Filmmakers Peter and Bobby Farrelly

DATE December 16, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Bobby and Peter Farrelly discuss their movies
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gress--Terry Gross. I should know my name.

My guests are the Farrelly brothers, Peter and Bobby, the duo that made the
comedies "Dumb & Dumber," "Kingpin," "There's Something About Mary" and
"Shallow Hal." Their new film, "Stuck On You," stars Matt Damon and Greg
Kinnear as Bob and Walt Tenor, conjoined twins attached at the hip. The twins
live in a small New England town where they own a diner. Their teamwork has
made them the fastest and most popular short-order cooks imaginable. When
Walt, Greg Kinnear's character, decides he wants to go to Hollywood and become
an actor, his brother obliges. Here's the twins having a cup of coffee with
an over-the-hill small-time agent looking for a quick buck who's offered to
represent Walt. The agent is played by Seymour Cassel.

(Soundbite of "Stuck On You")

Mr. SEYMOUR CASSEL: (As Morty O'Reilly) I want to let you boys know right up
front that Morty O'Reilly only represents actors who are truly committed to
their craft.

Mr. GREG KINNEAR: (As Walt) That's me, Mr. O'Reilly. I am fully committed.

Mr. CASSEL: (As Morty O'Reilly) Committed enough to pay my $200 up-front
service fee, which, of course, is used to defray the costs of registration
fees, entitlement, paperwork and what have you?

Mr. MATT DAMON: (As Bob) What are you doing?

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Walt) I'm showing him how committed I am.

Mr. DAMON: (As Bob) Mm-hmm. You're showing him how stupid you are. Here.
We'll give you $100 'cause you're only representing one of us.

Mr. CASSEL: (As Morty O'Reilly) Well, I'm going to have to level with you.
Siamese twins ain't the easiest sell I've ever had.

Mr. DAMON: (As Bob) We're not Siamese. We're American.

GROSS: Peter and Bobby Farrelly, welcome to FRESH AIR.

Mr. PETER FARRELLY (Director): Thank you very much, Terry.

Mr. BOBBY FARRELLY (Director): Thank you. Great to be here.

GROSS: Now how did you think of the idea of a comedy about conjoined twins in
the first place?

Mr. B. FARRELLY: This is Bobby speaking, and it was based on a documentary we
saw about these two gals--it was back in the 1940s, and I'm sorry, their names
skip me right now, but they were conjoined twins. And one of the gals wanted
to go out to Hollywood and become an actress, and the other one had no desire
to act but she thought, `Yeah, you know, I don't want to hold you back. I'll
go with you. Sure.' And the girl actually did go out and got in a few,
like--she became sort of a B movie star, and as we were watching this
documentary, we thought, `This is a fascinating story and, you know, I think
there's a good screenplay around it somewhere.'

GROSS: Were you concerned that people would take it the wrong way and that
they would think that you were mocking conjoined twins?

Mr. P. FARRELLY: Not really. This is Peter speaking, by the way. You know,
we go into it with our hearts open and we love the characters and we're not
afraid to show them--you know, put the full spotlight on them, show, you know,
their strengths and their weaknesses, but we always love these characters.
And we knew that these people were going to be our heroes and we were going to
treat them right. And truthfully, it never concerns us. You know, sometimes
you worry what the critics will think, but truthfully, over the years, despite
all the talk, we have received zero letters from anybody who's been offended
by any of our movies, despite what you might read.

GROSS: Now for the twins in your movie, who are played by Greg Kinnear and
Matt Damon, they're really happy to be attached to each, they love each other,
they have a great time together and they're really cooperative. One is always
making a sacrifice for the other so that the other could do what they want to
do, whether it's making a movie or making love. And I'm wondering, what are
some of the sacrifices you think you've made for each other so that the other
could do what they wanted to do?

Mr. P. FARRELLY: Wow. Oh, boy.

Mr. B. FARRELLY: I'll tell you the story that Pete did for me just growing
up, and is--my dad came home one time--we were about 11 or 12 years old--and
somehow or another, he had gotten a couple of tickets to the World Series game
and it was in Pittsburgh, but he only had two tickets. It was one for him and
then one for one of us. And he went to Pete and said, `Look, you're the
oldest. You know, I'm going to take you to the game,' and Pete said, `Nah,
nah, nah, nah, don't take me. You know, take Bobby.' And then he said, `Oh,
really? You sure?' He said, `Yeah, yeah, yeah. He'd love it.' And so my
father came to me and said, `You know, I've got a ticket to the game, the
World Series, and I've only got one. You want to go?' And I'm like, `Sure.'
You know, it didn't occur to me, `No, take Pete,' but I was young and dumb.
But then later, I found out what Peter had done, thinking of, you know, his
brother before himself, and I've been very grateful ever since. And one day
I'll pay you back, Pete.

Mr. P. FARRELLY: Well, you know, it sounds a lot better with a little time,
but at the time, you know, looking back, I think at the time, I just didn't
really want to spend that much time with my father, taking this trip over to
Pittsburgh.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: Well, let's hope he's not listening now.

Mr. P. FARRELLY: No, actually, I'm kidding. Bob was a National League fan
and, you know, my father knew some people who knew people with the Pirates and
I just thought he'd like it more.

But by the way, you know, we had a couple of conjoined twins sort of as
consultants on this movie, Lori and Dorie Schappel, and we really learned a
lot about--you know, we went in under the impression that these people, they
must do the same things--same hobbies, same jobs--and it was far from that.
In fact, you know, one of the Schappel sisters is a country-western singer and
the other one worked in a hospital when we were dealing with them, and they
had completely different hobbies. And it really was about, you know, giving
of each other's time in a very, like, thoughtful but sort of innate way. It
was just such a natural thing for them.

