Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Surely You Can't
Be Serious Podcast. My name is Dee Graves, and I
am here with my friend Jason, who is rich and
handsome and has a rapist wit.
Speaker 2: You ready to do this, mister French Tickler.
Speaker 1: Loves again.
Speaker 2: We are here today to compare two great movies from
the nineties, Dumb and Dummer and Something About Mary.
Speaker 1: Two arguably funniest movies of the decade.
Speaker 2: I mean, I laughed belly laugh every time I watch these.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The first act of both of these things is
so freaking brilliant that I'm in tears before we get
twenty minutes into the movie on both of them.
Speaker 2: When I was in college, Dumb and Dummer came out
and I saw it, and I immediately went home got
my roommate. I'm like, we're going to see this, all right.
I took him that same day. I saw it twice
in the same day. Yes, and then I proceeded to
drag other people. My dad, my mom, my, sister.
Speaker 1: Yea, we all went and saw it.
Speaker 2: So my college roommates Cameron Ackert, Todd Wadman, Scott Foster,
Doug Huggen. I know, I dragged them to the theater
here in Norman multiple times to see this.
Speaker 1: When something about Mary came out, I was living in Tulsa,
dropped out of college at the time, Nice and I
went back to see it again almost immediately after having
seen it for two reasons. The first reason is absolutely hysterical.
The second reason is I wanted to see the audience's
reaction at the zipper scene, and so at that point
I brought my girlfriend with me, and at that point
I'm like, hey, I'm gonna run into the bathroom because
I didn't want her to know what I was doing.
And I walked down to the corner where I could
see everyone's face, and when the zipper scene happened, when
they when you see the when you see the beans
in the Franks.
Speaker 2: Had to get the beans over.
Speaker 1: The free did see that, and the expression on everyone's
face of instantaneous shock and then hysterical laughter is something
that has burned into my memory forever as a priceless,
priceless moment.
Speaker 2: It was so friggin funny. These movies are awesome, and
whatever we talk about today is not going to be
nearly as funny as the movie.
Speaker 1: So we can't compare with The Fairly Brothers, but we
can't tell you the story, right.
Speaker 2: We are going to take a deep dive into both
of these movies. If you have not seen these movies,
do yourself a favor. Go immediately pauseitive podcast, go watch these.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the movies that we watch or that we're talking
about are over twenty years old, so you should probably
you know, have known that you got to see it
right now.
Speaker 2: Here's the other thing. We are a family friendly ish
podcast where we would can classify ourselves more as like
a PG thirteen type of thing.
Speaker 1: Yes, we're going to be.
Speaker 2: Talking about a few things today that might push over
the edge.
Speaker 1: Use some discretion for your younger listeners with you. We
will not have profanity on this, but there may be
some indelicate topics because of these movies are full of them.
Speaker 2: I mean, how can we not and talk about these
movies legit?
Speaker 1: Yes, your warnings have been given, and then so we
may proceed now, all right?
Speaker 2: So dumbin Dummer was released December sixteenth, nineteen ninety four,
with two weeks left to go in the year. It
still was the eighteenth highest grossing film of nineteen ninety four.
Fantastic it's really what I mean, it blew out of
the gates. Yeah, number eighteen and ninety four and number
twenty four overall in ninety five, so it made a
ton of money. Its budget was seventeen million, and it
made two hundred and forty seven point three million dollars.
Speaker 1: And just to keep things in perspective, nineteen ninety four
and nineteen ninety five are arguably two of the best
years in movie history. So in ninety four you've got
natural Born Killers, you've got clear in Present Danger, you've
got the usual suspects, you've got pulp fiction, you've.
Speaker 2: Got Forrest Gump, you've got Shawshank prediction.
Speaker 1: And ninety five you had Casino, you had Clueless, you
had Tommy Buy. Another incredible year for movies, and this one,
oh it's seven your favorite and Desperado one of my favorites. Wow.
So anyway, fantastic, hilarious. How do we get there? Let's
start with the Fairly brother Okay, so the Fairly Brothers
are self described near dwells. Their dad was a doctor,
their mom was a nurse practitioner. They had three sisters
who all did excellent in school, and basically they barely
made it through. I think Bobby fairly went to like
four different high schools. He ended up playing some hockey
I think in college, but wasn't a super student, stud
of geology. Peter studied accounting. They're both so bad at
those particular areas that they became salesmen after college. And
so at about twenty four years old, they're like, you
know what, we don't have anything to lose. We kind
of want to be writers. Let's go out to California.
So they moved from Road Island out to California to
become writers. And so they would tell people, yeah, we
moved to California and we're writers now. And people would say, well,
if you've written anything that I would have seen, and
they said no. What they essentially were were script doctors.
