Speaker 1: Oh is bolt it show die?
Speaker 2: People say good money to see this movie. When they
Speaker 2: go out to a theater, they want clod sodas, hot popcorn,
Speaker 2: and no monsters.
Speaker 1: In the protection booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring?
Speaker 3: Got it off?
Speaker 4: What are we gonna do?
Speaker 5: I got an idea, go faster.
Speaker 2: Dumb A person lacking mental power.
Speaker 4: What's the last name? I'll look it up.
Speaker 6: Starts with an s slappy no swap swappy.
Speaker 7: Nah.
Speaker 4: Maybe it's on the briefcase looking though.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, it's right here, samsonnight.
Speaker 1: I was way off.
Speaker 2: Idiot, an adult mentally inferior to a child of three.
Speaker 4: Ez huh, that's right.
Speaker 5: The years, Uh huh both of them?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Cool? Stupid A person below normal intelligence.
Speaker 9: Hey, want to hear the most annoying sound in the world.
Speaker 2: If they each had half a brain, they'd still only
Speaker 2: have half a brain.
Speaker 1: A luck Frost.
Speaker 2: Jim Carrey.
Speaker 6: You can't go in there, right.
Speaker 10: Driver Jeff Daniels, O, jeez, look at the button. Yeah,
Speaker 10: he must work out more dumb and dumber for these
Speaker 10: guys every day.
Speaker 2: He's a no brainer.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the projection Booth. I'm your host. Mike White
Speaker 5: joined me once again as mister Ryan Lewis Rodriguez, Hello, sir.
Speaker 5: Also back in the booth is mister John Walker. Okay, Gang,
Speaker 5: you know the rules. No humping, no licking, no sniffing,
Speaker 5: heigh knees. This week we are looking at the fairly brothers.
Speaker 5: Dumb and Dumber. Released in nineteen ninety four, the film
Speaker 5: stars Jim Carrey as Lloyd Christmas and Jeff Daniels as
Speaker 5: Harry Dunn, two complete idiots who embark on a quest
Speaker 5: to return a briefcase to Mary Samson I, played by
Speaker 5: Lauren Holly, who secretly is in a heap of trouble.
Speaker 5: We will be spoiling this film if we can, so
Speaker 5: if you don't want anything ruined, please turn off the
Speaker 5: podcast and come on back after you've seen it. We
Speaker 5: will still be here. So, Ryan, when was the first
Speaker 5: time you saw Dumb and Dumber? And what did you think?
Speaker 6: In the Year of Our Lord nineteen ninety four, I
Speaker 6: was obsessed with a man named Jim Carey. He was
Speaker 6: my absolute hero. And of course my dad took me
Speaker 6: to go see Ace Ventura when I was eight, and
Speaker 6: he said, if I ever do that again, and taking
Speaker 6: to another movie like that and it turns out to
Speaker 6: be like that, I will never take you to another movie.
Speaker 6: That's how offended he was. But he took me to
Speaker 6: go see The Mask. We both love The Mask, but
Speaker 6: he did not let me see Dumb and Dummer in theaters,
Speaker 6: so I had to see it on pay per view
Speaker 6: at a motel that we were staying at in maybe
Speaker 6: February of ninety five, and I fell in love instantly,
Speaker 6: And once I was allowed to buy the VHS, I
Speaker 6: wore that fucker out. I wore it out like a
Speaker 6: dirty shirt. And it's still one of my favorite comedies.
Speaker 5: And John, how about yourself?
Speaker 1: I was trying to remember actually, right before we started
Speaker 1: this conversation, like why this movie was on my radar,
Speaker 1: And the only thing I can imagine is that I
Speaker 1: was interested in what Jim Carrey was doing with his comedies.
Speaker 1: But I feel like there was something more. Maybe I
Speaker 1: had read an article because this was the first Fairly
Speaker 1: Brothers movie, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and only one of them is credited with directing it,
Speaker 6: which is weird.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting thing though, because it's like after this
Speaker 1: I knew who they were obviously, But anyway, I remember
Speaker 1: looking forward to this and feeling like there was some
Speaker 1: reason why I was particularly I was like excited to
Speaker 1: see a movie like this. I still to this day
Speaker 1: feel this way. But at the time, especially I was
Speaker 1: in college.
Speaker 5: I think I would have been.
Speaker 1: Twenty one when this came out, so I was I
Speaker 1: had I'd fully gone into my sort of pretentious film
Speaker 1: buff face. But I was also a huge fan of
Speaker 1: just pure comedies, and especially things that were like low
Speaker 1: concept or no concept or de concept or whatever, like
Speaker 1: really good dumb comedy was and so I think I
Speaker 1: was really primed and ready for this movie. And at
Speaker 1: the time, I remember at least a couple of times
Speaker 1: going back to the theater with somebody because I wanted
Speaker 1: more people to just laugh with me about this movie.
Speaker 1: And it does feel very nineteen ninety four in a
Speaker 1: strange way now, but it also feels like it's connected
Speaker 1: to like the Cluseau films or something like that, where
Speaker 1: it's really just or Anchorman or anything like that, where
Speaker 1: it's just like classic buffoonery people that think they're the
Speaker 1: smartest people in the room and are definitely not. I've
Speaker 1: always been a fan of that kind of movie. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I just remember being excited to see this movie and
Speaker 1: going to see it. And I also remember, just a
Speaker 1: quick little personal anecdote. I went with my girlfriend and
Speaker 1: some guys were being noisy in the theater, and she
Speaker 1: completely told these guys, you know, shut the fuck out.
Speaker 1: And it was at a point where I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: they're not gonna hassle her in the parking lot, They're
Speaker 1: gonna hassle me. I remember watching this movie feeling like
Speaker 1: I was gonna have to fight after the movie, and
Speaker 1: it never happened. But I do remember there was like
Speaker 1: there was still when I watched this movie. I'm remembering
Speaker 1: that feeling of maybe if I wait in the theater,
Speaker 1: these guys will leave first and then I can pick
Speaker 1: out later. But yeah, it was definitely a movie I
Speaker 1: was looking forward to and I enjoyed.
Speaker 5: When it came out. Well, you had to stay in
Speaker 5: the theater for that extra scene at the end.
Speaker 1: That's what I told myself. It wasn't an act of cowardice.
Speaker 1: It was an act of completism.
Speaker 5: Samuel L. Jackson shows up and says, Harry Lloyd, I'm
Speaker 5: putting together a team. I don't think I saw this
Speaker 5: in the theater. I remember seeing the mask in the theater.
Speaker 5: I don't think that I saw ace Ventura at the theater.
Speaker 5: I don't think I saw this one. I think I
Speaker 5: saw Did I see King Pen? No, I didn't see
Speaker 5: King Penn theatrically. I did see There's something about Mary theatrically.
Speaker 5: But yeah, this one just went under my raidar. I
Speaker 5: definitely knew who Jim Carey was. I definitely watch a
Speaker 5: lot of in living color, and even remember the great
Speaker 5: strides I had to make to go see Earth Girls
Speaker 5: Are Easy and just how tough it was to see
Speaker 5: that movie around here. I had to like take this
Speaker 5: major road trip to go out and see that. But yeah,
Speaker 5: I remember watching this on VHS and absolutely loumbing it.
Speaker 5: Had a real good time with that. But I didn't
Speaker 5: really go back to this one very often. It's not
Speaker 5: a movie that I watch frequently, nor did I back
Speaker 5: in nineteen ninety four. But I just remember very fondly.
Speaker 5: And it's funny that you bring up the Inspector Cluse movies,
Speaker 5: because I forgot just that this is a it's a
Speaker 5: caper movie. There's this whole thing of a crime that
Speaker 5: has been committed, and it's so funny how they keep
Speaker 5: that away from the rest of the narrative so much.
Speaker 5: They give you a little bit at the beginning with
Speaker 5: Lauren Holly, and then once you start to get into
Speaker 5: more of the Charles Rocket and Mike Stop and Duff characters.
Speaker 5: It's funny that you don't even know who or what
Speaker 5: was taken from Lauren Holly. Why she's giving Charles Rockett
Speaker 5: surreptitiously this briefcase full of money, and obviously she doesn't
Speaker 5: know that somebody so close to the family is involved
Speaker 5: with some sort of thing, and that it's not until
Speaker 5: five minutes before the end that you even know that
Speaker 5: she was married and that her husband was kidnapped. It's
Speaker 5: a little blue velvet at times.
Speaker 6: There's a comparison between that and Earth Girls Are Easy,
Speaker 6: and that Charles Rockett is the villain in both movies.
Speaker 5: Right, Yes, Oh God, I love Charles Rockett, love him
Speaker 5: so much, and he was so good in this He's
Speaker 5: so good in everything that he was in and we
Speaker 5: lost him way too soon.
Speaker 1: Wait, he sells that moment that I think you have
Speaker 1: to have in a movie like this, if you've got
Speaker 1: the caper plotline, and if you've got like villains, the
Speaker 1: way that this story does at some point, at least
Speaker 1: if not for the duration of the movie. The villains
Speaker 1: have to think the idiots are like super competent masters
Speaker 1: of subterfuge. At some point they have to say they're
Speaker 1: just that good. And I think that, like Charles Rockett
Speaker 1: knows like he's a funny guy. I was thinking, is
Speaker 1: it interesting for him to be asked to play basically
Speaker 1: the heavy just because he's got a jaw line and
Speaker 1: he can do that. He could be playing the funny
Speaker 1: guy in a different movie, but in this case he's
Speaker 1: getting to play a very dry character. But he does
Speaker 1: have that sort of he's got to sell that idea
Speaker 1: that these people are like, what are these two men doing?
Speaker 1: We see that they're complete idiots, But what's the Bill
Speaker 1: Murray movie? Is it The Man who Knew too much
Speaker 1: or knew too little? The Man who knew too little?
Speaker 11: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And then there's the great Dave Foley comedy The Wrong Guy.
Speaker 1: It's another great like it's a smart, dumb guy comedy,
Speaker 1: but it's also a guy who doesn't understand the situation
Speaker 1: he's in at all.
Speaker 6: And I'm a bag Jones.
Speaker 5: And with movies like that, you always have to be
Speaker 5: careful as far as how do people treat that character,
Speaker 5: how do they respond to him. It reminds me like
Speaker 5: Frank Drebin, where he will say and do the dumbest
Speaker 5: things on earth. Some people know that he's stupid, and
Speaker 5: other people just look, askance, am I hearing what I'm
Speaker 5: supposed to be hearing? And other people just take him
Speaker 5: completely seriously. I think it's mostly you're George Kennedy, your
Speaker 5: OJ Simpson take him very seriously because they are equally
Speaker 5: as stupid. But then you get to Nancy marsha On
Speaker 5: and she's just like, what is this kind of thing?
Speaker 5: Just making more faces than anything, and just I can't
Speaker 5: believe this, dude. But there's not a lot of people
Speaker 5: that call out Frank Drebin for being a complete idiot,
Speaker 5: and this movie does that good balance, because there are
Speaker 5: some people that are just like, who the hell are
Speaker 5: these guys? They're so stupid, and other times like you're saying,
Speaker 5: oh my god, these are evil geniuses. They're sending me
Speaker 5: a message, what do you mean gas man? How do
Speaker 5: they know I have gas? They're rubbing it in my face,
Speaker 5: which means then.
Speaker 1: That guy's trying to outsmart them and then when he's
Speaker 1: around them, like, I love that stretch of the movie.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get ahead, but that stretch of
Speaker 1: the movie where Mentalalino is in the car with them
Speaker 1: is one of those great like just that's hell for him,
Speaker 1: it's to be around these guys. But somewhere at the
Speaker 1: back of his mind he's like, how are these guys
Speaker 1: kind of running the board? Like I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: just I think that that's probably a through line. You
Speaker 1: would probably find that moment in a lot of these
Speaker 1: types of movies where part of what you're saying, Mike
Speaker 1: is like, how do you keep that? How do you
Speaker 1: keep these characters moving forward in the story. It has
Speaker 1: to do with how people react to them. Do you
Speaker 1: bring it up, Frank Drepen bring something up that I
Speaker 1: was hoping we would get to, which is what's the
Speaker 1: line between like spoof world and like whatever that adjacent
Speaker 1: to spoof world is that this movie takes place in.
Speaker 1: It's not quite spoof world. It's not quite where like
Speaker 1: the scene resets and it's like a cartoon character. If
Speaker 1: you get injured, you probably still look bruised in the
Speaker 1: next scene. In a fairly Brothers movie, it's a French sparse.
Speaker 1: There's a funny line there. But I think Frank Dreban
Speaker 1: is also in spoof world, so he's a little bit
Speaker 1: more even like the Marx Brothers or something, where you
Speaker 1: do have the straight people that react to him just
Speaker 1: like what's this idiot doing? But in Dumb and Dumber
Speaker 1: there's almost like there's more consequences and so you get
Speaker 1: more pushback to these idiots because the world is slightly
Speaker 1: more the real world.
Speaker 5: It's just an interesting distinction. Yeah, you do get those moments,
Speaker 5: so where he runs off the jetway and lands in
Speaker 5: a heap, but he is up and around the next
Speaker 5: time we see him, he's absolutely fine. But yeah, there
Speaker 5: are some consequences, not a lot, but there are some.
Speaker 5: To jump to the third movie when Rob Briggle gets
Speaker 5: blown up with fireworks, like his hair's on fire and
Speaker 5: all this stuff is going on, but then it doesn't
Speaker 5: necessarily look horrible in the next scene, but you definitely
Speaker 5: know he's been through something. But then again, he's one
Speaker 5: of the street people versus Harry and Lloyd, who do
Speaker 5: seem fairly indestructible. A lot of times.
Speaker 6: It's causing chaos wherever they go. People die around them
Speaker 6: frequently and they don't even notice it. Like Jim Carrey
Speaker 6: gets somebody killed in the second scene of the film,
Speaker 6: there's a giant explosion when he's not looking at the road.
Speaker 6: Clearly someone in that car died. I mean it just
Speaker 6: turns back around and starts driving.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm shocked when Harry is a little guilty about
Speaker 5: mental dying in the diner and everything, but he gets
Speaker 5: past it pretty darn fast.
Speaker 1: It's funny how that scene plays out, too. That's a
Speaker 1: good example of the logic of this world is that
Speaker 1: they somehow manage to get out of that scene, Like
Speaker 1: the people are realizing right after they left, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: there was something fishy here. But somehow they manage to
Speaker 1: get on the road and get out of there before
Speaker 1: the cops show up or before people start questioning it.
Speaker 1: You can again still see that there's like some plausible
Speaker 1: sense of even if we don't see them getting consequences,
Speaker 1: the idea that there might be some kind of consequences
Speaker 1: are there, even right up until the end when there's
Speaker 1: like gun play, Like you don't know that they're not going.
Speaker 5: To get hurt.
Speaker 1: You just suspect that if they do get hurt, it'll
Speaker 1: be funny and not tragic. But even then I do
Speaker 1: think that well in the third movie, I guess the
Speaker 1: injury that Harry as he's shot through, he's bleeding through.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of realistic wound, but it still played
Speaker 1: for laughs that he's, oh, I think I'll be fine,
Speaker 1: and then he's like, put some bactine on it or whatever.
Speaker 6: But it's a rubber band reality.
Speaker 1: But it's not full on spoof world where you say
Speaker 1: nice beaver and then somebody hands down a taxidermy beaver.
Speaker 1: It's not full on that, but it is like that
Speaker 1: pee weez big adventure world where you feel like, okay,
Speaker 1: there's a certain kind of magic to the comedy gets
Speaker 1: you out of situation somehow.
Speaker 6: I liken it to Beavis and butt Head, where I
Speaker 6: remember some writer of that show on the DVD saying
Speaker 6: the way that you write these characters is you start
Speaker 6: thinking and then stop, And that's really how you write
Speaker 6: an idiot. That's the perfect way is that where does
Speaker 6: logical thought begin? And how do you stop before you
Speaker 6: get to that point? And that's both of these characters.
Speaker 1: Even though it's funny that Lloyd's more proactive and Harry's
Speaker 1: a little bit smarter. There's a but they still don't
Speaker 1: make that doesn't get him out of any troubles.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, at least Harry can read slightly.
Speaker 1: Harry can read right.
Speaker 5: Even though both of them are complete idiots, they can
Speaker 5: actually both operate motor vehicles. And you mentioned, hey, nice
Speaker 5: beaver kind of thing. There's word play in these movies,
Speaker 5: but it's a different type of word play. It's so
Speaker 5: many malaprops where it's just like they think that they're
Speaker 5: like you said, they think that they're smart, and they
Speaker 5: will use a phrase, but it's always the wrong phrase. Ers,
Speaker 5: there's something slightly different about the phrase or wrong about
Speaker 5: the phrase, And sometimes what they say you can figure
Speaker 5: out what they're trying to say, and other times it's
Speaker 5: just what are you trying to say? But I love
Speaker 5: the layering of the jokes, and I think the best
Speaker 5: example of that for me is the end scene of
Speaker 5: this movie with the Hawaiian Tropic girls, where it becomes
Speaker 5: that whole thing of oh, we're looking for two guys
Speaker 5: to come slather us with suntan lotion and they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: you know the nearest, Oh you're in luck the nearest
Speaker 5: town is two miles back that way kind of thing,
Speaker 5: and you're just like, what, you guys are so stupid,
Speaker 5: Like why aren't you like jumping at this chance?
Speaker 1: This is a beer commercial that just drove up to
Speaker 1: you and it invited you to join the beer commercial
Speaker 1: by the pool.
Speaker 5: The bus drives off and they're just like, oh, you're
Speaker 5: so stupid, and they run after the bus and you're like, okay,
Speaker 5: here we go. Here's the moment is No, the town
Speaker 5: isn't that way, it's this other way. And then they
Speaker 5: have to turn around and then they go, gosh, just
Speaker 5: think about those lucky guys that are going to be
Speaker 5: with those women and they never get it, they never
Speaker 5: make that connection. And I'm just like, that's so nice
Speaker 5: that every time they just take you up to that
Speaker 5: cliff and then they let you go, and then they
Speaker 5: take you back up to that noe. We're gonna let
Speaker 5: you go again, and never. The joke is that it
Speaker 5: never pays off, which I just love.
Speaker 6: And to piggyback on the malapropoisms, when Jim Carrey says
Speaker 6: rapist wit instead of rapier wit, tell her that I'm
Speaker 6: laugh harder in a few weeks like I was losing
Speaker 6: my mind watching it today at that moment.
Speaker 1: I hate to say that one of the ones that
Speaker 1: is sticking in my mind right now is not from
Speaker 1: the first movie. It's from the from Dumb and Dumber two.
Speaker 1: But when he says, hey, man, I hate to burst
Speaker 1: your butthole.
Speaker 5: And it plays too with the cat's.
Speaker 1: Name, But that's an example of what you're saying, Mike.
Speaker 1: You go, Okay, I wouldn't have thought to like I've
Speaker 1: heard of. There's certain malapropisms that you have heard, and
Speaker 1: then other ones where you go, okay, I know he
Speaker 1: means bubble. It doesn't really sound like butthole, but we
Speaker 1: know what it's just like you're used to the rhythm
Speaker 1: of the thing. And so I wonder if the writing
Speaker 1: process of this it's just funny people trying to top
Speaker 1: each other with what's the most idiotic As you're saying,
Speaker 1: my turn on this scene, Okay, we're gonna have that
Speaker 1: be turn. How about this other turn that adds this
Speaker 1: other layer to it, or even just within one little moment,
Speaker 1: like one of my favorite moments it's also a little
Speaker 1: fun turn is when Harry. It was when he pulls
Speaker 1: up on the moped and he tells him that he
Speaker 1: traded the van for the moped, and he does that
Speaker 1: whole thing of just when I thought you couldn't be
Speaker 1: any dumber, you go and do something like this and
Speaker 1: completely redeem yourself. It's like, you have to know what's
Speaker 1: the movie, what's the moment we think we're getting in
Speaker 1: a movie like this before you know how to subvert
Speaker 1: it with the complete idiocy, and then the idiocy can
Speaker 1: be surreal idiocy or it can be just like, that's
Speaker 1: actually clever wordplay, and someone like Jeff Daniels knows how
Speaker 1: to make it really sing because he's a great actor.