GROSS: Do you feel that as time goes on, you have less, quote, "gross-out
humor" in your movies and just more, like, funny lines and sight gags and a
lot of heart, but that there's less kind of gross stuff?

Mr. P. FARRELLY: Well, you know, the truth is, you know, when we write a
movie--this is Pete again--you know, we don't sit down and think, you know,
`Jeez, you know, we had the hair gel in "Mary" and what could we come up
here?' The first thing we do is we try to create a character or characters
that, you know, are so likeable that we can hang a lot of our gags on, and
then our gags are basically trying to give you the unexpected.

You know, when we did "Dumb & Dumber" and Jeff Daniels walks into the bathroom
and sits down, well, you know, up to that point in time, everybody at
that--you know, we'd shut the bathroom door and you'd cut to something else,
and we thought, `Well, how funny would it be just to let it play?' And the
reason that was funny then and I don't think it would be funny now is because
of the unexpectedness of it. People could not believe we were actually
letting the camera roll while he's on the toilet. Now if you did that today,
because there's been a lot of this type of thing, it wouldn't be as
interesting.

GROSS: I'm glad you mentioned the now-famous toilet scene from "Dumb &
Dumber." One of the things that's just really hysterical about this scene is
that, you know, he's on the toilet, the camera's watching him. He's not only
doing his business, he's doing a lot of business, and then he finds out from a
knock on the door that the toilet's broken and it won't flush. And so he's
really stuck. This is--you know, he's not at home. And who hasn't either had
that nightmare or had that happen to them, and suddenly it's no longer just,
`Oh, isn't that gross?' it's like, `Wow, this is like a nightmare come true'?

Mr. P. FARRELLY: You know, it's really interesting to us how--you know, our
country is really very uptight. And, you know, I guess it goes back to the
Puritans and all that stuff, but very uptight about anything sexual or any
bodily functions or, you know, even things like people with disabilities.
They don't want to deal with that kind of stuff, and they find it--you know,
this is the kind of stuff that they call gross-out humor, whereas they're very
accepting. Our country has a strong stomach for violence. Like, for
instance, like, in a Coen brothers movie--and by the way, the Coens are the
best. We think they're tremendous, but in their kind of movies, you know,
"Fargo," for instance, when they turn a guy upside down and put him in a wood
chipper, that is somehow viewed as arty and, to us, that's gross. But, you
know--and bodily functions are just--you know, it's something everybody deals
with. People don't deal with people being chopped up in a wood chipper, yet
it seems to be accepted quite readily by the American public.

GROSS: Well, you're great at doing the things and showing the things that
you're not supposed to let anybody else see, that you're only supposed to do
behind closed doors, whether it's going to the bathroom or masturbating, and
the idea of how embarrassing it would be if you were seen doing that or the
aftereffects of that were seen is something that you really work with, and I
wonder if you guys embarrass easily.

Mr. P. FARRELLY: Not so much now probably.

Mr. B. FARRELLY: I don't think we embarrass too easily, but, you know, these
stories, like Jeff Daniels on the toilet and all, are things that have
happened to us. They've happened to us, or they've happened to a good friend
of ours, and so, you know, we try to base all of these sort of embarrassments
that happened from something that, you know, we know to be true. You know, I
remember reading an article about that where Clint Eastwood was talking about
"Dumb & Dumber," and he said he had that exact same bathroom experience happen
to him one time and he was just on the floor laughing watching it. And it
just--you know, if it's based in truth, it's funny.

Mr. P. FARRELLY: Yeah, and I think that's why "Something About Mary" works so
well. Like, you know, people laugh because they all recognize--they're like,
`Oh, I remember when I had the semen on my ear.' So it's sort of a universal
thing.

GROSS: Did that gag actually come from real life?

Mr. P. FARRELLY: No, that wasn't...

GROSS: That didn't, in fact--right.

Mr. B. FARRELLY: Yeah, we make some of them up.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. P. FARRELLY: You know, the truth of the matter is that's one of our--you
know, people always ask us, say, `Hey, who wrote that joke? Who wrote this
joke?' Well, you know, it kind of--we never quite remember because it's
usually not one person. It's sort of, like, somebody has an idea and someone
pushes it further, and that's, like, a great example of how we write.

You know, I had actually--this is Pete--thought at some point, `Well, what
would happen if you were masturbating and you lost the product, you know, and
you couldn't find it?' but I thought, `Well, you can't really do that.' But I
ran it by Bob. I said, `Is this doable in a movie, you know, if somebody
lost'--he said, `Yeah, you could, but then what happens?' I said, `Jeez, I
don't know.' He said, `Well, think about it. That's what's interesting:
Where is it?' And he said, `Well, I mean, like, what if it was on the guy's
ear and he doesn't know it?' And now we're laughing and thinking, `That's
funny. It's on his ear. Well, what could be a good situation now it's on his
ear?' And we said, `Well, what if he's going to have a date or something?'
you know? And it goes to the next thing, and then all of a sudden, she's
there, she sees it, what would she think it is? And then, you know, someone
says, `Well, what if she thought it was--I don't know. You could say it's
hair gel.' And then, you know, literally, like, 20 minutes later, somebody
says, `Well, if she thought it was hair gel, she might put it in her hair,'
and we're laughing. And then another hour later, somebody would say, `Well,
wait a second. Wouldn't it harden?' and then all of a sudden, you know,
that's a day's work for us.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. B. FARRELLY: That was a good day, too.

