4 hours ago
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Jeff Daniels, played Harry
I was bored with drama and wanted to explore comedy, but my agents didn’t want me to do the film. They said: “There’s a chance Jim Carrey will wipe you off the screen.” I said: “Maybe – but not if I work with him.” And that’s what I did. I remember thinking: “It’s either going to be such a bad career move I’ll never work again, or it just might be funny.”
One day Jim came into rehearsals having put a bowl on his head and cut his hair, because that’s how his character Lloyd would do it. I thought: “I gotta come up with something.” We were staying at a Holiday Inn and I started using the shampoo but with no conditioner. Then I’d towel my hair dry and not comb it. And that was it. I came in and said: “Maybe this is Harry’s look?” Everyone agreed. After a couple of months, you could almost break my hair off.
The first morning of shooting had me and Jim up against each other on a little scooter going down mountains. We had helmets on but I had no idea whether Jim could even drive a scooter – and then he started weaving!
The scene where I got my tongue stuck to the icy chairlift was bumpy, too. It’s one of the few times where you can see me break into laughter because I just knew it was funny.
I was stretching myself comedically. I remember getting ready to shoot the toilet scene, after my character unknowingly drinks laxative-laden tea. Jim asked me: “Hey man, you OK?” I said: “Just cold feet. This is either the beginning of my career or the end of it.” He said: “You’ve gotta go all in man. Go all the way!” He couldn’t have been a better cheerleader. Me on that toilet will be the image on my tombstone.
I have a theatre company in Michigan so I put on a preview. I was sat next to my parents and when we got to the toilet scene, my father hung his head in his hands and said: “No, Jeffrey …” Meanwhile 5,000 people fell out of their chairs laughing. The reviews were horrible though. I still have a scrapbook of 200 newspapers panning the movie and wishing it never existed. Then we were the box office No 1 for six straight weeks. That’s when it hit me that we’d done the impossible.
Peter and Bobby Farrelly, directors
The idea came from John Hughes. He was planning a movie called Ski Nuts about two dumb guys in Aspen. That’s all he had. Our agent asked if we wanted to work with him. We pitched the first act of Dumb and Dumber and he literally fell off his chair laughing. “This is it,” he said. “And you’re directing it.”
We wrote the script in three weeks but the studio didn’t get back to us. Then John left Universal so the project just sat there for a couple of years until I wrote to John asking if he could ask Universal to give us the rights back. He did but said we could never use his name when selling it. If we did, it was a million-dollar fine. When promoting the movie, we wanted to say it was John Hughes’s idea but we didn’t have a million dollars. Now, though, we finally thought we’d tell. We think he’d be happy for people to know the truth.
The movie wouldn’t have got made without Jim Carrey. Everybody in town shot it down. Then someone called and said: “Jim Carrey wants to do it.” His career was just taking off. He’d made Ace Ventura and The Mask but neither had been released. Ace Ventura was a surprise hit, and to have him attached to our low-budget movie catapulted us into a higher stratosphere.
We knew Jeff Daniels had a comedic sensibility but the studio didn’t see it. Jim read with him and said: “That guy scared the shit out of me. I was on my heels the whole time. That’s got to be the guy.” We said: “Great. Tell the studio.” Jim called and said he wanted Jeff.
Jim relished the fact that these characters were incorrigibly dumb and pushed to make them even dumber. We showed up at his house before shooting and he had that haircut and his tooth was chipped. We were hysterical. He said it was the haircut he had when he was a kid. He had chipped his tooth as a kid, too. He had been to the dentist and had them chip the tooth cap.In the final scene, a bus-full of girls on a national bikini tour offer Harry and Lloyd jobs as oil boys. The studio absolutely wanted them to get on the bus, but Jeff and Jim both said: “We’re not getting on that bus. Lloyd and Harry are too dumb. These guys are dumb and they remain dumb.” We agreed. It was a risky move. The studio was upset – but the audience loved it.