Speaker 1: But I love that he rose to the occasion of
Speaker 1: this and apparently despite a lot of people around him
Speaker 1: not wanting him to be in it. I find that
Speaker 1: fascinating and almost improbable that Jeff Daniels is as good
Speaker 1: in this movie as he is, because he's not known
Speaker 1: as a natural comedian. But I was watching the behind
Speaker 1: the scenes feature it on the DVD and somebody pointed
Speaker 1: out he gets fifty percent of the last Jim Carrey
Speaker 1: gets the other fifty percent. It is evenly divided, and
Speaker 1: Jim Carrey is a boring comedian. Jeff Daniels is a
Speaker 1: character actor who became funny, and he is absolutely slaying
Speaker 1: it in every single delivery that he gives.
Speaker 5: But Jeff Daniels is so dedicated to his craft and
Speaker 5: he's always looking for those INDs. Like Luckily Jeff Daniels
Speaker 5: being local in Michigan, he was invited to one of
Speaker 5: the film classes that I had in college and he
Speaker 5: came in and it was right around the time that
Speaker 5: he was on SNL and he did this amazing impersonation
Speaker 5: of Jay Leno and he was like, yeah, I was
Speaker 5: trying to find the character and trying to do it,
Speaker 5: and then he said he got into the character by
Speaker 5: saying the word Lamborghini and he just was like Lamborghini
Speaker 5: and he was like, Oh, there's the character. And then
Speaker 5: he was able to do that.
Speaker 6: Oh, Johnny, come on, Johnny like that.
Speaker 5: That's whole of thing.
Speaker 12: Look what the cat dragged in?
Speaker 4: How you doing, Jenny?
Speaker 11: Good to see you get.
Speaker 13: This?
Speaker 4: Jay?
Speaker 12: You got something for me? Is that what this is?
Speaker 12: You got a little something?
Speaker 14: Well, yeah, yeah, I think you I got a little
Speaker 14: get a little certificate made up here for you.
Speaker 12: Good That shot it says it's.
Speaker 14: Says a the king of Late Night, the gingling Night
Speaker 14: says there there will never be another.
Speaker 11: You know, I means this.
Speaker 12: That's nice, Jay, that's nice, Jay? Is it? Is it true?
Speaker 12: Ply because I could use this later to wipe my butt?
Speaker 12: That's good.
Speaker 11: It's good. You're kidding. That's good. It's funny, it's good.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know how I feel about.
Speaker 4: You, Jenny.
Speaker 11: I mean, you know, King of the Brown Noses.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean Johny.
Speaker 14: I mean, come on, you know it's time to tell
Speaker 14: the funk a moment.
Speaker 11: You're kidding.
Speaker 15: Sure, Jay, I guess you and your grotesque John just
Speaker 15: what you wanted.
Speaker 12: Is that it?
Speaker 6: Jenny?
Speaker 15: You know you know champlin an, you know champlon. I
Speaker 15: am having more fun than I've had in years and
Speaker 15: pressures off.
Speaker 12: I feel good, folks. What do you say?
Speaker 15: I stoock around for about five more years.
Speaker 5: Because it was Dana Carvey was Johnny Carson.
Speaker 1: One of the little vocal things he does as Harry
Speaker 1: that I think is great. He does it a couple
Speaker 1: of times in Dumb and Dummer is where he gets
Speaker 1: like a whiny little kid voice and says, right, it's
Speaker 1: like in the middle of them going back and forth.
Speaker 1: It's like he's getting ready to tell on him or
Speaker 1: something like that. But it's just I feel like that's
Speaker 1: that kind of hook that you're talking about that must
Speaker 1: be like an actorly thing, because when I noticed him
Speaker 1: doing it, I was like, oh, okay, you know that,
Speaker 1: you see them doing that, And then of course there's
Speaker 1: this whole other layer to that, which is and you
Speaker 1: alluded to, this is the Jim Carrey was having a
Speaker 1: moment at this point. So this is like him at
Speaker 1: the like the height of his Jim carreous, Jim carreousness,
Speaker 1: Jim Carrey ish nist. It was at his Jim carreyous
Speaker 1: at this point in his career. For me, this was
Speaker 1: my favorite one of those, like the Mask, and I
Speaker 1: did not see ace Ventura until much later, but this
Speaker 1: was definitely the one that I held on to us.
Speaker 1: I just loved the purity of it. It's always fun
Speaker 1: to see an actor like Jeff Daniels show up and
Speaker 1: like really throw themselves into the clowning. And I do
Speaker 1: think the craft allows them to do the clowning, but
Speaker 1: I think it was bringing something out in Jim Carrey,
Speaker 1: Like you can see that when they go back and
Speaker 1: forth it's not like they're trying to It's exactly what
Speaker 1: you said. It's not like they're trying to steal laughs
Speaker 1: from each other. It's like they're trying to build up
Speaker 1: the other guy's laugh constantly in the movie, and it's
Speaker 1: really it's just, I don't know, it's just a really
Speaker 1: fun interplay. And watching the deleted scenes and some of
Speaker 1: the longer versions of scenes that were in the movie,
Speaker 1: you see how much like they really were just getting
Speaker 1: into character and staying there, or it seems that way.
Speaker 5: They were teeing each other up for so many lines
Speaker 5: where it's oh, what did you say about that? And
Speaker 5: then he waits for the punchline and that, or he'll
Speaker 5: pass it back to give Jeff Daniels something else to
Speaker 5: work on, and then Daniels will pass it back to
Speaker 5: Jim Carrey. And Yeah, I love that collaboration that they have,
Speaker 5: and so much of what we see is in the script,
Speaker 5: but there's definitely a lot of stuff. The most annoying
Speaker 5: noise in the world that was something that they came
Speaker 5: up with, where they're just like, okay, like fucking around
Speaker 5: and pretty much messing with Mike Stars.
Speaker 6: It can't be overstated enough that when this movie was
Speaker 6: being shot, nobody knew that Jim Carrey was gonna pop.
Speaker 6: Like literally, they the offer for him before ace Ventura
Speaker 6: came out was a million dollars. They said, this will
Speaker 6: last up until the opening weekend of ace Ventura, and
Speaker 6: then after that point, we are completely screwed. And they waited,
Speaker 6: and so they ended up paying I think four times more.
Speaker 6: But it's still it's a perfect example of somebody who
Speaker 6: has been who's been starving for years, waiting to attack
Speaker 6: something and then finally getting that character of just like
Speaker 6: I know exactly what this is, like, I know exactly
Speaker 6: how to get this.
Speaker 5: Well, you remember the story of Jim Carrey rating himself
Speaker 5: a million dollar check, right, a twenty million dollar check.
Speaker 5: Twenty million dollar check, Okay, Yeah, And god, that's hilarious
Speaker 5: because that was the number. I can't remember which movie
Speaker 5: it was where he was making twenty million dollars and
Speaker 5: cable Guy, Cable Guy, Yeah, okay, Jesus, which so didn't
Speaker 5: deserve twenty million dollars. I love that movie, but it's
Speaker 5: a weird movie and it's a very tonally off movie
Speaker 5: for me. But yeah, twenty million dollars and that was
Speaker 5: such a big deal back then, or it was like
Speaker 5: Jim Curry got twenty million dollars, Oh my god. But yeah,
Speaker 5: he was raking in the dough because he was pulling
Speaker 5: in so many numbers with the box office.
Speaker 6: It was so prevalent. A ten year old like me
Speaker 6: knew how much he made for that movie. Which is granted,
Speaker 6: I was reading Entertainment Weekly because I was a movie nerd,
Speaker 6: but come on, ten year old shouldn't know how much
Speaker 6: their favorite actors are making.
Speaker 1: We all were probably reading that same issue of Entertainment
Speaker 1: Weekly in different places. Nice to picture the sort of
Speaker 1: bontage of us. I won't say that it was just
Speaker 1: Jim Carrey, but I do think that around that time,
Speaker 1: actors getting their salaries up to a certain number was
Speaker 1: a huge mark of arriving, and it was a huge
Speaker 1: part of Jim Carrey's kind of mythos at that point
Speaker 1: was that he had gotten to this point and he
Speaker 1: was this twenty million dollar man. And yeah, I love
Speaker 1: cable guy, but I do agree it's an odd one
Speaker 1: to be the one that he got paid twenty million
Speaker 1: for because it's not the most mainstream of the bunch.
Speaker 1: But no, I guess it's funny to picture, because I
Speaker 1: do think Jim Carrey was somebody. I remember there was
Speaker 1: a sitcom he was un called Duck Factory, where he
Speaker 1: played an animator who drew a duck. I think that's
Speaker 1: why it was called that, and that was something that
Speaker 1: was on television before he was on in Living Color
Speaker 1: a few years later that he popped up there. I
Speaker 1: didn't watch that show as much, but certain sketches made
Speaker 1: it to me, and I knew that there were really
Speaker 1: funny people on that show, and so I think I
Speaker 1: was ready for this moment when he hit. But like
Speaker 1: I said, I think this may have been the first
Speaker 1: of his movies that I really made a point to
Speaker 1: see in the theater. But what I remember was just
Speaker 1: feeling like so much of his persona I would later see.
Speaker 1: He does a lot of it in ace Ventura too,
Speaker 1: but a lot of that what we think of as
Speaker 1: the Jim Carrey persona just turned up to eleven is
Speaker 1: Lloyd Christmas. There's it's like a bitter, sarcastic, seething sort
Speaker 1: of guy who's in the same way that when Paul
Speaker 1: Rubins turns on the Pewee Herman persona. There's that's persona.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is one of these pure distillations
Speaker 1: of the Jim Carrey comedic gift is this character who
Speaker 1: is everything is so twisted one degree further than it
Speaker 1: would be with any other character, and I feel like
Speaker 1: this is such a great Lloyd is just a hilarious
Speaker 1: character to me. I love to watch his little just
Speaker 1: the way he enters a room, this posture, his expressions,
Speaker 1: He's constantly doing something and he's like the most awkward
Speaker 1: guy trying to be the coolest guy, and it's just
Speaker 1: such a it's so cringey, but it's the best kind
Speaker 1: of cringe.
Speaker 6: And there's like this impotent rage that is just beneath
Speaker 6: the surface, like there's an active volcano and he's ready
Speaker 6: to blow at any moment. But then he tampers it
Speaker 6: down and he's able to get it back inside himself.
Speaker 6: But then two scenes later it'll just rrupt and then
Speaker 6: he'll just have to bring it back.
Speaker 5: And the Fairly Brothers are so smart when it comes
Speaker 5: to and then a yelling as well. Just to have
Speaker 5: all of the different types of comedy. We're talking about wordplay,
Speaker 5: we're talking about physical stuff, and then you get some
Speaker 5: of these site gags, like when Harry's like, oh, hey,
Speaker 5: this is the last of our money, please use a
Speaker 5: wisely kind of thing, And then cut to Jim Carrey
Speaker 5: with that huge fucking cowboy hat, with the paddle ball thing,
Speaker 5: all of the pin wheels in the box and everything.
Speaker 5: He's just like, what the fuck's even in the box?
Speaker 5: What kind of food did he buy? They just they're
Speaker 5: hitting that thing, and then he sees that Rhode Island
Speaker 5: slut news there.
Speaker 1: I think about that moment all the time, Mike, Like
Speaker 1: every time my wife sends me to the store with
Speaker 1: a list of stuff, and then it hits me with
Speaker 1: that reminder be sure to get the DA And I
Speaker 1: have this thing in the back of my head of
Speaker 1: does she think I'm an idiot? Of course I know
Speaker 1: to get like what, but I always picture that image
Speaker 1: is like that's how she pictures me coming home from
Speaker 1: the store. It's a very iconic moment, but it's that
Speaker 1: kind of cut from that exact it's the perfect timing
Speaker 1: of what kind of an idiot do you think I am?
Speaker 1: And then book someone being an idiot?
Speaker 6: That scene has the greatest bit of adr ever. When
Speaker 6: the old lady approaches him, and he asks her to
Speaker 6: stay there and watch the dispenser so that he can
Speaker 6: come back and get his wallet, and he yells, don't
Speaker 6: you go dying on me. It's one of those things
Speaker 6: where it's clearly them sitting in a booth thinking what's
Speaker 6: the funniest way to exit this scene, and somebody coming
Speaker 6: up with it. But there's so many brilliant adr lines.
Speaker 1: In this movie that it's hard to count. Here's a
Speaker 1: purely speculative question. Do you think she was going to
Speaker 1: just watch his stuff for him before he insulted her?
Speaker 5: He does compound it, The world that they create has
Speaker 5: just so many vicious and nasty people in there. I'm
Speaker 5: so surprised that Lynn Shay isn't a worst person in
Speaker 5: this mooth. You know that she's one of their victims
Speaker 5: rather than somebody that can turn it around and make
Speaker 5: their lives even more miserable, because there are so many
Speaker 5: people that I just want to make their lives miserable
Speaker 5: that old lady Sea Bass. There's a lot of people
Speaker 5: in here that do not like them just from looking
Speaker 5: at them.
Speaker 6: And with Lynn Shape, they really got their money's worth
Speaker 6: when they brought her back for Kingpin, where she is
Speaker 6: the single most disgusting human being on the face.
Speaker 4: Of the earth.
Speaker 5: Oh good. Between that and then what's her name, Magda
Speaker 5: and something about Mary with that leather skin that she's
Speaker 5: got all but yeah, her with the VV fingers and
Speaker 5: that kind of stuff, it's like, oh god, it just
Speaker 5: turns your stomach.
Speaker 1: That's something that the Fairly Brothers have, that is we
Speaker 1: haven't really talked about this, but they do have that
Speaker 1: sort of like low comedy or kind of scuzzy or
Speaker 1: sleazy quality. Well, that's another brand of comedy that they have.
Speaker 1: It's gross out, but it's like again, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit more. It's like philosophical almost gross out comedy, which
Speaker 1: puts it in that kind of It's not quite John Waters,
Speaker 1: but it is that sort of transgressive almost comedic ideas
Speaker 1: in anarchic spirit. Yeah, but there's a shock value to
Speaker 1: it that is connected to I often watch these movies
Speaker 1: and I'm reminded of Oh yeah, there's definitely a great
Speaker 1: example is the comedian Fred Stoler, who plays the guy
Speaker 1: outside the phone booth. That's a perfect example of a
Speaker 1: Fairly Brothers moment. Jim Carrey isn't in this scene. Jeff
Speaker 1: Daniels and isn't in this scene. It's one of the
Speaker 1: straight men who's in this scene, but he gets a
Speaker 1: new comic antagonist, but he can beat this one because
Speaker 1: it's not one of the stars. But like the very
Speaker 1: fairly premise of oh, here's a guy who's like a
Speaker 1: yuppy asshole who's like talking beyond his actual ability to
Speaker 1: back up his words, he gets to be taken out
Speaker 1: in a punch like that's the gag. It's a little
Speaker 1: bit it's not quite Slobs versus Snob's comedy, but there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of that. If you're like it reminds
Speaker 1: me of the way might judge if he ever has
Speaker 1: like an intellectual person wander into his think, they're always
Speaker 1: like gonna be punctured in some way. And I think
Speaker 1: that in this movie there is a little bit of
Speaker 1: a you don't really side with with Harry and Lloyd necessarily,
Speaker 1: but you don't really side with the stuffed shirts that
Speaker 1: they go up against either, And I guess in that
Speaker 1: way it is Mark's brothers e. There's that sort of
Speaker 1: anarchic spirit, which is what you just mentioned.
Speaker 6: The only thing it's missing is in Margaret Dumont there's
Speaker 6: not really a consistent one that goes through the entire film, which.
Speaker 5: You might think is going to be Terry Garr at
Speaker 5: some point, but no, and then it might be Lauren Holly.
Speaker 8: But no.
Speaker 5: The other thing I wanted to say, too, is those
Speaker 5: moments of incredible pathos that this movie has. You're talking
Speaker 5: about the philosopher angle of this, those moments where they're
Speaker 5: just at their wits end and and oh my god,
Speaker 5: my parakeet's head popped off and everything is just going
Speaker 5: to shit, and they have that big teary moment and
Speaker 5: they're embracing, and then you get something like that towards
Speaker 5: the end too, and it's just like, oh, Harry, you
Speaker 5: betrayed me, and all these things. They have to come
Speaker 5: to their moments of reconciliation and everything, and I'm just like, yeah,
Speaker 5: this is very serious right here, and it's actually being
Speaker 5: played for being serious, even though these guys are complete idiots.
Speaker 1: I think those moments are there's that little extra twist
Speaker 1: of Jim Carrey really putting it on when he's crying
Speaker 1: or whatever. But You're right, those moments have a certain
Speaker 1: comedy to them that only works because that that's where
Speaker 1: Jeff Daniels is playing it straight. Jim Carrey is even
Speaker 1: playing those moments related straight where he's I just want
Speaker 1: somebody in my life. That's both ridiculous to hear Lloyd
Speaker 1: Christmas say, but it's also, like you said, a true
Speaker 1: moment of pathos. That is, it kind of gives a
Speaker 1: clown that little extra whatever thing it is that you
Speaker 1: root for these types of characters. I guess is there's
Speaker 1: just you don't want to see anybody get kicked around
Speaker 1: too much.
Speaker 5: When you mentioned that Fred Stoller moment, and that also
Speaker 5: brought to mind the Harlan Williams moment where it's here's
Speaker 5: the ultimate figure of authority with him being this motorcycle
Speaker 5: cop and the joke being pulled on him unknowingly. And
Speaker 5: it's not like they set out for him to drink
Speaker 5: Lloyd's piss, but that's what happens. They even try to
Speaker 5: stop him from doing it. But yeah, and then the
Speaker 5: moment where he's just you better get out of here
Speaker 5: kind of thing. It's just all right. There could have
Speaker 5: been a lot more trouble there. But I love the
Speaker 5: way that they play that moment. I love Harlan Williams
Speaker 5: his turn in Something about Mary is one of my
Speaker 5: favorite things in the world. The whole six minute ABS thing. Oh,
Speaker 5: it's brilliant.
Speaker 2: You learn of this thing?
Speaker 12: The eight minute abs?
Speaker 1: Yeah sure, eight minute aps yeah. The exercise video.
Speaker 16: Yeah, well this is gonna blow that right out of
Speaker 16: the water.
Speaker 4: Listen to this.
Speaker 16: Seven minute apps.
Speaker 1: Right, yes, okay, all right, I see where you're going.
Speaker 1: Think about it.
Speaker 16: You walk into a video store, you see eight minute
Speaker 16: abs sitting there. There are seven minute abs right beside it.
Speaker 12: Which one are you gonna pick?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 5: I'm I would go for the seven Yeah, bingo.
Speaker 16: Man, bingo, seven minute apps, and we guarantee just to
Speaker 16: go to workout as the eight minute folk?
Speaker 4: Do you guarantee it's you? How do you do that?
Speaker 16: If you're not happy with the first seven minutes, we're
Speaker 16: gonna send you the extra minute fright.
Speaker 1: See that's it. That's our motto.
Speaker 16: That's where we're coming from.
Speaker 1: That's from A to B. He's always like that. But
Speaker 1: what I love is a guy like that shows up
Speaker 1: and again I'm playing the state trooper who's pulling him over.
