The money shot in "There's Something About Mary" - well, actually, the first of many that declare these are the filmmakers who will take gross-out gags into the next millennium - is, by co-director and writer Peter Farrelly's own admission, "just stunningly inappropriate."
Peter's brother and collaborator, Bobby Farrelly, recalls with pride the moment when an executive from 20th Century Fox, the studio releasing "Mary," told him that a particular punch line was "perfectly reprehensible."
"There's Something About Mary," a romantic comedy on its way to becoming the summer's sleeper hit, is brought to you by the guys who made "Dumb and Dumber" - which found Jeff Daniels at the mercy of powerful laxatives and an even more powerful sound-effects editor - and "Kingpin," in which Woody Harrelson spat out a brutal parody of the "Got Milk?" ads.
Those were films dismissed by women and excoriated by some critics as, as Peter puts it, "pretty much the end of mankind." But inappropriateness and reprehensibility notwithstanding, their latest opened to rave reviews and even inspired a woman at a recent screening to laud it as "cute."
Cameron Diaz stars as Mary, every guy's ideal. In addition to the usual beauty and smarts, she also loves beer, beer nuts and sports. Ted (Ben Stiller), a nebbishy nice guy who hasn't seen her since a decidedly disastrous prom night a dozen years back, decides to try to find her, enlisting the aid of a dubious private detective (Matt Dillon), who decides to take her for himself. And one or two or three other guys are interested in her, with sundry levels of unhealthiness.
Basically, this is a wacky com-edy about stalkers. And we haven't even mentioned the dog-in-flames, the handicap and serial-killer jokes and the seminal fluid gag, which will become a seminal moment in raunch-humor history.
"There was a moment when I had to get on a prison cot with a big, fat guy where I asked myself, 'What am I doing here? What have I sunk to?' " admits Stiller, whose character is submitted to the film's most hilariously abjectindignities. "But I knew that if anyone could pull off these jokes, it was them. They're confident that what they're doing is funny, there's never any question. They're audacious, their obsession is with making the audience laugh."
"Critics ask us, how do you get away with this? But we've never gotten a letter," says Peter. "People are savvier than critics give them credit for.
"The other thing is, Ben's the hero, Ben doesn't set the dog on fire, he doesn't insult [Mary's mentally challenged] brother, he stands up for the brother. Matt Dillon's the bad guy, he does that stuff." Indeed, the Farrellys know they're not supposed to show the kinds of atrocities they do, and that's precisely what makes them funny.
Peter says they have friends with some of the handicaps depicted in the film, and it was made with them in mind. A bit part, a cantankerous character in a wheelchair, is actually played by a wheelchair-bound pal of the Farrellys who was tired of seeing people in wheelchairs portrayed in movies as sweet and lovable.
Peter and Bobby hung out as altogether unremarkable kids in Cumberland, R.I. (they still maintain homes on the East Coast), with no aspirations for filmmaking or, it seems, virtually anything else. "It would've taken effort to be the class clown," Bobby says with a shrug.
They weren't much good in their sales jobs, either, but luck was with them. When Peter moved to Los Angeles in 1985, it wasn't long before he had a development deal with a writing partner. Bobby was editing their scripts, and finally, he was invited out to become part of the process.
"We did 15 development deals before 'Dumb and Dumber' was made," Peter says. "The whole time I was out here, I never didn't have a job, I was constantly employed. We didn't exactly rough it. It wasn't a smashing success, but we were out playing golf, hanging out, living OK.
"But it was getting a little nerve-racking after nine years because you're like, 'How long can this go on? How many people will hire us to do scripts and none get made?'"
"Dumb and Dumber," pitched to them by a powerful producer who said, 'I want to do a movie about two dumb guys who go to Aspen,' changed everything. (That description was enough to get a film made? Both Farrellys laugh and, simultaneously, say, "With this guy, yeah.")
That producer eventually left the project, which wound up at New Line with the white-hot Jim Carrey interested. Peter says, "The studio said, 'Who's directing it?' and his answer, delivered very sheepishly, was us."
Their styleless directing style suits their material. "We never think of any swooping camera moves," admits Bobby. "But the director of photography likes to do that, so we sort of go along with him, let him do it, then cut it out in the end." The brothers laugh.
"They really have one focus - to tell the joke," Stiller says. "They don't care if it's a pretty angle. They take pride that they don't want to be part of the Hollywood system."
Still, it's taken awhile for people to get a handle on what the Farrellys do. Peter recalls premiere night of "Dumb and Dumber," when New Line head Bob Shaye - who, he says, never understood the movie but gave them complete freedom in making it - gave them their most "pathetic" introduction. " 'I want people to know something,' he said, 'I went to Columbia, I didn't get in the business to make this kind of movie.'"
L Bobby laughs. "We're thinking, 'OK, now - get to the joke.'"
Peter continues, "And he says, 'Anyway, here are the directors.' I had to hold my father back at the party. I said, 'It's OK, he let us do the movie.'"
At least, New Line marketed "Dumb and Dumber" well. MGM was clueless with "Kingpin" - Bobby recalls, perhaps only slightly exaggerating, "They advertised us almost exclusively on TV wrestling."
But Fox understood the Farrellys and approached them with work (the brothers have a three-film deal at the studio; their next will be a comedy about Siamese twins who enjoy their lot in life).
"It's more an issue of appreciating an aesthetic, of realizing that film talent comes in all guises," says Tom Rothman, president of 20th Century Fox Film Productions. "These guys are, of their art, masters. It may seem surprising to think of them as auteurs, but they are comedy auteurs. It's bloody hard to do what they do - big, envelope-pushing comedy - and they're terrific at it."
On his own, Peter has shown a slightly more serious side, writing two semi-autobiographical novels, "Outside Providence," which is being adapted into a film, and "The Comedy Writer," published earlier this year and based on an incident Peter wrote about in the Los Angeles Times 10 years ago. He witnessed a woman threatening suicide, and was powerless to get the police to do anything about it until she had already jumped off a building.
"Once it was printed, I was contacted by about 30 or 35 suicidal people," he recalls. "I met six at one time in a coffee shop, all these people with horrific stories. And here I am, trying to break into the comedy-writing business." Farrelly fictionalized that experience, and added true-life events he endured while machete-ing his way through the Hollywood jungle.
But it's as brothers that the two manage to make their filmmaking gel. "If we have a guy we really admire like Jeff Daniels sitting on a toilet, and basically the whole crew's a little embarrassed by their lot in life, it's easy, if you're alone, to say, 'Eh, you know what? Let's not do this. This is really creepy,' " says Peter. "But if you look over at the other guy, and he's like [beaming smile, signaling thumbs-up], it's easier to go on - 'I don't care how it seems, it's gonna work!'"
Fox's Rothman says, "They're down-home auteurs, the ultimate regular Joes. Everyone at Fox, up and down, loves them. They inspire loyalty in those around them. We hope to have a long relationship with them, we trust them, and everyone at Fox would lie down in the road for them."
The Farrellys just might take Rothman up on that. Provided, of course, that said Fox employees were slathered in some kind of goo first.
Pub Date: 8/09/98