GROSS: Now since you're often working in territory that people find really
embarrassing, the kind of sexual and body function territory, have you learned
ways not to do the gags, ways where it's either going to be too gross or too
embarrassing or not funny enough and it won't work?

Mr. B. FARRELLY: Well, I'll give you an example of one that we did, and it's
not necessarily a bodily function gag, but it was one of the first days we
were ever shooting on "Dumb & Dumber" and we were on the mountain up in the
snow. And we came up with the idea of shooting this little scene where Lauren
Holly picks up a little snow and gently throws it at Jeff Daniels and he,
being dumb and dumber, you know, doesn't know how to play, and so he rolls up
a big snowball and just fires it off her face, you know? And then when we
told him to do that, I remember he was like, `What? What? You know, why
would I do that?' I said, `Well, because you're dumb,' and, `All right. I'll
do it,' but we weren't sure if it would work or not.

Well, when we showed it to an audience, they just howled laughing that he
would hit Lauren in the face with a snowball. Well, we had made a mistake.
When she came up with the snow in her face, we had put a little drop of blood
under her nose, and the audience went from just howling laughter to when they
saw the blood they just stopped. There was no more laughter, and the reason
why, of course, is because she's been hurt, and we were thinking to ourselves,
`Man, we made a mistake putting that in.' So we actually had to go back and
digitally remove the blood spot from under her nose, and once we did, the
audience just kept laughing and laughing and laughing, and it was just someone
getting hit by a snowball, no one's hurt.

So it's, like, occasionally you do make a mistake by going too far and that
was a rule we learned, is that if someone gets hurt, all of a sudden, it's not
funny. If someone just gets embarrassed, it can remain very funny.

GROSS: My guests are the Farrelly brothers. Here's a scene from "Dumb &
Dumber." Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels are on the road. They've just picked up
a hitchhiker, not realizing that he's actually a thug who's after a suitcase
of money that they inadvertently picked up. The thug is sitting in between
the ever oblivious Carrey and Daniels, who are kidding around.

(Soundbite from "Dumb & Dumber")

Mr. JEFF DANIELS: (As Harry Dunne) You double stamped it, no erasies.

Mr. JIM CARREY: (As Lloyd Christmas) Cannot. Triple stamped it, no erasies.
No. No.

Mr. DANIELS: (As Harry Dunne) You can't double stamp a double stamp.

Mr. CARREY: (As Lloyd Christmas) La, la, la, la.

Mr. DANIELS: (As Harry Dunne) You can't double stamp a double stamp, Lloyd.

Mr. CARREY: (As Lloyd Christmas) La, la, la,

Mr. DANIELS: (As Harry Dunne) You can't double stamp a double stamp.

Mr. CARREY: (As Lloyd Christmas) La, la, la.

Mr. DANIELS: (As Harry Dunne) Lloyd! Lloyd! You can't...

Mr. MIKE STARR: (As Joe Mentaliano) Guys, enough!

Mr. CARREY: (As Lloyd Christmas) Hey, you want to hear the most annoying
sound in the world? (Makes noise)

Mr. STARR: (As Joe Mentaliano) Guys! Guys! Guys! Fellows, you think we
could listen to the radio or something?

Mr. CARREY: (As Lloyd Christmas) Radio? Who needs the radio? Ready, Harry?
Mock...

Mr. DANIELS: (As Harry Dunne) Yeah.

Mr. CARREY: (As Lloyd Christmas) ...ing...

Mr. DANIELS: (As Harry Dunne) Yeah.

Mr. CARREY: (As Lloyd Christmas) ...bird...

Mr. DANIELS: (As Harry Dunne) Yeah.

Mr. CARREY: (As Lloyd Christmas) Yeah.

Mr. DANIELS: (As Harry Dunne) Yeah.

Mr. CARREY (As Lloyd Christmas) and Mr. DANIELS (As Harry Dunne): (Singing)
Mockingbird...

Mr. CARREY: (As Lloyd Christmas; singing) ...don't...

Mr. CARREY (As Lloyd Christmas) and Mr. DANIELS (As Harry Dunne): (Singing)
everybody...

Mr. CARREY: (As Lloyd Christmas; singing) ...have you heard...

Mr. DANIELS: (As Harry Dunne; singing) ...have you heard...

Mr. CARREY: (As Lloyd Christmas; singing) ...she's going to buy me...

Mr. DANIELS: (As Harry Dunne; singing) ...she's going to buy me...

Mr. CARREY: (As Lloyd Christmas; singing) ...a mockingbird...

Mr. DANIELS: (As Harry Dunne; singing) ...a mockingbird...

GROSS: We'll talk more with Peter and Bobby Farrelly after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guests are Peter and Bobby Farrelly. They made "Dumb & Dumber,"
"There's Something About Mary," "Shallow Hal" and the new film "Stuck On You."

If you're just joining us, my guests are the Farrelly brothers and their new
comedy, "Stuck On You," stars Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear.

Your father--you know, we're talking about all the body humor in your movies.
Your father is a doctor. You know, doctors have to have a very
straightforward attitude about the body. So what kind of attitude about, you
know, bodily functions were you brought up with in your house?

Mr. P. FARRELLY: Well, you know, we weren't walking around, you know, ripping
them, I will say. You know, basically, you know, bodily functions were, you
know, kept in check pretty well. You know, our actual, you know, verbal
humor, you know, we were given a lot more leeway.