So when people had scripts that needed some punching up,
these guys came in and made them funny, okay. And
so at some point they're talking to a producer at
Universe who works at Universal, and they said that the
idea for Dumb and Dumber was his idea. Now here's
the idea for Dumb and Dumber. Two guys who were
screw ups travel across the country.
Speaker 2: Don Meloa.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not saying I've heard this or seen this
anywhere else, but if the two guys in front of
me are self described underachievers and they've moved from Rhode
Island to California, I would say maybe they didn't realize
they might have been the inspiration for their own movie.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, Lloyd and Harry maybe should have been
called Peter and Bobbie.
Speaker 1: Right. So they go and they write the first scene
of a script and they bring it to this producer.
He's like, this is magical. I love it. You know,
we we definitely need to make the movie. Go ahead
and write the rest of the script. They go back,
they write the rest of the script, they give it
to him. He thinks it's wonderful. He says, I'll get
back with you right after the weekend. Monday comes, They
don't hear anything. Tuesday, Wednesday, don't hear anything. Finally they
call and they find out he no longer works at
the Universal. Of course, yeah, it's a story that we've
heard before. I really yeah, right, And so he has
moved to Fox, and so they're waiting on him at
Fox to give them, you know, an idea of what's
going to happen? And after nineteen months of not hearing anything,
they write him a letter and say, hey, you know,
if you loved this script, what's going to happen with it?
And he says, I'm not doing anything that I was
associated with whenever I was at Universal, So here's your
script back, and they didn't know what to do. Yeah.
Somewhere in the process they come across John Hughes and
they're like, hey, we're looking for a director on this thing.
And he tells them, you know what, you should direct
it and they're like, we haven't even written anything famous yet,
how are we going to direct that. He's like, you
have the movie in your head. You've already got the
story in your head. Just make that the movie. That's
all you have to do as a director.
Speaker 2: Now, wait a minute, this is John Hughes, like Ferris
Bueler's Day Off Pretty in Pink weird Science.
Speaker 1: No, it's the other John Hughes, John John Bartholome, Yes, No,
the John Hughes. Yes wow. And so they eventually get
some producers to come along board who think that the
script is hilarious. There's a bit of resistance to having
them direct but at this point they've decided this is
what we want to do. This is how we're going
to make our break.
Speaker 2: Initially, the first script was called Dust to Dust, and
that was about two idiots moving across the country and
working at a funeral parlor. It was actually bought by
Eddie Murphy's production company Huh, But ultimately it didn't happen,
so it sat there dust to Dust, never gotten made.
They later wrote a sequel for the Tom Hanks dan
Aykroyd movie Dragnet Dragnet Part two.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: They called it their best script they've ever written. Okay,
but it was never made right. So they go back
to the drawing board and the fairlies and this other
guy is.
Speaker 1: The name of their writing partner. Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2: Came up with another story. This is about two dim
witted guys, Harry and Lloyd, who set off for Aspen
to return the lost briefcase. Right with the whole plot
of the movie. They called it Go West, but then
they thought, no, what we really need to do is
called Dumb and Dumber. But that title nobody liked it.
They could not get any actors to agree to star
in a movie called Dumb and dumber. It kept getting rejected, rejected, rejected,
so they changed the title to A power tool is
not a toy. Basically, they changed the title and sent
it back to the same studios, same script, but instead
of people not reading it, they then thought, okay, well
that's interesting title, so they were read it. Yeah, okay.
So when the Fairly Brothers finally found a movie studio
that agreed to do this, they said, all right, here's
the deal, we'll make it. So the script passed through
and was rejected by every major Hollywood studio until it
made its way to Newline. Okay, the head of New
Line Cinema, Mike de Luca, loved the script and agreed
to make it, but the CEO of the company hated it.
But he said, okay, here's the deal. He gave him
a list and he said, I will make this movie.
You can get any of these twenty five guys on
this list. So they sent it out rejected by all
twenty five, every single one, every single one. But you're
talking about big names like Steve Martin and Martin Short
and Nicholas Cage.
Speaker 1: So one of the guys whose hands the script ends
up in is a guy named Jim Carrey, who at
the time that he had the script and looking at it,
you wouldn't know who he was unless you're a big
in Living Color fan. He was the token white girl,
white guy. I loved it. I watched it in Living
Color all the time. Did you watch it? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah I did. And I knew him from Once Bitten.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean I certainly wouldn't have known. Yeah,
that guy's name is Jim Carrett.
Speaker 2: Now I knew him from Once Bitten. But that movie
was cute and.
Speaker 1: Humorous, and he was kind of leading.
