PAUL RUDD: Well with this one, because there was so much improvisation, it was really fresh. And fun. When I was doing “Shape of Things,” which we'd done as a play, it was just so tired by the time we rolled tape.
WILL FERRELL: Only questions for Paul Rudd from now on.
This question is for everyone, starting with Paul. Can everyone please
tell me their favorite 70s memories?
WILL FERRELL: Well, you know, it's funny.
PAUL RUDD: Damn it, Will.
CHRISTINA APPLEGATE: We're supposed to start with Paul.
WILL FERRELL: Oh, I wasn't listening.
PAUL RUDD: Well, Dave. Do you want to take that?
DAVID KOECHNER: Paul's favorite 70s memory was the move from New Jersey to Kansas City, Missouri. He cried. They took a long car trip and he cried the entire way but it’s burned into his memory, I think. I grew up with Paul. We're actually brothers. So I know what his favorite memories are.
PAUL RUDD: Dave's family took me in at a very young age.
WILL FERRELL: Do you know what my favorite 70s memory was? This is going to be good, too. This is going to be good.
ADAM McKAY: He actually told me this before. This is going to be really good.
WILL FERRELL: When you used to watch football games, and the guy with the rainbow wig.
CHRISTINA APPLEGATE: Oh!
WILL FERRELL: What? The rainbow wig guy?
CHRISTINA APPLEGATE: John 3:16.
WILL FERRELL: I thought that was going to be bigger than that.
DAVID KOECHNER: I want to know Paul's.
CHRISTINA APPLEGATE: Shhh, I'm talking. I was an infant. Unlike all of them, I was very young. I was a baby, don’t remember anything. I was born in 1982. Write that down. Quote me on that. That's how old I am.
DAVID KOECHNER: I just want to hear Paul Rudd's favorite memory.
PAUL RUDD: ‘76. “Battle of the Network Stars.” I was just a kid, watching it on TV. And they were doing a tug-of-war. And Adrienne Barbeau was on the right side and she was pulling pretty hard. She was really giving it her all. And then they cut over to the other side, and Ed Asner, which is funny that this movie we're taking about is “Anchorman,” and Ed Asner was the Anchorman during the tug-of-war. And they wound up winning. And they were all very excited about it. And I was really happy for them. I don't know. I guess that's my favorite memory from the 70s. I was in the closet most of the rest of the 70s. Dave's parents, once they took me in, wouldn't let me out in the sun too much.
ADAM McKAY: With my memory, it's a pretty quick one.
CHRISTINA APPLEGATE: They weren't asking you.
ADAM McKAY: He said everyone. It'll be quick. Mine was ‘74, at the end of the Vietnam War. I was two years old sitting and watching TV, and the image of the helicopters being pushed off the aircraft carrier. And it just hit me. I'm sitting there, two years old, with a Popsicle, and I'm just thinking, "This is the end of an Empire. This is it.” I mean, we went there with these political goals, this post-World War 2 paradigm, and this paradigm is shattering in half right in front of us. That, and then “Hong Kong Phooey.”
STEVE CARELL: Are you serious? I mean, you were only two. And that's what you were thinking? That's amazing.
ADAM McKAY: Yeah. You can talk when you're two. You're not an idiot when you're two. I remember, I got on the horn with Kissinger, and I said, "Henry, what have you done?"
STEVE CARELL: Are you serious?
ADAM McKAY: I said, "This madman theory. You were the madman!" That's all it was.
STEVE CARELL: Adam, all joking aside, a lot of this has been lighthearted. But this is really amazing.
ADAM McKAY: Yeah. I had a direct line to Henry Kissinger. I was two. Yeah, I worked for Carter's campaign when I was 11. I was pretty active in the 70s.
STEVE CARELL: Wow.
ADAM McKAY: Yeah, when I was three, I became Secretary of the Interior.
