Will Ferrell’s early days as a “Saturday Night Live” cast member in 1995 were not promising. “A lot of the writers looked at him and said, ‘I don’t know what to write for this guy. We’re not sure he’s funny; we think he’s the dud,’” recalls Josh Greenbaum, who directed and produced the documentary “Will & Harper.
” This story, told in the Netflix documentary about Ferrell’s cross-country road trip with his pal Harper Steele as she eases into her new life as a transitioned woman, has a happy ending, in part because of Steele, who joined the show as a writer the same time as Ferrell. As Greenbaum explains, she saw Ferrell’s potential early on, realizing that “this guy is a little quieter than your usual guy,” and “went back to the writers’ room and said, ‘Don’t write him off.’” That connection — a shared “love language in comedy,” as Greenbaum calls it — forged a decades-long friendship and is at the core of the doc.
But “Will & Harper” is not the only film this awards season that pivots around a key friendship: “Nickel Boys,” “Challengers” and the stop-motion “Memoir of a Snail” also focus on friendships, while “A Real Pain” keys on cousins who are close enough to be considered pals. Setting such relationships as the centerpiece for a movie can be risky; audiences may have the expectation that friends don’t have as much potential for drama or roller-coaster emotions as people who are in love. In “Chal.