Speaker 2: He was, he was the main guy, but he wasn't
Jim Carrey like on display, you know what I mean.
It's like nineteen eighty five. It was a long time
before a Sventuer.
Speaker 1: Long time well, and a Spincher is the key here,
because he was going to be able to do the
movie for a paycheck of one million dollars if they
signed him before A SPINU.
Speaker 2: Was released, a million bucks.
Speaker 1: Jim Carrey for a million dollars. Yes, As it turned out,
they didn't get that done, and so I think they
offered him seven hundred thousand. And then when ace Ventura
came out, they had to offer him seven million dollars,
seven million.
Speaker 2: Dollars, seven million bucks because they waited too long and
ace Ventura was out like a rocket.
Speaker 1: Yes, and so the thing was though, with that ace Ventura,
suddenly they had star power from a guy who was
willing to do the movie. And that is what allowed
the studio to go, Okay, we're going to invest enough
that you can pay him seven million dollars. We'll invest
sixteen million dollars. A little less than half will go
to him, and the rest of it you can use
to make your movie.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's think about this for a second. We talked
earlier this summer, flashback to our Smoking the Banded episode. Yeah,
that was made on a budget of four million dollars.
Burt Reynolds was paid one million of that four million
dollar budget. Yes, Jim Carrey was paid seven million dollars
of a seventeen million dollar budget.
Speaker 1: What the hell are we doing here, Harry.
Speaker 2: That's nearly half of the budget. It's incredible. Yeah, and
here's the kicker to go along with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you know what Jeff Daniels was paid to do?
Dumondemer Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Jim Carrey was the one who asked for Jeff
Daniels to be in the movie. They didn't want Jeff
Daniels to be in the movie. They knew he was
a good actor, but they thought, you know, this isn't
the right guy for this comedy about stupid guys, the
ridiculous stuff that he's going to have to do, and
so they deliberately low balled him and they offered him
fifty thousand dollars. Handy Heat instantaneously said yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Know they were trying to drive him away with that
low ball offer.
Speaker 1: Yeah. His agent said, do not do this movie. It
will kill your career.
Speaker 2: He said, he had three agents on the line. They said, look, dude,
we're trying to get you an oscar. You can't do
this to us. Don't do this movie.
Speaker 1: Still his most profitable movie today.
Speaker 2: It's incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So when Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels they got together
and they were auditioning using the hot tub scene. Huh right,
so they're naked, they're in the hot tub or not naked,
but you know, undressed mostly, And Jim Carrey said he
went over to Jeff Daniels and motor voted him. And
when Jeff Daniels just went with it. Jim Carrey was like,
this is my guy. Yeah, I have to have this guy.
Speaker 1: He's I mean, in any other movie he's the comic guy,
but in this one, between those two, he's the straight man. Yeah,
the guy with the poop scene is the straight man.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: It is dumb and dumber.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: By the way, here's that's a good question. Which one's
dumb and which one's dumber?
Speaker 2: Okay, Harry Jeff Daniel's character is dumb. Yeah, Lloyd Jim
Carrey's character is dumber.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally agree. Okay. I watched this movie with Caleb,
my eleven year old. The movie starts and he asks
me that question, and I'm like, I tell him the
same thing that you just said. Yeah, Jim Carrey's the
dumber one, Lloyd. Lloyd's the dumber one, right, And he's like, no,
I don't think so. And we watch and we watch,
and at the point that Lloyd says, yeah, he must
work out, Caleb turns me. He goes, you're right, he's
the dumber.
Speaker 2: Roll For me, it's when he's trying to read, he's going, hey, dumb, yeah,
all right, before we get too far down the road,
I do want to talk about casting in both of
these movies. But let's flip back. Let's talk about there's
something about Mary.
Speaker 3: His friends would say, stop one and they've had enough
of that his.
Speaker 1: Friends, right, and which, interestingly I mean this. That movie
came out in nineteen ninety eight. It was the third
movie Dumb and Dumber, was the first movie we had
Kingpin in the middle, right. But the story actually starts
ten years earlier, when these two guys in nineteen eighty
eight are living in a rent control apartment in California,
and their names are Ed Decker and John Strauss, and
they are they're script writers. They're working on a script together,
and they realize that their neighbor, an aerobics instructor, likes
to change her clothes when she gets home from work
with an open windows and blinds.
Speaker 2: God bless her.
Speaker 1: That's how they felt as well.
Speaker 2: They saw the aerobics instructor.
