropical, shall we? 

Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Where did this story come from? How did this originate?

I just always have been a fan of the ABA and I just love how ridiculous a lot of the true stories were about the ABA. And I'm a big fan of sports movies, not always the ones that are like "Hoosiers," like sincere ones, but the ones that have some edge. Things like "North Dallas Forty," "Slap Shot" or "Bull Durham." I just grew up on great sports movies and I saw a lot of potential in this story.

One of the other things I think that is key here is a lot of times with sports movies — I know the NFL's a little weird about what you're allowed to incorporate into a film. Did you guys actually have to get any cooperation from the NBA since you used some of the actual teams that exist in the NBA?

There was some weird politics because so much of the stuff in the movie is inspired by true events and the ABA really did merge with the NBA. Four teams really did go into the NBA and it's really inspired by true events. In the end when the NBA absorbed the ABA, I guess technically the NBA owns the ABA and stuff. So there was a little bit, but they were mostly pretty cool about it.

The movie kicks off with "Love Me Sexy." Was that written into the script? Because the song is such a huge part of the movie, but I have to imagine that the full song was written later. How is it that you framed that in the original script and how did the actual song come about?

I wrote the lyrics in the script, so when people read it they get that it's ridiculous, but it wasn't really based on a tune, you know what I mean? It was just in my head, but I'm not really a musician. Will added some lyrics and changed some things around. Then we worked with a big talent [Nile Rodgers], and once it was on its feet, they recorded it. The producer did a lot of great work on it, and changed things around, and helped write it.

It's so funny when you look up the song on Spotify, it's credited to Jackie Moon and not Will Ferrell, which is one of my favorite things. On the subject of musicians, one of the most striking things now is that the cast is absolutely bananas. Not only is Will Ferrell leading it, along with Andre 3000, but you have Patti LaBelle as Jackie Moon's mom. You have Jackie Earle Haley doing this thankless job as Dukes, which is amazing. How on Earth did such a ridiculous cast come about and some of these people doing bit parts? It's pretty impressive.

Yeah, there's Rob Corddry, a lot of people that took off after that movie, too. Ed Helms.

Oh, totally.

Honestly, it goes back to when the Upright Citizens Brigade was getting some underground attention back at the time. I had been spending time at the theater and performing a little bit, and getting to know people and you could see who had a lot of great raw talent. We cast some people that had a lot of talent that hadn't really broken out yet through that theater. Matt Walsh is in it as the ref [Father Pat] and he's a good friend of mine. A lot of the comedy parts including Andy Daly and [Will Arnett], all that's through the theater and the New York comedy scene at that time.

Everyone else, it was the magic of Kent Alterman, the director. He was tenacious about getting the best possible cast. And it obviously doesn't hurt that people seem to respond to the script, and Will Ferrell was doing it, and Woody Harrelson. We just got people to come in. It was a fun shoot. People came in and had fun for the day because it's a big funny movie. It's set in the 70's. We shot in L.A. — that helped us, too, because people didn't have to drive and travel too far.

It is really, really funny and it does seem like people were having fun. One of the reasons I really want to talk to you is the movie has very much found its audience. I don't ever see anything but people liking this movie. You see people dressing up as Jackie Moon or the Flint Tropics on Halloween. But at the time, the critical response was what it was and the commercial response perhaps could have been a little better. Have you noticed the change over the years, the movie finding its audience?

Yes. I get so many comments about "Semi-Pro," it's ridiculous. More than almost any of my other movies, people love "Semi-Pro." It's always disappointing, but I feel like comedy reviews are always weird sometimes. Some of the best comedies in history don't always get — I'm not saying mine — but I'm saying other comedies throughout history don't always get the reviews or the reaction. Movies like "Office Space" or whatever are not well-reviewed and don't break out. But then people discover them and that's just the sign of a good movie, I think. We opened at number one, but it just wasn't as big as I guess some other of Will's big hits at the time. But now I think it's found its audience.

I think one of the things that really stands out is it's one of those movies that's incredibly quotable. What's wild is you can go on Amazon right now and you can get an "everybody love everybody" placard very easily. I think that's amazing. Where did that come from? Was that a phrase that you had already used in life or did you just pull that out of nowhere for the movie?

Well, I love writing for Will. I really do. I worked with him on "Old School." He was in "Starsky & Hutch." So I've worked with him a bunch. But my favorite voice of his is when he is unabashedly positive and trying to talk people into things. That's my favorite way to write him sometimes. And I myself find myself being pretty positive a lot of times. People might be down, I'd be like, "Come on." I'm looking at the bright side all the time. So that stuff is an exaggerated version of me. Also, obviously, the Flint Tropics have nothing to build on and they have nothing going for them, but it's all bulls***. It's just funny. It just seemed like a funny thing.

