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