As the narrator says in the film: ‘This is a story about a man named Harold Crick … and his wristwatch. Harold Crick was a man of infinite numbers, endless calculations and remarkably few words. And his wristwatch said even less.’
Stranger than Fiction focuses on a woman named Karen Eiffel. Played by Emma Thompson, Karen is a novelist nearing the end of the work on her latest book. However, she is struggling with one problem: how to kill off her main character, Harold Crick. In a mind-bending twist that had critics comparing it to the works of Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich, Harold exists in the real world and begins to realise what his ‘writer’ has in store for him. He is soon desperate to have her change his ending. The plotline was described thus: ‘One morning, a seemingly average and generally solitary IRS [Inland Revenue Service] agent named Harold Crick begins to hear a female voice narrating his every action, thought and feeling in alarmingly precise detail. Harold’s carefully controlled life is turned upside down by this narration only he can hear, and when the voice declares that Harold Crick is facing imminent death, he realises he must find out who is writing his story and persuade her to change the ending.’
The voice in Harold’s head turns out to be the once celebrated, but now nearly forgotten, novelist Karen ‘Kay’ Eiffel, who is struggling to find an ending for what might be her best book. Her only remaining challenge is to figure out a way to kill her main character, but little does she know that Harold Crick is alive and well and inexplicably aware of her words and her plans for him. To make matters worse, Kay’s publisher has dispatched a hard-nosed assistant, Penny Escher (Queen Latifah), to force Kay to finish her novel and finish off Harold Crick.
‘Desperate to take control of his destiny and avoid an untimely demise, Harold seeks help from a literary theorist named Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), who suggests that Harold might be able to change his fate by turning his story from a tragedy into a comedy. Professor Hilbert suggests that Harold try to follow one of comedy’s most elemental formulas: a love story between two people who hate each other. His suggestion leads Harold to initiate an unlikely romance with a free-spirited baker named Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal). As Harold experiences true love and true life for the first time, he becomes convinced that he has escaped his fate, as his story seems to be taking on all the trappings of a comedy in which he will not, and cannot, die. But Harold is unaware that in a Karen Eiffel tragedy, the lead characters always die at exactly the moment when they have the most to live for. Harold and Kay find themselves in unexplored territory as each must weigh the value of a single human existence against what might just be an immortal work of art: a novel about life and death – and taxes.’
The film was written by a new writer named Zach Helm. The story began in 2001. Helm, then 26 years old, had the idea of a man who constantly had a narrator accompany him that only he can hear. He was already collaborating on another project with producer Lindsay Doran, and when they talked about the new project, Helm decided that the story should focus on the man hearing from the narration that he was about to die. Helm said: ‘I wanted to tell the story of a man who found his life just before he lost it. There’s something very poetic in the understanding of one’s place in the world and the meaning of one’s life, but it’s far more dramatic when such understanding occurs only days before that life ends.’
After the script was finished, it soon became hot property around Hollywood, with two executives from Mandate Pictures, Joe Drake and Nathan Kahane, eventually securing the film thanks to their dogged efforts. Doran said in the film’s production notes: ‘They wouldn’t take no for an answer. At first it was amusing. Then it was annoying. Then it was intriguing. And then it was a deal. They really listened to our ideas and they truly understood that you can’t ever compromise the intelligence of this kind of material just for the entertainment value. Or vice versa.’ Ferrell said about this process: ‘You know this was one of those scripts that was kind of talked about and everyone was kind of circling around it and so I was just, I don’t know, there was no agenda other than wow what an amazing project and I’d love to meet with Marc and this would be fun.’
The film was directed by Marc Forster, an Academy Award nominated filmmaker. Forster said in the film’s production notes, ‘I saw Stranger than Fiction as the story of a man who’s been asleep for most of his life and suddenly wakes up and realises he has very little time left and that he has to do something we all would like to do in some way – change our story. I thought it was a fantastic script, a very funny comedy with heart and soul. I’d always wanted to try something comedic, but I also try to make films that are not just entertaining, but also emotional and inspiring. I was fascinated by Stranger than Fiction because I think we all have a narrator in our lives. We all have inner voices in our heads that tell us what to do and how to be – and what Harold Crick discovers in the midst of these incredible events is how to escape all that and really begin to enjoy every second of his existence.’
