Behind-The-Scenes Of ‘The 2018 Rose Parade Hosted By Cord & Tish’ With EP Chris Bruss

It’s 2018 and thanks to the glorious goons at Funny or Die, The Rose Parade will never be the same. Just one week ago, Amazon and Funny or Die partnered on The 2018 Rose Parade Hosted by Cord & Tish, an audacious live comedy experiment featuring Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon as fictitious Rose Parade hosts Cord Hosenbeck and Tish Cattigan. The two Saturday Night Live alums stayed in character for the entire duration of the parade and produced a gleefully absurd parody that angered quite a few Rose Parade purists. One Amazon customer said, “Do you really think fear of horses and depression are fitting parade commentary?!!” in their 1-star review on the site, but as the show has been dissected, it’s found its fair share of super fans.

Chris Bruss, the special’s Executive Producer and Funny or Die’s Digital President, saw the audience’s real-time reaction was a signal of their success.“You know, we were able to kind of see some of that going on in real time. And I think that what you saw was that there were people who tuned in and sort of didn’t get the joke of it, which I understand. I mean, through marketing and through the broadcast itself, we played this thing very straight, and that’s a lot of the fun of it. That’s a lot of the way that Will has done stuff like this over the years, and we wouldn’t have had it any other way, Bruss said. “So I get it, and I understand that there were people who probably were confused. And I think that that’s why you saw a number of 1-star reviews like early on — like within the first 30 or 60 minutes of the parade — because those were people tuning in maybe expecting a more traditional broadcast and then tuning out because of that.”

“But what you found was that as soon as the parade ended, right, the people who were actually watching knew what they were watching and watched in an enthralled way throughout the entire two house, that’s when 5-star reviews just started flooding in,” he added. “Which is great, the fact that people can still go and see this thing at Amazon. And we urge anyone who hasn’t to watch the full broadcast because it’s fantastic. But I think we’ll continue to see great reviews come in.”

According to Bruss, the idea for Cord and Tish came from Funny or Die head honcho, Southern California native and life-long Rose Parade fan Will Ferrell. “Somebody said to him, ‘These broadcasters can sometimes be so unintentionally funny. You should do a broadcast, Will.’ And that set the gears moving in Will’s head,” said Bruss. “Obviously, he’s our boss and sometimes when he has interesting or out of the box ideas, he calls us and asks, ‘Is this something that’s possible?’ And between us here at Funny or Die and his agent Martin Lesak over at UTA, we started the journey of trying to figure out if it was possible for him to host a Rose Parade.”

The first big hurdle in their quest? Convincing the folks over at the Tournament of Roses in Pasadena to even let them film it. The process to name Funny or Die an officially licensed broadcast partner for the 2018 Rose Parade  didn’t happen overnight. Bruss revealed that Funny or Die first approached the Tournament of Roses team in early 2016. The whole process took an estimated year and a half. “We’re the first new broadcaster to be added in like 15 years or something like that. You’ve got people who have been doing it for a long time, like ABC, HGTV, Univision, KTLA obviously is the local broadcaster that a lot of people here in town watch. So, you know, there’s people who have been doing it for a long time, know what they’re doing, are well respected at doing this, and also have been working with the Tournament of Roses for a long time,” he said.

And now Funny or Die is among their ranks. “A guy named Ed Corey, who is the COO, I believe, for the Tournament of Roses was our advocate through the whole process of talking to the Tournament of Roses people about what we had in mind, explaining who Funny or Die was, and that we are legitimate people who put together a legitimate broadcast, and also making sure that they understood how much Will and Funny or Die loved and respected the parade,” he said. “Because, as you can see, Cord and Tish, unlike some other comedic characters, are eternally positive people.”

Getting permission to broadcast live from the Rose Parade was one hurdle, and finding a broadcast partner was another. Funny or Die had an existing relationship with Amazon Studios exec Mike Benson, who immediately saw a win-win opportunity for the two streaming services to band together on the project. “Obviously, they had started doing live broadcasting last fall as part of that NFL deal where they’re broadcasting Thursday night games, and that was their first foray into live broadcasting. And this seemed like a great next thing for them to do. It made a lot of sense for them as they were sort of exploring more live broadcasting and what was the next thing for them outside of sports. And to do kind of a part comedy, part parade live broadcast seemed like a very interesting thing to them,” said Bruss. 

Amazon’s recent push into live broadcasting meant that Cord and Tish were ironically able to give viewers one of the most hi-def quality live streams of the parade ever. Bruss said, “So when you do get a chance to see the floats and the flowers, everything pops super well. That all came from, sort of, Amazon’s expertise.”

Amazon was ideal not only because of their streaming capabilities as a broadcast partner, but because they could aid Funny or Die as a sponsorship partner. “That was kind of part of the fun of the creative. I mean, every time you heard Cord’s voice say, ‘Presented by Honda’ or ‘Goodyear: More Driven,’ there’s a lot of fun to that. So knowing that we wanted to probably incorporate some of those elements into it, we were able to partner with Amazon not just as a broadcast partner, but also, you probably saw that there was a couple of live reads for Amazon Original shows, Sneaky Pete, and that great conversation about Bryan Cranston.”

The 2018 Rose Parade Hosted By Cord & Tish had an electricity to its banter. The whole thing seemed improvised which made the live aspect of the production even more impressive. Even though the producers pushed Ferrell and Shannon to lean hard on their improv comedy skills, there was a huge amount of writing that went on behind the scenes. Bruss revealed that Ferrell and his long-time writing partner, Andrew Steele, provided the bulk of the vision, and that Molly Shannon helped mold the tone of the show. Former Funny or Die contributor Jake Fogelnest was also brought on board.

So will it become an annual thing? “It’s probably too soon to say for sure. Obviously we were with the Amazon folks all day on the 1st. They seemed to be thrilled with everything. We’ve had a chance to have a couple good conversations with them since then, as well, and it seems like everybody over at Amazon is super thrilled with just, you know, just creatively how the whole thing came together. Knowing how it was going to be improvised, just seeing how strong Will and Molly were together and how funny the whole thing was in real time. So that obviously–they’re very pleased with that. They’re certainly pleased, as are we, with the amount of chatter–I mean, just the amount of engagement that this thing got on social, in the reviews section on Amazon.

“I mean, I don’t know, but it’s not every show that premieres that gets this much debate and attention, and you’ve got people who are starting to post their own made up stories about how they met Cord and Tish. When they first–their personal histories with Cord and Tish,” said Bruss. “We have different brands are interacting with the Cord and Tish social handles. You know, Miracle-Gro has a lot to say about Cord’s thoughts on lawns and stuff like that. You just don’t have that with most shows, I don’t think. And so I think that’s very exciting for us. It’s exciting that these characters are people that, obviously, and audience is responding to and wants to learn more about and wants to engage with.”

Of course, we had to ask about the mysterious “lady in the fur coat.” At one point during the broadcast, the team went to Tim Meadows, stationed along the parade route, and he had a run-in with a woman who wasn’t too pleased about the production blocking her view. So who was she?

“I don’t think we do know much about her. My guess is we had to have her sign something, so we might have her name somewhere, but my guess is that we’ll probably plan on leaving her alone,” said Bruss. “Yeah–I can’t–maybe we’ll hunt her down like, uh–who’s the woman that Billy [Eichner] always brings back? Elena. Yeah, maybe she’ll be our cranky Elena in future projects with Cord and Tish. But, um, yeah, that obviously was not a plant. That was a woman who did not care.”

Stream The 2018 Rose Parade Hosted By Cord & Tish on Prime Video