A friendship’s strength is usually proven during hard times: Will they run away or provide support? For Harper Steele, the question became a pressing one after coming out as a trans woman, wondering how friends and family would react, including her friend of three decades, “Saturday Night Live” colleague Will Ferrell. Ferrell’s support was immediate — and included a cross-country road trip from New York to California to introduce Harper to the world and vice versa. Chronicling the 17-day odyssey were filmmaker Josh Greenbaum and cinematographer Zoë White, with the resulting footage assembled by editor Monique Zavistovski into the Netflix documentary “Will & Harper.”
As with all good road trip films, “Will & Harper” is more about the journey rather than the destination. “One of the things that I discovered from editing ‘Will & Harper’ is unlike other films where there is a race to an event or to the finish, this was more about listening, and the psychological and emotional growth of Will Ferrell and Harper Steele,” editor Zavistovski told IndieWire. “It was important to keep that in mind when structuring film, otherwise it could have been 17 days of state to state. We had to figure out what were those pivotal inflection points in Harper’s and Will’s journey and build from there.”
Car shots were unavoidable, given the nature of the subject matter. “The good news is that Will and Harper got comfortable having all of these cameras around. It took a couple of days.” A routine developed between the two friends while driving. “Will and Harper start with a joke or a running gag that lasts for a while, then have an emotional conversation about their feelings, anxieties, fears, joys, dreams, hopes, and when they get too close to the edge of deep emotion, they crack a joke; their conversations and the camerawork had a rhythm,” Zavistovski said. “It took a bit of time to investigate what that pattern was and to crack it.”
The desire was to have the viewer laugh and cry simultaneously. “When you’re dealing with two comic geniuses as your main subject, it is tempting to lean into the jokes,” Zavistovski said. “However, I learned that when you lean into the emotion and stay away from the comedy, the jokes are funnier. Bursting out laughing often came after the deepest emotional moments in the edit. Also, there is not a lot of funny documentaries so it was a big learning curve for me to deal with this amount of comedy in the dailies.”
A production footage breakdown took a while to produce but was worth the effort. “It was a color-coded spreadsheet and our most important resource in post,” Zavistovski said. “It was cross-referenced to transcripts and b-roll so I could find any shot, comment or subject of conversation.” Since Ferrell and Harper love to talk, there was no need for a voiceover. “They talked about everything and gave me the tools necessary to fill in the story without needing any narration. If I couldn’t find it on Day 10, it was on Day 7 and probably many other days as well.” An important sequence of the film was Harper meeting with her daughters, accompanied by Ferrell. “Because Josh considered how difficult it might be to speak openly in front of the cameras about this subject matter, everybody felt comfortable. What you see in the diner scene is as authentic as if no cameras were there.”
At another point, Harper ventures into an unfamiliar bar alone while Ferrell remains outside as a safety precaution. “That scene is a testament to Harper’s view of the world and her courage, adventurous spirit, and connection with places like that bar in the middle of Oklahoma. When watching the dailies and in the editing, I was like, ‘What are you doing in this bar?’ It felt dangerous to me from the beginning, but it was emotionally important for Harper to feel that she could go back to these places. In the edit, I had to honor Harper’s point of view. The way she came away from that experience was profoundly moving. Harper was reminded that at our core, when we’re not on social media, people have a great capacity to treat each other well.”