Speaker 1: They saw every single day, like clockwork, she would come
in the door. They would go hide behind the couch
and just peek over the edge and see her change
her clothes in the open window the way. And at
some point, as one of their first visages of this
is they're cowering and peeking and spying. They one of
them turns the other and says, this is really actually
pretty disgusting. We're a couple of stalkers here, and the
other one says, don't think of us as stalkers, think
of us as detective. And it is that moment that
was the light bulb moment where they said, imagine if
some guy hired a private detective to go spy on
this girl that he had liked, and the private detective
sees her and falls in love with her.
Speaker 2: It's a great hook.
Speaker 1: Yes, so thank you again, aerobics instructor. We appreciate your
contribution to the movie industry.
Speaker 2: Giving it up to her.
Speaker 1: So they write a script that is there's something about Mary,
and they get it to a studio who's excited about
making it, and it ends up in what we call
development hell right, the studio has its own ideas about
how things should go, and basically they develop it into
a terrible script instead of a wonderful script, and it
goes nowhere for years. Fortunately, before all of that happened,
when they had their original script, they showed it to
a couple of friends of theirs named Bobby and Peter Fairly,
and so years go by. They finally, after I think
it was eight years, they finally get their script back.
It had been in development hell for that so that
puts it at nineteen ninety six. They get it back,
they're trying to figure out what to do with it,
and happen to run into the Faarilies again, who go, hey,
whatever happened with that script that you were writing? And
they said, well, it never got made. We actually just
got it back, and they said, we would love to
make it awesome, and so there you go. And so
they gave it to the Fairlies. The Fairlies worked their
own magic on it, and they did tons of work,
including that introductory scene, which is key. It is key
to the success of that movie.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's talk about that for a second, because I
heard the same thing. Kingpin in ninety six was the
fall up to Demon Dummer. I mean, it's not a sequel,
but it was their next.
Speaker 1: Movie, next movie for the Pharilans.
Speaker 2: It didn't do very well.
Speaker 1: It did I didn't like it.
Speaker 2: Did you like it?
Speaker 1: I still haven't seen it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, it didn't do as well obviously, and so
when they were working on there something about Mary. They're like, listen,
this may be our last movie, so we're putting every
amazingly funny thing we can possibly think of and cramming
it into this movie. They were talking to their mom, actually,
and their mom reminded them of an event.
Speaker 1: Their mom Mary, their mom Mary.
Speaker 2: Who if you'll notice the main woman in Demon Dummer,
her name is Mary, and obviously there's something about Mary.
But she reminded of an event way back when when
her sister had a party at their house and one
of the young men got his privates means and franks
that means caught in the zipper, and their dad was
a doctor and he had to go in and help
this kid. Yeah, and they laughed, they said, they laughed
at the recollection of that story so much. They're like,
we have got to put that in. Okay, So let's
talk about casting for Dumb and Dumber real quick.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: We talked about the list of twenty five names that
if they could get any one of those names then
they would do the movie, but unfortunately they all rejected it.
So me, being curious, I want to know the names
on that list, right, So here are some of the
names that I came across Nicholas Cage and Gary Oldman
was the first choice pairing.
Speaker 1: Nick Cage would definitely take the risks. I could see
that Gary Oldman at that point had done very little
that we know him for at this point, but he
had done Rosenkrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead, which is kind
of a two idiot but more like a Shakespeare two
idiot kind of thing. I could see it.
Speaker 2: He was Dracula, I know.
Speaker 1: But when was that? Yeah? I guess so still.
Speaker 2: Nick Cage, Gary Oldman, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: Here's some of the other names, Okay, yeah, Steve Martin
and Martin Short, sure, Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers.
Speaker 1: Ooh s greg yea interesting.
Speaker 2: Rob Lowe was considered for the role of Harry. They
really wanted Chris Elliott, the guy who played Woogy and
There's something about Mary, And then they also considered Chris Farley. Yes,
they briefly considered the two Corries, oh wow, until the
studio said, look, dude, those guys are not bankable actors anymore.
You can't have those guys, right. That was the absolutely
right call.
Speaker 1: My gosh.
Speaker 2: So Lauren Hawley, she was a star of picket Fences.
She had been in like soap operas and stuff like that.
She actually turned down the role that Courtney Cox got
in s Ventura.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so Jim Carrey knew her, was familiar with her.
Speaker 2: Had an interest, tight little package affirmative.
Speaker 1: Oh look at the fun bags on that one.
Speaker 2: Okay, real quickly with the other members of the cast. Okay.
Karen Duffy, she was on MTV a lot. They called
her duff remember her. She played jp Sha. She was
one of the early fans of this script. And the
only part they had was the hit man.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right, which.