Speaker 1: I get this bit. It's a gross out gag. It
Speaker 1: was just like everything is dialed in just perfectly to
Speaker 1: being the kind of asshole just gets his come up
Speaker 1: and for the way he's handling these characters, and it's
Speaker 1: like it's part of the comic conceit that they're going
Speaker 1: to run into some people, Like you said, who asked
Speaker 1: for it?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah. He so reminds me of the James Keach
Speaker 5: character from a vacation when when they pulled Clark over
Speaker 5: after the dog has been tied to the bumper, he
Speaker 5: probably kept up for a little while.
Speaker 1: That's a great example of an actor playing a moment
Speaker 1: really straight, like really dramatic. It's like the like Trlton
Speaker 1: Heston in is it Wayne's world that he's in? Or
Speaker 1: Wayne's world too where he's shollow?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Wayne's world?
Speaker 4: Two?
Speaker 1: Yeah, But they swap an actor out for a better
Speaker 1: actor and they bring in Tarlton Heston to give a monologue.
Speaker 12: I once knew a girl who lived on Gordon Street.
Speaker 12: That was a long time ago, when I was young.
Speaker 11: Do we have to put up with this?
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, can't we get a better actor?
Speaker 4: I know it's a small part, but I think we
Speaker 4: can do better than this.
Speaker 8: Gordon Street, Yes, Gordon Street. I once knew a girl
Speaker 8: who lived on Gordon Street a long time ago when
Speaker 8: I was a young man, not a day passage. I
Speaker 8: don't think of her and promise I made I will
Speaker 8: always keep at one perfect day on Gordon Street. That's
Speaker 8: five blocks up too over.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Someone playing a moment like that straight in the middle
Speaker 1: of this ridiculous comedy, it almost always works, especially if
Speaker 1: you get an actor who you know who isn't on
Speaker 1: the face of a comedic force.
Speaker 5: Thinking about these actors or these characters that kind of
Speaker 5: get there come up and don't, or you're just wondering
Speaker 5: what kind of person am I running into the waitress
Speaker 5: at the diner. I love the giggles that Jeff Daniels
Speaker 5: gets when Lloyd calls her flow and he just like
Speaker 5: starts doing that thing with his hands, or he's just
Speaker 5: beyond I'm out of control with the laughter.
Speaker 1: Flow from the TV show excuse me.
Speaker 13: Flow Flow, Like the TV show.
Speaker 5: What's the Soup?
Speaker 15: Dis You Were the Day?
Speaker 5: That sounds good. I'll have that when Harry starts complaining
Speaker 5: about no bubbles drink and she just takes it and
Speaker 5: blows on the bubbles, and I'd like that in the
Speaker 5: script that was actually chocolate milk he's this isn't mixed
Speaker 5: up very well, and then she blows all these bubbles
Speaker 5: in the milk.
Speaker 1: There are tons of little moments like that, and one
Speaker 1: of the funniest moments to me for whatever reason, and
Speaker 1: I got a screenshot of it so that I would
Speaker 1: so that I would have the line right, because it's
Speaker 1: really nothing. But it's the moment where he's coming out
Speaker 1: of the gas station and he sees the guys drinking
Speaker 1: the big gulps and he says, hey, guys, oh big gulps. Huh,
Speaker 1: all right, see you later and walks away. I think
Speaker 1: that moment is an ad libbed moment, but I don't
Speaker 1: know how moments like that come about. But that just
Speaker 1: is such a great example of why these characters are funny.
Speaker 1: Is because Lloyd feels like he's supposed to say something
Speaker 1: and have a moment with these people but has nothing
Speaker 1: to say, and then it's like, all right, cool, and
Speaker 1: in his mind he just had a he just he
Speaker 1: just bantered with some people. But it's just the most
Speaker 1: unnecessary thing to say that you could ever say, and
Speaker 1: then just to say, all right, see you later.
Speaker 6: There's a similar moment when he's in the bar and
Speaker 6: he's been waiting for Mary for six hours and finally leaves.
Speaker 6: He notices a newspaper article that says man lands on moon,
Speaker 6: and he goes.
Speaker 1: We did it.
Speaker 6: We landed on the moon. And that was apparently improvised
Speaker 6: because they put that as part of set dressing, and
Speaker 6: it just that's probably my favorite moment in the entire
Speaker 6: I quote that constantly anytime anybody says something stupid, so
Speaker 6: we land on the moon.
Speaker 1: What I love about that moment that I agree it's
Speaker 1: hilarious is even before he shouts, just that he's as
Speaker 1: he's walking out, he like to himself says, it's great,
Speaker 1: like he's just having a private little moment of pride.
Speaker 5: Another really smart thing that they do too, is they
Speaker 5: have those fantasy sequences. And here we're talking about how
Speaker 5: these characters are basically cartoon characters, they can almost literally
Speaker 5: be cartoon characters in those moments, especially the Dreen sequence
Speaker 5: that he has where he's out with Mary and the
Speaker 5: guy starts kissing on Mary's arm and it has a
Speaker 5: whole fight in the restaurant, and you get the chef
Speaker 5: coming out from the back who's like a karate master,
Speaker 5: and all these things are just the end of the
Speaker 5: playing with the like a punching bag with the guy's
Speaker 5: nuts and everything. But I love the physical again. Physical
Speaker 5: comedy and Jim Carrey go together was so beautifully. The
Speaker 5: way he's moving his arms back and forth is he's
Speaker 5: like coming up to battle the kung fu guy. Or
Speaker 5: when he holds his hands up against the side of
Speaker 5: his face and starts making that amazing face. Oh, it's
Speaker 5: so good, and it's just yeah, this is why Jim
Speaker 5: Carrey was the twenty million dollar man and within a
Speaker 5: few years.
Speaker 6: And that scene goes on for six minutes. There's four
Speaker 6: different fantasies in one fantasy sequence and they all build
Speaker 6: to that point of him putting the cook's heart in
Speaker 6: the doggy bag, and that's the perfect exclamation point for
Speaker 6: that kind of scene.
Speaker 1: I love the fireside ski lodge scene with all the sweaters.
Speaker 1: Just his idiotic idea of what adults hanging out looks
Speaker 1: like and his idiotic idea of being the life of
Speaker 1: the party is so great in his own farts, and
Speaker 1: he's just like throwing snacks in his face and stuff,
Speaker 1: and everyone's laughing and clapping for Oh, it's so perfect.
Speaker 1: They and Dumb and Dumber two. They do that. That's
Speaker 1: a similar sort of montage, but it's Harry's idiotic idea
Speaker 1: of what being a dad would be. It's a similar
Speaker 1: idea of just like you said, Mike, vignettes that are
Speaker 1: just a little too real to fit this world. But
Speaker 1: you get to see them just piled up and they
Speaker 1: do escalate in a little chunk like that. It really
Speaker 1: is an opportunity to do a slightly different, broader form
Speaker 1: of comedy.
Speaker 5: It's also a good chance for them to do some
Speaker 5: outfit changes since they're in the same outfits for almost
Speaker 5: the entire first half of the film until they get
Speaker 5: to Aspen, until they finally open up that briefcase and
Speaker 5: see all that money in there, and then it's just
Speaker 5: an amazing orgy of depravity of the way that they're
Speaker 5: spending this money. And just don't worry, we'll write out
Speaker 5: IOUs and you're gonna want to keep that one. When
Speaker 5: they talk about.
Speaker 1: Car, just their outfits, those boots, the ruffled tuxedos. When
Speaker 1: they get out of the car and he's wearing like
Speaker 1: the big fur boots, that seems hilarious, but yeah, this tuxedos.
Speaker 1: Their idea of dressing up is another thing that's like,
Speaker 1: this is what an eight year old would think dressing
Speaker 1: up look like.
Speaker 6: And he has the banaka spray, but he sprays it
Speaker 6: not in his own out but in Charles Rocket's face.
Speaker 1: It's funny that's paid off. He does it earlier before
Speaker 1: he goes in to talk to Mary, and then it's
Speaker 1: pay He does it again later, but this time, yeah,
Speaker 1: the payoff is he hit someone in the face with it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a good kind of recurring gag.
Speaker 5: Like I said, there's heist part of it, or crime
Speaker 5: keeper kind of thing. It's a road movie in here,
Speaker 5: of course, it's a comedy going on, but you just
Speaker 5: get so much because really it takes such a major
Speaker 5: turn once they finally do get to Aspen. And then
Speaker 5: it's the character of Beth who keeps coming in and out,
Speaker 5: like her at the gas station and then her at
Speaker 5: the bar again later on. I feel so bad for her,
Speaker 5: but at the same time she's so ditsy and just
Speaker 5: doesn't seem to understand what's happening. But then that's the
Speaker 5: joke on us where it turns out that she's an
Speaker 5: FBI agent. It's like, oh, okay, that makes a lot
Speaker 5: more sense her and the guy from RoboCop, right, the guy.
Speaker 1: That plaid CP Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: He's the other agent in there. And I always when
Speaker 5: he shows up, especially when he's getting the whole lowdown
Speaker 5: on how they murdered Mike's star, poor mic Star.
Speaker 1: But again, when you think of him, this is maybe
Speaker 1: the role that at least I when I picture him,
Speaker 1: I picture him in the car with them telling him
Speaker 1: to shut up.
Speaker 6: I picture this and mad Dog and Glory. Those are
Speaker 6: the two for me.
Speaker 1: What a great mug, what a great character actor. And again,
Speaker 1: someone who knows exactly what he's doing in this, knows
Speaker 1: he's playing the heavy, but also knows that we're going
Speaker 1: to be watching him for how he interacts with these
Speaker 1: two guys, and if he's too mean to them, he
Speaker 1: will seem mean, but we're with him in terms of
Speaker 1: being annoyed by them. I don't know. It's just something
Speaker 1: that I think that playing a heavy and a comedy
Speaker 1: like this, it is like a weird skill because there
Speaker 1: is a certain amount of menace to him. Even with
Speaker 1: all that, you believe he would kill them if if
Speaker 1: it seemed like the right thing to do. He would
Speaker 1: just kill them without a thought, but because he's trying
Speaker 1: to figure them out, he dies.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, and he's so ready to poison them. And
Speaker 5: then they turned it around not knowing oh his pills.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, here's your pills right here, and now acuy
Speaker 5: pills too. Yeah, so good. So def That's how I
Speaker 5: knew her because she was a VJ for a long time.
Speaker 5: I mostly knew her as Duff. I never knew her
Speaker 5: as a real name. And I love that whole thing
Speaker 5: of her playing basically a male character but just playing
Speaker 5: it straight, even to the point where she's like, I
Speaker 5: got to pitch a loaf, play Jesus Christ.
Speaker 6: Apparently they gave her the role because she was such
Speaker 6: a staunch supporter of the script, and they said, this
Speaker 6: character is a man, but do you want to play
Speaker 6: and she's like, fucking I want to play it. And
Speaker 6: that's how you that's how you end up in movies sometimes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think it's great. I feel like they
Speaker 5: really did not rewrite that role for her and just
Speaker 5: kept it the same way, because that's exactly the way
Speaker 5: it's written in the screenplay.
Speaker 1: I think. I think the Fairly Brothers frequently there's a
Speaker 1: story like that with who gets cast and like they
Speaker 1: do a lot of like real casting from just the
Speaker 1: celebrity pool, but they also do their They have their
Speaker 1: kind of regular people that come up with them, that
Speaker 1: are friends of theirs, or that they just want to
Speaker 1: stick in a role. There's always interesting casting like that
Speaker 1: in their movies.
Speaker 6: And as the movies go on, those roles get bigger
Speaker 6: and bigger, Like the bartender at the bar is one
Speaker 6: of their good friends, ends up being the guy who
Speaker 6: wears eyeshadow and Kingpin as his own bowling outlet.
Speaker 1: Isn't he also in Me Myself and Irene and one
Speaker 1: of the roles?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yes, I think he's in all of them. I
Speaker 6: think pretty sure he's in all of their movies.
Speaker 1: I think that was the last one that I really
Speaker 1: found myself enjoying the way that I did the ones
Speaker 1: that came before it. I feel like after that is
Speaker 1: when the Fairly Brothers movies just started to feel a
Speaker 1: little bit I don't know, sloppier or something to me.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I haven't watched them all after that one,
Speaker 1: but for a while there I was really from Dumb
Speaker 1: and Dumber to kingpinned something about Mary. It was like
Speaker 1: as a comedy fan, I was just like, no one
Speaker 1: else is making comedies like this, and then Something about Mary. Really,
Speaker 1: I haven't watched it in a long time, but it's
Speaker 1: one of those times I remember laughing so hard in
Speaker 1: the theater and being in a room full of people
Speaker 1: that were laughing that hard. Another time was Peewe's Big Adventure,
Speaker 1: but I remember the big laughs in those movies, and
Speaker 1: Something About Mary had three or four just long stretches
Speaker 1: where the entire theater was just roaring. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I've seen movies like that in a while, or
Speaker 1: if they even make I don't know. People like to
Speaker 1: talk about how they don't make a certain kind of
Speaker 1: movie anymore, but I do think the sort of big
Speaker 1: budget comedy or mid budget comedy, it's a form of
Speaker 1: that we just don't see that often. I'm streaming now, yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean their last movie, Dear Santa was just I
Speaker 5: think that was just to Amazon and it was not
Speaker 5: even a regular release.
Speaker 6: And Ricky stinicky that I don't know which fairly brother
Speaker 6: wrote that one, but that one ended up and then
Speaker 6: the longest beer run in history or something that ended
Speaker 6: up on Apple.
Speaker 1: So even when they go solo.
Speaker 6: They can't get them theatrically, So I.
Speaker 5: Remember Dumb and Dumber Kingpin. There's something about Mary, and
Speaker 5: then it was it was just two years between. There's
Speaker 5: something about marrying Me myself and Irene, and then there's
Speaker 5: Osmosis Jones, which I don't think. I saw, Shallow hal
Speaker 5: Stuck on You, and then I think Stuck on You
Speaker 5: was the last comedy of theirs that I really saw,
Speaker 5: because Yeah, Fever, Pitch, No Thank You, Jimmy Fellon, No,
Speaker 5: Thank You, Heartbreak Kid. I didn't want to see a
Speaker 5: remake of that.
Speaker 6: Saw it on a date, regretted it.
Speaker 5: Hall Pass, I bet you I saw hall Pass.
Speaker 17: I know.
Speaker 5: I actually saw The Three Student Z.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually think that movie is underrated.
Speaker 5: The Three Stooges I think so too, and I think
Speaker 5: the guys that actually played the Stooges are really good.
Speaker 5: And then it's got our friend of the show, Craig
Speaker 5: Berko in there as well.
Speaker 1: Right, I know, I think Three Stooges felt right, And
Speaker 1: I can't say I loved the whole experience of watching it,
Speaker 1: but I had fun with it and I liked it,
Speaker 1: and I was glad that they did it the way.
Speaker 5: They did it.
Speaker 1: It's an odd movie, but I was glad that they
Speaker 1: just said, let's make a new Three Stooges thing. Let's
Speaker 1: not do a biopic, Let's not try to make a
Speaker 1: movie necessarily side like a movie sized story. It was
Speaker 1: an old fashioned approach to them, singly.
Speaker 6: Jim Carrey was supposed to be curly, I know.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, the was supposed to be mo yeah, and
Speaker 1: Sean Penn was supposed to be Larry Larry, Yeah.
Speaker 11: That's right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I did remember that.
Speaker 1: I think their movies have often had cast things like
Speaker 1: that sound like, oh my god, because remember what it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be. Was it Jim Carrey and Woody
Speaker 1: Allen that were supposed to be stuck on.
Speaker 6: You Woody Allen? And I'm blanking on who the other
Speaker 6: person was, But.
Speaker 1: It was somebody like, not Woody Allen. It was somebody
Speaker 1: in that sort of physical.
Speaker 6: Somebody like thirty years younger than Woody Allen's blanking.
Speaker 1: Then the movie that comes out, which is not a
Speaker 1: it's not a this is not a ding on the movie.
Speaker 1: It's just the movie that comes out is Gret Kinnear
Speaker 1: and Matt Damon, two actors who are very fine and
Speaker 1: very funny, but not the almost experiment in celebrity casting
Speaker 1: that it sounded like it was going to be in
Speaker 1: the beginning of Oh, these two people who have such
Speaker 1: different energies. This is more like two good actors that
Speaker 1: are going to find a way to make this work versus.
Speaker 1: But when it was Woody Allen and somebody, it was like,
Speaker 1: what is Woody Allen even going to do in a
Speaker 1: fairly brother's context. Are they going to have him like
Speaker 1: shitting his pants and stuff like that? Surely they would,
Speaker 1: But at the same time, is that why he wasn't
Speaker 1: in it? Is that that kind of thing's never really
Speaker 1: going to happen.
Speaker 6: They deleted that scene for Manhattan Race.
Speaker 1: Shit right exactly.
Speaker 5: I'm seeing Jim Carry was once attached to the film
Speaker 5: with Woody Allen in talks and plays brother. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 5: that would pretty interesting to see those two together. And
Speaker 5: I didn't remember that Ben Carson, the magical hands of
Speaker 5: Sleepy Ben Carson were in that movie as well.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard the notion of the screening room
Speaker 1: in Heaven where like all the movies that didn't get
Speaker 1: made are exist. I would love to see the version
Speaker 1: of this that got made in some alternate universe with
Speaker 1: Woody Allen and Jim Carrey, that would be an interesting
Speaker 1: thing to see. Maybe not now, but back then I
Speaker 1: would have been interested to see.
Speaker 5: Yeah, now, poor whatd he's ninety years old. I don't
Speaker 5: know how spry he is. There's a mention of the
Speaker 5: Menendez brothers in this who will probably get pardoned very soon,
Speaker 5: and the right before the story about Pete and being
Speaker 5: built by those horrible monsters that sold them a head parakeet.
Speaker 1: You sold my dead to a blind kid.
Speaker 5: Polly wanted Cracker, and there was a little bit more
Speaker 5: of him too that ended up on the cutting room floor,
Speaker 5: a little bit of the men character taking the bird
Speaker 5: and throwing it and being like a bird flew south
Speaker 5: for the winter.
Speaker 1: We do feel slightly bad for him that he gets
Speaker 1: murdered by them, but he pulled the head off a bird,
Speaker 1: and he does it so thoughtlessly. It's like that you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: there is this moment in the script that tells us
Speaker 1: like we shouldn't feel too bad for whatever happens to
Speaker 1: this guy. We just relate to him because we would
Speaker 1: be annoyed to be with those two guys in a
Speaker 1: car as well, but he's still a pretty nasty guy.
Speaker 5: I mentioned how they never really talk about what the
Speaker 5: crime is, and it is so late in the movie
Speaker 5: that you find out that her husband was kidnapped, and
Speaker 5: then right towards the very end where you actually get
Speaker 5: to see the husband before is that another fantasy sequence
Speaker 5: to shoot the husband And then looking at those deleted scenes,
Speaker 5: so so much stuff about the husband and this whole
Speaker 5: thing of the husband being kept in a little foot
Speaker 5: locker and Charles rocket like torturing him basically and blowing
Speaker 5: cigar smoke into the hole that they have for his
Speaker 5: air hole, dropping a lit either cigar or cigarette into
Speaker 5: the hole.
Speaker 1: Very smart of them to trim all that.
Speaker 5: Oh god, yeah, deaf at one point leans over and
Speaker 5: gets spit on, so she takes a broom and starts
Speaker 5: trying to like bash whoever's inside with the broom handle.
Speaker 5: There is one little remainder where it's when they're talking
Speaker 5: about how they murdered how Harry and Lloyd murdered those snowowls,
Speaker 5: and there's a push in where it's Charles Rockett on
Speaker 5: one side of the screen and stuff on the other
Speaker 5: side of the screen, and eventually had they not cut away,
Speaker 5: you would see that the trunk was out on the
Speaker 5: driveway and it was scooching itself down trying to escape.
