Will Ferrell: 'I decided to accept this award because of the prize money', Mark Twain acceptance - 2011

23 October 2011, Kennedy Center, Washington DC, USA

Oh, boy, okay. Um, wow, thank you, thank you, so much for that warm ovation. As I stare at this magnificent bust of Mark Twain, I’m reminded of how humbled I am to receive such an honor and how I vow to take very special care of it. I will never let it out of my sight. I will find a place of honor in my house for this magnificent bust. If my children try to touch it or even look at it, I will beat them. It means that much to me. In fact, I told my wife that maybe I should buy it its own seat for the plane right home, and no, no I’m not done, I’m not done, I’m not, I’m not, no. No, I just started the speech, why would you think I’m done?

I want to sincerely thank the Kennedy Center for this prize and this – and the fine folks at PBS for airing this special. I am the 14th recipient of the Mark Twain prize. And you’re probably asking yourself, why did it take so long? Well, for 13 consecutive years, I have been begged by the Kennedy Center to accept this award and for 13 consecutive years, I have emphatically said, no. For years, I had many questions about this Mark Twain, the first being, who is he? It’s been donned on me that, since I was a small boy I have thoroughly enjoyed his delicious fried chicken.

Then my wife informed me that I was thinking of Colonel Sanders not Mark Twain. It turns out that he is considered America’s finest author and humorist, but that his real name is not Mark Twain, it was Jerry Goldman. Before that, it was Judy Blume, and before that of course, we all know the name, Samuel Langhorne Chimmins. Despite my failings to grasp the importance of Mark Twain and what exactly he did, I decided to accept this award because of the prize money, $1 billion dollars, paid out over the next 10,000 years. To say that I’m thrilled to be here is a complete understatement, and to make this evening even more thrilling, I have just been informed that, I’m only the 11th Caucasian to receive this prestigious award.

Pretty cool, I can’t tell you enough how special it is to stand here on this stage at the Kennedy Center, in front of this amazing audience, while being watched on PBS by hundreds of people. It’s very surreal, you have to understand as a kid growing up in Irvine, California, where I would sit in my room and listen to records of Steve Martin and the original Saturday Night Live Cast or stay up late and watch Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show to see what comedians he would have on. I had one dream, one singular focus even at the earliest stage, I can remember wanting to do one thing and one thing only, sell insurance.

So to be standing here, feels somewhat odd, whether it was auto, home or life, fire, flood or earthquake, I just wanted to make people feel safe. Do you have enough inland marine insurance or business overhead expense disability insurance, these are the things I thought when I was a kid. But the insurance game didn’t happen for me. So I fell back on comedy, and here I am now. There is so many people I need to thank for helping me make tonight possible.

First off, I would like to thank all the wonderful people who spoke or performed tonight on my behalf, an amazing line-up, all of you taking time out of your busy personal and professional schedules to be here means the world to me and if any of you ever needs me to speak on your behalf, for any reason, just know that I sincerely mean this, I’m probably unavailable. But thank you and I’m sorry ahead of time.

One of the people you saw tonight to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude is Mr. Adam McKay. Together Adam and I have created Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Stepbrothers and The Other Guys, a Broadway show and a comedy website. I would also not be standing here, if it weren’t for Saturday Night Live Executive Producer, Lorne Michaels.

Thank you, Lorne for taking a chance on me and giving me the opportunity to be on Saturday Night Live, the show I always dream to being on. And finally what makes tonight truly special is that I can share it with my family. I am so grateful to all of you guys for your continued support and love for the things that I do. But mostly I would like to thank my lovely wife, Viveca.

Before I do that, however, I should really thank my first and second wives Donna and Julie. Donna, what can I say, we were just too young, when we got married. I mean literally too young, we were 13. Ah, heck, you were 13, I was nine. You know. I was in the third grade and it wasn’t right or legal, but I hope you’re well and I thank you for your support. As for Julie, you left me for Gary Busey and I will never blame you for that ever.