Speaker 2: Was originally supposed to be a male character. But they're like,
what what the heck. Charles Rockett, who plays Nicholas Andre, Yes,
he was the guy if you remember, he said the
F word on Saturday Night Live in like in the
seventies and was fired from Saturday Night Live. Okay, so
that's kind of what he was known for. Harlan Williams,
who plays the motorcycle police officer, Yes, and also the
hitchhiker in There's Something About Mary. Yes, he finished second
for the role of Harry.
Speaker 1: I could see him in the park. Yeah, he's got
the he's got the right dumb like if you've seen
Half Baked, he's he's got the ability to play stupid
pretty well.
Speaker 2: Well, according to the Fairly Brothers, he's impossible to direct.
So they said, look, this is how we wrote it,
this is what we want you to do. It doesn't matter.
He's going to do it however we wanted to. So
they were kind of glad that they didn't land him, right,
but they said, well, you know, we got this role
of the highway patrolman who drinks urine out of beer bottles. Right,
I'll take it, sticking.
Speaker 1: Them back on a little grandpa's cuff, sir.
Speaker 2: You feel is aware that drinking alcohol have an open container.
They got Terry Garr from mister.
Speaker 1: Mom Yes, and young Frankenstein and a slew of.
Speaker 2: I mean everything. Yeah. One person that I wanted to
mention real quickly is cam Neely. Cam Neely is a
professional hockey player played for the Boston Bruins.
Speaker 1: He's Sea Bass.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, right, and so they have a knack of
putting in professional athletes in their movies, right right, real quickly.
Sea Bass is the guy who chases them across the
country and is the guy who's going to distribute the
manly love and the the stall in the bathroom real
quickly on that scene. Right, So that scene is so
frigging funny, But they pump the brakes just enough for
my taste.
Speaker 1: You mean they pump the brakes right when you see
his leopard print underwear.
Speaker 2: The deleted scene of his leopard print underwear and his yeah,
I mean his you can see his package there. So anyway,
when you're watching with your kids, they kind of are
under the assumption that maybe he's just gonna get beat up.
Speaker 1: Sure, because of these two movies, there's only one that
you can watch with your kids. And even still, there
might be some scenes that you have.
Speaker 2: To fass that's true.
Speaker 1: Like I fast forward through most of the heart shape
hot tub scene and Caleb Cock going, there's nothing inappropriate here,
There's nothing, And I'm like, you just don't know, and
I'm not wanting to have you figured out and me
and explain it to Yeah.
Speaker 2: Really, yeah, some of Little Philly break your heart. No,
it's a girl. Okay, let's talk about casting for something
about Mary sounds great.
Speaker 3: Run.
Speaker 2: So when the Fairly Brothers were casting before, there's something
about Mary. They immediately thought of Jim Carrey for the
role of Ted.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: He had done great and he was a full blown
movie star. Yes, I mean a full blown movie star
from nineteen ninety four. The Mask was a number one movie.
A Spentura was a number one movie, and Dumb and
Dummer was the number one movie. That's the first actor,
I think, to have three number one movies in the
same year. And he had actually worked with Cameron Diaz
in The Mask, right, but I think at that point
it was a little bit too expensive and he had
all kinds of other things going on, so they said,
let's get this guy Ben Stiller.
Speaker 1: Now, at this point, ben Stiller had done a lot,
but hadn't done anything big. So I was talking to
Arlen on the way over here today. Actually he called
me up. We're talking and I talk about what we're
going to talk about the night, and he's like, oh,
are you going to talk about the Ben Stiller Show?
And I'm like the what. He was like, Yeah, he
had a show. It was like the Ben Steller Show.
And he tells me about this episode that he's seen
and I'm like, no, I didn't even know that was
the thing. He's like it was only like two episodes.
You know, I think he's speaking hyperbole. No, there were
literally two episodes of Ben Stiller Show and that was it.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And then he goes on and he does like some
serious roles. He does like reality bites just before this,
and he was kind of building. But there's no question
that this was a breakout role for him.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely. You know John Stewart, they thought about him
as the role of Ted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I could see that same type of deal. Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the Fairly Brothers come to the studio they say,
we want Ben Stiller, right, and the studio says, I
don't think so this this guy is unproven, he hasn't
really done anything. We don't really know him. Go back
to the drawing board. So the Fairly Brothers come back
and say, well, okay, we want this guy named Owen Wilson.
They're like, wait a minute, now, we really don't know
this guy. Yeah, so let's go back to Ben Stiller, right,
And so that's how they landed on Bill Still.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think they would have been happy had
they gotten Owen Wilson. And interestingly, Owen Wilson and Ben
Stiller have done a few things together.
Speaker 2: Since then, Yeah, they have.
