Santa Barbara Film Fest: Will Ferrell, Kirk Douglas Award Honoree, Feted by Kristen Wiig and Octavia Spencer

“The fact that you’d drive up to this hellhole, Santa Barbara, means the world to me,” Will Ferrell joked Wednesday night as he thanked family, friends and costars — including Kristen Wiig and Octavia Spencer — for coming to the picturesque “American Riviera,” two hours north of Los Angeles, to participate in the Santa Barbara International Film Festival‘s presentation to him of the Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film.

Since 2006, the SBIFF has annually presented the honor, which is named after the late star of Hollywood’s Golden Age who lived part-time in town, at a black-tie gala dinner at the local Ritz-Carlton Bacara. Held several months before the actual fest (the next edition of which will run Feb. 4-15), the event raises money for the fest’s numerous educational initiatives. It has previously celebrated Ryan Gosling, Michelle Yeoh, Martin Scorsese, Hugh Jackman, Judi Dench, Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda, Jessica Lange, Forest Whitaker, Robert De Niro, Harrison Ford, Quentin Tarantino, Ed Harris, John Travolta and a son of the namesake, Michael Douglas.

Last September, Michael Douglas said, in the announcement of Ferrell’s selection, “Congratulations! Dad loved you.”

No actor in the 21st century has been associated with more hit comedy films than Ferrell. Among them: 2003’s Old School and Elf, 2004’s Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, 2006’s Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, 2008’s Step Brothers, 2010’s The Other Guys, 2014’s Get Hard and The Lego Movie and the list goes on. He also co-wrote and co-produced many of them.

On Wednesday, SBIFF executive director Roger Durling hailed Ferrell as “the king of American comedy.” Oscar-winner Spencer, with whom Ferrell acted in 2022’s Spirited, described him as “synonymous with comedy” and working with him as “a true highlight of my career.” And Wiig, with whom Ferrell collaborated on what she described in deadpan as “the critically-ignored Lifetime movie A Deadly Adoption” in 2015, said he “has fundamentally shaped the comedic landscape of our generation.”

Wiig also praised Ferrell’s latest project, the Netflix documentary feature Will & Harper, directed by Josh Greenbaum and produced by Ferrell, which chronicles a cross-country road trip that Ferrell took with a longtime friend, the former SNL writer Harper Steele, who recently came out to him as trans: “This film is profound and it will shift thinking and undoubtedly save lives.”

Ferrell, upon taking the stage to a standing ovation and accepting the fest’s plaque from Wiig, borrowed a page out of Sally Field’s book and asked, “You really like me?!” He then shared his long history with Santa Barbara — that he came to the fest in 1997 with a film that went straight to DVD (“It’s good to be back!”) and that he was married at the local courthouse 24 years ago.

Ferrell also recalled that when he was an undergraduate student at USC, Kirk Douglas gave a talk on campus, and Ferrell and some friends then bumped into him as he was exiting the building: “We said hello. I said, ‘One day, maybe I want to do what you do.’ And he put his hand on my heart and he said, ‘You have stories to tell, and one day you will.’” As the audience issued a collective “awww,” Ferrell brought down the house by confessing, “Actually, that never happened.”

Turning more serious, Ferrell said, “Thank you to the festival for recognizing comedy. Because when it’s good, it looks easy. But it’s hard.”