Jimmy Fallon Has 'Fever'

In the new romantic comedy "Fever Pitch", Jimmy Fallon plays a man with the difficult task of trying to balance the two loves of his life, The Boston Red Sox and his girlfriend, played by Drew Barrymore.

"When she meets me at first. It's like the off-season. She thinks I'm a normal guy," Fallon explains to Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm. "When the games are on, I'm just going crazy like when I am on ESPN. She figures it out. She'd like, OK, I didn't know it was this deep. But it's really sweet and funny, a feel-good movie. You feel good when you leave."

Barrymore really wanted Fallon for this role. He plays high school teacher, Ben Wrightman, who is completely and totally obsessed with the Boston Red Sox.

"Obsessed beyond belief," Fallon says. "I have to decide between my team and my girl. It's almost like I think any relationship you go: How much of myself do I give up to make this work?"

To prepare for the role there was a particular character he had in mind, Fallon says, "This guy Michael Schur, who produced 'Weekend Update' on 'Saturday Night Live' was a huge Boston fan. He'd come into work. Some days he would look so sick. I'd go, 'What happened to Mike? Does he have the flu?' They'd go, 'No, the Yankees beat the Red Sox. Don't bring it up.' If they won, he'd come in, 'Hey, how you doing?' He physically would change whether they won or lost games. It was absolutely insane."

Insane was also that the film crew was given ten days to shoot at Fenway Park, half of which were in game days.

"All the extras in the movie are actual fans, real fans," Fallon says. "Bobby and Pete [Farrelly] would give us direction by the hot dog stand and beer stand. Now this scene do the blah, blah, blah. It was like guerrilla filmmaking. At end of the inning, we'd make sure the fans were enjoying the game. Then we'll just sit down and do the whole scene."

According to the film production notes, perhaps the most anxious moment for the filmmakers came at the end of one game, when the Farrellys had to walk out onto the field and ask 37,000 fans to remain in their seats while the production filmed a scene that had Barrymore running across the field. Fortunately, Bobby Farrelly immediately won over the fans with a good-natured jibe about the New York Yankees.

"We had no idea they'd win," Fallon says referring to the Red Sox World Series win in 2004.

Interestinly, Fallon admits he is no stranger to obsession. He used to put on hold college parties to watch "Saturday Night Life.

"I didn't want to watch it with anyone else," he says. "I'd watch it in my room and I'd tape it and have my soda and my chips. I didn't want anyone around me. I would just study Dana Carvy and try to be the next Dana Carvy and study his voices. I'd watch it the next day. In college I wouldn't go out until like like 1:30. The show ended at 1:00. They're like, 'How about a party?' I'm like, 'Yeah, I'll meet you out at like 1:00. Let me just watch this.'"

Now, "The Best of Jimmy Fallon" can be seen on DVD.

"I couldn't believe it," he says. "That's the best thing ever. I was flipping out. I got to hang out with Mick Jagger."

Looking back he says, "That was fun."

About Jimmy Fallon:

• Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. on Sept. 19, 1974, and raised in upstate New York.
• He began his stand-up career at age seventeen and first appeared as a featured performer on "Saturday Night Live" a week after his twenty-fourth birthday.
• In 1996, he dropped out of college, just a semester shy of graduation, and headed to Los Angeles. He trained with The Groundlings, the famed improvisational theater company.
• In 1998 he impressed Lorne Michaels in an audition where he impersonated John Travolta and Adam Sandler, which landed him a featured spot on "Saturday Night Live." And he was soon a favorite, thanks to his good-natured reworkings of current top pop hits and recurring characters like Sully, the rowdy high school-age Bostonian with a demonstrative girlfriend (Rachel Dratch) and video camera always in tow, entertainment journalist Pat O'Brien and a host of others.
• In March of 1998, a guest role on the ABC series "Spin City" marked his screen debut.
• In the beginning of the 1999-200 "SNL" season, Fallon was promoted to regular cast member, and also took on co-anchoring duties for the series "Weekend Update" segment with writer Tina Fey beginning in 2000.
• That same year, Fallon was rendered almost unrecognizable with a beard and older demeanor made his pleasing feature film debut as joyless band manager Dennis Hope in Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical rock and roll homage "Almost Famous."
• After high-profile awards hosting gigs on MTV, Fallon's acting career continued to grow: he was cast in a crucial role in Woody Allen's "Anything Else" in 2003, and he took on his first major leading role in the action-comedy "Taxi" in 2004, playing an experienced cop who commandeers a cab driven by a sassy, streetwise woman (Queen Latifah) to pursue a gang of beautiful thieves.