Speaker 1: But they were in love with the movie Bottle Rocket,
which was Owen Luke Wilson's first movie. It's great movie,
and in watching the movie they saw something where you're
starting in one direction, then all of a sudden, there
is a sharp turn and you're going in an entirely
different direction. And that inspired them in their script writing,
and that, I'm sure is why they proposed Owen Wilson
is an alternative. When they do a script, they say,
we don't want to know what happens at the end,
because if we know what happens at the end, somehow
it's going to come through to everybody else. And so
we leave the end open and decide what it's going
to be when we get there.
Speaker 2: So they said, let's go back to Ben still. Okay,
they were in love with Cameron Diaz.
Speaker 1: Duh, I mean, who who's not? Right?
Speaker 2: Then they had to cast the role of Pat Healy.
So they thought Bill Murray perfect. He had just done
King Ben right, and they thought, let's get Bill Murray
in here. But they thought he was too old, right,
and he probably was, yeah he was. So they talked
about Hanka's area. They talked about QB. Goodding Junior and
Vince baughn. But here's the kicker. Cameron Diaz. She's on board.
Speaker 1: You know her Her boyfriend is this guy from the eighties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Matt Dylan.
Speaker 1: Matt Dylan.
Speaker 2: People don't realize this. Karon Diaz and Matt Dillon had
dated for like three years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then they broke up.
Speaker 2: They broke up right after this movie. So I just
find that interesting. They were a couple and they were
really in love. And I read some stuff and he
said basically he lived in New York, she lived in
la It ran its course and it was dead.
Speaker 1: Huh. So just real quick, I got to say this
since we're on Matt Dylan. Yes, the interest scene of
Pat Healy where he stands up and his pants are
and that was Matt Dylan's idea, as was the mustache.
And I think the mustache is perfect. If Matt Dylan
plays this part without the mustache, he's too appealing.
Speaker 2: He's still good looking, yes.
Speaker 1: But you give him that Pencilton porn stash and now
he's creepy.
Speaker 2: So Chris Farley was actually considered for the part of Warren. Yes,
that's Cameron Diaz's brother. Yeah, he's middlely challenged, and he's
the guy who runs around my gosh, and and in
time he touched his ears, he goes crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Warren is actually a contribution by the Fairly Brothers
to the to that original script. He wasn't in the
original Ed Decker John Strass script. Warren is actually based
on a real person that the Fairly Brothers grew up with,
whose name was Warren. Okay, and he makes an appearance
in the movie. You remember in the movie when Cameron Diaz,
when Mary is handing out lunches to all of the
special needs works, the guy who leans in and gets
and steals a kiss from her, that's the real Warren.
Speaker 2: All right, that's cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the other things I want to talk about,
casting wise, Markey Post.
Speaker 1: Okay, So Markey Post is a perfect cast for that
part because she's as much a Mary as Mary. I mean,
she's totally you.
Speaker 2: Could major babe from the eighties.
Speaker 1: Very much, and and nailed the part with the back
teene and all of it, and trying to ask about
whether it was the beans or the Franks with the hand. Yeah. Yeah, Anyway,
there are a couple other interesting casting things that happened,
okay with this movie, and they relate back to dumb
and Dumber. Okay, first, let me say in the movies,
all of the extras are friends of the Fairly Brothers.
Speaker 2: I love this.
Speaker 1: I like, I mean, like you just you see people
in their movies that are extras, and I guarantee they
either grew up with them, or they're related to somebody
that grew up with them, or who's involved in the
movie or their crew or something like that. Just as
an example, you'll remember the guy in the jail cell
as they're closing the door, the guy with long hair
and the mustache, the old man. It's Cameron Diaz his dad.
Speaker 2: That's her real dad.
Speaker 1: Yes, like their parents are in the movie. They've got
all kinds of friends from high school and stuff in
their movies.
Speaker 2: But I thought that was an exaggeration, Like I thought.
I read that, and I thought, okay, you know, they've
got some friends scattered out when they're at the bar.
I watched the commentary and the Fairly Brothers are like, well,
that's Jim Smith, and that's Betty Lou Johnson, and then
they named everybody in the background.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, they're literally throughout the commentary, they're like, oh,
that's that guy that grouped down the street from us. Yes,
and so they also tend to stick with the same actors,
and so just I'll give you three examples and I'll
hopefully end with the best. So Dom's wife his wife,
which I mean, my gosh, we're talking about dream wife
number one. Right, I'm gonna make some cookies, butterscotch chocolate chip.
And then when the news article comes on, I'm not
going to describe what happens. But anyway, so that she
she was actually the wife of one of their producers.
She was in the She was in Dumb and Dumber
as one of the waitresses.