Forster was hired after the producers saw his award-winning film Finding Neverland, as then unreleased. Doran said: ‘I would say within the first ten minutes of watching Finding Neverland I felt very, very strongly that Marc should direct this movie. I’m not exaggerating. I felt such a sense of enchantment watching that film. And even though the tone is very different from Stranger than Fiction. I was convinced that Marc had an understanding of that magical side of life which was the key to transforming Zach’s script to the screen. Marc’s take on the film couldn’t have been more exciting. His vision accommodated all the elements of the script – the comedy, the drama, the love story, the spiritual journey of Harold Crick – as well as the look and even the sound of the various scenes. So many directors were focused on just one aspect of the film; Marc was focused on them all.’
In a 2006 interview with DarkHorizons.com, Will revealed: ‘Everyone keeps asking me, “How did you select this Stranger than Fiction?” And it’s like believe me I wish I could have selected it, it was, you know it was really up to Lindsay and Zach and Marc and people at Mandate and everyone kind of really talked about who was out there and Marc was very frank with me. I’m not very good at the hard sell, I didn’t know how to approach this. I didn’t know whether to say “Look I’m gonna camp outside your house for a month until you tell me I’ve got the part.” We just had a really kind of nice breakfast and just talked about it. We were like I don’t think this is a very over-the-top thing … We kind of had some shared beliefs in how it should be played and this and that and then he was like, so look I like you but I don’t know if I have to figure out if I’m going to use a dramatic actor who I think can pull off the comedy or vice versa. And so I said well I respect that ’cause you have to figure out who’s going to be the best for the type of movie you want to make and then I was lucky that he kind of decided on me, after Russell Crowe fell out.’
Forster said in the film’s production notes: ‘When I met Will Ferrell, I sensed a man who was very humble, very smart, very down-to-earth and very introverted – and I instantly knew he was Harold Crick. I felt very lucky because Will brought the very same vision of Harold I had in my head fully to life. He has a natural gift that allows him to do things in this film that no one has seen him do before – subtle comedy and equally subtle drama. He approached the role soulfully and yet made Harold feel like a real human being, not just a screen character. I don’t believe there is anyone who could have brought all those nuances to the role.’ Doran added: ‘You had to have an actor in this role you’d really believe as an IRS agent, a charismatic actor who didn’t feel too much like a glamorous movie star. What’s wonderful about Will is that he’s so completely believable in this world. In spite of all the extroversion we’ve seen in his other films, he really is this shy, self-effacing character, and he makes Harold so funny and so moving.’
Ferrell said to DarkHorizons.com on the appeal of the script: ‘I’ve had moments in my life when I’ve thought if I wasn’t acting, if I wasn’t doing what I do and I had a career in the private sector and I didn’t have a family, that I do have some tendencies where I could really kind of have a monastic existence and be OK with it. You know, ’cause I think there’s been times in my life, well certainly recently as things get more and more hectic and chaotic, you kind of seek refuge in having some order and also just like very simple things and so, yeah, I identified kind of right away with Harold Crick.’
Emma Thompson plays the narrator and she pre-recorded her work so that Ferrell could hear her voice through an earpiece during the scenes. Thompson said about the script in the production notes: ‘It was the best script I’d read in years and years. It was one of those rare instances where you think, “Yes, absolutely, I’ll do anything to serve this writing.” The way in which Zach Helm created a fictional reality and a real fiction – going both ways at once – is one of the most remarkable things I’ve encountered. There’s nothing better than a combination of serious human inquiry and good gags.’ In fact, according to Doran, Thompson had said yes to the part by the time she got to page 22 of the script. With a page roughly equating one minute of film time it was easy to see that she was impressed with the script. Thompson said about the character: ‘Kay is borderline bonkers. She has this bizarre and disgusting habit of putting out her cigarettes with a saliva-moistened tissue. She can’t figure out how to kill her main character so she spends her days imagining all manner of death and destruction. You could say we meet her right at the end of her tether.’
Maggie Gyllenhaal plays the love interest in the film, and she said about working with Ferrell in the production notes: ‘Will was constantly surprising me. He would just do little things that would take me off my track, which is exactly what you want when you’re acting. There’s a lot of life to him and I found that intoxicating.’ Famed actor Dustin Hoffman added his recollections of Ferrell: ‘He wasn’t what I expected. I thought he’d do comic routines. On the first day of shooting I couldn’t believe he said things like “Gee” and “Golly” between scenes. He was very shy and totally guileless. But after a while I told the director, “He’s working very subtly. Do you see what he’s doing? He’s more real than I am, but I’m supposed to be the realism character. He’s showing me up.”’