I was trying to tie in the '70s thing, peace and love, that kind of thing. That's just something I made up and it took off after I wrote it. We started building on that. Sometimes I'll take lines out of real life. I was at a hockey game in real life and it was really, really quiet and all of a sudden someone yelled, "Somebody hit somebody." And I was like, "That's funny." And I just remembered that when I was thinking, and then Jackie Moon yells that once they cut to commercial. I don't know, just make it up as you go. What else would Will Ferrell say?

One thing you've got is positivity and that's very much his character. He is so unwaveringly positive.

Can I tell you something I just remembered?

Absolutely.

The one thing about "Semi-Pro" is it was never meant to be non-stop wacky comedy or whatever. Some of Will's previous comedies had a slightly different tone, slightly different, bigger tone, and paced a little quicker. We were trying to make a movie that was in the style of "North Dallas Forty" or "Slap Shot" or "Bull Durham," a little bit more grounded pace even though it's ridiculous. Some people didn't always catch onto that until right out of the gate. I think once people saw it a couple times or, I don't know, people eventually came back to it and realized that it all works.

That is what I was just about to get at, because it is really f***ing funny, still to this day. But underneath that, there is a real genuine, actual heart to this movie. It does feel like an actual sports movie in that way. I think that's one of the biggest things that does maybe set it apart from another goofy comedy from that time period.

Yeah, I truly love sports. I was an athlete in high school, not good enough to be great, but put in my time on the teams and was very invested in all these things. I love the stories. And there is some heartbreak in sports. There's a player on my team that was probably going to be a Division I football player and busted up his knee, and there [were] other people that had a huge potential that threw it away. All these different things combined with true stories in sports, and the true history of the ABA league, then combined with the movies we all love. For some reason I found myself — I like writing for guys that should have been big, but it didn't really happen.

Like Monix, I think there's something funny about a character that was good enough to be there barely, but not good enough to be great. He rode the bench for the Celtics. I think there's something funny about that character, but there's also something in a sports way beautiful and awesome about a character that maxed out his potential and made it to the NBA. The Monix character was literally as good as he could be and he made it that far, but there's a ceiling. But he didn't have the talent of the Clarence character. Not to get heavy, but that's the basis of it. There's a deep frustration when he sees these other characters not being as good as they could be or not trying or not focusing or not wanting to learn.

I think that's what helps when you have a guy like Woody Harrelson willing to do that part, because it really comes through.

Yeah, I think I myself get frustrated when I see people that have a lot of potential that don't try, especially in sports. I'll be like, "Man, if I had that, I would be doing this and this." So I think some of that comes from, I agree with Monix on a lot of things.

For all his flaws, he has a very relatable perspective, which I appreciate. There were a couple specific scenes I think that we'd be remiss not to talk about, the first being the c***sucker scene, the jive turkey scene. How did you arrive at jive turkey being the ultimate offensive thing that could be said?

I think that was originally pitched to me, that was a later thing. That wasn't in the original script. We wanted to add something to that part of the movie. I think that's something Kent Alterman actually came up with that framework of something and from there we built off of that. But that's just a great idea.

Yeah, genuinely wonderful. But also, you have guys in that scene that are known for improvisation. Be it that scene or the rest of the movie, how much of it was improv or how much of that was actually in your script?

The funny thing about that, the one guy who improvised the most is probably Andy Daly. Andy Daly is Dick Pepperfield, one of my all-time favorite characters. Just the guy that just clicked into that role. He literally became the guy. Originally, Andy Daly was, like I said, somebody who performed at the theater and hadn't really been in a lot of things yet. I invited him to the table read, assuming we would eventually put in someone more famous or whatever. But then he just killed so hard in the table read that it was just like, "Oh my God, he's going to be the guy." He was great.

But a lot of that stuff you just roll camera and he'd just roll on things. Believe me, a lot of it's written. But then he would take the beginning of that and let that spin out into other things. I think somewhere in storage at New Line is a reel of him just winging it, talking about so much nonsense. He was so great and he actually built this whole backstory of his character who's conservative but has a slightly wild side he won't admit to or whatever. It's just funny.

Andy Daly is one of the funniest people. I don't know if you ever saw the show "Review" that he did.

Oh yeah. Big fan of "Review." Kent Alterman directed this movie and then went on to produce that at Comedy Central.

It's a miracle you got Andy in there because I can't picture anyone else, especially as a guy named Dick Pepperfield. That is completely the right person for that role.

In my mind, Dick Pepperfield grew up in Iowa and had five daughters, and had a potato farm in his backyard or whatever. It's just this sometimes there's this Midwestern basketball guys that wear blazers that are just like, I don't know, there's something funny about it.

The other one is the bear scene where Will Ferrell wrestles the bear. You had Kristen Wiig in there as the bear wrangler.

Yeah, she was awesome. It was so cool of her to come and do that.