Finally, Viveca, all I can say is thank you, and thank god I found you. You’ve given us three beautiful boys and we have a wonderful life together. But I do have to say sometimes you get a little lippy, okay. You got a big mouth and you like to run it. Now I’ll tell you one thing, and one thing only, okay tonight is my night, all right. I love you, but I’m really sick of that big mouth of yours okay? And I won’t stand it, okay? Do you hear me? You look at me when I talk to you.

I mean tonight, if I after the show, if I want to go on a bender with Gwen Ifill and buy a couple of spearguns and try to scale the Washington Monument, I’m going to do it, okay? And there is nothing, you can say to stop me. I love you.

So once again, I thank you for this magnificent night and this amazing honor and I want to thank the Kennedy Center for being one of the few places that upholds comedy, as what it truly is an art form. Thank you and good night. Now, you can play it, now you can play the music.

Steve Hely: 'I wanted to see wonders', Laguna Beach Festival of the Arts - 2016

24 July 2016, Laguna Beach, California, USA

Delivered for 'Books and Brunch' event at Laguna Beach Festival of the Arts. Steve Hely has written for The Office, 30 Rock, American Dad and Veep. His first novel won the Thurber Prize for American Humour. His current book is The Wonder Trail.

Guys, I have to tell you that although I’m really happy to be here, and delighted you invited me, I’m living out one of my biggest fears. 

I’m not afraid of public speaking, I’ve done it quite a few times, I even enjoy it.  But all the talks or speeches I’ve ever given have been inside.  I’ve never given one outside. 

It’s really hard to give a speech outside.  Inside, you’re kinda boxed in.  You’re a captive audience.  There’s nothing to stop you from wandering off into the hills or down to the beach.  Plus, I’m competing for your attention with nature.  Which, in a place as beautiful as Laguna is just not a good idea. 

Now, there have been a bunch of great speeches given outside.  Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was given outside.  JFK’s inauguration speech.  Ronald Reagan’s Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall, that was an outdoor speech.  But guys, I have to confess to you: as a speaker I am not at a level with Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. 

But I will promise you I will do my best. 

Laguna Beach is such a special place.  Let me tell you a story about Laguna Beach, because it has a place in my own family history. 

My grandfather was a doctor in the Navy during World War II.  Some of you probably know this but the Navy supplies the doctors for the Marine Corps., and my grandfather was assigned to the Marine Corps.  Sometime in 1944 they sent him to Camp Pendleton to train for amphibious landings.  He was engaged, and he sent for my grandmother.  She took a train across the country from Philadelphia by herself, probably her first trip away from home, and they got married in June. 

A lot of the doctors got married that summer, because they knew they were going to ship out.  And when they shipped out, they believed they weren’t coming back until they’d invaded Japan.  And they knew how hard that was going to be. 

But before they left all the doctors and their new wives got a one month honeymoon here in Laguna Beach. 

I think about that every time I come down here, and how intense that month must of felt, wonderful and terrifying at the same time, because when they shipped out they didn’t know when they’d come back or how they’d come back or if they’d come back. 

My grandfather did come back, though.  Which is lucky for me.  So I get to be here today with you on this beautiful Sunday. 

Life is wild, is I guess the point of my story.  It’s full of chances and miracles and disasters and ups and downs and things that are completely out of our control.  Who can say what we’re put here for?  We all have to look around and search ourselves and search the world and come up with answers to that for ourselves. 

One answer I’ve come up with for myself is that we’re put here to explore.  To experience the Earth and the places on it, to travel, to have adventures, to learn about other people, to share what we learn with other people, to learn what they have to share with us, and to communicate with each other. 

That’s what I wanted to do, I want to live life and explore and see as much of the world as I can.  I’m curious, I want to have a look, and if I find something that gets me excited, that fires up my interest, then I want to share that with you. 