Speaker 2: Yes, not Flow, the other one.
Speaker 1: Right, excuse me, Flow. Detective Stabler was the bartender in
Dumb and Dummer. Yes, and here's this one. See if
you know this mag.
Speaker 2: That's missus Noogie Berger from Dumb and Dummer newborn new
born born, Okay, missus Niggieberger.
Speaker 1: Yes. So do you know who else? She was in
one of the Fairly Brothers movies. No, she was the
land lady in Kingpin.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: When we were talking on the phone about Kingpin, I asked,
you did anybody steal that movie, you said, Bill Murray,
I think a lot of people might say the Landlady
stole that. Yes, So the land Lady is the dog
lady in Dumb and Dummer. She is the land lady
in Kingpin, and she is Magda, the constantly scanning the
airwaves for indecent folks, roommate of Cameron Diaz.
Speaker 2: The one who, if you'll remember, was there spying on
Cameron Diaz. He turns us back to get a bigger
pair of binoculars as Karendiaz is changing clothes and accidentally
sees Magda with her top off, ands like yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that lady actually is it pretty nice?
Speaker 2: She's a great that's all fake.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's in her mid forties at the time they're
filming all this stuff, so not the hag that they
presented her to be.
Speaker 2: Quickly, they wanted to cast a professional athlete, as Karon
die is his former boyfriend.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: They mentioned Brett several times in the movie Brett and
they even call him the pac Man at one.
Speaker 1: Point, right, Green Bay Packers.
Speaker 2: Who they really wanted was Steve Young. Okay, he was
the quarterback of the forty nine ers, right, he's a
pretty religious guy. He's a practicing Mormon, and when he
read the script he's like, guys, I can't do this right.
Funny but no, So then they thought let's do Drew Bledsoe.
He was the quarterback I think at the Patriots at
the time. For whatever reason, didn't work out with him,
and so they got Brett farv FIV, which that was
Ben Stieler. Yes, Ben Stiller is a sports fan. He
knew the proper pronunciation of Brett Farre's name. Yes, but
he's like, wouldn't be funny if I mispronounced his name?
Speaker 1: Who had done that right?
Speaker 2: It's a weird spelling, a weird spelling. So that does it?
With casting for something about Mary?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: One of the things I forgot to mention and wanted
to talk about during Dumb and Dummer. Kind of the
plot of the movie is revolving around the kidnapping of
Mary's husband. His name is Bobby. Yeah, okay, and they
had some scenes written with him. There's a funny deleted
scene where he's in a trunk and they throw it
down the stairs and they poke in with a broom
and they actually he's actually escaping. You see the trunk
like scooting away and they have to go grab him anyway.
That guy was played by another actor. They wanted Mel
Gibson to be in that part. Okay, at the time,
you think about Mel Gibbson in nineteen ninety four of Me,
he's like America's hunk.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: They wanted her husband to be such an unattainably good
looking guy to minimize the Lloyd's chances even more.
Speaker 1: Right, So you're saying there's a chance, yeah, just real
quick on that. Yes, as I did my own segue there.
It's interesting both of these movies. There are lines and
scenes that are absolutely hysterical, and there are lines and
scenes that are not hysterical, but they're the most memorable,
Like they stand the test of time. Like I didn't
laugh at that line, but everybody said, yes, still say it,
they still say. So you're saying, there's a chance that
it's those lines weren't laugh out loud lines, but they
are lines that stand the test of time. And so
I got to say that's some that's some good writing.
The Fairly Brothers, it's very easy to throw them in this.
You know, they're just crew disgusting humor guys, and that's
how they've made their millions. But the truth is their
movies would not have been what they were if there
wasn't a heart.
Speaker 2: Absolutely part of these movies, huge, huge part.
Speaker 1: So growing up, their favorite their favorite TV show was
The Andy Griffith Show, and what they loved about it
was number one, it was funny, it's always you're always laughing.
But number two, there was always heart. You loved the
characters that were involved. And so that's what they try
to do for each of their movies. And so, just
as an example, if you think about Dumb and Dumber, right,
You've got one scene that you're just going once you
rewatch it, you're like, why am I watching this? What's
going on? Here? Is the scene where Lloyd is trying
to convince Harry to go across country with him, and
Harry's out and then Jim Carrey gives this very dramatic
he's got the dramatic music playing and he's just, you know,
I'm just tired of being alone, you know, And it's
this really kind of moving moment. They hug and Harry
is like it's okay, it's okay, and then he's like, okay, that's.
Speaker 2: Enough and he's like boohooing into his shoulder. Yeah, yes,
but you're right, that's he's very touching. He says, you know,
I'm sick and tired of eking my way through life.
