Everyone knows the story of Anchorman. Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) is a '70s celebrity newscaster in San Diego whose job is threatened by the talented Veronica Corningstone. There's a turf war with at least one rival network. Brick kills a guy. There's a Kodiak bear rescue, and everyone lives happily ever after as CNN anchors.

But the original concept was very, very different and had a tiny bit of help from Paul Thomas Anderson. According to a new interview with Bill Simmons, Will Ferrell and Anchorman co-writer and director Adam McKay were struggling to get their script made by Paramount. As Ferrell told Simmons, while Anderson was guest-writing for a week on Saturday Night Live, he offered to help get whatever they wrote made into a movie. "He was one of the guardian angels," Ferrell said, "even though I think the first incarnation of that was maybe a little too weird for Paul."

That first script was definitely weird. As Ferrell told Simmons:

The first version of Anchorman is basically the movie Alive, where the year is 1976, and we are flying to Philadelphia, and all the newsmen from around the country are flying in to have some big convention. Ron convinces the pilot that he knows how to fly the charter jet, and he immediately crash-lands it in the mountains. And it's just the story of them surviving and trying to get off the mountainside. They clipped a cargo plane, and the cargo plane crashed as well, close to them, and it was carrying only boxes of orangutans and Chinese throwing stars. So throughout the movie we're being stalked by orangutans who are killing, one by one, the team off with throwing stars. And Veronica Corningstone keeps saying things like, 'Guys, I know if we just head down we'll hit civilization.' And we keep telling her, 'Wrong.' She doesn't know what we're talking about. So that was the first version of the movie.

Anyway, Anderson didn't like it, and they eventually morphed the script into what we know Anchorman as today. Good thing!

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Matt Miller Culture Editor Matt is the Culture Editor at Esquire where he covers music, movies, books, and TV—with an emphasis on all things Star Wars, Marvel, and Game of Thrones.

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