Mr. B. FARRELLY: I remember one time my father told me a story where he had a
guy come in and he was giving him a physical checkup and the guy was saying he
had a little bit of a burn going on or something down in his privates. And he
said, `Well, OK. We're going to need you to take a sample for us.' And he
sends the guy in the other room to get a urine sample, you know, in a little
jar, and the guy's in there, like, 10 or 15 minutes and comes back and he has
a sperm sample in there and he handed it to the nurse. And they got a kick
out of that one.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. P. FARRELLY: Yeah.

Mr. B. FARRELLY: He didn't want to embarrass the guy. He said, `OK. Great.'
He threw it in the trash. `All right. Can you give me a urine sample now?
That'd be great.'

GROSS: In a lot of your movies, the main character has some kind of, like,
disability or shortcoming, whether it's that he's incredibly stupid or he's a
bowler who has, like, a rubber prosthetic hand or they're conjoined twins as
in "Stuck On You." Did you go through your early years thinking that you had
some kind of real handicap?

Mr. P. FARRELLY: No. You know, we had a very, very nice upbringing, you
know? I would say the only way--you know, at times, we felt like outcasts
because we were sent away to many schools. We weren't good students, but
other than that, we had the same group of friends in our town and, you know,
we fit in. You know, we weren't outcasts at all, but, you know, we're just
drawn to people with disabilities because, you know, it's--well, for one
thing, we know a lot. You know, we've been involved in the Best Buddies
program for a long time, which is a mentoring program for people with mental
retardation, you know, so we've hung around a lot of people with that
disability. And also a friend of ours named Danny Murphy broke his neck when
we were kids and he's a quadriplegic and, you know, through him, you know,
we've met a lot of other people with disabilities. So I think we're just
comfortable around that type of person and we like them and feel--you know, we
want to write about them.

GROSS: Were you shy around girls when you were, say, in high school? Because
most of your male characters have real problems with women because they think
of themselves as too ugly or too stupid or they just don't get it.

Mr. B. FARRELLY: Yeah, we were not particularly good with women, nor are we
now, but I think what we try to accomplish in the movie with the guys is that
they shoot out of their league. You know, like in "Something About Mary," she
was--he just--you know, I think that Ben Stiller's character just, you know,
fell for Mary and I think that there was a part of him we just thought, `She's
the best woman in the world and I don't know that I'm the best guy in the
world, but I love her.' You know, I go, `Jeez, but she--yeah, I think deep
down he thinks that she's out of his league,' which she is.

Mr. P. FARRELLY: But, you know, the reason I think that movie crossed over in
women as well as guys liked it is because of the one scene in it where, you
know, he hires a private eye, the private eye finds her, falls in love with
her, comes back and reports that she's put on a lot of weight and she's on
welfare, she's been married a bunch of times, has a lot of kids out of
wedlock and so on and so forth. And he lies in bed that night and thinks
about it and he comes back the next day and says, `I've still got to find
her.' He says, `Why?' He says, `Well, I can't just turn it off like that. I
still feel something.' And I think that's the moment in the movie where women
say, `OK. He deserves her,' because, you know, obviously it's not hard to
fall in love with Cameron Diaz.

GROSS: Right. Right. Let me ask you about "Shallow Hal," and this is a
movie in which Jack Black plays somebody who has--I mean, you know, he's a
young man who isn't very good at getting girlfriends and, of course, the girls
he's attracted to are really beautiful and, you know, quote, "out of his
league."

Mr. B. FARRELLY: Right.

GROSS: He's kind of put under this hypnotic spell, so he sees the beauty
underneath the surface. So no matter how somebody looks physically, he sees
who they really are. So even if they're, like, obese, if they're beautiful
inside, he will see them as a physically beautiful person and that's what
happens with Gwyneth Paltrow. She's actually quite fat, but because she's,
you know, a beautiful person, he sees her as how Gwyneth Paltrow really looks.
How did you come up with the concept for that film?

Mr. B. FARRELLY: It was actually a concept that a friend of ours pitched to
us, Sean Moynihan, and what's interesting about it is that Sean has an eye
disease called macular degeneration, where he is legally blind. And so he,
you know, lives his life differently than everyone because--I mean, if he's
with a girl, if somebody sets him up, he'd be, like, coming over, `How's she
look?' He actually has a hard time almost forming his opinion about how she
looks physically because he can just barely see her. So he's a guy who needs
to look, you know, more inside someone, which I'm sure all blind people do,
and he came up with this idea, `Well, what if a guy was hypnotized where he
just saw the inside of somebody, just recognized the inner beauty, you know,
to him?' and that's what he saw. So we thought, `That's a novel idea. Real
interesting.' So, collectively, we wrote the script.

Mr. P. FARRELLY: You know, the press kind of jumped on this. There was, you
know, sort of--a couple people yapping about it, saying that, you know, it was
making fun of overweight people and it was the furthest from the truth. In
fact, you know, that movie was really celebrating inner beauty and saying
that, you know, it doesn't matter how you are on the outside. You know, it's
all about what's inside. And it was sort of disheartening to us to have to
answer so many questions about that, 'cause we felt that the movie spoke for
itself, but for some reason it seemed like there was just a--you know, there
were a couple of people who had an agenda at the time and I think they
confused some people. And I think people stayed away from it, some people,
because they thought we were making fun of heavy people, which we weren't.

GROSS: The Farrelly brothers will be back in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

Unidentified Singer: His friends would say stop whining, they've had enough
of that. His friends would say stop pining, there's other girls to look at.

GROSS: Coming up, we continue our conversation with filmmakers Peter and
Bobby Farrelly, and Ken Tucker reviews two stripped-down CDs, Randy Newman's
album of solo recordings and The Beatles' "Let It Be...Naked."

