‘Me, Myself’ & the Farrellys

In their outrageous 1998 smash hit, “There’s Something About Mary,” filmmakers Bobby and Peter Farrelly forever changed the way moviegoers think about zippers and hair gel, and films copying their outlandish style soon followed. In the brothers’ newest film, “Me, Myself & Irene,” opening Friday, with Jim Carrey and Renee Zellweger, it may be chickens and chocolate yogurt that elicit side-splitting laughter or winces of can-you-believe-they-actually-did-that wonderment.

The Farrellys share writing and directing duties on “Irene,” produced by their new company, Conundrum Entertainment, and released by 20th Century Fox. Carrey, who starred in their first movie, “Dumb and Dumber” (1994), plays a timid Rhode Island state trooper who loses his wife to a midget. He develops a split personality--his alter ego is an aggressive jerk--and both fall in love with Zellweger’s character.

The Farrellys recently renewed their deal with Fox, where they’ll continue making their own movies while also producing projects by writers and directors they’re shepherding. “Say It Isn’t So,” starring Heather Graham and Chris Klein, due next year, is directed by J.B. Rogers, first assistant director on previous Farrelly brothers movies. For Warner Bros., meanwhile, they’re producing the animated “Osmosis Jones,” written by Marc Hyman and also expected next year, in which Bill Murray’s body battles a virus with a white blood cell voiced by Chris Rock.

Other projects in development include “Shallow Hal” with Gwyneth Paltrow, which is written by lifelong friend Sean Moynahan, and a spinoff movie of “Me, Myself & Irene,” starring the three actors who play Jim Carrey’s sons.

The Times submitted written questions to Bobby, 41, and Peter, 43. The brothers added a few of their own--some they say they’ve never been asked, others that they just enjoyed answering. (The responses come from both Bobby and Peter.) Both have homes and families in New England, but their work often sends them to L.A., and Peter called in the answers from the brothers’ Santa Monica offices. They reflected on their place in the comedy world, the genius of Jim Carrey and why they don’t like it when people call their movies gross.

Question: So are you guys the new kings of comedy? Do you ever see a really raunchy movie and think, what have we wrought?

Answer: Never, because we don’t feel we invented this genre. What we’re doing is basically “Animal House.” If you go back beyond that, “Some Like It Hot,” which was as shocking in its day as “There’s Something About Mary” was. [“Irene” is] actually more similar to “Some Like It Hot,” if I could be so bold as to compare those two, because “Some Like It Hot” had a more complicated plot than “Animal House.” But it’s not our invention. It’s just a style of comedy that goes around, and so we don’t feel like we’re influencing people, except in the sense that when “There’s Something About Mary” worked, the studios said, “Hey, let’s make a bunch of those now.” But that’s not something we invented.

Q: Talk about Jim Carrey’s physical humor, for example when his two personalities fight each other during a chase scene. How did you and he do those scenes?

A: All the physical stuff, I have to give credit to Jim Carrey. In the script it would say, “Charlie fights Hank.” We would spend three days doing a fight scene that Jim had choreographed in the privacy of his hotel room or his home. Even now when I look at those scenes, it blows my mind. He got a lot of attention for “The Truman Show,” but the truth is, a bunch of actors could have done that role. Nobody could have done this role except Jim Carrey. In fact, if he hadn’t done the movie, we weren’t going to direct it.

Q: Was there pressure to live up to “There’s Something About Mary”?

A: The pressure was off, actually, after “There’s Something About Mary.” We had pressure before “Mary” because “Kingpin” hadn’t done so well. We realized going in if “There’s Something About Mary” didn’t do so well, then people would think our humor doesn’t work, or at least doesn’t translate to a wider audience. It didn’t change anything about the way we work together, because it just confirmed what we believed in.

Q: Many people describe your movies with the words “gross-out,” a term I’m told you’re not wild about.

A: No, we actually dislike it immensely. It’s a very simplistic way of describing what we do. Somebody came up with the “gross-out” term and everybody has jumped on that bandwagon. In “There’s Something About Mary,” when Ben Stiller has the stuff on his ear, people aren’t laughing because it’s gross. People are laughing because of the situation. He hasn’t seen this woman in 15 years. It’s the girl of his dreams. He finally gets a date with her and this happens. If you put that on his ear in a different situation, then it’s gross and the reaction wouldn’t be laughter, it would be groans.

Q: Some of “Irene’s” gags are aimed at, among others, a midget, an albino, lesbians and African Americans; few escape unscathed. You say you’re not making fun of anybody but poking fun at everybody. What’s the difference?

A: I think the difference is where your heart is. After “There’s Something About Mary,” people asked us how we could make fun of the mentally retarded brother. Who made fun of him? Matt Dillon, who’s the bad guy. The good guy, Ben Stiller, stuck up for the mentally retarded brother when he was being picked on by the bully. That’s how we approach all our jokes. In this movie, there’s a scene where Jim finds a cow that’s been hit by a truck and it’s lying in the middle of the road and he tries to put it out of its misery. The funny thing is he’s trying to do the right thing and it backfired miserably. That’s why it’s funny when Ben Stiller has a fight with Mary’s mentally retarded brother, because all he’s doing is bringing a baseball and trying to do the right thing, and we find humor when good-hearted attempts backfire.

Q: How do you respond to those who say that “Me, Myself & Irene” makes light of mental health disorders, something that can be a tragic situation for families? (The film’s ad campaign has already drawn protests from some mental-health advocacy groups.)

