April 04, 2005 - When Jimmy Fallon took over Weekend Update with Tina Few during the 2000 season of Saturday Night Live, he went from one of the promising members of the SNL cast to arguably the most popular cast member on the show. Soon the feature offers came flowing in and now Fallon has left SNL to pursue feature film acting full time. His first vehicle, last year's Taxi with Queen Latifah, was a troubled production that had a bit of a rough ride from critics, although it ultimately did respectably at the box office.

Fallon's latest venture, the baseball comedy Fever Pitch co-starring Drew Barrymore and directed by the Farrelly brothers, could well be the film that breaks Fallon out in features. Releasing on the heals of the baseball season's opening day, Fever Pitch could become a successful date film that will equally interest both male and female audiences. After all, it's a date flick with baseball.

In the film Fallon plays Ben, a schoolteacher in Boston. During the baseball off-season Ben meets and falls for a successful career woman named Lindsey (Barrymore) and the two embark on a winter romance. As the baseball season approaches, Ben tries to downplay his love of all things Red Sox, but soon his obsession starts to compete with his burgeoning relationship. Ben is the perfect guy in every other way, but Lindsey starts realizing that she may always be second fiddle to Ben's first love.

IGN FilmForce sat down with Fallon in Los Angeles recently to talk about working on the film, his own obsessions and entering the hallowed grounds of the Red Sox Nation.

	-20th Century Fox Fallon and the World Champion Red Sox

IGN FILMFORCE: When you first read the script, were the Farrellys already attached?

JIMMY FALLON: No. I think just Drew. Drew had it and she was just like, 'What do you think?' She always wanted to do something with me and I, of course, wanted to do something with Drew Barrymore. Please. So we were reading scripts back and forth and then we found this script, Fever Pitch, and I was like, 'Yeah, I kinda like this,' and she goes, 'Yeah, I like it too.' I was like, 'I think the Farrellys might like it too. We all just kind of came together. The Farrellys don't direct movies that aren't their movies, that they didn't write. This is the first one… I was kind of excited to see what they do with this one. They were saying, towards the end, 'Imagine if we didn't direct this?' This is their passion. New England. It was just finding this one. It was really well written, it was based on a Nick Hornby book and Lowell and Babaloo – Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel – are the writers, just somehow made it so it wasn't cheesy or corny, as most romantic comedies are. They actually wrote a really great script. There was some poetry in there, [different from] the actual genre of romantic comedy that wasn't as cookie cutter as most of them are. And it was just kind of interesting and fun. I was like, 'We can have a blast.' And little did we know the Red Sox would win. That's like lunacy. As I've said before, if that had been in the script at the end, they win the World Series, people would have been like, 'Yeah, bulls**t.

IGNFF: Especially the way they won it, that's just too far fetched.

FALLON: It's the biggest comeback in baseball history. Plus, it's the team that hasn't won in 86 years. There couldn't have been a better Hollywood ending for us. It's beyond baseball. It's rooting for your family. When they won, it wasn't about 'We have a trophy or we have a ring,' it was about calling their dad or their mom and saying, 'We won!' It was awesome and emotional. It was great.