(Soundbite of music)

Unidentified Singer: Mary. There's just something about Mary. Well, his
friends say, `Look, life's no fairy tale,' that he should have some fun. He's
suffered long enough. Well, they may know about domestic and imported ale,
but they don't know a thing about love. Well, his friends would say he's
dreaming and living in the past, but they've never fallen in love, so his
friends need not be asked. His friends would say, `Be reasonable.' His
friends would say, `Let go,' but there's something about Mary that they don't
know. Mary. There's just something about...

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Peter and Bobby
Farrelly. Their new film, "Stuck On You," stars Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear
as conjoined twins.

Here's a scene from their film "There's Something About Mary." It's a
flashback to Ben Stiller's prom night. He's at his date Mary's house in her
bathroom. His privates are caught in the zipper of his fly, and everyone is
coming to the rescue: Mary's parents, a policeman and a fireman. Here's the
fireman calling for backup.

(Soundbite of "There's Something About Mary")

Mr. LENNY CLARKE: (As Lenny the Fireman) (Laughs) Mike, Eddie, get down here
quick. Bring everybody. Bring a camera. You're not going to believe this.
We got a kid down here--what's your name?

Mr. BEN STILLER: (As Ted Stroehmann) Oh, Ted.

Unidentified Actor #1: Look, there's only one thing to do here.

Mr. STILLER: (As Ted Stroehmann) What--you know what? I got an idea. I got
an idea. Look, look, I can just--we don't have to do anything 'cause, look,
I can just wear this over the front. Look, I can go to the prom. We'll deal
with it later.

Unidentified Actor #2: Son, relax.

Mr. STILLER: (As Ted Stroehmann) I...

Unidentified Actor #2: You already laid the tracks. That's the hard part.
Now we're just going to back it up.

Unidentified Actress: Teddy, be brave.

Unidentified Actor #3: It's just like pulling off a Band-Aid. A-one and
a-two and a...

Unidentified Actor #4: We got a bleeder!

(Soundbite of siren)

Unidentified Actor #5: Keep the pressure on! Keep it on!

Unidentified Actor #6: Everybody get out of the way!

GROSS: What do you think you get out of working as a team most of the time
that you wouldn't be able to do if you were working individually?

Mr. P. FARRELLY: That's a really good question because, in fact, that's--you
know, there are a lot of brother teams out there today: the Coens, Farrellys,
Wachowskis, Hugheses, you know, Weitzes and Zuckers, so on and so forth. And
I think if you look at each brother team, they're pretty distinctive. They
all have a very distinctive point of view. And what you're able to do when
you have a brother is you're able to defend that--you know, I don't
want--`vision' sounds a little artsier than it is, really, but you're able to
defend your point of view.

You know, if you're one person and you go in and you try to do a "Something
About Mary," the studio's going to be like, `Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you
doing here? This is a little much,' you know. And you could be beaten down
where you're saying OK and you're compromising. But when there's two of you,
if I start getting weak--this is Pete speaking--Bob will say, `Nah-ah. Ah-ah.
Come on. Don't back down now,' you know, and vice versa. If I see him
weakening, I might--`No, no, Bob. This is what we're going to do.' We lift
each other up, and we are able to see that through and basically, you know,
fight the fights better.

GROSS: You didn't intend to become filmmakers when you were in college or
even when you got out of college. I think you were both at businesses, family
businesses, beforehand. And which of you went to Hollywood first?

Mr. P. FARRELLY: Well, I went about a minute before Bob. I had
actually--Bob had a round beach towel company at the time called Sun Spot, and
he was driving that into the ground. And at the same time I was learning how
to write. You know, I'd gone back to grad school for creative writing,
writing short stories and stuff. And on a whim, a friend of mine, Bennett
Yellin and myself, we got a book, you know, "Screenplay" by Syd Field, and,
you know, it basically explained the format of the screenplay, and we whipped
one off, and, lo and behold, it sold. So I was out there and then Bob
followed, and then, you know, Bob started editing all our screenplays. And
then, you know, a couple years later, in '87, Bob jumped on board, and there's
been no looking back.

GROSS: Bobby, how come a beach towel company--that's the first business that
you started. I mean, why did you decide beach towels, of all things?

Mr. B. FARRELLY: Well, when I came out of school--you know, I studied geology
in school, and when I came out, I thought, `What did I just do?' I've got a
degree in geology, which is of interest to me, but there were no jobs in
geology or anything. So I really didn't know what to do with myself. And I
come out and I became a stockbroker and not a very good one and kind of
struggled at it and just wasn't good at it at all.

While we were doing this, a friend of mine and myself were sitting around
thinking of harebrained ideas of trying to do something different, and we come
up with this scheme to make round beach towels. And the idea was that when
you're at the beach, you have to get up and, you know, you move your towel as
the sun moves across the sky. Well, we thought, `Hey, how about a big 6-foot
round towel that you can kind of just move on? I've never seen that. That
seems novel.' And so we dropped everything we were doing in our lives and we
started a company, went out to California and invested what little money we
had into trying to make this company work. And after about three years of
struggling, we kind of came to the realization that, you know, people really
don't mind moving their towels over the course of the day.

Mr. P. FARRELLY: Did I mention that Bob's a pot smoker?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. P. FARRELLY: no. But, you know, the whole Hollywood thing, honestly, it
was one of those, like, you know--and I've talked about this before--you know,
we were lucky enough to, you know, be unsuccessful enough so that we could
attempt something crazy enough, like going to Hollywood and trying to get into
the movie business, because we really had nothing to lose. And that was our
gift.