Ferrell told HamptonRoads.com: ‘I’d show up every day and do scenes with Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman or Maggie Gyllenhaal – like running a marathon with all the Olympic champions. Dustin was, like, my second director, more so than the real director, who was like a Swiss phantom. He never said anything. I’d ask him, “Is this going OK? Is this what you want? You haven’t said anything since yesterday.”’ Ferrell added about Hoffman to Premiere: ‘Dustin was the nicest guy, and still so energetic. The first day, there’s a walk and talk thing in a gym, and he had all the dialogue. I’m just going, “Well, yes.” And he did the first take of it, and he turned to me and said, “How was that. Was it OK? I can do better.” I said, no it seemed good. It seemed really good. But it was so sweet that he let me in that way.’
Despite the film’s credentials, it received a mixed response from critics. The Guardian noted: ‘Screenwriter Zach Helm’s comedy has some quirky points, but it’s very sugary and sentimental, and feeble compared to the work of those who have done the same sort of thing better: Woody Allen or Charlie Kaufman. Will Ferrell plays the movie with a look of glazed shock, and I guess if I heard Emma Thompson wittering away in my head, I’d have a look of glazed shock too. Ferrell and Thompson are such distinctive performers; a little of them goes a long way. Director Marc Forster keeps the pair within bounds, although Thompson’s role demands many cutesy mannerisms denoting distracted writerliness and droll detachment, of which she makes a fair-sized meal.’
And Village Voice stated: ‘Once an actor gets big enough to take whatever kind of role he wants, it makes sense that the biggest stretch imaginable, given his current situation, is the part of a powerless loser. Call it a “nice” movie – a vehicle designed to subvert the very mania that gives the star his juice. Stranger than Fiction is Will Ferrell’s nice movie in the sense that The Truman Show was Jim Carrey’s, and it comes at roughly the same point in his career. Many minds have compared Zach Helm’s zigzagging script to the work of Charlie Kaufman, whose name has become shorthand for self-reflexive gamesmanship with screenwriting convention. The difference seems obvious. Kaufman’s scripts anchor their craziest conceits in something actual: the real John Malkovich, the real Chuck Barris, even the real Charlie Kaufman – not to mention real anguish and alienation. Stranger than Fiction merely layers whimsy upon whimsy. As written, Harold Crick is no more convincing a human being than he is an IRS agent; Kay Eiffel’s writing, supposedly good enough to inspire the career-long devotion of a literature professor (Dustin Hoffmann), sounds as dully declamatory as movie-trailer narration. And yet when the actors enter Helm’s artificial constructs, some small miracle happens. I don’t believe that of all the songs he could use to woo the baker, the taxman would dust off Wreckless Eric’s “Whole Wide World”. But the way Ferrell performs it – plunking sweetly on two strings of an electric guitar in a smitten trance – rivals John Cusack holding aloft his boombox. And however absurd it seems for the baker, Ana, to fall for her sad-sack auditor – how often you wanna bet that happens? – Gyllenhaal redeems the contrivance with dizzy charm. These performances succeed where Harold fails: gaining a life independent of their author.’
However, Ebert noted: ‘What a thoughtful film this is, and how thought-stirring. Marc Forster’s Stranger than Fiction comes advertised as a romance, a comedy, a fantasy, and it is a little of all three, but it’s really a fable, a “moral tale” like Eric Rohmer tells. Will Ferrell stars in another role showing that like Steve Martin and Robin Williams he has dramatic gifts to equal his comedic talent.’
Following the lukewarm box-office reception, Ferrell is reported to have told the Wall Street Journal: ‘I did Stranger than Fiction and it wasn’t like the floodgates opened and I got sent a bunch of serious dramatic roles. I don’t think I got sent any. I liked that movie a lot, and people recognised it as a nice piece of work. That having been said, what disappoints me is that there’s still a stigma attached to the fact that a comedic actor did that role. If it was a dramatic actor, I think that movie would have been put on more of a pedestal. I say to Marc Forster, had you cast Russell Crowe you might have gotten more credit as a director. There’s an absolute bias.’
In 2006 an online rumour surfaced that Will Ferrell had died from a paragliding accident. He said, ‘That was creepy. That really affected me. I got a phone call from my publicist telling me that there was this report out there that I was in a hang-gliding accident. I had to make sure to call my family before they heard anything. That was probably the weirdest thing I’ve ever had to go through in this business.’