Speaker 5: That was very judicious because you watch those scenes here,
Speaker 5: just like glad all this stuff, Glad everything that is
Speaker 5: cut out of this movie. I'm so glad it I'll
Speaker 5: end up the cutting room floor because it really didn't
Speaker 5: need anything. I don't think there's one joke. There's some
Speaker 5: good jokes, but I don't think any joke really needed
Speaker 5: to be back in this movie. And I really appreciate
Speaker 5: how tight it moves. I didn't need to see the
Speaker 5: mind getting his hand shot when Duff is now trying
Speaker 5: to take the shot that Harry when his tongue is
Speaker 5: stuck to the chair lift or anything. I didn't need
Speaker 5: to see that, but it was worth a laugh on
Speaker 5: the deleted scene. But the way that this movie stands now,
Speaker 5: I think it just runs like a very well oiled machine.
Speaker 6: And unfortunately you can't see the theatrical cut on high definition.
Speaker 6: They put a fell unrated version which is eight minutes longer,
Speaker 6: and you can see where probably these sins were trimmed
Speaker 6: to get like a PG. Thirteen, But they just they
Speaker 6: feel off. There's something about the kind of the circadian
Speaker 6: rhythm of what the movie's doing and just adding anything
Speaker 6: to it. It's it's lean, it's stripped down. There's not
Speaker 6: a lot of fat on it, and the more you
Speaker 6: push into it, the less effective it becomes. And I
Speaker 6: wish that if they ever do a four K, which
Speaker 6: I hope they do, that they at least put the
Speaker 6: theatrical version on there because I miss it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those unrated versions were often like you just went
Speaker 1: back one version. If the movie we saw was version
Speaker 1: two B, you went back to version two A that
Speaker 1: had more fat on every scene, and it was just like,
Speaker 1: unrated really just meant, oh, we never put this in
Speaker 1: front of the board. It didn't necessarily it always sounded
Speaker 1: like it meant there was gonna be wild stuff, but
Speaker 1: it really just meant this wasn't officially rated. But I
Speaker 1: think that interesting thing you mentioned the mime scene. I
Speaker 1: did think it was funny to see that someone should
Speaker 1: market the cinematic era of dumping on mimes in movie.
Speaker 1: There had to be the first time a mime was
Speaker 1: depicted as somebody who gets pushed over or we all
Speaker 1: think it's funny that they get hurt, but even the
Speaker 1: mime has it coming, Like he gets his handshot, but
Speaker 1: he's making fun of Harry in a vulnerable moment, and
Speaker 1: he's making so much fun that it's okay. You're going
Speaker 1: from just being a mime to being someone who deserves
Speaker 1: a comedy come up. And so I think that that's interesting.
Speaker 1: But there's a long tradition of mimes being the butt
Speaker 1: of jokes, and I think it's interesting because you had
Speaker 1: to cast a mime to play that part. So I
Speaker 1: wonder what it always. I wonder what it felt like
Speaker 1: to be a mime. Did you feel like a sellout
Speaker 1: when you went home? Going Yeah, I got another one
Speaker 1: of those film gigs where it was all about how
Speaker 1: lame mimes are.
Speaker 6: It couldn't have been an episode of Shields in Yurnel.
Speaker 6: Had to be another goddamn movie.
Speaker 1: Had to be another movie where I get pushed in
Speaker 1: front of a train or something like that. But I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know what the first abused mime
Speaker 1: on screen was. But so much or make that listical.
Speaker 5: I thought it was interesting too to see how they're
Speaker 5: basically playing with things in some of those deleted scenes,
Speaker 5: like you get two versions of one scene where there's
Speaker 5: one of the hotel's staff where there's a scene early
Speaker 5: on where he brings them something and they're like, oh,
Speaker 5: there's some money for you there on the table and goes, oh,
Speaker 5: I accidentally grabbed two is I don't care? It's so
Speaker 5: two hundred dollars and they're like oh yeah, and they
Speaker 5: start to talk to him like we're come from the
Speaker 5: same cloth or whatever, and just really stop the bond
Speaker 5: with this guy. And then at the end he is
Speaker 5: basically walking them out to their vehicle and they're just say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: we've got to go back, and this is going to
Speaker 5: be so rough.
Speaker 4: Maybe you could both stay right here.
Speaker 1: This joint's a little rich for our blood.
Speaker 18: Bernie, Well, we might be able to find you a
Speaker 18: free room somewhere, After all, you once told me we
Speaker 18: all come from the same mold. You just don't have
Speaker 18: any do right now?
Speaker 4: Are you on the level?
Speaker 18: Absolutely, We'll slide you into one of those employee rooms,
Speaker 18: providing you don't mind working one half day a week.
Speaker 4: Doing what well, I don't know, doing what I do.
Speaker 18: I can train you myself.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, right, is there anything.
Speaker 1: Else something where you don't have to have your.
Speaker 9: Nose up people's butts all day.
Speaker 18: You know, maybe you should try your luck along the road.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that's one version. Then there's another where he's.
Speaker 18: Like, oh, I think we could possibly work something out.
Speaker 4: Are you on the level?
Speaker 18: Absolutely, We'll slide you into one of those employee rooms.
Speaker 1: Providing you don't mind doing a few work a week.
Speaker 13: Doing what.
Speaker 4: Hey, I've got a great idea.
Speaker 18: You can look after my grandson.
Speaker 4: He's out here on a visit.
Speaker 18: Poor little Tyke suffered a traumatic experience.
Speaker 5: You've probably read about it.
Speaker 6: Here.
Speaker 4: He is.
Speaker 11: Now, Hi, Billy, come over here.
Speaker 1: I want you to meet these two nice men.
Speaker 5: That actually might have been funny, but you have to
Speaker 5: have the setup in order to have the payoff. And
Speaker 5: I'm glad that they cut both because it's just like, yeah,
Speaker 5: let's just keep this thing moving. But yeah, I agree
Speaker 5: with you, right. I dislike unrated cuss sometimes because yeah, no,
Speaker 5: I like the rhythm of the comedy and you get
Speaker 5: those weird things like The Blues Brothers where they just
Speaker 5: added in all of these little bits and I'm just like, no,
Speaker 5: you ruined the pacing of your own film by adding
Speaker 5: all these little bits in this thing sang like a
Speaker 5: like an orchestra, and now it's so clunky and just
Speaker 5: it feels like we are having an extra beat every
Speaker 5: single scene.
Speaker 6: Nobody walked out of either of these movies and said,
Speaker 6: you know what, this needed to be eight minutes longer.
Speaker 1: There is a moment where you go the DVD Blu
Speaker 1: Ray era was such a good era because you got
Speaker 1: to see those moments and I appreciate, Oh, some of
Speaker 1: the choices they made without seeing them shoved back into
Speaker 1: the movie feels wrong headed when most of the time,
Speaker 1: nine times out of ten watching deleted scenes, I would say, whoever,
Speaker 1: I watched them with, oh, I see why they cut
Speaker 1: that out. Oh I see why they cut that out.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's not even just it's rare to want
Speaker 1: a movie to have been longer. You see those moments
Speaker 1: and you usually go, oh, I appreciate the editor's craft
Speaker 1: even more now seeing that moment, because yeah, even if
Speaker 1: it's a funny bit, sometimes you need the rhythm and
Speaker 1: you need the pacing.
Speaker 5: Also with the extras on the Blu ray or DVD,
Speaker 5: it's nice too, where you get those moments where Jeff
Speaker 5: Daniels is talking about how he did some of those scenes.
Speaker 5: Like the diarrhea scene, you actually get to hear, like
Speaker 5: the wild audio on the set, you hear somebody say, Harry,
Speaker 5: what are you doing? And it's obviously not Lauren Holly.
Speaker 5: It's just some grip on set or something just yelling
Speaker 5: that at him and oh, I'm shaving. But then you
Speaker 5: get to see more of that take and how he just, yeah,
Speaker 5: I probably did that for four minutes straight than just
Speaker 5: talking about how difficult it was to come up with
Speaker 5: all those different expressions and things. And actually getting to
Speaker 5: see him making those faces while he's talking about doing that,
Speaker 5: I thought was really good and really fun to see.
Speaker 6: And he talks about Clint Eastwood meeting him and saying
Speaker 6: that same thing happened to me the strangest thing because
Speaker 6: it's Clint fucking Eastwood. Did you really suspect that he
Speaker 6: would ever have a situation like that? But apparently he did.
Speaker 1: I love the closed caption set at all. It just
Speaker 1: said all caps and brackets sparting and defecating.
Speaker 5: I watched this with the captions on too it I
Speaker 5: just thought that was hilarious. Yes, that was so good.
Speaker 1: Did you happen to read the novelization? I didn't get
Speaker 1: a chance to read it, but I was wondering how
Speaker 1: that part was treated in the novelization.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I did not, but I really probably should have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that one scene at least, I'm curious how they
Speaker 1: pulled it off. Did they write it like it's dramatic
Speaker 1: or do they you know what I mean? How do
Speaker 1: you write about that right scene?
Speaker 5: Anyway, I'm curious. All right, we're going to take a
Speaker 5: break and we'll be back with an interview with Bennett Yellen,
Speaker 5: who wrote the screenplay for Dumb and Dumber with the
Speaker 5: Fairly Brothers. Now, this was recorded a little while ago.
Speaker 5: You actually hear him make references to the writer's strike.
Speaker 5: Can you remember that? Remember when we thought that AI
Speaker 5: was going to be dangerous and take away people's jobs. Geez,
Speaker 5: what a different time that was. Anyway, we'll be back
Speaker 5: with all that right after these messages.
Speaker 19: Get ready to dive deep into the life, career, and
Speaker 19: unforgettable moments of the one and Only Chevy Chase. Join
Speaker 19: us on an exciting journey through the illustrious career of
Speaker 19: this comedy icon as we explore groundbreaking roles, behind the
Speaker 19: scenes stories, and timeless contributions to the world of entertainment.
Speaker 19: Each episode of the Chasing chevy Chase podcast brings you
Speaker 19: expert analysis and nostalgic reflections on Chevy Chase's most iconic
Speaker 19: characters in classic films like National Lampoon's Vacation, Caddy Shack,
Speaker 19: and Fletch. Whether you're a diehard Chevy Chase aficionado or
Speaker 19: simply curious about the man behind the laughter, Chasing chevy
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Speaker 19: Tune in and join the conversation as we celebrate the
Speaker 19: life and legacy of a true Hollywood legend. Don't miss out.
Speaker 19: Subscribe now to Chasing chevy Chase wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 19: and let the adventure begin.
Speaker 5: Obviously, I want to ask you about Dumb and Dummer
Speaker 5: and your work with the Fairly Brothers, but I would
Speaker 5: love to know more about you and where you grew
Speaker 5: up and how you got into the business.
Speaker 11: I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I don't
Speaker 11: meet a lot of La Natives. This is like the
Speaker 11: terminal island of Los Angeles, but I grew up here.
Speaker 11: I was born and raised here and went to UCLA.
Speaker 11: I lived at home until I went off to graduate school,
Speaker 11: I lived at home. I was going to UCLA and
Speaker 11: I was raised Orthodox Jewish, so that explains the living
Speaker 11: at home part. I didn't go away until graduate school.
Speaker 11: And then I went to graduate school at the University
Speaker 11: of Massachusetts at Amherst, and that is where on the
Speaker 11: first day of class, I met Peter Fairley in my
Speaker 11: first class, first day of class, first time I was
Speaker 11: away from home, really like a little Orthodox Jewish bird. Yeah,
Speaker 11: I wouldn't say kicked out of the desk, but it
Speaker 11: was time to go and see what life was all
Speaker 11: about outside of Orthodoxy and all that stuff. And I
Speaker 11: remember the first day of class, this will take twenty
Speaker 11: five minutes of our however, a lot of where to go.
Speaker 11: But I was really, I'm nervous. I was like, what
Speaker 11: is really? Was experiencing so much so fast. Peter and
Speaker 11: I were sitting across from each other at table and
Speaker 11: we were both getting an MFA in fiction, which for
Speaker 11: me it was basically my way of postponing having to
Speaker 11: do anything for another three years and get this degree
Speaker 11: and I'm going to buy a corduroy coat with patches
Speaker 11: on the ala and a pipe and end up teaching
Speaker 11: as a professor teaching creative writing at some university in
Speaker 11: the Midwest. That's truly what I thought I was going
Speaker 11: to do. So we were sitting across from each other.
Speaker 11: We had a teacher. He was a little heavy set.
Speaker 11: His name was George Cuomo, and we were supposed we
Speaker 11: had a sigmon and for the first day of class
Speaker 11: where we were supposed to bring in the first page
Speaker 11: of a short story that we had written, and we
Speaker 11: were going to go around the table, and there were
Speaker 11: probably ten people of class. They were small we got
Speaker 11: to grad school and smaller classes at least for a
Speaker 11: degree like this. And so we read the first person's
Speaker 11: first page, and the whole point being that we were
Speaker 11: going to try and what can we assume from just
Speaker 11: this first page of the story? And so the first
Speaker 11: person read this beginning of class, and George Cualmo, the teacher, said,
Speaker 11: I liked this first page. But and I won very
Speaker 11: big butt and Peter and I see you're laughing. Peter,
Speaker 11: I looked across the tail from each other and we
Speaker 11: were like, we'd get fod And the teacher was like what,
Speaker 11: and We're like nothing. And as soon as class was over,
Speaker 11: we met in the hallway, and we said he had
Speaker 11: a big butt, didn't he. I'm betting, I'm Peter. We
Speaker 11: met from the same stupid sense that you know where.
Speaker 5: So how orthodox were you? Did you have the big.
Speaker 11: Hat and I didn't have the beaver hat. I didn't
Speaker 11: even I put my foot down on a lot of it,
Speaker 11: like I didn't even wear a yamaka. But we were kosher,
Speaker 11: like strictly kosure.
Speaker 4: We were.
Speaker 11: We honored the Jewish Sabbath. By I would say, oh,
Speaker 11: I wouldn't. You can't drive in a car, you can't
Speaker 11: turn on lights and things like that. But I was
Speaker 11: blessed to have incredibly wonderful parents and I have two
Speaker 11: older sisters, and so we would spend the weekends together
Speaker 11: as a family. Always we ate all our meals together.
Speaker 11: That's that really reinforced the idea of family and relationships
Speaker 11: and things like that. So I don't have a lot
Speaker 11: of criticism about the fact that that element of how
Speaker 11: beautiful it was and what it gave Lilah life, which
Speaker 11: was a great sense of family and relationships and things
Speaker 11: like that. But of course, when I went to graduate school,
Speaker 11: that was the first time that I broke away from
Speaker 11: all that and It's also the first time I ever
Speaker 11: I hadn't drank, I hadn't gotten drunk. I'd never smoked pot,
Speaker 11: I'd never played poker. That all happened one night, Like
Speaker 11: the first weekend, I did not always stay if I
Speaker 11: had a bucket list of things I wanted to try.
Speaker 11: That happened the first weekend. I loved it. I loved it.
Speaker 11: I loved suddenly I understood completely what Like I had
Speaker 11: such a disdain for cheatin chong and drug and humor,
Speaker 11: and like it's so anti authoritative to me. It was
Speaker 11: just like roll my eyes. In the moment I got high,
Speaker 11: I was like, I get it, got it. Fantastic. Cheating
Speaker 11: Child the funniest thing in the world. So watched Cheating
Speaker 11: Child's the next movie, and I still think it's actually
Speaker 11: one of my ten fings favorite holidays. It's just a movie.
Speaker 11: It's just hilarious.
Speaker 5: How do you go from that into writing?
Speaker 11: You meane screenwriting. Peter and I knew we had the
Speaker 11: same sense of humor instantly. He was writing his own
Speaker 11: novel outside Providence when we met, and he would come
Speaker 11: over my where I was living, and he'd read it
Speaker 11: to me off of yellow pads. And his handwritten that's
Speaker 11: where were in our writing fields. And we both said
Speaker 11: a certain point, you know what, we have the same
Speaker 11: twisted sensit humor. George Cuomo's but was being let's write
Speaker 11: a movie together. We should do that. He's from Cumberland,
Speaker 11: Rhode Island, and his dad is a doc. My father
Speaker 11: had group homes in Los Angeles for wards of the court.
Speaker 11: We had no connection whatsoever to the business, even though
Speaker 11: I was from Los Angeles. But we said, let's do it.
Speaker 11: So we did it. We wrote the silly script called
Speaker 11: Trusted Us, really funny comedy. It was like we never
Speaker 11: taken a comedy, We never taken a writing class, nothing.
Speaker 11: We just wrote it and it was stupid and funny.
Speaker 11: I was about two idiots in our minds when we
Speaker 11: were writing. It was like Bel Murray and John Candy
Speaker 11: who get jobs at a funeral home, a shady funeral home,
Speaker 11: one that advertises like holiday layaway sale, that sort of thing.
Speaker 11: Now we had this silly, funny script written. What do
Speaker 11: you do with it? What do we do with it?
Speaker 11: So Peter was on a date. He was in New York.
Speaker 11: He was on a date, and this was the time
Speaker 11: when Eddie Murphy had made Beverly Hills cop and just
Speaker 11: it was a huge hit, like he was the number
Speaker 11: one I think box office at the time. And the
Speaker 11: girl said, you'll never guess who moved in next door
Speaker 11: my parents and out by New Jersey, Eddie Murphy. Really
Speaker 11: you ever see out that's a long shot. But this
Speaker 11: was nineteen eighty six, I think, And she said, yeah,
Speaker 11: he was washing his car. So Peter gave her dust
Speaker 11: to dust and said, if you ever see him, will
Speaker 11: you please give him this script? And she said sure,
Speaker 11: and then strangely enough, a week later must have been
Speaker 11: a good take, because a week later she called she said,
Speaker 11: I saw him coming out to get his paper, and
Speaker 11: I ran out and gave him dust to dust. What
Speaker 11: the hell? Fantastic. Meanwhile, this was like around December of
Speaker 11: nineteen eighty six. Meanwhile, I was home for Jewish holidays,
Speaker 11: and I knew that my sister Freda this is Freda
Speaker 11: was her name, And yes she is who we named
Speaker 11: Freda Felcher after in Dumb and Dummer. This is that's
Speaker 11: her honor.
Speaker 5: Does she have a smiley face tattoo?
Speaker 11: But she does not know. I'm glad you're taking the
Speaker 11: reference deeper Zamond Dummer too, but she went she would
Speaker 11: go Israeli dancing, and she knew David Sucker from Israeli dancing.
Speaker 11: I said to her, afraid of will you ask David
Speaker 11: Zucker if he'd read our script? Dusted us? And she
Speaker 11: came back to me and she said, yeah, David said,
Speaker 11: no' read it. So I gave her dust to dust.
Speaker 11: She gave it David. Now, first of all, those two
Speaker 11: things couldn't happen today period. No one can hand a
Speaker 11: physical script. At least there would be a hard drive
Speaker 11: to Eddie Murphy or even David Dusk. They just wouldn't
Speaker 11: take it. I wouldn't take it because legal reasons. You
Speaker 11: don't want to make yourself vulnerable. What happens if you
Speaker 11: accept it and then something you do ends up similar
Speaker 11: to the script, even if you didn't read it right.
Speaker 11: But let's dissolve in motion picture terms too. Several months later,
Speaker 11: we were both finishing our programs and we got an
Speaker 11: article in the Los Angeles Times. It was all about
Speaker 11: what is Eddie Murphy going to do next? It's called
Speaker 11: like the Eddie Murphy script Derby. It was in the
Speaker 11: Los Angeles Times and it started out Eddie Murphy was
Speaker 11: looking out his Alpine, New Jersey window when he saw
Speaker 11: a neighbor coming across the street with a script. That's
Speaker 11: the opening of it. And then they mentioned the script
Speaker 11: Dusted Us. They say, the script Dusted Us is now
Speaker 11: on Murphy's shelf, and like he read it on here's
Speaker 11: what happened. He read it and he thought it was hilarious,
Speaker 11: and he went back to Los Angeles and they looked
Speaker 11: for two writers were vaguely remembered. I think their names
Speaker 11: were Peter Fairley and Ben couldn't find us anywhere because
Speaker 11: we weren't anywhere, and so they planted that in the
Speaker 11: article so that we would call exactly. But meanwhile and
Speaker 11: then Freida called, So we called Paramount. We were like, hey,
Speaker 11: that's our script.