GROSS: How did you get to direct your first film, "Dumb & Dumber"? Sure,
you'd want to do it, but why would the studio trust you to do it?

Mr. P. FARRELLY: No trust involved. The...

Mr. B. FARRELLY: Yeah, we had written--you know, we'd always write a script,
and we'd hope, `Jeez, we hope we can find some director who wants to make this
into a movie.' And somewhere along--you know, we could never do it. And we
might get close, but we couldn't get any guy who was going to take our scripts
and run with it. We just couldn't get that part. So somewhere along the way
we thought, `Well, what if we say that--you know, what if we attach ourselves
as directors?' And the idea was that we'd shoot a real low-budget movie and
we'd keep it real simple, and, you know, maybe we could direct it ourselves,
seeing that we couldn't get someone else to do it.

And so the script that we chose was "Dumb & Dumber." It had been passed by
all the studios in town, and we thought it's a simple enough movie; we felt we
could shoot it real cheap. And right around then our producer, Charlie
Wessler, happened to get it into Jim Carrey's hands, and Jim was nowhere near,
you know, the big star that he is now, but he wanted to make this movie, "Dumb
& Dumber." And like lightning, his career took off right then. And so all
the big studios wanted to do the next Jim Carrey movie, and it just happened
to be "Dumb & Dumber" with us attached as directors. And when they came in,
they never asked us, you know, what qualifications we had to direct it, mainly
because they came in after us, and they basically just forgot to fire us.

Mr. B. FARRELLY: Yeah. It was really--they were so tickled about having Jim
Carrey, they were sort of blinded by the fact that these, you know, banana
heads were hanging on directing it. And we hadn't directed a video, we hadn't
directed a commercial. We hadn't been on a movie set more than a half-hour.
And we kept waiting for, you know, the hammer to come down and them to say,
`Wait, why you?' They just never did. So that's why I say it's not that they
trusted us. It's just that, you know...

Mr. P. FARRELLY: They were negligent.

Mr. B. FARRELLY: Yeah.

Mr. P. FARRELLY: Totally negligent. And the crew was so good, and when we
started "Dumb & Dumber," you know, the studio itself didn't know we were
doing--we were very honest with the crew. Right off the bat we told the
director of photography and first AD and all that stuff, we said, `Look, this
is a joke that we're here. We have no idea what we're doing. So, you know,
we need your help.' And they did. You know, they pulled us through. You
know, they would--I didn't know when to yell `Action!' at the beginning of the
movie. You know, I'd look to the AD, and he'd point to me and then `Action!'
you know.

The point is, you know, the reason there weren't the big glitches and the
problems that you would expect is because the crew was so good. You know,
they do their jobs. They're there--like everything, it's like clockwork, and
all you have to do is worry about getting that performance from the actor.

GROSS: My guests are Peter and Bobby Farrelly. Their new film is called
"Stuck On You." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guests are the Farrelly brothers. Their films include "Dumb &
Dumber," "There's Something About Mary" and "Shallow Hal." Their new film is
"Stuck On You."

I want to ask you about one of your movies that is not one of your best-known
films. It's "Kingpin," and it's a really funny film. It's out on DVD if
anyone wants to see it. But this is a movie that's about bowling, and it
combines elements of, like "The Hustler." And it's as if bowling were, like,
this big arena sport--which, of course, it's not--with ESPN coverage and
everything. And it's really funny. Bill Murray and Woody Harrelson, Randy
Quaid star in it. What made you want to do a movie about, you know, somebody
whose dream is to be the bowling champion, and he's got a prosthetic hand?

Mr. B. FARRELLY: You know, Bradley Thomas, who produces all our movies, found
that script. It was an old script that had been lying around. And, you know,
we got in and punched it up, and we just--I don't know, it struck us as--you
know, we're not bowlers, you know, more than anyone else. You know, we bowl
once a year or something. And we'd been wanting to work with Woody Harrelson,
who we knew for a long time. And, I don't know, it just seemed perfect for
him. That movie is very, very close to our hearts because it didn't do well,
and we really loved it. You know, our first movie was "Dumb & Dumber"; it
came out, it was a big hit. And then we made "Kingpin" and we really loved
it; we figured, `Well, that'll be a big hit.' And when it came out and did no
business, you know, it was devastating. You know, it's hard to believe you
could be so wounded by, you know, a movie not doing well, but it hurt. And it
wasn't until about six months later when it came out on video that it started
catching on and, in fact, to this day is probably--more people approach us
about that movie than any of our movies, I think.

GROSS: Oh, I didn't know that.

Mr. B. FARRELLY: Yeah, because it's kind of taken on sort of a cult status
and, you know, I think people figure, you know, we hear it all the time about
"Dumb & Dumber" and "Something About Mary." But, you know, people seem pretty
fanatical about that one.

Mr. P. FARRELLY: Yeah, and Bill Murray was just too damn funny in it. I
mean, he really--I could go back and watch him three times in a row, just
because of Bill. He was just, I thought, genius in it.

GROSS: Well, how much improvisation is there in most of your movies?

Mr. P. FARRELLY: I would say in most of them, you know, we always keep the
door open for improv. We shoot what's on the script, and then we ask them
when we have it, `OK, now just wing it. See what you got there.' But with
Bill Murray, you know, he's the only one, you know, who's done this and the
only one we would want to do this--he literally, you know, looks at the script
and just throws the pages on the floor and he said, `I get it.' And then he
wings it, and he always comes up with better stuff than we could have
envisioned.

GROSS: Is that pure fun to work with, or is it also a little scary 'cause you
don't know what you're going to get?

