On Movies: A bleak, nuanced role for - Will Ferrell?

So there

Will Ferrell

was two Tuesdays ago, clowning around on

Late Show with David Letterman

. A repeat guest, Ferrell this time sauntered out in a top hat, spats, and morning coat in honor of the royal wedding. "I'm so excited," he deadpanned. "Kate and Willy are very good friends." However, because of "that pesky no-fly list," Ferrell regretted he wouldn't be in attendance at the London ceremony.

And then, after a George Bush impersonation and some business about his three young sons' penchant for the Military Channel, Ferrell found himself in the somewhat odd position of promoting a new movie that was not a knuckleheaded laugh riot.

In Everything Must Go, opening Friday at the Ritz Five and at Rave Motion Pictures at the Ritz Center/NJ, Ferrell plays a guy who has just lost his job, been locked out of his house by the wife who's dumping him and who has jettisoned all his possessions on the front lawn. Adapted from "Why Don't You Dance," a sleek and bleak Raymond Carver short story, this is no Anchorman or Talladega Nights.

"I have to say, Letterman was really effusive about the movie. He actually really liked it," Ferrell says the next day, on the phone from New York. "I could tell, though, that even he was having trouble articulating exactly what type of movie it is. . . . It's not crazy high jinks. I even debate whether it is a comedy. . . . It's an interesting thing, given my past body of work, to try to get across how different this movie is."

It was Dan Rush, a commercials director making his feature debut, who went after Ferrell for the role, and who elicits a terrifically nuanced performance from his unlikely star. Clearly, the filmmaker saw something in Ferrell that was right to play a middle-aged, alcoholic salesman fallen off the wagon and onto the La-Z-Boy recliner in his front yard, chugging six-packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

"I sat down with Dan to discuss when he wanted to shoot," Ferrell recalls, "and why did he want me. In fact, I asked my wife to read the script. I told her it's somewhat dark, but it's really strong and it's a great premise and I love it. See if you think it's as good as I do.

"And she stayed up until 2 in the morning reading it. We woke up the next day, and I was like, 'What do you think?' And she said 'Wow, that's really good. Why do they want you?'

"And we both started laughing."

Ferrell admits that he hadn't heard of Carver - the minimalist fiction god who explored the lives of hard-drinking, hard-luck middle Americans with grit and grace - until after he'd been handed Rush's screenplay.

"Dan gave me the collection of short stories that included the one that he adapted. I read the whole book very quickly - I was embarrassed slightly that I didn't know who Raymond Carver was. But then I appreciated the script even more, because it felt like Dan really captured it. Carver's short stories are so stark and melancholy, they almost have this gray overtone to them that I felt Dan totally nailed. And he did an incredible job when you think about the story - it's five pages long, I think, and yet he created this whole world off of that."

The beauty of Everything Must Go is that, like Carver's fiction, it respects these characters as they go off the deep end, and then struggle to stay afloat. They're fools, and they're flawed, but there's no condescension, or pretension, in the way they are portrayed. Helping Ferrell out in this fine role is Rebecca Hall, as a just-moved-in, very pregnant neighbor; Michael Peña as Ferrell's character's AA sponsor; and Laura Dern as a high-school classmate he kind of stalks in a moment of desperation.

"That scene, I think, perfectly encapsulates how lost this guy is in reaching out to someone he noticed in his yearbook and had once, long ago, said a nice thing about him," Ferrell says. "He's really grasping. . . . And when she says, 'Why are you here?' he doesn't even know."

The actor who has the most screen time opposite Ferrell in Everything Must Go, however, is Christopher Jordan Wallace, a 14-year-old from New York with just one other movie to his credit. As a kid who rolls up on a bike and befriends this loser on the lawn, he's funny, and quiet, and smart - and the perfect foil.

"We were really lucky to find him," Ferrell says of his co-star. "It's always a challenge casting younger actors. You need them to stay believable . . . and find someone who hasn't done so much work where they're already mannered and are 'acting.' He knew his lines better than any of us."

Ferrell shot Everything Must Go after he did his one-man George W. Bush show, You're Welcome America, on Broadway, and The Other Guys, his buddy-cops spoof with Mark Wahlberg. But it was a few years earlier, when he played an IRS auditor who surreally becomes the protagonist of a novel in the multitiered comedy Stranger Than Fiction, that gave him the urge to go a little deeper, try something with more substance.

"I really loved the experience of making Stranger Than Fiction," he explains. "And since then, I've been looking for another project that would be more leaning towards the drama world. And then this one came along, and I just felt like it was so unique, and also a radically different kind of thing for me to get to do.

"We'll see. Hopefully, audiences will embrace me in this, but you never know," he cautions.

"They may be like, 'Yuck, I don't like him. You know, he's just acting depressed.' "

Shorts. Blue Valentine auteur Derek Cianfrance will reteam with Ryan Gosling for a Sidney Kimmel-produced crime pic called The Place Beyond the Pines. Gosling will play a motorcycle ace who robs banks. Variety reports that Bradley Cooper has been offered the role of the rookie cop who goes after him. . . . Moonrise Kingdom is the name of the new Wes Anderson pic, which has just started shooting and stars Anderson regulars Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman, along with Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, and Tilda Swinton. The story, set in the 1960s, centers on two 12-year-olds (newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward) who fall in love and run away from their New England island town. Moonrise Kingdom marks Anderson's return to live-action, following his Oscar-nominated animated feature - and work of genius - Fantastic Mr. Fox.