Speaker 4: Just to us.
Speaker 11: They were like, we've been looking for you. Meanwhile, my
Speaker 11: sister Freda said, David read the script and he thought
Speaker 11: ready gave it to his brother, and they gave it
Speaker 11: to their partner, Jim, and they want t oft to you.
Speaker 11: That's how we got started. It couldn't happen today, Mike
Speaker 11: couldn't possibly. It wouldn't be possible. We were just in
Speaker 11: the right place and did the right thing with the
Speaker 11: right piece of material, and I guess it was funny.
Speaker 11: And it still blows my mind that we'd never written
Speaker 11: the script before, but that was and by the way,
Speaker 11: pieces of that have been cannibalized things we've done since then,
Speaker 11: including and up to Green Book. Green Book has a
Speaker 11: joke from dust to dust in it at the beginning
Speaker 11: where he the character parks and takes a trash can
Speaker 11: and turns it over and covers the fire hydrant that
Speaker 11: he parks next to. That's from us to dust. That's
Speaker 11: how we got started.
Speaker 5: That must have been how you got to our planet tonight.
Speaker 11: Yes to the Zucker brothers. Oh, this man reads IMDb pages.
Speaker 5: I had a great opportunity. I spoke with mister Zucker
Speaker 5: a few months ago and his early stuff. I was
Speaker 5: like just amazed to see some of it. And then
Speaker 5: I was a big Rich Hall fan, especially from not
Speaker 5: necessarily the news.
Speaker 11: Yeah, Richshaw was great on our plans. So, by the way,
Speaker 11: this is a twist on it all, and I know
Speaker 11: he's joking. But years later, many years later, the Writers Guild,
Speaker 11: both Writers Guild West and East, finally decided to take
Speaker 11: a poll on what they thought were the hundred and
Speaker 11: one funniest screenplays of all time. I am beyond honored
Speaker 11: that Dumb and Dumber one was a number fifty six
Speaker 11: and it tied with Anchorman, another thing that I would
Speaker 11: honored to share. And as a result of that, they
Speaker 11: did a beautiful night at the we have cin around Madelt,
Speaker 11: world famous Cinta aram Medelt, which is right now just
Speaker 11: dormant until it gets opened to get close for COVID,
Speaker 11: and it hasn't opened again. But they did honoring the
Speaker 11: winners of of that contest and they had us up
Speaker 11: on stage, Peter, Bobby and I with David, Jim and
Speaker 11: Jerry and other people, Alexander Payne, and so it was
Speaker 11: such an honor. Before it started, I said, I went
Speaker 11: up to David. I said, David, you really the one
Speaker 11: who got us started, you and Annie Murphy. If you
Speaker 11: hadn't accepted, if you hadn't read the script, asked to
Speaker 11: read it. He said, oh really, honestly, I just want
Speaker 11: to date your sister. So don't ever have anyone who
Speaker 11: wants to get a script rate, make sure you have
Speaker 11: attractive sister and give it to someone who wants the
Speaker 11: dater or brother whatever, you came. Nothing ever happened with
Speaker 11: Dust to Dust. But the Zuckers thought liked us and
Speaker 11: asked us to work with a few things on them.
Speaker 11: The first thing they gave us, actually was the very
Speaker 11: first thing was they were doing Ruthless People, and they said,
Speaker 11: read it, see if you can, if there's anything you
Speaker 11: want to throw in. It was a great script. Dale
Speaker 11: Lonna wrote a fantastic screen but and we just we
Speaker 11: threw a few things in. Not only do we throw
Speaker 11: a few things in, they used a couple of them,
Speaker 11: and one of them, oh yeah, It was a line about, oh,
Speaker 11: Gandhi would have strangled She's not By the end, the
Speaker 11: line was like, she's not, mother, Teresa, Gandhi would have
Speaker 11: strangled her, And the New York Times review of Ruthless
Speaker 11: People mentioned that line. So the screenplay is full of
Speaker 11: funny one liners. Peter and I were like, all right,
Speaker 11: we thrown But in the meantime they were also putting
Speaker 11: together our Plan Tonight, which was their parody. And you
Speaker 11: can actually, I think you can see it now it's
Speaker 11: on YouTube, but for years you couldn't access any of it.
Speaker 11: The parody of information shows like Minutes, but combined with
Speaker 11: the variety show. But the idea was, if you see it,
Speaker 11: it's so bizarre, But yeah, we did. We wrote a
Speaker 11: sketch for Jay Leno and then another one for about
Speaker 11: a guy who is seems to have a twin brother
Speaker 11: living in another town, but it's actually just the same guy.
Speaker 11: He's just living with two families. But that was fun
Speaker 11: and that was our real That was an introduction. I
Speaker 11: think that was our first thing before, unless we may
Speaker 11: have done the Paul Riiser, the HBO Paul Riser Special first,
Speaker 11: but in doing the Paul Riser Special, the producer of
Speaker 11: the Paul Riser Special was Charlie Westler, and Charlie Westler
Speaker 11: is the producer of Dun the Dumber. That's how we
Speaker 11: got Dumb and Dummer made was Charlie Westler. We met
Speaker 11: him doing the Paul Riiser HBO special, which was a delight.
Speaker 11: That was a lot of fun. I don't know if
Speaker 11: you've seen it, but it has an incredible cast. Paul
Speaker 11: wanted to do something more more than just stand up,
Speaker 11: so we came in and pitched, what if we have
Speaker 11: a whole wrap around story that explains how you even
Speaker 11: get to your stand up. So there's three quarters of
Speaker 11: it are a wrap around and then one quarter is
Speaker 11: the stand, or maybe says half a wrap around, half
Speaker 11: a statu But Paul was delightful. We were so lucky
Speaker 11: to and we also ended up writing something for Eddie Murphy.
Speaker 11: He wanted to direct this. He said, I want you
Speaker 11: guys to write a like a teenage Robin hood story,
Speaker 11: and we did. It was called Young Robbers, and he
Speaker 11: wanted to direct it in paramount. They wanted him star
Speaker 11: and everything in perpetuity because and so they were not
Speaker 11: happy never got made. And we would see him every
Speaker 11: once in a while rare and he'd say, guys, I
Speaker 11: still want to do Young Robbers. What do your members
Speaker 11: that I haven't seen him in years, but it's.
Speaker 5: Like he should have the cloud to direct now.
Speaker 11: They let him do Harlem Knights, which I think he
Speaker 11: co wrote, or they about it. I think that was
Speaker 11: his one dipping the toe, but he was in that too.
Speaker 11: They wouldn't have let him just direct it. I don't
Speaker 11: think they really wanted him want their star to be
Speaker 11: a star.
Speaker 5: How did Dum and Dummer come to be? Was that
Speaker 5: your guys' original thing or was it already out there
Speaker 5: and then you took it over.
Speaker 11: We pitched Elman Dumber to John Hughes. John Hughes had
Speaker 11: a deal at Universal. There's the reason why I'm telling
Speaker 11: this detail. And we came in and we pitched him
Speaker 11: the plot of Dulmin Dumber and he was like, that's hilarious.
Speaker 11: Well go and write that and I will let you
Speaker 11: direct it. We were like, you will. None of us
Speaker 11: have got anywhere near. I made super great movies as
Speaker 11: a kid, and regular eight movies. But yeah, we weren't
Speaker 11: like directed. So we went away and wrote it and
Speaker 11: we came back and gave it to him and he
Speaker 11: liked it. But here's what happened, is his deal at
Speaker 11: Universal ended, and typical of what happens when director or
Speaker 11: producer or writer who has a development deal, when their
Speaker 11: deal ends one place, they go someplace else. All the
Speaker 11: material that they developed just goes into the icy vault
Speaker 11: and disappears and it never really, nothing ever happens with it.
Speaker 11: And of course he went to Fox and made the
Speaker 11: next thing he did was Home Alone. So he'd just
Speaker 11: done that a little earlier. It would have been a
Speaker 11: Universal movie. But we always loved dust to dust, love
Speaker 11: the script, and so we asked him if we could
Speaker 11: get it back and take it around and try and
Speaker 11: set it up. And he said, yeah, but yes you can,
Speaker 11: but not officially attached to this, so you can't use
Speaker 11: my name to set it up where you have to
Speaker 11: pay me my dolls. Like, we just saved a million
Speaker 11: dollars on the budget. So we took it every mike.
Speaker 11: We took it every everywhere, and then everywhere else. I
Speaker 11: think it's turned down at least twice by everybody. And
Speaker 11: to the point we thought if we'd read what happens
Speaker 11: typically is a studio has coverage where they get a
Speaker 11: script and there's a whole department where they'll read it
Speaker 11: and someone will write down a synopsis of what it
Speaker 11: was and whether they recommend it or not. Those are
Speaker 11: the gatekeepers, the people who write coverage, because they could
Speaker 11: kill your script right of that. Boy they did. They
Speaker 11: constantly killed them. We got things like this is the
Speaker 11: stupidest thing hello, So we changed that. We've sent it
Speaker 11: out again, and we changed the title. We had two
Speaker 11: other titles. We had go West, which isn't hilarious but
Speaker 11: it's obvious, and then A Power Tool Is Not a Toy,
Speaker 11: which was a song by a group they were called
Speaker 11: the Americans or something, or it makes them sound like
Speaker 11: up with people, so it had those they catch up.
Speaker 11: So didn't we get this when it was called du
Speaker 11: dumb and Dummer and then there was one, but we kept,
Speaker 11: we wouldn't stop. We were indefatigable, a word I love
Speaker 11: because it's so many syllables. And at one point this
Speaker 11: little company called the Motion Picture Corporation of America, which
Speaker 11: was to producer Steven Stabler and Brad Kervoy. They've read
Speaker 11: it and oh the reason why also got what's getting
Speaker 11: turned down was that we were attaching Pete as the director,
Speaker 11: like we said, let's And by the way, our agent
Speaker 11: at the time was a gentleman named Richard Lovett at
Speaker 11: Richard love It is now the head of creative Artists.
Speaker 11: At the time he was just like a junior agent
Speaker 11: coming up assigned. These two idiots are three. At that point,
Speaker 11: the thief Stabler and Radvoy thought it was hysterical. They
Speaker 11: were like, this is what they were, the very low
Speaker 11: budgety kind of thing. But once they had made that
Speaker 11: once they said we will do it with them, and
Speaker 11: they were thinking low budget at that point. I don't
Speaker 11: remember how New Line ended up getting reading dumb and dubber.
Speaker 11: But New Line had just made the mask with Jim Carrey,
Speaker 11: and they read dumb and dumber, and somehow Jim got it.
Speaker 11: I loved it. I just thought it was hysterical. And
Speaker 11: so New Line heard the Most Picture Corporation was going
Speaker 11: to do it, and they said, we'll co produce it
Speaker 11: with Most of Picture Corporation and that created the momentum
Speaker 11: to make it happen.
Speaker 5: What was that version of the script like at this point?
Speaker 11: Very similar to what was on the screen, Very similar,
Speaker 11: only really big difference.
Speaker 4: We didn't do it.
Speaker 11: We didn't do a lot of rewriting production we had to.
Speaker 11: We had a different ending in the script which we shot.
Speaker 11: We actually shot it. I don't know though it's an
Speaker 11: extra on any of the but we had a different
Speaker 11: ending and preview it and it previewed great. The ending
Speaker 11: was just it wasn't funny like they so the whole
Speaker 11: ending with them and the Swedish wrestling team is that
Speaker 11: was the new ending, which was thank goodness because it
Speaker 11: was so much better. But it was very similar. You
Speaker 11: read the production draft or the script was the actual
Speaker 11: shooting draft, you would very similar. There are things that
Speaker 11: there are improvised things too, not Pete Bobby and Pete
Speaker 11: Bobby co directed it. Technically, I don't know if I
Speaker 11: should be saying that, but it's Peter on the screen.
Speaker 11: But it's very much the way the Zucker brothers gave
Speaker 11: them a crash course and how they do it. One
Speaker 11: of them is on the set with the actors, the
Speaker 11: other one is back on the monitor video village. They
Speaker 11: would always shoot the script and then if Jim or
Speaker 11: Jeff had a suggestion, they would suggest it, they'd shoot that.
Speaker 11: They'd always pay deference to them. There were a few
Speaker 11: things that we sat down with Jeff and with Jim
Speaker 11: and he said, I would love to do this in
Speaker 11: a movie, and we put it in. Things like he
Speaker 11: wanted to do like the most the weirdest kiss, romantic
Speaker 11: kiss in a movie, So we threw that in. So
Speaker 11: we threw some stuff in before we shot. Yeah, they
Speaker 11: would also do an improv take. Especially Jim was like,
Speaker 11: I got an idea, let's do it. And so there's
Speaker 11: a few of those in the movie too. Yeah, And
Speaker 11: weirdly enough, what I've read online is being the most
Speaker 11: popular line from the movie. We didn't write it. It's
Speaker 11: not even funny. And it is the line where they
Speaker 11: were shooting out outside of the seven levels and there's
Speaker 11: the gas station mini mart, and there were these two
Speaker 11: guys off on the side just slurping on some slurpy,
Speaker 11: some big gulps, and people say, hey, get in the picture,
Speaker 11: go stand by the door and Drake. And the end,
Speaker 11: Jim comes out and goes, oh, big golfs. That's the
Speaker 11: most popular line movie. And we did not write that line.
Speaker 11: That line just happened. It's not even funny, but it's
Speaker 11: apparently it's People think that's the essence of the addedness.
Speaker 5: Is it true that they really low balled the studio,
Speaker 5: low bald Jeff Daniels to keep him out of the movie.
Speaker 11: Well, yeah, they weren't enthusiastic, but they wanted another comedian
Speaker 11: and they pitched everybody because they they just thought in
Speaker 11: their minds, Jim Carrey is funny. Let's get another funny person.
Speaker 11: And they did lowball him. Not only do they love ball,
Speaker 11: but his management didn't want him to do it. I
Speaker 11: remember nobody. Well, the reason that Jeff Daniels is in
Speaker 11: that movie and he's the greatest guy is because he's
Speaker 11: the greatest guy and he wanted to do it, and
Speaker 11: they thought it would be funny and and but I
Speaker 11: remember the very first we had. The first cut was long.
Speaker 11: It was like two hours forty minutes. Is that long? Yeah?
Speaker 11: And now at least an hour more than it is now.
Speaker 11: And I'm sitting next to Jeff Daniels manager and the
Speaker 11: toilet scene which was longer too, that comes on and
Speaker 11: turned to him and I swear it's blanched. He was white,
Speaker 11: and he said you're going to cut that, aren't you?
Speaker 11: And he said, oh, I said it's all gone. I'm sure.
Speaker 11: But yeah, they did low. They did want Jeff and everybody.
Speaker 11: They were pitching us, everybody from Sinbad. And we are thinking,
Speaker 11: was we knew Jim was hilarious, and we wanted an actor.
Speaker 11: We love Jeff Daniels. We had seen Something Wild, that
Speaker 11: Jonathan Demi movie, and the first half of Something Wild
Speaker 11: is really a comedy almost, it's definitely a comedy. We
Speaker 11: just thought his reactions to being in this world he
Speaker 11: gets pulled into this crazy with this by this crazy girl,
Speaker 11: was so funny, and we just knew he'd be funny.
Speaker 11: We knew he would, and we also thought he would
Speaker 11: pull Jeff into he Jeff would do less stick. At
Speaker 11: this point, I had just seen I remember when I
Speaker 11: met not Jeff, Jim would. When I met Jim, I
Speaker 11: had seen ace Ventura that day, so I met him
Speaker 11: later that day. That that evening, I was watching a Ventura.
Speaker 11: What the hell is he like? It's so extreme? Every
Speaker 11: line and every that was what he wanted to do
Speaker 11: with that character. Then I was thinking, I honestly was thinking,
Speaker 11: like I just I don't know. Could he be Lloyd?
Speaker 11: The first thing he said when I met him, he
Speaker 11: shook his hand and invited us into this place, and
Speaker 11: they said, I just want to assure you I am
Speaker 11: not doing ace Ventur in this movie. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 11: thank god. And he didn't doing a whole other character,
Speaker 11: and thank goodness. I really think having Jeff Daniels there
Speaker 11: balanced them perfectly in many respects. Jeff gets the biggest
Speaker 11: laughs in the movie if you really think about it,
Speaker 11: He gets the toilets, and he gets some of the
Speaker 11: biggest last well even more so maybe than Jim does.
Speaker 11: But Jim was It was such a perfect The stars aligned.
Speaker 11: What can I tell you? They truly did. We were
Speaker 11: so lucky on it. We were blessed.
Speaker 5: This is a really dumb question, but where did Lloyd
Speaker 5: Christmas the name come from.
Speaker 11: I don't remember where Lloyd Christmas came from, except that
Speaker 11: we wanted if her name was married. In his mind,
Speaker 11: if they got married, she would be married Christmas. That
Speaker 11: was we wanted that. But I don't remember how Lloyd
Speaker 11: came up. We actually knew a Harry Dunn. He was
Speaker 11: a journalist and I think Pete called them up and said, hey,
Speaker 11: can we use your name for character? And he said, yeah,
Speaker 11: that's why the last name was Christmas.
Speaker 5: The Street performers Mike Starr, Duff, Charles Rocket. Charles Rocket
Speaker 5: was a national treasure.
Speaker 11: By the way, Duff, that part was written originally for
Speaker 11: a male and we didn't change any lines or anything
Speaker 11: like that. They just cast stuff instead, which was great.
Speaker 11: You can do that with scripts. He lucked out and
Speaker 11: everyone got into the spirit of it. It's when you
Speaker 11: think about how weird it was forever for them to
Speaker 11: do it and take two guys who never directed before
Speaker 11: directing their first screenplay starring. By the time when Jim
Speaker 11: did it, he was on the rise. So this was
Speaker 11: the third movie he shot that ended up being released
Speaker 11: in ninety four. A Spentaur came out in ninety four
Speaker 11: begging it. Now, he's a superstar time he made it,
Speaker 11: he wasn't. I was like it was O, the guy
Speaker 11: from in Living Color. None of those had come out.
Speaker 11: So the fact that everyone said let's do this movie,
Speaker 11: that we're going over to Utah to shoot Crack of Ridge,
Speaker 11: Colorado and let these two guys have never direginate that,
Speaker 11: there's a lot of respects. It's aligned similarly to I
Speaker 11: think to the the Zuckers and a Airplane. I don't
Speaker 11: want to rule out Jim too yet, Jim Abrams, but
Speaker 11: they never direcd it before, and this is their first
Speaker 11: screenplay if you don't count Kentucky forright movie. Yet everyone
Speaker 11: got into the spirit of it once they figured out
Speaker 11: what was going on, and they got into the spirit
Speaker 11: of it, and the script with the script spoke for itself.
Speaker 5: And I remember in ninety four Carrie was everywhere in
Speaker 5: that movie, all three of them, but especially Dumb and Dumber.
Speaker 5: It was huge, absolutely huge.
