2007'S CLASS CLOWNS: WILL FERRELL AND ANDY MCKAY OF FUNNYORDIE.COM

The revolution, such as it was, took place in less than an hour and was led by a 2-year-old. Early this spring, longtime collaborators Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay (Saturday Night Live, Anchorman, Talladega Nights) were kicking around ideas for a sketch to help launch their new comedy website, FunnyOrDie. McKay thought it might be amusing to do something with his rambunctious toddler, Pearl, so he whipped up a silly two-minute piece casting her as Ferrell's ornery, foulmouthed landlord. During a break from Ferrell's son Magnus' third birthday party, they shot the bit in the doorway of the Ferrell family's guesthouse. ''It was so casual — like, 'Did you cut the cake? Okay, we've gotta go do the thing with Pearl real quick,''' Ferrell remembers, sitting at a small table in McKay's trailer on the Los Angeles set of their upcoming comedy Step Brothers. ''Then, when it launched, it was mayhem. Complete mayhem.''

On April 12, the video, entitled ''The Landlord,'' appeared on FunnyOrDie.com and became an overnight viral sensation, receiving so many hits so quickly that the site's server eventually crashed. The productivity of the American workforce dipped as millions of cubicle drones watched Pearl get up in Ferrell's grille, calling him ''bitch'' and ''a--hole,'' and hectoring him for her rent money so she could ''get [her] drink on.'' Soon, Pearl was receiving an offer to costar in a Jackie Chan movie, while Bill O'Reilly, Geraldo Rivera, and other noted child-psychology experts debated whether she was an innocent victim of shameless Hollywood exploitation. McKay and Ferrell, who only a few months earlier had agreed to spearhead the website — the brainchild of Silicon Valley venture capitalist Mark Kvamme, whose firm, Sequoia Capital, would supply the funding — were bewildered. ''It was like, 'The president is holding a meeting to discuss it right now! Aircraft carriers are being diverted to the Indian Ocean!'' McKay says, laughing. ''It was crazy s---.''

Where some just saw a goofy bit of workplace diversion, others saw a new landmark in the evolution of creative content on the Web. As ''The Landlord'' went on to rack up more than 48 million hits, becoming one of the most watched clips in Internet history, user-generated comedy bits began streaming onto FunnyOrDie in massive numbers. And it wasn't just aspiring comedians from the hinterlands looking for exposure; celebrities like Brooke Shields, Jenna Elfman, Danny DeVito, Eva Longoria Parker, and Bill Murray appeared in sketches on the site, seeing it as a low-stress, potentially high-impact venue for their own comedy stylings. Humor on the Internet, once largely the business of lonely, sweatpants-clad webcam jockeys, had a hip new Hollywood home.

Though traffic has subsided since the initial spike, FunnyOrDie continues to draw a steady 3.5 million visitors a month. Last month, writer-director-producer Judd Apatow, who'd worked with Ferrell and McKay on Anchorman and Talladega Nights and was hot off the combination punch of Knocked Up and Superbad, signed on as a third partner on the site, further certifying its legitimacy as a go-to spot for comedy. Apatow has already contributed several clips to the site and is developing more original pieces. ''It's scary to make a movie,'' he says. ''It's fun to do something like this, where it doesn't have to make money, you don't have to market it — it's just a pure comedy experience.''

That's not to say FunnyOrDie is completely pure — for the site's partners and financial backers, all those yuks represent potential bucks. Thus far, FunnyOrDie has yet to turn any kind of profit (''We're doing quite well, if by 'well' you mean getting no money and working a lot,'' McKay says drily), but Sequoia Capital has already poured several millions of dollars into the site, banking on a future in which FunnyOrDie operates as a sort of Web 2.0 version of Comedy Central, supported by advertising and available on any device with a screen. ''The goal is to create a channel on the Internet,'' Kvamme says. ''Programming that channel and creating the content — that's the key — and that's what Adam, Will, and those guys do so well.'' —Josh Rottenberg

This is an online-only excerpt from the EW Entertainers of the Year 2007 issue; click the link to see the full profile of Will Ferrell, Andy McKay, and FunnyOrDie

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