It’s rare to find only one of the Farrelly Bros. alone in the wild. Peter and Bobby Farrelly have been a seemingly inseparable comedy duo since they co-directed the blockbuster Dumb & Dumber in 1994, and went on to make the gross-out romantic comedy classic There’s Something About Mary in 1998. But we found Peter Farrelly, in his car, driving down from Ojai and willing to spend a few minutes on the phone talking about their latest hit, Dumb and Dumber To.
Whilst desperately trying not to distract Peter Farrelly from the road (we lost the connection for a few minutes and naturally assumed the worst), we talked to the co-writer and co-director about his favorite jokes from the Dumb and Dumber franchise, the origin of the Bill Murray cameo that hardly anybody noticed in the sequel, and when we’ll see a Dumb and Dumber 3. (It’s going to be a while, but it’s probably in the cards.)
Dumb and Dumber 2 is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.
Related: What’s the Best Dumb Comedy Ever?
CraveOnline: This is a sequel that I think a lot of your fans have been wanting for many years. Now that we’ve got this sequel, and it involves Harry and Lloyd’s potential daughter, it seems like this is an idea you guys couldn’t have had back when the first Dumb & Dumber came out. Did you have any ideas for a sequel earlier on?
Peter Farrelly: No, we didn’t because right after Dumb & Dumber we didn’t want to do Dumb and Dumber To right away, because we didn’t just want to be the Dumb & Dumber guys. So we went on and did our things. Jim [Carrey] went his way, [Jeff] went his way, and it wasn’t until about five years ago that I heard from Jim and he said, “Let’s do a sequel.” Then we started thinking about it.
“They were talking about ‘There’s Something Else About Mary.’ We really didn’t want to do that…”
So no creative energy was spent on Dumb and Dumber To that entire time? You guys never even spitballed?
[Thinks.] Not really. I mean, every now and then someone would say… I remember one time, Bennett Yellin who co-wrote both scripts with us, both Dumb & Dumbers, he said, “Maybe one of them has a sister and she gets kidnapped and they have to go find her.” That was the extent of it. “Yeah, that’s not bad. Let’s think about it.”
We basically crossed the last twenty years, from one project to another, and when we’re on a project we’re pretty much focusing on that project. Sometimes you’re trying to develop other things through other people, but ultimately until you roll up your sleeves and get in there, it’s never to our satisfaction.
What was the appeal of going back to Harry and Lloyd from a writer’s perspective, or from an emotional perspective? What is it about these characters that made them sequel-worthy?
Well, of all the movies we did, this was the perfect one for a sequel because there was no growth. They didn’t change from the beginning of the first one to the end. They’re pretty much the exact same guys, and we left them in pretty much the exact same state: just the two of them, alone, heading home, jobless. So it seemed like you could just pick up with what the next adventure would be.
We never wanted to do sequels to the [films] that had the happy endings. Like, There’s Something About Mary, they were talking about There’s Something Else About Mary. We really didn’t want to do that because that felt low. Even Kingpin, it never felt right to me. It had its ending and even though Bill Murray, Ernie McCracken won the tournament, it just felt like the right ending.
Dumb & Dumber felt like we could do three, four, five of them. We always knew that, we just never really got around to it.
Had you been following the prequel or the TV series? Did you have any involvement in them whatsoever?
I did not. The studio came to us with the idea of the prequel and asked us if we would want to do it. We said, “Absolutely not. It’s got to be Jim and Jeff, and it doesn’t work in any way.” All kids in high school are dumb and dumber. The funny part is that these guys are in their forties and fifties and they’re still this way. We felt like it cut away the real joke by having a high school Dumb & Dumber movie.
What about the TV show, the cartoon? Did you ever watch that?
I did not. I might have seen a clip here and there [but] as far as the cartoon and the prequel went, I didn’t watch them and I didn’t participate in them, but the guys who did the prequel… They were some young guys who went off and did it. I was rooting for them. It wasn’t like, “God damn it, how could they do this?” I don’t think like that.