Speaker 11: Because we were number three in line and I remember
Speaker 11: going to the theaters to see because Dumb was really
Speaker 11: by Neil Line, and so is the Mask and so
Speaker 11: they attacked a Dumb and Dumber trailer onto the Mask
Speaker 11: before the Mask started, and I'd go to theaters to
Speaker 11: watch the audience react to the trailer and it'd be roaring,
Speaker 11: and I'd be like, it's possible. Could we possibly be
Speaker 11: a hit? Yeah, it's gonna happen. I'm like, but they
Speaker 11: can't know. That's not the way the business works. You
Speaker 11: can't predict things. And don't even think that, and stop
Speaker 11: being so certain, Bennett. It's and again, we were so lucky,
Speaker 11: not just lucky about it being the hit that it was,
Speaker 11: the financial that it was at the time, but think
Speaker 11: of all the movies that are classic, that are great,
Speaker 11: classic movies that get forgotten. They come out and then
Speaker 11: time marches on, and somehow, I don't know how it happened,
Speaker 11: and nothing to do with us, Dumb and Dumber got
Speaker 11: became part of the zeitgeist. Really. It's definitely a cult
Speaker 11: hit favorite. And the lines from it which come up
Speaker 11: all the time, you can't make that happen. That's just
Speaker 11: something that just happens. It happens culturally. It's amazing to
Speaker 11: me that just occurred to me, like cult and cultural.
Speaker 11: I didn't I never thought of the two, that those
Speaker 11: two things are the same, but we're It blows my mind,
Speaker 11: it really does. You can't make it happen.
Speaker 5: It isn't just pratfalls and like the toilet scene and
Speaker 5: all that, but you've got all of the wordplay. I
Speaker 5: just love how fast everything is paced throughout the entire thing,
Speaker 5: and that you have those multiple levels of comedy happening.
Speaker 11: It's a solid screenplay. The thing about it, you could
Speaker 11: say it's called dumb, and we're telling you we're not
Speaker 11: trying to pull in the wool over your head. It's stupid,
Speaker 11: but it's a kind of a smart. It's a smart stupid.
Speaker 11: I'll definitely say that structured. There's nothing easier. I wouldn't
Speaker 11: say easier. There's nothing. If you're going to do a movie,
Speaker 11: make it a road movie, because already you have this
Speaker 11: incredibly strong spine. It's there's a journey and then there's
Speaker 11: a destination, and that's the spine on which you're hanging everything,
Speaker 11: and it's you can't go wrong downb with Delver two.
Speaker 11: After we made it, we looked at each other and said,
Speaker 11: did we just basically remain that's them. They're supposed to
Speaker 11: be on taking another journey going somebody. It'd be silly
Speaker 11: if it wasn't that. But yeah, the road structure. And
Speaker 11: by the way, I didn't hear this until I started
Speaker 11: mentioning it on podcasts. We very deliberately designed to be
Speaker 11: an homage to the Bing Crosby Bob Hope road movies.
Speaker 11: Down to this always happened in those movies. The dynamic
Speaker 11: there they're smiling at each other and backstabbing each other
Speaker 11: for Dorothy Lamore simultaneously. That's that was a direct steal
Speaker 11: from the Road to Looby's. There you go. There's a
Speaker 11: spoiler alert where.
Speaker 5: So after Dummen Dummer comes out, what does it do
Speaker 5: for you?
Speaker 11: That's a good question. I still had to wait in
Speaker 11: line everywhere I went, even at the gas station. You'd
Speaker 11: think they'd say, mister Yellen, come on out, No, we
Speaker 11: don't want your credit card. Gave me a career, and
Speaker 11: career that I that, thank goodness, continues to this day.
Speaker 11: Although I consider myself semi retired now, although I do
Speaker 11: have my full time job now is picketing, which I
Speaker 11: don't do full time, but several hours a week left
Speaker 11: the partnership, and that was nothing to do with Peter
Speaker 11: and Bobby. They were incredibly great partners that had everything
Speaker 11: to do with me and where I was in my
Speaker 11: life and where I was going through I was going
Speaker 11: I was wrestling with all sorts of dark things, and
Speaker 11: as a result not maybe not necessarily making the best choices,
Speaker 11: meaning leaving the partnership to move across the country, things
Speaker 11: like that. But I came back, and I've always worked
Speaker 11: with partners. I always I love to co I love
Speaker 11: to be a part in a partnership. I like to
Speaker 11: be on a team, like to be like a kind
Speaker 11: of a writer's You sit around and everyone's pitching and
Speaker 11: throwing ideas and you've got I like being gear in
Speaker 11: the machinery. It's so much fun. Also, the pressures, it's
Speaker 11: not all on you to creates. There's so much more
Speaker 11: fun than throwing things back and forth. And you're also
Speaker 11: when you're in a partnership, you're hanging out with your friend.
Speaker 11: Imagine hanging out. Your job is to hang out with
Speaker 11: your friend and create something that's just so much fun
Speaker 11: to think about. So I've always worked with partners. I've
Speaker 11: ever had a problem finding one. But it's interesting because
Speaker 11: it's in finding asking each person I asked in my
Speaker 11: life in different ways. That's why I ask them, do
Speaker 11: you really have to have it asked? Work instantly? There's
Speaker 11: no time to see if you guys don't work. It
Speaker 11: has to work. It's like a marriage that has to
Speaker 11: be perfect right off the bat, because that's how you're
Speaker 11: going to make your money. That's career, that's your life.
Speaker 11: And maybe I'm not giving myself enough credit for being
Speaker 11: a collaborator, but because I don't have a much of
Speaker 11: an ego when it comes to it, I really don't.
Speaker 11: It's what makes the product, the project best. And if
Speaker 11: pitch something that's not good and you're saying, no, I'm
Speaker 11: not crazy about that, I don't take I never take
Speaker 11: that personally. Just we move on. I just had a
Speaker 11: career of with different writing partners and managed to and
Speaker 11: I think there's no question that being one of the
Speaker 11: people who co wrote doumb and Dummer has got me
Speaker 11: indoors and got people look at the work that I
Speaker 11: do as a part of a team. They look upon it.
Speaker 11: It's got me jobs. We'd love to get the co
Speaker 11: writer of Domen Daher on this project. There's no question
Speaker 11: it's had that sort of positive effect on me. There's
Speaker 11: nothing negative about it whatsoever. It's funny because I'm talking
Speaker 11: to something. I meet someone, I don't know them, I'm
Speaker 11: talking with them. I don't ever lead with domin Daha.
Speaker 11: That will come later if that's where the conversation goes, maybe,
Speaker 11: but a point where it may what do you do?
Speaker 11: I'm a writer? What kind of usually someone does? What
Speaker 11: do you ride like horses? No writer? A writer? Not
Speaker 11: a writer? And then what do you write? Entertainment? So
Speaker 11: film and I've done a little bit of television, Okay,
Speaker 11: what do you think? The next question is am I
Speaker 11: seeing anything you've done? Now? At this point, I know
Speaker 11: we are like the Robert Frost We are at that
Speaker 11: the two roads, and you may have one of them
Speaker 11: was a pretty pretty popular movie. Did you see Dom
Speaker 11: and Dumber? At that point, either somebody goes, oh I
Speaker 11: love DuMond Dumber or oh, Mike, little brothers it's always
Speaker 11: a little brother, my little brother's favorite movie, or it's
Speaker 11: oh yeah, no, I didn't see that. Not really a
Speaker 11: big Jim Carrey fan. Then then it's that conversation kind
Speaker 11: of ends because what and then if it keeps going
Speaker 11: on the plus side, did you also get Oh, that's great,
Speaker 11: and what else have you done? I'm like, well, I mean,
Speaker 11: really that was the most I've done other things, but
Speaker 11: that's the one that is the most famous. I don't
Speaker 11: have anyone that's more famous than that. I'm sorry. I'll
Speaker 11: come back to you at the end of my career.
Speaker 11: But no. But there's no question that being involved with
Speaker 11: it has had nothing but a positive effect on my life.
Speaker 11: When Panna Barbara, I think it was NBC was developing
Speaker 11: an animated show series of Duvin Tower, came to us
Speaker 11: and said, you guys want to be involved, and Pete
Speaker 11: and Bobby said, Ben, why don't you? Why don't you
Speaker 11: like being get involved in it? And I said, all right, look,
Speaker 11: and they dropped me in, really in the position of
Speaker 11: the show runner. I had never at that point hadn't
Speaker 11: been on a TV show at all. I didn't even
Speaker 11: know what a show were I I'd never been in
Speaker 11: a writer's room, and they dropped me into this position
Speaker 11: that I was Mike when I say it was not
Speaker 11: qualified for this. It would be like taking a writer
Speaker 11: and making them a surgeon. That's so I struggled as
Speaker 11: long as I could before I got myself out of
Speaker 11: that situation. To this day feel terrible about being knowing
Speaker 11: I was the wrong person in the wrong place. But
Speaker 11: that was the most negative thing that ever happened as
Speaker 11: a result of being involved in dumbn Toower and not
Speaker 11: completely on me nobody else. As I accepted that, I
Speaker 11: find no I think if I had just known more
Speaker 11: what I was going to do and what was going
Speaker 11: to be expected to me. But I remember I would
Speaker 11: have to I'd spend so much time having to talk
Speaker 11: with the NBC sensors because we had one joke, like
Speaker 11: pretending to be a show runner or when I thought
Speaker 11: a show runner was supposed to be. But we had
Speaker 11: this one joke where one of them sticks their head
Speaker 11: outside the van. We had the van animated show and
Speaker 11: all these things smash against him's face as he goes
Speaker 11: through them, as they drive through them, and one of
Speaker 11: them was a flashing railroad sign, and the NBC sensor said,
Speaker 11: you have to take the sign out. I said, why
Speaker 11: is it? Because it suggests they didn't stop for the train.
Speaker 11: Completely sensible. They also made they had to have seatbelts
Speaker 11: on in the van as well with their beaver, their
Speaker 11: pet beaver.
Speaker 5: Were you or the fairly brothers involved at all with
Speaker 5: the prequel Dumb and Dumber.
Speaker 11: We were not. They New Line came to us and said,
Speaker 11: we want to do a prequel because the time I
Speaker 11: don't remember what happened right after Dumb. You remember Jim
Speaker 11: Carrey was huge. In fact, his price they paid him
Speaker 11: like seven hundred thousand dollars for seven hundred and fifty
Speaker 11: thousand for the mask. And when they were going to
Speaker 11: sign him for Dumb, the mask hadn't come out yet
Speaker 11: and we said you should get him for this price.
Speaker 11: Then they said, let's wait and see how the mask done.
Speaker 11: As a result, cost went up to seven million dollars.
Speaker 11: So the price was a lot. And that's why the
Speaker 11: movie by it made so much money. Why it was
Speaker 11: such a profit was it was made for seventeen million dollars.
Speaker 11: The movie cost ten and then Gym was seven and
Speaker 11: worth every penny obviously, and it made two hundred and
Speaker 11: seventy five nine on its release. So that was a
Speaker 11: big profit for New Line. But it wanted to you
Speaker 11: because they didn't. They wanted to avoid having to pay
Speaker 11: a lot of mys to a sequel for both of them.
Speaker 11: They said, let's do a prequel, and they came to
Speaker 11: us and we said, no, we just it's the joke
Speaker 11: is there are too adults who act like adolescents. It's
Speaker 11: not funny when they're stupid and they're in high school.
Speaker 11: It's funny when they're stupid. Man. So we backed off
Speaker 11: on that, and they I have a credit and executive
Speaker 11: produce a credit on that. Only that's it. They said,
Speaker 11: do you want your name on this? I said why not?
Speaker 11: I mean, Peter and Bobbie were smart enough to take
Speaker 11: their name off of it. But I only saw it once.
Speaker 11: I was toes curdle. It was like, remember thinking, why
Speaker 11: wouldn't they at least let us or let me do
Speaker 11: a pass to throw some jokes in the here. But
Speaker 11: maybe it's the best. It's better that they didn't.
Speaker 5: That same year that came out, you got a story
Speaker 5: credit for Stuck on You.
Speaker 11: Stuck on You? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Was that from Dust to Dust? Or was that a
Speaker 5: fresh credit?
Speaker 11: That was a fresh credit? Funny about that was I
Speaker 11: took a movie to beat and Bobby I said, guys,
Speaker 11: watch this movie because I'm telling you there's a comedy
Speaker 11: in it, because it's so ridiculous. And it was this movie.
Speaker 11: It was made in the fifties, and it starred and
Speaker 11: they're gonna think I'm joking. But and IMDb this Daisy
Speaker 11: and Violet Hilton, the Hilton sisters who were conjoined twins,
Speaker 11: and they were also actors in this movie. And they
Speaker 11: play sister conjoined sisters and one of them is dating
Speaker 11: a good guy and the other one's dating a bad guy.
Speaker 11: And the bad guy's abusive and she's defending herself. He's
Speaker 11: trying to beat her up and she accidentally kills him,
Speaker 11: and they both go on trial for his bird because
Speaker 11: they had to both go on And I said, this
Speaker 11: is a comedy, and so that that set off stugging you. Yeah,
Speaker 11: And I didn't write it, participated in round table rewrites
Speaker 11: after once they'd written it. It was going closer to production.
Speaker 11: At one point, Meryl Streep was the whole Meryl Streep
Speaker 11: thing was actually going to be Jack Nicholson. Oh. At
Speaker 11: one point, you'll love this. Woody Allen was signed to
Speaker 11: be one of one of the brothers, and we were gonna,
Speaker 11: we're gonna say to explain how he was older and
Speaker 11: everything was they were sharing a liver, so that was
Speaker 11: I he looked. But but and I remember Pete I said,
Speaker 11: what did he say? I mean, Pete said, he said,
Speaker 11: just don't show me on the toilet. So there were
Speaker 11: some interesting twists a lot of the way of that.
Speaker 11: But that's such a sweating that movie. I remember after
Speaker 11: I saw the first screening of it, I said, you, guys,
Speaker 11: you realize that's you guys made a Valentine to each other.
Speaker 11: He really did. That's that's a love to each of you,
Speaker 11: to each of you. So I think that's a very
Speaker 11: underrated movie. I think it's very sweet.
Speaker 5: Well, it really showed us what Matt Damon was capable
Speaker 5: as far as comedy.
Speaker 11: He's great at it. And then Greg was great. And yeah,
Speaker 11: but I got a lot of people who tell me
Speaker 11: how much they like it. I'm like, I'm glad you do. Yeah,
Speaker 11: it's a final one.
Speaker 5: And how was it revisiting Lloyd and Harry twenty years
Speaker 5: after to do Dumb and Number two?
Speaker 11: It was so much fun. Everybody was in the best
Speaker 11: mood and everybody we just had a great time doing it.
Speaker 11: I'm starting to figure out why the reaction to the
Speaker 11: movie was because Louis had a very mixed reaction, especially
Speaker 11: for first of all, the first one got almost it
Speaker 11: was not well reviewed. There were only a few good
Speaker 11: reviews of the original Dumb and Dumber. And to give
Speaker 11: you an idea of my mother's sense of humor, she
Speaker 11: only had one review ever in my entire career, on
Speaker 11: the Refrigerator. I wish I could remember which review this
Speaker 11: was from, but it may have been just like a
Speaker 11: local paper. But it said the writer's mother should be
Speaker 11: ashamed of the stuff. That was the only review of
Speaker 11: my mom ever had and was on the which I
Speaker 11: saw everything about Ellen Ellen, but it was a blast.
Speaker 11: I was so shocked with Bee called and said, hey,
Speaker 11: we're going to make another one, and I'm like, it's great,
Speaker 11: I can't wait. And then everyone, Jim and Jeff had
Speaker 11: such a great time making it. They really enjoyed being together.
Speaker 11: I remember when Jeff arrived. He rived his first day.
Speaker 11: It was his birthday and he had just won he'd
Speaker 11: flown in from winning the Emmy for the News Rowy
Speaker 11: and so we saying happy birthday till we had a cake,
Speaker 11: and then he blopped down into his chair and he said,
Speaker 11: I just wanted Emmy, let's make this fuck her. But
Speaker 11: it was a blast. Weird about it, comedy sensibility, I
Speaker 11: don't think this is a strange thing to say. Kid
Speaker 11: does canon does change in some respects. We're in like
Speaker 11: the Hayes Office, some comedy right how it got We've
Speaker 11: gone backwards in some respects, But so a lot of
Speaker 11: what was funny if people laugh in nineteen ninety four
Speaker 11: maybe doesn't fly now. And I don't mean it's inappropriate
Speaker 11: because we got in under the wire of it appropriate.
Speaker 11: We've got a man groping a grandmother. Half that movie
Speaker 11: couldn't be done today, I think. But I was surprised
Speaker 11: that more people because we really felt so affectionate toward
Speaker 11: it and we were making and it was so much fun.
Speaker 11: And that doesn't always mean the movies that'd be good,
Speaker 11: but the energies, the energy was right. It came out
Speaker 11: a lot of fans of dumb and dumbt What happens,
Speaker 11: I think is it's fish the sentence. A lot of
Speaker 11: fans they were like, oh, that's not the way Harry
Speaker 11: and Lloyd like, they were like critical of it. And
Speaker 11: I think what happens is when you love something, you
Speaker 11: literally and you internalize it and it becomes a part
Speaker 11: of you, and your relationship to it is so personal
Speaker 11: and so intense and intimate. That the second one, people
Speaker 11: didn't feel that about those characters, like they felt that
Speaker 11: they were being mean spirit or whatever, and they've always
Speaker 11: been means, they've always adult adolescents. But it was a
Speaker 11: joy to make, and it was so much fun. The
Speaker 11: idea of able to get a do over and do
Speaker 11: it again was just unexpected. I had a blast. It
Speaker 11: was that's the most. That was the most because when
Speaker 11: we were making Domadeo, reidn know is going to be
Speaker 11: a hit. So now and now you're writing a sequel
Speaker 11: to something that was not just a hit, but it's
Speaker 11: like a it's a cult hit. And so we although
Speaker 11: we said, let's not think about what the audience would want,
Speaker 11: let's just trust to do what we want to do
Speaker 11: and that they'll think it's funny. They did before, hopefully
Speaker 11: they will this time. That was a constant, that's a
Speaker 11: question we had. They would maybe they want to see this. No,
Speaker 11: let's not burden ourselves with trying to think what they're thinking.
Speaker 11: Let's just do what we're doing. But it was fun
Speaker 11: for us.
Speaker 5: I mentioned all those levels of comedy earlier. Do you
Speaker 5: have one or two or more that you specialize in
Speaker 5: do they come to you for here's the visual gags
Speaker 5: or here's the wordplay.
Speaker 11: No, and in fact a genre guy. So as I
Speaker 11: write with different writing partners, done different types of projects.
Speaker 11: So I've done a horror film. In fact, I just
Speaker 11: sold Hours before the Strike, sold a supernatural thriller, so
Speaker 11: I've done that. I've done family films, a Christmas movie,
Speaker 11: all co written with different writing partners, a Disney movie
Speaker 11: of the Week, all over the place. So I like
Speaker 11: doing comedy best only because when you're writing, you're in
Speaker 11: that the period of time it takes to write it,
Speaker 11: which is months, weeks and two months. You're living the
Speaker 11: energy of that movie, if it's a horror movie or
Speaker 11: if it's a I did a like revenge thriller called
Speaker 11: In the Blood with Gina Carano, the beloved Gina Aran.
Speaker 11: That's the word I'm in canceled. But you're in the
Speaker 11: energy of the movie you're writing. And I like being
Speaker 11: I'm a lighthearted person and maybe lightheaded sometimes, but I
Speaker 11: like being in a happy place. Movies, puppies. We wrote
Speaker 11: a sequel to Marley and Me that didn't get made.
Speaker 11: It was like a like the Lost Weekend of Marley,
Speaker 11: A chapter in Marley and things like that, and so
Speaker 11: much stuff that I've written didn't get done. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 11: it's the number of scripts and projects that don't get
Speaker 11: made but you get paid, Thank goodness. I don't think
Speaker 11: there's anything that once. And the other thing also is
Speaker 11: that once my writing partner and I get into a room,
Speaker 11: we're really good for great about If we're drawn to
Speaker 11: a project and we're going in to try and pitch
Speaker 11: on it, we're good. You conduct ourselves, we can impress.
Speaker 11: But I don't. I know certainly are things that I've
Speaker 11: probably gotten comedy wise been asked to do that we're
Speaker 11: the best, because dumb. There's no question nobody's ever said, oh,
Speaker 11: you wrote the sequel to Oh is it called the.