I'm sick and tired of being and nobody, but most
of all, I'm sick and tired of having nobody.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it like pulls at the heartstrings, you know it does.
Speaker 1: And so when the studio saw that, they're like, what
the crap is this scene doing in here? Why do
you have this? This is absurd? We take this out.
And the Fairly brother said, listen, in two minutes, this
guy is going to be selling a dead, headless bird
to a blind, crippled boy. You have to like him
in order to not hate him in two minutes, right,
And so that's why the scene's in there. You think
about that first hysterical eighteen minutes of there's something about
Mary everything he is heavily you fall in love with
Ben Stiller during that time period.
Speaker 2: He brought Warren of Baseball right, like he's a good
hearted guy. He had already protected him on the schoolyard,
not even knowing who he was, right.
Speaker 1: And just that moment when you've got this obviously geeky guy.
I mean, it's a little weird that you've got thirty
something year old actors playing high school students. But if
you start off your movie with a guy playing a
guitar and another guy playing a drum in the top
of a tree, you're willing to suspend your belief quite
a bit, right. And so you see Ben Stiller in
this ridiculous way, with these ridiculous braces on, and you're like,
I'm okay with that. Let's keep on going, right, And
then he defends Warren without knowing that it's Mary's brother.
They walk home, You're already in love with her because
she's talking about the forty nine ers. And then at
that moment where she asked him to the prom, and
you're like, okay, this goddess just asks this toad. You
fall in love with him, right. You're rooting for the
guy who has no hope. And then they followed the
best moment in his life with the worst moment in
his life and he messes it.
Speaker 2: All on we got a bleeder?
Speaker 1: How are you not going to root for that guy
throughout the whole moment.
Speaker 2: I totally agree with you, and I think that's why
Dumb and Dumber two was not as good. I thought
the characters were. Even though there's still Lloyd and Harry
and it's still Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey, they were
a bit more mean and it was less hard and
more over the line, Humer, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't see it anyway. Did you see Dumb
and Dumber Earth?
Speaker 2: Yes, there's one funny scene in the prequel one, and
it's how Harry Lloyd meet. Yeah, and they're both running
and they come around the corner at the same time
and they run into each other and Harry knocks out
Lloyd's chips his tooth and it's in his forehead.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's hysterical.
Speaker 2: So that's how he gets his chip tooth. Yeah, Which
that part was the only funny part in that movie.
But let's talk about that for a second.
Speaker 1: Jim Carrey actually took a chisel and knocked out part
of his No, I'm kidding, he didn't really do that.
He already had lost the tooth.
Speaker 2: He had already chipped his tooth.
Speaker 1: When he was a young man and had a some
sort of cap on there. And so for the movie,
he had them remove the cap in order to give
him the kind of snaggle tooth.
Speaker 2: Look. I heard that he removed it himself with a
beer cap.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's a better story.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that is Jim Carrey's actual chip tooth. And
the bowl haircut was Jim Carrey's idea.
Speaker 1: M hm.
Speaker 2: He said, let's give me the dumbest cut you can.
So they gave him the bowl cut. And then for
Jeff Daniels, they said, for the next while, don't cut
your hair, don't wash your hair, yeah, don't comb your hair.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's perfect. So they're set to direct
Dumb and Dumber, Yes, the first movie they've ever directed.
And so at some point Peter Fairley, two weeks two
weeks before the movie's supposed to start filming, Peter Fairley
goes to this dinner and there's a British movie director
there sitting at the table with him. And if you're
not a director, you probably don't know what coverage is.
But that just means you do a whole bunch of
different cameras so that you know that you've got a
lot to work with in the editing room, right right,
And so he's talking to this British director and he's like,
so do you have you know I'm about to direct
my first movie. Do you have any advice for me?
And the director says, make sure you have plenty of
coverage and Peter fairly is like, what's coverage? And the
British director stands up and he calls his wife. He's like,
come over here, come over here.
Speaker 3: He's directing a film in twos and he doesn't know
what covery that.
Speaker 1: He's totally freaked out. The day before they're supposed to
start filming, he won't get out of bed. Like Bobby
and other people are there. They're like, we got to
just go do He's like, no, we don't know what.
When we've gotten in over our heads, I don't.
Speaker 2: Know what to do.
Speaker 1: But they got him out of bed.
Speaker 2: His older brother finally got him out of bed by saying,
you are one pathetic los no offense, no, no, you're taken.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we have to stop now. Unfortunately we're loving
what we're doing. But come back next week we'll have
part two of Dumb and Dumber Versus. There's something about
man moving or lose it.
Speaker 2: Sister