CraveOnline: So you got Bill Murray to come in for a cameo in Dumb and Dumber To, but we don’t even see his face. Was that part of the joke?
Peter Farrelly: Exactly. Yeah, we knew that that guy, we’d never see his face. So we were just going to have a guy under there. Then it occurred to us, this could be really fun if we get Bill. So we called Bill.
We have Bill’s hotline number. There’s an 800 number you can call Bill and leave a message, and he will always get back to us within a month or two. So we just left him a message and said, “Hey Bill, call us. We have a funny little cameo in Dumb and Dumber [To] if you’re interested,” and he did call back. Then we said, “Look, this is the deal, you’re in a hazmat suit and we never see your face. If you’re around we’d love to have you.” And he said, “Yeah! I’ll come,” and he did and we had a ball.
“New Line and Warner Bros. [have] already said, ‘Hey, if you guys want to do another one, we will.'”
So I find in a movie with this many jokes, like Dumb & Dumber and Dumb and Dumber To that everyone has their favorite joke, and I find that the filmmakers often have very different favorite jokes than audience members. What’s your favorite joke in Dumb and Dumber To, if you had to pick one?
It’s funny. I’ll tell you in Dumb & Dumber 1, my all-time favorite joke, the one that got the movie made. Because we had to pitch it to the studio, and I remember the guy we pitched it to literally fell on the ground when we said the bird’s head fell off. He goes, “His head fell off?” “Yeah, he was pretty old.” He just said, “That’s it! That is it, man! That is a fucking perfect gag!” and we got it sold, so that was always my favorite joke in that one.
In this one, it’s the train. Because I remember, when we came up with it, it was a very complicated thing and we thought, “How do you do that?” because that’s not our strength. That would involve CGI, and we avoid CGI. Like in The Three Stooges, we did a very minor amount. We could have done a lot more but we didn’t want to. We wanted to have the old fashioned fall off the building type thing, how they would have shot that 50, 80 years ago.
But in any case, the train thing was on the complicated side for us, and it turned out exactly the way we’d envisioned it, and nobody ever sees it coming. So that’s probably my favorite joke in this one.
Has anyone been talking to you about a Dumb and Dumber Three yet? Was the studio knocking on your door going, “We’ve got to do a third one!”
Well, yeah! New Line and Warner Bros., who own the rights to it, have already said, “Hey, if you guys want to do another one, we will.” And again, we’re like, that wouldn’t be the next thing. It would be better in a few years. But yeah, I would definitely do it. That’s the one movie [I’d do a sequel to].
And also, by the way, those guys… Working with Jim and Jeff, it was our first movie, Dumb & Dumber, and it was very close to our hearts. It was the movie that put us on the map. But those two guys, working with them, they’re so generous, so loving. It’s a fun, fun time. It’s just a ball. All our movies are a lot of fun. We just make them fun because we want it to be fun for the actors, so they’re loose and they go out on a limb and feel good about trying things that might not work sometimes. But this one, Dumb & Dumber, those two guys are so great. I would love just to get together with those guys again, [even] if we weren’t making a movie.
So what is next, if it’s not going to be Dumb and Dumber Three? What else are you working on right now?
Bobby and I are thinking of each doing our own projects next. We’ve never done that, and we just feel like it’s time to try that. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to make movies together again. We are, absolutely. We’re not splitting up. But we feel like going out and doing our own solo album.
I’m going to do a thing called Ricky Stanicky. [It’s] about these kids who, when they’re young and get in trouble and break a window… “Who broke the window!” “It was Ricky… Stanicky.” They make up a name, and every time they get in trouble through their youth they blame it on Stanicky. It’s like, “Who got the booze?!” They’re teenager. “Where’d you get the booze!” “Stanicky bought it!” “Well, stay away from Stanicky!”
Now they’re grown ups, married or [with] girlfriends, and they’re like, “Honey, Stanicky is having a fundraiser in New Orleans for the hurricane victims. We’ve got to go.” He’s their go-to excuse, this fictional guy. What happens is, instead of going to New Orleans on one of these trips, they go to Vegas. They’re partying, and one of the wives who’s seven months pregnant goes into labor, has her baby. Everything went fine but they can’t reach their husbands. She has the kid alone.
The shit hits the fan. They say, “Where the fuck?! We want to meet Stanicky.” It’s like, “You know, Stanicky had to go to Africa to work with orphans.” They go, “We don’t give a shit! We want to meet Stanicky or don’t come home!” So they have to hire somebody to be Ricky Stanicky.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