Speaker 5: Trucker joy Ride?
Speaker 11: Yeah? Joyride? You wrote the sequel to Joybride. We want
Speaker 11: you to do this too. Nobody's mentioned joy Ride? Is it?
Speaker 11: But you're right? And see that's another thriller. I like genre,
Speaker 11: but I like comedy, Bess. I do like it, and
Speaker 11: comedy is the sort of thing that really comes with it.
Speaker 11: It comes out with collaboration. I couldn't just sit and write.
Speaker 11: I wouldn't trust lines that I write necessarily myself. They're
Speaker 11: want to throw them back and forth. Somebody tells me
Speaker 11: something and I'll go, yeah, I want we add this
Speaker 11: to it. It's very satisfying that kind of work that
Speaker 11: M's have been interesting to go back can work so
Speaker 11: intensely with the Fairlies and were there other people involved
Speaker 11: with the sequel. Jim had read the script called Mister
Speaker 11: Popper's Penguins, which was made to a movie, and he
Speaker 11: loved the screenplay and I cannot, Oh God, I wish
Speaker 11: I could remember the name of the writers. But he
Speaker 11: really liked those writers. So we agreed, let's let these
Speaker 11: those writers write the first draft of Dom and Dober two,
Speaker 11: and then Pete and Bobby and I would come in
Speaker 11: and rewrite it. And we all agree from the beginning
Speaker 11: to take shared screen credit. We worked in a it
Speaker 11: was an agreement in front of it, which is perfect,
Speaker 11: and they handed it in. We ended up having to rewrite.
Speaker 11: I want to say this diplomatically because those guys have
Speaker 11: gone onto like huge careers, and so I don't want
Speaker 11: to say anything negative about them. They're great writers, but
Speaker 11: we ended up rewriting it significantly. But so they worked
Speaker 11: on it, and then the point Bobby had to take
Speaker 11: some time to bow out, and we brought on a
Speaker 11: friend of ours, Mike Sara and who's very funny guy,
Speaker 11: very funny writer, and so Mike worked on that with
Speaker 11: us too, and so we all shared that. So there
Speaker 11: was I feel like an asked for not remembering the.
Speaker 5: Guy Sean Anders and John Morris.
Speaker 11: Yes, Sewan Anders and John Morris very nice guys too.
Speaker 11: And then yeah, so there's them, Peter, Bobby, myself and
Speaker 11: then Mike SARONYA a lot of people on that one.
Speaker 11: But it was so much fun. We laughed so much
Speaker 11: writing it.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I can't even imagine what that must be
Speaker 5: like to sit there and do that whole this line
Speaker 5: that's funnier. We were just talking recently on the show
Speaker 5: about Ernest Slupitch and Billy Wilder and it was just like,
Speaker 5: who's going to come up with the button? Who's got
Speaker 5: the best button for each bit?
Speaker 11: Billy Wilder is my favorite screenwriter. When I saw something
Speaker 11: like it hot and it was, it changed, I suddenly realized, oh,
Speaker 11: you mean a movie. Every line in a movie can
Speaker 11: can lead to another line, and then that can be
Speaker 11: brought back something they saw how a screenplay functioned at
Speaker 11: multiple levels and aspired to be by the way again.
Speaker 11: One of the one hundred and one, along with several
Speaker 11: Billy Wilder scripts, is Beyond I can't believe it. It
Speaker 11: blows my mind.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So when you're not picketing, what are you up
Speaker 5: to these days?
Speaker 11: Now? That's it. So I want if anyone from the
Speaker 11: guild is watching this, I want them to know that's
Speaker 11: all I do is picket. The one thing I have
Speaker 11: done by writing part and I is can get windy
Speaker 11: here it's s Angeles but and you've got the sign
Speaker 11: and there's splinters and stuff. So we've turned made sandwich boards.
Speaker 11: So we walk around with sandwich boards and we're the
Speaker 11: only ones out there wearing sandwich board. Nobody else is.
Speaker 11: Every time we show either Netflix or Warner Brothers or whatever,
Speaker 11: people going that's a great idea, and we're like, do
Speaker 11: it because basically, if I see one other person do it,
Speaker 11: I'm going to retire. That's my work here is done,
Speaker 11: so I think. But now it's interest time, Like I
Speaker 11: am somewhere retired, so thinking about what do I want
Speaker 11: to do? And other projects have come up that have
Speaker 11: been surprising and out of left field and one of
Speaker 11: them was, and this is before the strike, that the
Speaker 11: company that called Rovio that owns the IP for Angry Birds,
Speaker 11: they wanted to do a stage like a ninety minute
Speaker 11: family stage show of Angry Birds. So we got writing
Speaker 11: partner James Johnston and I, who's who I've written with
Speaker 11: for fifteen years, so that's a pretty long partnership. I
Speaker 11: think my partnership with Peter involving was maybe like seven.
Speaker 11: But we got involved in that and they hired us.
Speaker 11: Who knows whether Domin Dubber was helpful, it didn't hurt,
Speaker 11: there's no question about. We may have hired one of
Speaker 11: the I was from Devin Dunter, and we did it.
Speaker 11: We wrote it and was I'd never done it before,
Speaker 11: neither James or I had ever done a stage show.
Speaker 11: The one thing. Never even played Angry Words on my phone.
Speaker 11: But I watched both of the movies the cartoons, and
Speaker 11: they're really funny movies. They're really solid scripts, great voice work,
Speaker 11: and we said, hey, if you want us to do
Speaker 11: that on the stage, we'd love to, and that's what
Speaker 11: we did. So we did that and now we're seeing
Speaker 11: how that plays out. But that was a blast. I
Speaker 11: was one of one of the most enjoyable things I've
Speaker 11: ever done. It was a lot of fun that it's
Speaker 11: a really it's a really funny it's a funny script.
Speaker 11: I've always opened to that sort of thing. Writing is writing, right,
Speaker 11: I'm relaxing. I'm enjoying my dotage. Gonna call me Dame
Speaker 11: Bennett soon.
Speaker 5: Mister Yellen, thank you so much for your time. This
Speaker 5: has been so nice talking with you.
Speaker 11: Mister White. You asked very good questions. Thank you. Now,
Speaker 11: this is very enjoyable. And where are you.
Speaker 5: I'm just outside of Detroit.
Speaker 11: Okay, just outside, that's right, all right, I'll meet you
Speaker 11: at the truck stop.
Speaker 5: Never for manly love or men we got there was a.
Speaker 11: Memo that circulated fast around a new line when we
Speaker 11: had the first cut of the movie, and there were
Speaker 11: some gay employees who were offended. They felt it was homophobic.
Speaker 11: Trust me, we didn't write it any intention to be
Speaker 11: homophobic or to be was not at all our intent.
Speaker 11: But defended some employees and so detailed what they were,
Speaker 11: and we said take it up. So what's left is
Speaker 11: just manly love. That's it. But I wonder again today,
Speaker 11: I wonder if you could get away with it if
Speaker 11: we'd made Dumb and Dumber today, I do we have
Speaker 11: to make changes in Dumb and Dumber two, but we
Speaker 11: probably would have to make some changes in Dumb and Duver.
Speaker 11: You can't talk about a woman's anatomy even like that.
Speaker 11: They can't giggle about that sort of thing too. I
Speaker 11: think I could do another one. The guys would. I
Speaker 11: think the guys would like to make another one. But
Speaker 11: on the other hand, doesn't need doesn't have to. It's
Speaker 11: not I'm this philosophical rate of my life where if
Speaker 11: something isn't necessary, then don't do it. Two we're good.
Speaker 11: I don't do things just for the money. I do
Speaker 11: it for the spiritual satisfaction whatever it's not. There is
Speaker 11: maybe talk about possibly fighting some sort of streamy or
Speaker 11: television sort of exploration for the two characters, but I don't.
Speaker 11: If it happens, it's great, and if it doesn't, it's
Speaker 11: I'm fine with it. I'm not your typical need to
Speaker 11: do it. It has to be exploited. I need more money.
Speaker 11: I don't think that way. The cash gow is there's
Speaker 11: nothing left, there's no milk left, so kill it and
Speaker 11: make some burgers for God's sakes and then feed the world.
Speaker 11: This summer.
Speaker 17: You Line Cinema proudly presents the greatest saga of all time,
Speaker 17: from the very beginning of Dumb and Dumber.
Speaker 6: Sorry about that, buddy, it's my first time bringing a
Speaker 6: friend up there.
Speaker 17: Okay, so high school's all about looking cool, Harry, so
Speaker 17: stick with me.
Speaker 11: What stinks?
Speaker 2: That'd be me, sir?
Speaker 17: They're on the journey?
Speaker 4: Is that what I think it is?
Speaker 1: Noped treasure map, cool and an adventure. It's O's a loss, Harry.
Speaker 17: Of idiotic proportions.
Speaker 1: It's even sort of than ionizing.
Speaker 7: The state's giving one hundred grand in every school that
Speaker 7: has a special needs flash. The problem is where do
Speaker 7: we find kids we can pass off as special?
Speaker 1: Stuck FINGO on June thirteenth.
Speaker 7: Well, I've got a little surprise for you.
Speaker 3: You got the extender.
Speaker 5: That's gross.
Speaker 1: It's a meeting.
Speaker 17: Of the mindless?
Speaker 4: Are you trying to be funny?
Speaker 7: Are you actually reading.
Speaker 4: Special Crash?
Speaker 2: Before the first movie there.
Speaker 11: Was high school?
Speaker 4: What are you doing?
Speaker 9: What are you doing?
Speaker 5: I think I need a.
Speaker 11: Bacon because it's gonna be on the mid term.
Speaker 1: No, that's my boy.
Speaker 11: Girls, anyone want to settle this?
Speaker 1: Make y'all contest.
Speaker 12: Mom, Hi, lady.
Speaker 17: Dumb and Dumber when Harry met Lloyd?
Speaker 4: Did you just.
Speaker 5: Maybe all right? We were back and we were talking
Speaker 5: about Dumb and Dumber, And of course, like I always say,
Speaker 5: any good movie deserves a bad sequel, but I would
Speaker 5: say that this movie actually has a pretty good sequel,
Speaker 5: and I'm going to put this out there and hopefully
Speaker 5: you guys can tear me a new one. I thought
Speaker 5: that the prequel was pretty good as well, Dumb and
Speaker 5: Dumberer when Harry met Lloyd, which I think it kind
Speaker 5: of lights that one. What did you guys think of
Speaker 5: the prequel?
Speaker 6: Not so crazy about the when Harry met For the
Speaker 6: stupid people in the audience, I'll get dumb and Dummer.
Speaker 6: I don't recognize those characters whatsoever. Oh, Harry and Lloyd. Right,
Speaker 6: that's the one.
Speaker 1: Maybe not liked, but definitely found things to like about it.
Speaker 1: I would say that Dumb and Dumber there were moments
Speaker 1: where it would just throw me off and where I
Speaker 1: felt like the tone wasn't quite the right tone. That like,
Speaker 1: it's like it's not written by the same people, it's
Speaker 1: not the same performers, but within that realm of an
Speaker 1: unnecessary prequel that doesn't have the same people associated with it.
Speaker 1: I do think there were some moments where I don't know,
Speaker 1: it had its own little moments of idiocy and it
Speaker 1: made me laugh. Like an example would be when the
Speaker 1: character Jessica says to Harry to come by her house
Speaker 1: around seven, and he says, o'clock come on, so.
Speaker 11: You'll pick me up tonight at seven forty five.
Speaker 14: Joy, Well, no, I got a few things to take
Speaker 14: care of first, but why don't we make a quarter
Speaker 14: to eight?
Speaker 1: But the guy who does young Jim Carrey. Also it's
Speaker 1: like I have to give him credit, like he's doing
Speaker 1: It's an impression, for sure, but it's not like a
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live sketch impression. He's actually doing something. It's
Speaker 1: a finely tuned comic performance that happens to be exactly
Speaker 1: imitative of Jim Carrey's energy. But he does do something
Speaker 1: with it, and I was impressed to I looked at
Speaker 1: the actor's resume and I realize I know him from Community.
Speaker 1: He played Vaughn, the kind of hippie bro, the shirtless
Speaker 1: hippie bro with the tiny nipples, who is in a
Speaker 1: recurring role in that show. But I him from that,
Speaker 1: and I was like, Okay, so that shows he has
Speaker 1: comic range because in that he's totally not a weird
Speaker 1: bull cut dork like he is in this.
Speaker 6: I knew him as Mason's son on twenty four. He
Speaker 6: has like a two episode arc when Mason gets exposed
Speaker 6: to radiation and then starts quickly dying and he starts
Speaker 6: getting me in his affairs in order and he finds
Speaker 6: his son, and he's only in it for two episodes,
Speaker 6: but that's what I remember him most far.
Speaker 5: I know him only as Deeks from NCIS Los Angeles,
Speaker 5: where he's like this kind of hip surfer dude FBA
Speaker 5: while not n CIS agent, and he's so hip and cool,
Speaker 5: And when I saw him in Dumb and Dummer, I
Speaker 5: was like, that's the same guy. And I don't know
Speaker 5: if they actually chipped his tooth or if it was
Speaker 5: an appliance, but he yeah, he really goes for it
Speaker 5: and really does a Jim Carrey impersonation like nobody's business.
Speaker 6: And that's something we didn't bring up earlier. The chip
Speaker 6: tooth Jim Carrey has is his real tooth, and he
Speaker 6: wears a falsey whenever he's he's out in public and
Speaker 6: doing red carpet events, but that is how he's teeth naturally.
Speaker 1: Look. It kind of links to that thing I was
Speaker 1: saying about how this is in some ways like the
Speaker 1: perfect comedy form of Jim Carrey that he was like this,
Speaker 1: will I'll have my real tooth for this, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. There's something about it says that's a
Speaker 1: way of getting in touch with the character that feels
Speaker 1: like it does change his looks, so does that awful haircut.
Speaker 1: Of course, Dumb and Dummer has that other thing too.
Speaker 1: Of there's certain jokes that just it's like they just
Speaker 1: haven't aged well in the context of if you did
Speaker 1: them now you would they just would feel different even
Speaker 1: if you wanted to joke about the same thing. Like
Speaker 1: I think some of the kind of Asian humor in
Speaker 1: Dumb and Dummer really did not age well compared to
Speaker 1: the other stuff that's like transgressive, where you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe there's a certain amount of that kind of gay
Speaker 1: panic stuff that was very popular in comedies of this time,
Speaker 1: but it's couched in the fact that these guys are idiots.
Speaker 1: So some of the stuff, like I saw some people
Speaker 1: saying that they were too mean spirited in the in
Speaker 1: Dumb and Dumber two, or that the characters were not
Speaker 1: as they didn't know the characters. But I feel like
Speaker 1: these have always been nasty guys in a certain way,
Speaker 1: Like they betray each other constantly and they're always trying
Speaker 1: to get one up on people. So I don't think
Speaker 1: it's out of character for them to have like crappy
Speaker 1: views or to represent something nasty in a moment. But
Speaker 1: I do think sometimes you watch an old comedy and
Speaker 1: you go, oh, they weren't quite meaning to make the
Speaker 1: joke that now it seems like they're making because they
Speaker 1: weren't thinking about how kind of limited and reductive the
Speaker 1: Asian representation in this movie would seem. And I feel
Speaker 1: it's the same way with the sort of homophobic jokes.
Speaker 1: It's like that stuff just it's not, oh, I'm so offended,
Speaker 1: it's just, oh, this movie would be just fine without
Speaker 1: this stuff.
Speaker 5: My biggest surprise from Dumb and Dumber err is Shia
Speaker 5: lah Boof. I had no idea that he was in this.
Speaker 1: I just wrote down the beef that was.
Speaker 5: Amazing, And I love how they're so dumb that he
Speaker 5: thinks that think that he's half man, half horse because
Speaker 5: he's a mascot, and then later on when he's also
Speaker 5: a mascot but now for a like a fish place
Speaker 5: or whatever it is, and he's dressed like a pirate
Speaker 5: and they think that he's a literal pirate, or I
Speaker 5: think that's just Lloyd thinks that he's a pirate and
Speaker 5: that he's actually Harry's invisible friend. That whole thing, and
Speaker 5: then it was nice seeing Mimi Rodgers. It's always great
Speaker 5: to see Louis Guzman, and then Eugene Levy and Cherry. Oh,
Speaker 5: Terry I thought were great as the principal and the
Speaker 5: lunch lady turned special ed teacher. So there. Yeah, gave
Speaker 5: me a couple lass which I was really just shocked by.
Speaker 1: When they get hung up on the flagpole and one
Speaker 1: of them says, so this is what a flag sees
Speaker 1: all day. It's so dumb. I think. When this one
Speaker 1: came on, I put this one on because I had
Speaker 1: never seen it before. I just instantly had that thought of, Okay,
Speaker 1: if a movie is trying to be dumb, and all
Speaker 1: it's trying to be is funny, there's a certain kind
Speaker 1: of forgiveness I have in my heart for I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna it's like I'm not. Maybe there's not much expectation
Speaker 1: for some comedies, but if that's all you're trying to do,
Speaker 1: I don't really begrudge a movie for being dumb when
Speaker 1: that's clearly the goal. There is something that doesn't quite
Speaker 1: nail the tone in the characters. But in my mind,
Speaker 1: I was always putting it next to that Kid ace
Speaker 1: Ventura movie, where it's like, oh god, little boy acting
Speaker 1: like ace Ventura. And it's not that it's not as
Speaker 1: awful and hard to watch as that Acepina Junior.
Speaker 5: Yes, God, oh man, and it's.
Speaker 6: Amazing that Dumb and Dummer, like the other two Jim
Speaker 6: Carrey movies that came out in nineteen ninety four, all
Speaker 6: received animated series. Yeah, that's crazy, and if you count
Speaker 6: Batman Forever the next year, Batman the animated series was
Speaker 6: on at the time because they were making fun of
Speaker 6: that movie, so technically he's got four animated series.
Speaker 5: Did either of you guys get a chance to watch
Speaker 5: Dumb and Dumber the kurtoon from ninety five.
Speaker 1: I watched one episode I was able to. I was
Speaker 1: really curious about it because I almost maybe i'd seen
Speaker 1: a moment or two from it, but I don't know
Speaker 1: that I had an awareness of this, so I I
Speaker 1: just wanted to see the style of the animation, and
Speaker 1: when I saw it, I was like, oh, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is definitely nineteen ninety five style animation and character designs.
Speaker 1: But what I love is that the conventions are in
Speaker 1: place from when I was a kid, and it was
Speaker 1: like the seventies into the eighties when they would do
Speaker 1: the animated show based on the sitcom they would do,
Speaker 1: like the Laverne and Shirley Show or whatever, but like
Speaker 1: the animated show always has a talking animal or an
Speaker 1: alien or a robot or something fantastical in it, and
Speaker 1: dumb and dumber they have a purple beaver that it
Speaker 1: doesn't speak, but is like smarter than them and sometimes
Speaker 1: points things out to them and helps them out with stuff.
Speaker 1: So I do think it's funny that, like, even though
Speaker 1: the animation style was more kind of postern and stimpy
Speaker 1: influenced and not what in my mind when I read
Speaker 1: the description, I was picturing like a Hanna Barbara cartoon
Speaker 1: from nineteen eighty two or something. It's not that it's
Speaker 1: much more modern than that, but it still hits that
Speaker 1: thing of Oh, they have to have an animal mascot,
Speaker 1: and it has to be somehow like fantastical. So it's
Speaker 1: a purple beaver. It's just such an odd It should have.
Speaker 6: Done the Back to the Future cartoon and had the
Speaker 6: purple beaver give science lessons in between episodes. Oh, it's
Speaker 6: like Doc Brown would do.