Mr. B. FARRELLY: Well, you don't know what you're going to get, but you get a
pretty good feeling that it's going to be good. But, yeah, it's scary to work
with Bill just because he's such a, you know, force of nature. And, you know,
it was a little intimidating to try to go over and give him comic direction
because we felt like here's a guy we looked up to our whole life and, you
know, he knows so much more about it than us. That was a little intimidating.
But he was a lot of fun to work with, and, you know, he's a great guy, too.

Mr. P. FARRELLY: You know, I remember one time actually we approached him--or
I approached him--this is Pete--and I said--you know, I gave him some advice
on the scene. I said, `Well, why don't you try it this way?' And I remember
he said, `Oh, yeah, the obvious choice.'

GROSS: (Laughs)

Mr. P. FARRELLY: And then I just backed off and never said another word. But
he nailed it.

GROSS: In your new movie there's this fantastic dog, a big, gorgeous, gray,
fuzzy, wonderful dog. And there are animals in most of your movies, though
they're often, like, stuffed animals playing real animals. There's the animal
car in "Dumb & Dumber" and a lot of animal stuff in that. Do you guys have
pets?

Mr. P. FARRELLY: Yeah, we both have a lot of pets. We grew up with many pets
and ducks and geese. And, like, my dad actually brought home a monkey one
time on Mother's Day and gave it to my mom. And I don't know exactly what he
was thinking, but that was a lot of fun to have around the house for a while.

Mr. B. FARRELLY: Yeah, we're big on animals.

GROSS: And why do you like to use animals a lot in your movies?

Mr. P. FARRELLY: Well, you know, it's--well, I'm trying to think. You know,
people are--there's a lot of things that we do in our movies that we don't...

GROSS: Don't know why.

Mr. P. FARRELLY: We know that we do them, but we don't know why. And we sort
of--I always looked at it like a good golfer, you know, probably shouldn't
look at his swing because it might screw him up to try to analyze it. And we
just do what we think's funny, and we don't particularly have particular
reasons for everything. But, yeah, the animal thing is a recurring theme. I
think this is the first movie that we've made where we haven't, you know, used
really. There's not that much animal humor in "Stuck On You," but hopefully
we'll get back to it.

GROSS: But th...

Mr. B. FARRELLY: We actually are, though, developing a script, and it was
called "Party Animals" at one time. It's an animated movie about a bunch of
lab animals; there's a rat and a pigeon and a few other things--who are--you
know, they're basically being tested for everything: high doses of nicotine
and alcohol and drugs and everything. And what happened is an animal rights
group breaks into this lab and frees them and, you know, sends them out in the
streets of Manhattan, and basically they all start getting the shakes. You
know, they're looking for cigarettes and trying to find weed, and...

Mr. P. FARRELLY: They're very upset when they get freed.

Mr. B. FARRELLY: Yeah, they want back in. But in the meantime...

GROSS: It sounds really funny.

Mr. B. FARRELLY: It's a riot. It's being written by Peter Gaulke and Gerry
Swallow, who had the idea for it. And it's a real riot. It would be an
R-rated animated movie, to say the least.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guests are the Farrelly brothers. Their
new comedy is called "Stuck On You."

In your new movie "Stuck On You" about the conjoined twins, they have, like, a
diner in which they flip burgers. And one of the people who works at the
diner is developmentally disabled. And he, I believe, is played by a person
who actually is developmentally disabled. At the...

Mr. B. FARRELLY: His name's Rocket, and he's basically playing himself.

GROSS: Does he work at a shop like that?

Mr. B. FARRELLY: No, he doesn't. But his name's Rocket Valliere, and he's a
friend of ours from home. And like I said, his character is the same as we
know him. But--I'm sorry, go ahead.

GROSS: How did you approach him to be in the movie?

Mr. B. FARRELLY: He's a fantastically interesting guy. He's a savant. He is
developmentally disabled, but he's a savant, too. And he knows more about
movies and movie lore and movie history and actresses and actors than any
three people I know combined and--don't even know how he knows it all, but he
has an encyclopedic knowledge about everything in the business. So he's
wildly entertaining and is infatuated with anything to do with the movies.
So, you know, we know him. We're very friendly with him. We always thought
that we'd love to put him in a movie and give him a good part, and in "Stuck
On You," we came up with the perfect situation.

GROSS: Did you know him--like, how long have you known him?

Mr. P. FARRELLY: We've known him about 10 years or so. He is good friends
with a guy we know named Tommy Songen, who is a hockey player, grew up near us
actually. He played at Mt. St. Charles Academy in Rhode Island and then for
the Boston Bruins for a time. But we see him around quite a bit, and he had
bumped into Rocket about 15 years ago in a diner. Rocket was having lunch
alone. He saw him there several days in a row and finally invited him to his
table, and they ended up, you know, sort of best friends. I'll say they take
care of each other. You know, Tommy thinks he's taking care of Rocket, and
Rocket thinks he's taking care of Tommy, and I don't know who's right, but we
see them all the time. And Rocket is such a great character and interesting
guy, we just wanted to get his mug up there and get him talking. You know,
it's fun to have him on the set, and it was fun to put him in the movie.

