Yuck Yuks

The money shot in “There’s Something About Mary”--well, actually, the first of many that demonstrate that these filmmakers will take gross-out gags to a whole new level--is, by co-director and co-writer Peter Farrelly’s own admission, “just stunningly inappropriate.”

Peter’s brother and collaborator, Bobby Farrelly, recalls with pride the moment when an executive from 20th Century Fox, the studio releasing “Mary,” told him that a particular punch line was “perfectly reprehensible.”

“There’s Something About Mary,” a romantic comedy with summer sleeper potential, is brought to you by the guys who made “Dumb & Dumber,” which found Jeff Daniels at the mercy of powerful laxatives and an even more powerful sound-effects editor, and “Kingpin,” in which Woody Harrelson spat out a brutal parody of the “Got Milk?” ads. Those were films dismissed by women and excoriated by some critics as, as Peter puts it, “pretty much the end of mankind.”

But inappropriateness and reprehensibility notwithstanding, their latest opened to rave reviews and even inspired a woman at a recent screening to laud it as “cute.” Could these be the same, you-can’t-take-them-anywhere brothers?

Cameron Diaz stars as Mary, every guy’s ideal--she’s beautiful and smart, and she loves beer, beer guts and sports. Ted (Ben Stiller), a nebbishy nice guy who hasn’t seen her since a disastrous prom night a dozen years back, decides to try to find her, enlisting the aid of a dubious private detective (Matt Dillon) who decides to take her for himself.

Basically, this is a wacky comedy about stalkers. And we haven’t even mentioned the dog-in-flames, the disabled and serial-killer jokes and the bodily fluid gag that will become a seminal moment in raunch humor history.

“There was a moment when I had to get on a prison cot with a big, fat guy where I asked myself, ‘What am I doing here? What have I sunk to?’ ” notes Stiller, whose character is submitted to the film’s most hilariously abject indignities. “But I knew that if anyone could pull off these jokes, it was them.”

The Farrellys discuss bad taste on the bare floor of Peter’s empty Santa Monica apartment (he forgot he was moving the day he scheduled the interview). Peter, 41, looks like a mix of David Duchovny and Garry Shandling (which would be a matter of tasteless amusement to fans of “The Larry Sanders Show,” on which they were linked); Bobby looks far younger than his 40 years--he could still play Jimmy Olsen if he wanted. The brothers share an easy rapport, yet they’re not so similar that they can’t surprise or amuse the other with a sharp punch line.

“Critics ask us, how do you get away with this? But we’ve never gotten a letter,” says Peter, adding, for emphasis, “Not . . . a . . . letter. Not one saying, ‘We’re pissed about this.’ People are savvier than critics give them credit for.

“The other thing is, Ben’s the hero, Ben doesn’t set the dog on fire, he doesn’t insult [Mary’s mentally challenged] brother, he stands up for the brother. Matt Dillon’s the bad guy, he does that stuff.”

Indeed, the Farrellys know they’re not supposed to show the kinds of atrocities they do. And that’s precisely what makes them funny. Peter says they have friends with some of the disabilities depicted in the film, and it was made with them in mind. One bit with Mary’s brother was excised because they thought it might hurt their acquaintance, he admits, but a bit part, a cantankerous character in a wheelchair, is actually played by a wheelchair-using pal of the Farrellys who was tired of seeing people in wheelchairs portrayed in movies as sweet and lovable.

Still, even their performers can have their doubts. Diaz, “the nicest person we ever worked with, hands down, and we worked with Bill Murray,” says Peter, cryptically, “was a little nervous about it. She liked the script, but she knew it was a potential career-ender. People would see [the notorious hair-gel scene] and think, ‘What was she thinking? She had a great little career going.’ She wanted to be reassured that we knew what we were doing and also that if it didn’t work, it’d be cut. We didn’t know, we thought it might work.”

Peter and Bobby hung out as altogether unremarkable kids in Cumberland, R.I., (they still maintain homes on the East Coast) with no aspirations for filmmaking or, it seems, virtually anything else: “It would’ve taken effort to be the class clown,” Bobby says with a shrug.

They weren’t much good in their sales jobs, either, but luck was with them. When Peter moved to L.A. in 1985, it wasn’t long before he had a development deal with a writing partner. Bobby was editing their scripts, and finally, he was invited out to become part of the process.

“We did 15 development deals before ‘Dumb & Dumber’ was made,” Peter says. (The film was released in 1994.) “The whole time I was out here, I never didn’t have a job, I was constantly employed.

“But it was getting a little nerve-racking after nine years because you’re like, ‘How long can this go on? How many people will hire us to do scripts and none get made?’ ”

“Dumb & Dumber,” pitched to them by a powerful producer who said, “I want to do a movie about two dumb guys who go to Aspen,” changed everything. That producer eventually departed the project, which wound up at New Line with the white-hot Jim Carrey interested. Peter says: “The studio said, ‘Who’s directing it?’ and his answer, delivered very sheepishly, was, ‘Us.’ ”

As directors, their style is basically styleless, which seems to suit their material. “We never think of any swooping camera moves,” Bobby admits. “But the director of photography likes to do that, so we sort of go along with him, let him do it, then cut it out in the end.” The brothers laugh.

“They don’t care if it’s a pretty angle,” Stiller says. “They take pride that they don’t want to be part of the Hollywood system. It was a big lesson for me as a director, they’re so laid-back on the set. It was good for me to watch that style.”

Still, it’s taken a while for people to get a handle on what the Farrellys do. Peter recalls the night of “Dumb & Dumber’s” premiere, when New Line head Bob Shaye--who, he says, never understood the movie but gave them complete freedom in making it--gave them “the most pathetic introduction. ‘I want people to know something,’ Shaye said. ‘I went to Columbia, I didn’t get in the business to make this kind of movie.’ ”

Bobby laughs. “We’re thinking, OK, now, get to the joke.” Peter continues, “And he says, ‘Anyway, here are the directors.’ I had to hold my father back at the party. I said, ‘It’s OK, he let us do the movie.’ ”

At least New Line marketed “Dumb & Dumber” well. MGM, the brothers say, was clueless with “Kingpin.” “They advertised us almost exclusively on TV wrestling.” “We came out during the Olympics and they wouldn’t advertise there. We asked why and they said, ‘That’s not your audience.’ The whole world is not our audience?”

Fox got the Farrellys immediately and approached them with work (the brothers have a three-film deal at the studio; their next will be a comedy about Siamese twins who enjoy their lot in life). “It’s more an issue of appreciating an aesthetic, of realizing that film talent comes in all guises,” says Tom Rothman, president of 20th Century Fox Film Productions. “These guys are, of their art, masters. It may seem surprising to think of them as auteurs, but they are comedy auteurs.”

On his own, Peter has shown a slightly more serious side, writing two semi-autobiographical novels, “Outside Providence,” which is being adapted into a film, and “The Comedy Writer,” published earlier this year and based on an incident Peter wrote about in the L.A. Times 10 years ago. He witnessed a woman threatening suicide, and was powerless to get the police to do anything about it until she had already jumped off a building.

But it’s as brothers, however, that the two manage to make their filmmaking gel. “If we have a guy we really admire like Jeff Daniels sitting on a toilet, and basically the whole crew’s a little embarrassed by their lot in life, it’s easy, if you’re alone, to say, ‘Eh, you know what? Let’s not do this. This is really creepy,’ ” Peter says. “But if you look over at the other guy and he’s like [he gives a beaming smile, signaling thumbs-up] it’s easier to go on. I don’t care how it seems, it’s gonna work.”