Speaker 5: Oh god, I never saw that cartoon. I didn't even
Speaker 5: know there was one until that just came out of
Speaker 5: your mouth.
Speaker 1: Did you know about the Lavern and Shirley cartoon?
Speaker 11: Mic?
Speaker 1: Just as quick, I did not know there was a
Speaker 1: I want to check what I'm about to tell you.
Speaker 1: I believe there was one where they were in the
Speaker 1: army and they had a drill sergeant who was a pig.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. Didn't they appear on Scooby Doo at one point? Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm certain they must have.
Speaker 5: Yet, I was very surprised that the character design of
Speaker 5: these of this cartoon because it so reminded me of
Speaker 5: like Powerpuff Girls Dexter's Laboratory. But this was ninety five,
Speaker 5: and I don't think.
Speaker 6: When those shows were starting. Okay, yeah, it was Hanna
Speaker 6: Barbara on the Way Out and the Cartoon Network brand
Speaker 6: kind of coming on the way in.
Speaker 5: Especially the way that Lloyd looks where it's the bowl cut,
Speaker 5: but then there's a little streak in his hair to
Speaker 5: kind of show that it's almost shiny, and then the
Speaker 5: exaggerated features of Harry where he's got this majorly big nose,
Speaker 5: majorly big chin coming out. It's really nice to hear
Speaker 5: Bill fager Becky's or however you pronounce it, part of
Speaker 5: me his voice coming out of Harry.
Speaker 2: Though.
Speaker 5: I was saying to Ryan before we started recording that
Speaker 5: it's amazing that Patrick Starr is dumber than Harry, which
Speaker 5: is amazing. But yeah, it's almost like a precursor to
Speaker 5: SpongeBob with the way that these two are sometimes. But
Speaker 5: there's no meanness. Obviously, neither Patrick Starr nor SpongeBob ever
Speaker 5: intend to be mean. Ever, they're a little bit like
Speaker 5: Harry and Lloyd in that the way that they annoyed
Speaker 5: squid word. But I also have to say that Matt
Speaker 5: Fruher did a really good Lloyd Christmas. But it's Matt Frewer,
Speaker 5: so yeah, he can do no wrong.
Speaker 1: In my book, it made me realize how much the
Speaker 1: sort of somebody stopped me that kind of Jim Carrey said,
Speaker 1: set's very max Headroom, and so Frewer doing Jim Carrey
Speaker 1: it fits. It's like this heightened as this person thinks
Speaker 1: they're an entertainer and they're doing this thing. So I was,
Speaker 1: but I had the same thought. Matt Frewer does a
Speaker 1: great job, and I think that so does Patrick. I'll
Speaker 1: just call him Patrick because I don't know how to
Speaker 1: pronounce his last name either. But he's got such a
Speaker 1: recognizable voice that it was it didn't feel as much
Speaker 1: like an impression of what Jeff Daniels is doing, by
Speaker 1: the way, I wanted to say, Yes, I was correct
Speaker 1: that the Laverna's early cartoon they had a drill sergeant
Speaker 1: named Sergeant Squeally who was a pig, and it's voiced
Speaker 1: by horses. Shack, oh wow, welcome back catter.
Speaker 6: So yeah, it's really celebrity boxing days before he found his.
Speaker 1: True calling as a celebrity boxer. I didn't even think
Speaker 1: about that. This was before some of those cartoons that
Speaker 1: it feels in league with, like around this time. Definitely,
Speaker 1: the mid nineties was a time for this kind of
Speaker 1: those chunky, line weight and slightly more like our animation
Speaker 1: that looked a little bit more like alt comics, edging
Speaker 1: towards that style, but still a very user friendly kind
Speaker 1: of Saturday Morning style.
Speaker 5: Overall, it had both Patrick and SpongeBob because Tom Kenny
Speaker 5: was doing a voice as well. It was Weenie in there,
Speaker 5: which I don't know if I remember the Weenie character,
Speaker 5: because I did watch a few of these episodes, but
Speaker 5: towards the second one, I just started fast forwarding because
Speaker 5: I was like, I'm not enjoying this as much as
Speaker 5: I feel like I should be.
Speaker 1: I felt like I needed to see what it was
Speaker 1: about because it sounded crazy. But once I got it,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, okay, I got it. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't need to watch all of them.
Speaker 5: Nah, No, all thirteen episodes very quick, just a one
Speaker 5: season show, and then yeah, the sequel coming out twenty
Speaker 5: years later, and that they are very open to. This
Speaker 5: is twenty years later, and they are doing everything right
Speaker 5: in my opinion. When it comes to Dumb and Dumber
Speaker 5: two to really put in the future. I love that
Speaker 5: they're making all these references back to free to Felcher
Speaker 5: because they talk about her in Dumb and Dumber and
Speaker 5: I forgot all about that until I was watching it
Speaker 5: again because I actually went through and I watched this week,
Speaker 5: I watched Dumb and Dumber, I watched Dumb and Dumber two,
Speaker 5: and then I wrapped up with Dumb and Dummer, and
Speaker 5: it was so interesting to see the way that they
Speaker 5: would do the touch points back to Dumb and Dumber
Speaker 5: from Dumb and Dumber two, watching them out of order
Speaker 5: and just oh, okay, yeah, I forgot all about that,
Speaker 5: and they talk about the French tickler and all those things.
Speaker 5: I'm like, Wow, you guys are really doing a good
Speaker 5: job bringing all of these things back. And then the
Speaker 5: crime that's in that film I found to be pretty
Speaker 5: interesting as well. And just the girl that played their
Speaker 5: not daughter who seemed like their daughter, Rachel Melvin as Penny.
Speaker 5: I thought she did an amazing job in this. But
Speaker 5: I was really just taken by Rob Riggle, especially when
Speaker 5: he plays his own twin brother and those scenes where
Speaker 5: he would walk out of the background because he was
Speaker 5: an expert. Apparently, it's just like Peta from The Hunger Games.
Speaker 5: It can blend into any.
Speaker 1: Except unlike Peta, this is intended to be ridiculously funny,
Speaker 1: and Pete has apparently played as a dramatic moment and
Speaker 1: it's just the instead. It's the silliest thing that's ever
Speaker 1: been in a movie. Hell yes, I love the way
Speaker 1: it's like he has to quickly apply this makeup and
Speaker 1: then lay down amongst the rocks. It's just ridiculous. Whatever
Speaker 1: you think of the movie, I found myself just enjoying
Speaker 1: that they the spirit was intact, even if the gags
Speaker 1: weren't always intact. For me, I thought, you know what,
Speaker 1: I love that Jeff Daniels is here throwing himself back
Speaker 1: into it as Harry, and I love that Jim Carrey.
Speaker 1: Jim Carrey doesn't do a lot of stuff. He's maybe
Speaker 1: now he does the Sonic movies, and it seems like
Speaker 1: that's mainly what he does. But at the time, I
Speaker 1: felt like it had been a while since I'd seen
Speaker 1: Jim Carrey go for broke with this type of stuff.
Speaker 1: And I love the gag. I just love the concept
Speaker 1: that he's been a catatonic since the end of the
Speaker 1: first movie, and then b that he's been faking it.
Speaker 1: But that is such a great way to answer the
Speaker 1: question of what is what have the character has been
Speaker 1: up to since the last time we saw them. Literally
Speaker 1: nothing in the way. This movie kind of wipes away
Speaker 1: the can And I mean, it's an interesting thing to
Speaker 1: say that one of these movies is not canonical, but
Speaker 1: I believe the events of Dumb and Dumber two make
Speaker 1: Dumb and Dumber a non canonical just because of the
Speaker 1: parents and certain things about the background of the characters.
Speaker 1: So now we have a multiverse. We don't just have
Speaker 1: a saga. We have a multiverse of.
Speaker 5: And I thought it was great that Kathleen Turner was
Speaker 5: able to play into her comedy chuffs because she has
Speaker 5: those and it rarely gets to use them. And she
Speaker 5: was great in here as Fraida, and I love that
Speaker 5: they're not afraid or she's not afraid to take some
Speaker 5: of these insults that they're throwing around, and that she's
Speaker 5: a leet slut. The end with her doctor Pinchela was fantastic.
Speaker 5: But yeah, and just when she's talking about, oh yeah,
Speaker 5: you're not the father, and nor are you the father?
Speaker 5: That was my place? What was it like I took
Speaker 5: on the whole basketball team.
Speaker 1: I'm there, there's no telling. And also when you find
Speaker 1: out that not only has she been with all these
Speaker 1: other guys, but she wasn't ever with them, and they
Speaker 1: didn't know that, they didn't have sex with her. They
Speaker 1: both had no understanding of sex. It's so ridiculous.
Speaker 5: But the reaction of both of them when she finally
Speaker 5: tells them what sex says.
Speaker 6: No, worry, that's just not my mom.
Speaker 12: But we're pea like him and I cannot learn it.
Speaker 1: You're bad.
Speaker 4: Can you show us?
Speaker 5: I call sloppy.
Speaker 1: Seconds then the one flashback to him being with her,
Speaker 1: he says, I need to put on protection, and then
Speaker 1: he puts on the bike helmet and then he like
Speaker 1: comes at her with his mouth wide open and does
Speaker 1: this to her shoulder. So it's like they play into
Speaker 1: that idea that these guys don't know what's going on,
Speaker 1: but you don't know, you really don't know, Like how
Speaker 1: much do they really not know? Like you could have
Speaker 1: another version of this where they are regularly with women
Speaker 1: but they just can't keep a girlfriend or something, But no,
Speaker 1: these guys are complete cartoon characters in the world that's
Speaker 1: slightly more real than them.
Speaker 5: I almost wish that they had gotten Derek Richardson and
Speaker 5: Eric Christian Olsen to be the younger versions of them
Speaker 5: in this movie. That would have been nice. But yeah,
Speaker 5: you're right, it's multiverse now, and they can even dip
Speaker 5: into cartoon World two.
Speaker 1: That's three hole multiverses. We need a crisis on infinite
Speaker 1: and dumbers now.
Speaker 5: Somewhere in Rhode Island there's a hell mouth that has
Speaker 5: opened up.
Speaker 1: I think there are several I've been to Rhode Island
Speaker 1: and I'm just kidding.
Speaker 5: There's not a whole lot of room for multiple strip
Speaker 5: in there. Nice having a little cameo from Bill Murray
Speaker 5: and here is a nice pick. I thought that was, yes,
Speaker 5: the best day of my life. And then they have
Speaker 5: PD as well. I thought was wonderful. And that they
Speaker 5: had to track down that actor via Facebook because they
Speaker 5: couldn't find contact information for him. And then I guess
Speaker 5: he had to audition regardless, just because of the rules
Speaker 5: of the way that the movie was made, and it's yeah,
Speaker 5: you got the role, but they still made him audition.
Speaker 5: That was nice to have him show back up. And
Speaker 5: then especially now that he's got all those beautiful birds
Speaker 5: and you're talking about, oh, the characters are too mean.
Speaker 5: When they do set brob Riggla on fire and they
Speaker 5: do that pointing and laughing, the literal pointing and laughing.
Speaker 5: I'm like, that's the exact same thing that they did
Speaker 5: to Mental in the first movie after they just murdered
Speaker 5: him with the hot peppers. They don't know that they
Speaker 5: are murdering him, and it's before they give him the cyanide,
Speaker 5: but they do that same point and laugh kind of thing.
Speaker 5: And yeah, just the intensity around the pranks that they're
Speaker 5: pulling on each other. And I'm not going to give
Speaker 5: a way the final twist of the movie, but that
Speaker 5: actually really got me the first time I watched it,
Speaker 5: and I thought that was wonderful that they did.
Speaker 1: If we're gonna leave that ending slightly unspoiled, then I
Speaker 1: will not say what I would say that was spoil it,
Speaker 1: but I can expect to something I said earlier about
Speaker 1: an injury that Harry has. I just think that moment
Speaker 1: is funnier because it's being played while Harry has a
Speaker 1: bullet hole through him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think that Lloyd's injury is wonderful as well,
Speaker 5: and the way that Carrie plays that is terrific and
Speaker 5: just the repetition of the dialogue. Yeah, but not as Yeah,
Speaker 5: I find a lot of laughs in Dumb and Dumber two.
Speaker 5: It's not a classic, it's it's better than a lot
Speaker 5: of legacy sequels I see, though I have to say
Speaker 5: it definitely feels like they thought about this one a
Speaker 5: lot more than they did something like Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice.
Speaker 1: The question of do comedy sequels ever fully work, and
Speaker 1: I think that when they have the best success, it's
Speaker 1: when they just again not to sound like I'm beating
Speaker 1: a dead horse, but when and just try to be funny.
Speaker 1: And I think the fact that this movie has literally
Speaker 1: nothing on its mind other than that, I think that
Speaker 1: is that's there's a certain kind of grace that it
Speaker 1: achieves just by virtue of being like, Okay, gag to gag.
Speaker 1: Maybe you didn't like that last one, but you might
Speaker 1: really like the next one, and it doesn't move quite
Speaker 1: as efficiently. It maybe could be a little bit tighter,
Speaker 1: and maybe that would make it seem funnier. But I
Speaker 1: think there's something about just I'm a sucker for when
Speaker 1: it feels like, oh, these people had fun getting back
Speaker 1: together to make this movie. So I think that's what
Speaker 1: I feel when I watched that one, is just that
Speaker 1: Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels seem to be having such
Speaker 1: a blast, and that's infectious to me.
Speaker 5: Were you aware of the controversy around the making of
Speaker 5: A Dumb and Dumber two? On June fifteen, twenty seventeen,
Speaker 5: the United States Department of Justice charge that money used
Speaker 5: to produce the film was stolen from a Malaysian government
Speaker 5: investment fund.
Speaker 1: You know, I did not know this.
Speaker 5: Yes, According to Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge, Red
Speaker 5: Granite Pictures denied knowingly accepting stolen money. Prosecutors also filed
Speaker 5: a forfeiture complaint in federal court to seize the rights
Speaker 5: of ownerships to Dumb and Dumber two, as well as
Speaker 5: the rights to the twenty to fifteen film Daddy's Home.
Speaker 6: So didn't they also do with Wolf of Wall Street?
Speaker 6: Wasn't that alsopart of it?
Speaker 1: They went half, is there an agenda being pushed by
Speaker 1: this movie?
Speaker 5: Is that?
Speaker 1: I don't know there's anything political about the actual sun.
Speaker 5: Yeah, now, other than all the clean energy that they have.
Speaker 5: The thing where they've got Harry judging all of those
Speaker 5: young geniuses with their projects, and it's so reminded me
Speaker 5: of like Martin from The Simpsons, Behold the power plant
Speaker 5: of the future Today.
Speaker 1: To cold and sterrile whiz the hot but.
Speaker 6: It really generates power.
Speaker 1: It's letting this room right now, you lose, get off
Speaker 1: mud pupperty. I thought that was eerily reminiscent of what's
Speaker 1: happening in the research community and in DC right now,
Speaker 1: these people presenting like the cure for cancer and this
Speaker 1: complete idiot city there going no yeah, but what's in
Speaker 1: it for me? And he's loving that. The crowds with him,
Speaker 1: they're laughing at him, and Harry's so stupid, He's I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's so funny to see him. He gets
Speaker 1: a little full of himself in that moment. I think
Speaker 1: that's it. Yeah, Jeff Daniels is good in that scene.
Speaker 1: I'll just say that one of the best lines in
Speaker 1: Dumb and Dumber two was one that really stuck with me,
Speaker 1: is when he says, so this is what rock Bottom
Speaker 1: feels like. It's not that bad.
Speaker 5: All right, We're going to take another break and play
Speaker 5: a preview for next week's show right after these brief
Speaker 5: messages down.
Speaker 3: That's street.
Speaker 4: In Manhattan.
Speaker 1: That has no window pane, and that.
Speaker 20: That bad little way, God.
Speaker 4: It's bad.
Speaker 16: To night.
Speaker 4: Damn that street.
Speaker 3: In Manhattan, and that house.
Speaker 1: That has no window paye.
Speaker 4: And that love that bad.
Speaker 20: Lot away God, it's Spad.
Speaker 5: That's right. We'll be back next week with something very different,
Speaker 5: Jean Pierre Melville's Two men in Manhattan, two very different
Speaker 5: men from Harry and Lloyd. Until then, I want to
Speaker 5: thank my co host John and Ryan, two very different
Speaker 5: men from Harry and Lloyd. So, John, what is the
Speaker 5: latest in your world?
Speaker 1: I'll just go ahead and throw my blue sky out there.
Speaker 1: That seems like the smart thing to do nowadays. I'm
Speaker 1: johnnyw dot bsky dot social, So that's g I A
Speaker 1: N N I d U b y A. And from there,
Speaker 1: if you look at my bio you can link out
Speaker 1: to my music and other podcasts I do. But I
Speaker 1: will say I have a podcast that has been working
Speaker 1: in little batches, in another batch. At the time this
Speaker 1: episode comes out should be in full swing, and that
Speaker 1: is my Coen Brothers podcast, co Intel Pro.
Speaker 4: That's co O E N T E L p r O.
Speaker 1: Mike was kind enough to be on the first episode
Speaker 1: where we talk about Blood Simple and Crime Wave and
Speaker 1: those continue to roll out with fun guests and if
Speaker 1: you know the movies of the Coen Brothers, there's lots
Speaker 1: of fun stuff to talk about there, so that's happening.
Speaker 1: And then just about every week, Movie Movie is a
Speaker 1: podcast I've been on for thirteen years now and we
Speaker 1: pretty much talk about whatever we've been watching recently, so
Speaker 1: a lot of recent stuff, but we also usually try
Speaker 1: to pick a classic or a not so recent film
Speaker 1: to talk about each week as well. So that's Moviemovie
Speaker 1: and yeah, that's where you can find me.
Speaker 5: And I say your name at least twice a month
Speaker 5: on the air because I always thank you for the
Speaker 5: theme song for The Shabby Detective and the Life and
Speaker 5: Times of Captain Barney Miller podcast. So John is a
Speaker 5: very wonderful and talented musician who has definitely done right
Speaker 5: by me.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the kind words.
Speaker 5: And Ryan, what is happening with you?
Speaker 6: Sir? I am the co host and producer of two
Speaker 6: different podcasts. The first is called One Track Mind, which
Speaker 6: is the only commentary podcast that matters because it's the
Speaker 6: only one that exists where every week or every other
Speaker 6: week a guest and myself will cover the audio commentary
Speaker 6: of a movie and see how it relates to the film.
Speaker 6: Mike has been on twice and by the way, I
Speaker 6: listen to your Demolition Man commentary on the Aero video
Speaker 6: four k outstanding.
Speaker 5: Oh thank you. I was hoping you could completely skewer
Speaker 5: it for me.
Speaker 1: I can't skewer something that was good.
Speaker 6: You can find those first off Blue Sky one track
Speaker 6: Mind atbsky dot, social Instagram at one that is the
Speaker 6: Numeral one Track Mind podcast. I'm on Facebook, on Podchaser,
Speaker 6: and i just had an essay in issue sixteen of
Speaker 6: The Physical Media Advocate where I talked about the five
Speaker 6: commentaries that Roger Ebert has done since I shouldn't say
Speaker 6: has done considering that he's dead, but did past tense
Speaker 6: and then I also have a different podcast which is
Speaker 6: a fake movie court called Reels of Justice, where we
Speaker 6: have a prosecutor, a defender, a judge, and a jury.
Speaker 6: We try to conclude whether or not a movie is
Speaker 6: guilty of being a bad movie. You can find that
Speaker 6: anywhere on social media at Reels of Justice.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you so much guys for being on the show.
Speaker 5: Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear
Speaker 5: more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some
Speaker 5: of the other shows that I work on. They are
Speaker 5: all available at Weirdingwaymedia. Dot com. Thanks especially to our
Speaker 5: Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit
Speaker 5: patreon dot com. Slash projection booth. Every donation we get
Speaker 5: help some projection booth take over the world.
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