One question I had that was bugging me was what’s the world south of us like.  If you go south, from here, not very far as all of you know, you come to the border with Mexico.  Well, what’s Mexico like?  How did it get that way?  And what’s beyond that?  South of Mexico there’s Central America.  I knew Central America had waterfalls and ruins and jungles and sloths and coffee plantations and coastlines that pirates had sailed along, and fruits I’d never tried, and volcanoes, and the Panama Canal, and hidden surf spots, and a million other things worth seeing.  I also knew they’ve had all kinds of problems there, civil wars and guerrilla movements and dictators and disasters. 

What’s it like there?  How’d it get that way? 

And beyond that there’s all of South America!  What’s going on down there?

Well that’s what I wanted to find out. 

I work as a TV writer on comedy shows, and by a fluke of luck I ended up with three months off, between two jobs.  And I thought ok, well great.  I’m gonna go south, and see as many places as I possibly can, and come back and tell you about them. 

So that’s what I did, I traveled south from here, and I went through Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, down to Tierra del Fuego at the bottom of South America. 

Then I came back, and I devoured a shelf full of books about these places, and I put what I learned into this book. 

Let me tell you three things about this trip, and what I learned, things that amazed me and still fascinate me. 

What’s now Mexico City was once called Tenochtitlan, and in the year 1519 it might have been the biggest city in the world.  It was for sure the biggest city in the Western Hemisphere.  The city sat on an island in the middle of a lake that was fifty miles long. 

Bernal Diaz was a Spaniard who saw this city in that year.  He says that men who’d seen Rome and Constantinople and every city in Spain were stunned by how enormous it was. 

He says there were weavers and seamstresses, and craftsmen who worked with gold and silver, and garment makers who made robes out of feathers.  There were painters and carvers and whole neighborhoods of clowns and acrobats and stilt-walkers.  There were gardens and ponds and “tanks of fresh water into which a stream flowed at one end and out of the other… [and] baths and walks and closets and rooms like summerhouses where they danced and sang.”  And there were people who sold human feces for use in tanning hides. 

Diaz was taken to the top of an enormous temple, and he could see out agross the city and the lake, he could see aqueducts and canoes coming and going and other cities and towns that you reached by drawbridge, and shrines that had gleaming white towers and castles and fortresses.

Well about a year later almost everyone in the city was dead, and the place had been destroyed. 

On the very site where there’d stood the biggest temple in Tenochtitlan, the Spanish started building a church.  And they kept building and building and working on it for over five hundred years.  Sometimes it would get knocked down in an earthquake or destroyed in a fire but that’s the spot, to this day, where you can see the cathedral of Mexico City. 

Greater Mexico City, all the land that was once that enormous lake, now has something like twenty million people in it.  In the book I try to describe the tiny fraction of it that I could see and experience. 

How about Costa Rica?  I bet there’re people here who’ve been to Costa Rica.  Costa Rica is a paradise!  There are rainforests and hot springs and beaches, and the people have a national philosophy of being chill.  In Costa Rica they don’t have an army.  They dissolved their army in the 1940s.  Now, Costa Rica is not perfect, but it’s neighbored by countries - Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua - that’re some of the most violent places in the world.  In El Salvador the murder rate is seventeen times the world average. 

Why do things work out so much better for one country than for another?  That’s something that interests me when I travel, and in the book I try and tell you what I found when I went looking for answers. 

But most of all when I set out on this adventure, I wanted to see wonders.  I wanted to drink the best cup of coffee.  I wanted to see the Amazon jungle.  I wanted to see Macchu Piccu, I wanted to see the Galapagos, I wanted to see the Andes mountains and the Atacama desert.  I know I’m not alone, I know there are people out there who want to see these too.  And some of you have seen them, and some of you will some day.  And some of you can’t really be bothered, and that’s ok, too.  For all of you, I wanted to share what I saw, and what I experienced, what excited my curiosity, and I hope it’ll excite yours too. 

So thanks so much for having me, it’s a real honor to be a part of this event.  You’re the best looking audience I’ve ever spoken to and I’m not just saying that. 

Purchase 'The Wonder Trail' here. Steve Hely is also a guest of the Melbourne Writers Festival in September 2016. Purchase tickets here.