A: We certainly in no way intended to make light of this situation. We approached this movie as a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” movie, and we’re in no way trying to make any kind of statement about split-personality disorder or schizophrenia. We apologize if there are people out there who are offended by that.

Q: Are there scenes in “Me, Myself & Irene” you think will offend people?

A: We really don’t try to offend, and if we thought it was truly offensive, we would cut it. Having said that, some people are offended that baseball is played on Sundays. There is always going to be somebody offended, but the truly offensive stuff we do cut.

Q: You say you edit scenes out of your movies if test audiences think they go too far. Give me an example of a scene that didn’t make the cut.

A: It’s absolutely true, all the time we cut things. The audience is never wrong. They always alert us to something we hadn’t thought of. In “Dumb and Dumber,” Jeff Daniels throws a snowball and hits Lauren Holly in the face. The audience goes crazy laughing. Originally when she came up, she had a dab of blood under her nose, and the laughter stopped because she was hurt and now it wasn’t funny . That hadn’t occurred to us. We got rid of the blood, and then the laughter continued because all you see is a face full of snow.

In “Irene,” there’s a scene where Jim makes a crack about [the boys’] mother having slept with a midget. We cut it because of two things. First, though it got a laugh, people came up to us afterward and said, ‘Please cut that line because it ruined the relationship between him and his sons.’ But the bigger reason we cut that is Bob and I realized that’s really quite a hurtful thing to say.

These questions and answers were submitted by the Farrelly brothers.

Q: Have you considered doing TV?

A: Yes, we’ve considered it, but I believe that TV will not be good until the Internet goes broadband in the next three to five years, and you can watch television on the Internet. I’m really quite depressed about the state of network television. Recently I flipped on the TV, and “Blazing Saddles” was on. This is a movie that is 25 years old and is a classic. It’s extremely mainstream, almost everybody in the country has seen it. So 25 years later, here’s the campfire scene and these guys stand up and there’s no sound. They can’t do fart sounds on TV. If you can’t do fart sounds on TV, you’re dead.

Q: Why are you starting to produce movies you don’t direct? Are you afraid you’ll spread yourself too thin?

A: We have a great relationship with 20th Century Fox. They have asked us to sort of oversee a bunch of comedies for them. It’s almost like we’ve created a comedy division. It allows us to give writers we really admire opportunities to get their stuff on screen and have their visions protected, people like Peter Gaulke, Jerry Swallow, Ricky Blitt, Mark Hyman, Bennett Yellin and Mark Steilen.

Over the years, before we got movies made, I went in several times to do rewrites on scripts that were sent to me that I thought were perfect. I would take the meeting, and I’d look at the executives and I’d say, “Listen, I’m not taking this job because you’re crazy to rewrite it. This is perfect.” One example is this script “Senior Trip.” It was at New Line a few years ago, and I just thought the script was brilliant. It ended up getting developed to hell and turned out to be not very good. It was written by Roger Kumble and Marlene King. I’m protective of these guys and I want them to get their vision up there, and we’re in a position to do that and it’s not a lot of skin off our back. It still allows us to make our movie every two years, which is what we’ve been doing.

Q: Do you have some resentment about having to wait nine years to get your first movie made (the amount of time between moving from Rhode Island and “Dumb and Dumber”)?

A: No, because they [early scripts] weren’t that good. We developed. We got better. We look at it like we look at casting. We’ve been turned down by everybody in town. Even after “Dumb and Dumber” was a hit, we had a lot of people pass on us for “Kingpin.” The reason is they perceived it as a Jim Carrey movie, and we were just the lucky guys who were hanging on the coattails. But that’s OK. We never take it personally.

Sometimes when you don’t get who you want, then it’s left up to the gods, up to fate, and it works out for the better. Ben Stiller was not our first choice for “There’s Something About Mary.” But nobody in the world could do that role the way he did it. I look at my wife. I didn’t get married till I turned 40, three years ago. I think of all the women I fell in love with over the years who I would have married if they’d only liked me. But thank God they didn’t because I ended up with the perfect woman for me. Sometimes it’s good not to get what you want.

Q: Who are the filmmakers you admire most?

A: I love Quentin Tarantino. He blows me away. Talk about a guy having influence on people. He started something that didn’t exist before. I think he’s had the biggest impact on film in the last 10 years. I think the guy who’s had the biggest impact on comedy in the last 10 years is Jerry Seinfeld and his partner Larry David. I think that television show was the exception to what I was saying and has absolutely influenced everybody. I also admire the Zucker Brothers, the first guys we worked with out here who taught us how to treat people on a movie set. And I love every Jim Brooks movie.

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Following the Farrellys Here are the films of the Farrelly brothers and how much they grossed at the box office.

“Dumb & Dumber” (1994), $127.2 million (directed by Peter Farrelly)

“Kingpin” (1996), $25 million (directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly)

“There’s Something About Mary” (1998), $176.5 million (directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly

“Outside Providence” (1999), $7.3 million (directed by Michael Corrente; produced by Bobby and Peter Farrelly, Randy Finch and Corrente)

Source: Exhibitor Relations

How Low Can You Go?

*Gross humor seems to be the standard for American film comedies. Whatever happened to good taste, anyway? Story on A1.

How Low Can You Go?

* Gross humor seems to be the standard for American film comedies. Whatever happened to good taste, anyway? Story on A1.