Mr. B. FARRELLY: Yeah, and one of the last things that happened was we were
shooting a dance number where he was actually dancing with Meryl Streep. And
after they finished their take, we yelled `Cut,' and we gave them, you know,
an applause 'cause they had done a nice job. And all of a sudden Rocket was
up there on the stage, and he just kind of became inspired, and he sang "Old
Man River" for us, which was like, `Wow, that was great.' And then we clapped
again, and then he went into this spontaneous--like an acceptance speech, like
he had just won the Oscar. And he gave this beautiful, moving speech,
thanking all the people in his life who were important, and we just kind of
kept the cameras rolling on it. And, you know, people in the crew who were
watching him were just crying, watching. You know, he's just such a beautiful
guy, Rocket. Anyway, because we had filmed it, we thought it might be a nice
little something to put in the end credits, so at the very end of the movie,
Rocket's acceptance speech is there.

GROSS: Thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. P. FARRELLY: Hey, thank you, Terry.

Mr. B. FARRELLY: Thank you. Thanks a lot, Terry.

Mr. P. FARRELLY: Real pleasure.

GROSS: The Farrelly brothers. Their new film is called "Stuck On You."

Coming up, rock critic Ken Tucker reviews stripped down CDs featuring Randy
Newman and The Beatles. This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: The Beatles' "Let It Be...Naked" and "The Randy Newman
Songbook Vol. I"
TERRY GROSS, host:

A new version of The Beatles' 1970 final album has been released. It's called
"Let It Be...Naked," and it removes much of the elaborate production imposed
on The Beatles' tracks by producer Phil Spector. At the same time
singer-songwriter Randy Newman has released "The Randy Newman Songbook Vol.
I," the first of a projected three-volume set of Newman performing his songs
solo, backing himself on piano. Rock critic Ken Tucker listened to both and
finds new pleasure in one of them.

(Soundbite of music)

THE BEATLES: (Singing) The long and winding road that leads to your door will
never disappear. I've seen that road before. It always leads me here, lead
me to your door. The long and...

KEN TUCKER reporting:

If that version of The Beatles "Long and Winding Road" sounds different from
the one you carry around in your head, it's because it's been stripped clean
of the string section and orchestration imposed on it by Phil Spector. In
1969, you'll recall, The Beatles were breaking up. Paul McCartney wanted to
make one more album, and the other three of the Fab Four relented, dragging
themselves, producer George Martin and, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yoko Ono into the
studio. To make a long, acrimonious story short, Lennon, having fought with
McCartney, asked his pal, Spector, to see what he could do with the tracks.
McCartney denounced the work, but "Let It Be" released. Now Capitol Records
has put out bare-bones versions of the songs. Are they better?

(Soundbite of music)

THE BEATLES: (Singing) When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary
comes to me speaking words of wisdom, `Let it be.' And in my hour of darkness
she is standing right in front of me speaking words of wisdom, `Let it be.
Let it be. Let it be. Let it be. Let it be.' Whisper words of wisdom, `Let
it be.' And when the broken...

TUCKER: Now, remember, "Let It Be" was never considered a great album anyway.
I don't think this does much to enhance its reputation either. McCartney,
Ringo and Yoko have all signed off on this naked version. So the
deshellacking of Phil Spector is out there for fans, but it's not as though
the original is being taken off the shelves. Market concerns--that is,
squeezing more Beatles sales by Capitol Records--seems to be the primary
reason for this project.

By contrast, I'll bet no one at Nonesuch Records thinks that stripping away
the rock 'n' roll backing Randy Newman had on the 1979 recording of "It's
Money That I Love" is going to bring Newman and the record company more money.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. RANDY NEWMAN: (Singing) Don't love the mountains. Don't love the sea.
Don't love Jesus. He never done a thing for me. Ain't pretty like my sister,
smart like my dad, good like my mama. It's money that I love. It's money
that I love. They say that money can't buy love...

TUCKER: If anything, the starkness of the sound on "The Randy Newman
Songbook" emphasizes the gleeful misanthropy that Newman was aiming for the
first time around when, in the '70s and '80s, he was still trying to crack the
pop charts and rock audiences. His idiosyncratic piano style, a mixture of
New Orleans barrel house playing with classically trained fills and precision,
sounds wonderful coming from his 59-year-old hands.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. NEWMAN: (Singing) Broken window in the upstair hallway. Pale dead moon
and the sky streaked with gray. Human kindness is overflowing, and I think
it's going to rain today.

TUCKER: Judy Collins made a maudlin hit out of that Newman song in 1966.
Newman himself orchestrated it into pathos on his debut album two years later.
This version carefully reveals "I Think It's Going to Rain Today" for what it
really is, a suicide note. Later on he takes one of his greatest, most
meticulously ruthless songs, "The Great Nations of Europe," and makes a pure
masterpiece of it.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. NEWMAN: (Singing) The great nations of Europe had gathered on the shore.
They'd conquered what was behind them, but now they wanted more. So they
looked to the mighty ocean and took to the Western sea, the great nations of
Europe in the 16th century. Hide your wives and daughters. Hide the
groceries, too. Great nations of Europe coming through.

TUCKER: These days lots of people know Randy Newman primarily by the jaunty
or florid movie soundtracks he writes, whether it's "You've Got A Friend in
Me" from "Toy Story" or his dewlapped "Horse Manure" in "Seabiscuit." As he
recently told NPR's Bob Edwards, `If Disney pays me enough money, I can turn
it out.' On "The Randy Newman Songbook," it's not money that he loves. It's
the pride in his art, which he'd probably call craft.

Even in the Balkanizing context of current pop music, The Beatles and Randy
Newman are still opposites, culture-changing collaborators compared to
stubborn, solitary cult creator. But it's the Randy Newman project that I
won't let be. I've got a feeling it won't let me down.

GROSS: Ken Tucker is critic at large for Entertainment Weekly. He reviewed
The Beatles' "Let It Be...Naked" and "The Randy Newman Songbook Vol. 1."

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.