Did you guys actually have a bear on set? How did you pull that off?

Yeah, we had a real bear on set and I mean, not all of it was. Obviously, we're using movie magic. Will Ferrell was never in danger. But we really used a bear. Now I think everyone changed the rules, and have been more looking out for bears, and the rights of animals. So I think if we had to do it over again, we probably would've digitized it. But yeah, that's a big bear. We named it after my dog, Dewey.

Yeah, Dewey is also the perfect name for a bear that you have to wrestle, too. It's just such an unassuming name.

That's the idea. When I lived in Peoria, Illinois, there was this local bar that you were allowed to wrestle a bear to raise money for charity or something, which is totally wrong and cruel, but also something with it just stuck with me. It's so old-fashioned. And again, a lot of this is the idea is that it's set in the 70's, so it's things you would never do now. So a lot of it is supposed to be backwards. Wrestling a bear to me was old thinking. That was part of what I think was funny about it. But now that we look back from here, even when we shot it, that was old thinking not to digitize it.

Totally. Well, that's what was striking about it now. Because we've got "Cocaine Bear" coming out and you have a whole movie with a digital bear. Then I was watching this, it's almost hard to know, but I'm like, that bear looked really real when I was watching it.

The stuntman had glue to hold his wig on so he looked like Will Ferrell. And I guess the bear liked the glue on the wig. There's a scene and then we left it in where he's really going after the hair. And then later on we added, I think Will put in some audio lines later, like, "Let go of my hair, my beautiful hair." That was added on.

That's amazing. That line stuck out to me while I was watching it. It was really funny, but it was really out of nowhere, too.

I mean there was a lot of crazy, funny ways that people promoted their games in the '70s. ABA is known for, they invented the dunk contest and they invented all these radical ideas to promote. I took that as inspiration to if they did that, what would Jackie Moon do? Even push it further and all the way wearing eyeliner so they'd look better on the first televised game. And giving away the corn dog's an idea that came from, I used to go to the Chicago Bulls games, I was a big basketball fan growing up. They had a rule in Chicago Stadium that if the Bulls scored more than 125 points, everyone got a coupon for a free pizza at Pizza Hut or wherever it was.

People would be cheering at the end of the game, even though they were losing 140 to 124 or whatever, to try to hit that. The players would actually try and hit three's so the whole crowd, they were all into it. So I took that idea. It's funny if what if Jackie Moon's pushing the corn dogs, but then he never expected to get to 125 and they don't even have corn dogs?

Or the same thing with Dukes. Jackie doesn't have the $10,000 for anyone to make that shot. It's incredible.

I mean, he's just all promotion. He's in debt. He has no money, no cash.

Were there any stories from filming that you think are particularly memorable that you think people that love this movie would like to know about? Or was there anything that never got filmed that didn't make the movie?

There's one moment, you know that character Vakidis?

Oh yeah.

The joke is that he never speaks in the movie. At some point, we were doing some additional photography and someone had the idea of let's just put Monix and Vakidis in a room together and just see what happens. Just shoot them in their hotel room on the road. The joke is Vakidis doesn't speak and Woody Harrelson's just improvising, and being in the room and annoyed with him. It was just this quiet, weird, "what are we doing?" scene. That was great, but it doesn't fit in the movie at all. But that was funny.

Vakidis is such a great character.

What other project would you try that? It was only because we were pushing the limits of what to do. I think that was just a cool moment. The fact that we would try that where one character doesn't even talk. It's like, it didn't work, but it's a good idea to try.

Yeah. Vakidis is such a great foil, too, because there's even that point where Monix is like, "Hey, Vakidis, would you give Bobby Dee a handjob?" And he is like, "Yes, right on." He just has no idea what's going on the whole time.

The other thing that was fun was actually playing basketball while they were setting up, moving the lights around. So we would just be literally shooting hoops and there would be that crowd in the audience dressed in '70s clothing and were watching us shoot baskets. You know what I mean? Woody would actually get competitive and keep playing and he'd get tired out. You'd try to get him to stop playing so much. "All right, just sit down and rest so we can shoot the rest of the afternoon." But then we'd be playing 21 or whatever. It was fun. I remember, I don't know, it was probably the most fun set I've been on. It was great.

Awesome. Well, Scot, seriously, again, I only am doing this because I genuinely love the movie so much. And I quote it not infrequently because you gifted me the phrase, "C*** sandwich, that hurts." That is something I have said many, many times in my life.

Oh yeah. One thing I should add is that Kent Alterman was a fan of the ABA Spurs as a kid and was on the cover of one of the Spurs in-game magazines. And we used that in the movie.

Oh, no kidding?

Yeah, and he was a serious ABA fan and the Spurs actually did get absorbed into the NBA. And so that was one thing that when Kent read my script, he totally loved it. He, from the beginning, was fighting for it.