[IMG:L]Bobby and Peter Farrelly have kept audiences in stitches since 1994 with their directorial debut Dumb and Dumber and hits like There’s Something About Mary, Me, Myself and Irene and Shallow Hal. Now the comedic geniuses, who pen and produce most of their own projects, are bringing their latest movie, The Heartbreak Kid, to DVD.
The Farrelly Brothers pull out all the stops for the comedy about a bachelor named Eddie [Ben Stiller] who falls head over heels for a blonde bombshell named Lila [Malin Akerman]. After a whirlwind romance the two wed and take off on a honeymoon in Mexico, but the trip takes a turn when Eddie finds himself flirting with another woman.
When Bobby called up Hollywood.com to chat about The Heartbreak Kid that brought in more than $110 million worldwide and the new DVD in stores Dec. 26, we found out all about the brothers’ first business venture, their cross country road trips, and more.
[IMG:R]HW: You and Peter had a chance to share your own story as part of the “French Connection” segment on the DVD extras. What were you most excited about sharing with your fans?
Bobby Farrelly: I think what we would like fans to learn from us is that we didn’t have any education in the film business. Maybe somebody would look at the film and say, “Oh that shows”–but we came from the writing side of things. We really feel like it all starts with a good screenplay. We try to keep all of our movies based on characters and things that did happen to us, or our friends, in real life. We keep them loosely based in reality. We exaggerate them but we feel like the things that happen in real life are funnier than stuff you can make up.
HW: Such as?
BF: In The Heartbreak Kid, Ben’s first wife Lila proves to be a little nutty. My brother Pete and I were sitting down and thinking of all the gals that, lets say, “Got away.” before we met our two lovely wives. We took the nuttiest things that any of them had ever done and we compiled them. We created this Lila character.
HW: You and Peter also admit to some pretty bad business practices during your time as newspaper deliver boys!
BF: That was our first foray into the business world. We did do it together and we were terrible at it. My mom actually made us quit because it was costing her too much money. The guy would come to collect what we owed him for the papers and she would have to come out of pocket every time. I think my brother was embezzling. I can’t prove it, but there was some bad accounting going on.
[IMG:R]HW: It’s pretty clear between the cast and crew “Egg Toss” and the “Heartbreak Halloween” features that you guys run a fun set. What other bets and competitions have you done?
BF: We’ve bet on every single thing that we can think of during the course of the day. We bet on whether or not it will be sunny or cloudy. It’s just to keep everyone involved. The egg toss came up because we were just sitting around and we were bored. Someone actually had an egg. We thought, “Hey, you know that thing where you throw it back and forth? You see how far you can go before it breaks on you.” Then, like everything else, it becomes a competition. Everybody wanted to play it so it became a tradition on the show. After work, at least once a week, we would all get together for this giant egg toss. It would cost $20 a team to get in, it was winner take all.
HW: What about the Halloween party you had on set?
BF: The Halloween party was a good one. That came at a time when for a week or so we had forgotten our motto about everyone having a good time. I don’t know what it was, but everybody was just getting on each other’s nerves for a couple of minutes. That’s not good for us so one of the guys on the crew came up with an idea. He said, “Hey, why don’t we have a big Halloween party?” We were going to do it at night but we thought “Well, we’re in L.A., so rather than everyone driving a long way lets just do it on the set.” The whole day was a giant Halloween party. There were some good costumes.
HW: You looked pretty cute as a yodeler, but did you ever think you’d see Peter dressed as Alex Owen (Jennifer Beals) from Flashdance?
BF: Not only did I think I wouldn’t, but I prayed I wouldn’t. [Laughs] Prayers don’t work. That wasn’t anything that any of us needed to see but he certainly had a good outfit.
HW: You noted earlier that you two come from a writing background. Is it true that you come up with ideas on road trips together?
BF: Dumb and Dumber was a giant road trip. The guys are going from Providence out to Ashton. Almost all the things that happen, from them getting on the highway and going the wrong way, are things that we did ourselves. We used to love to just get in the car and go from one end of the country to the other. My brother Pete has taken that trip 19 times. I’ve done it about 10 and the last time I did it was about three weeks ago. We got in the car, we have a writers’ strike going on so we couldn’t put pen to paper, but we thought, “Let’s just get in the car and drive this route that we’ve never seen before.” So we went up the northern route, through the Dakota’s, and the Black Hills, and we had never been that way. We did it just a few weeks ago. You just sit there and there is nothing to do but talk. You flush out a lot of ideas. For us, it’s very therapeutic and it’s something that we believe in.
[IMG:R]HW: You’ve said on the DVD that you could direct without Peter, but you could never write without him. Why is that?
BF: Writing comedy is hard to do by yourself. You don’t really know if something is funny until you say it out loud and you hear someone else laugh. Then you are like, “Okay, I’m on to something here.” Maybe Woody Allen can do it, but I wouldn’t know if something was funny until I ran it by someone. My brother Pete, if I come up with an idea, he will laugh but the next thing he will think is “Hey! Hold on, hold on, here’s how to make it better.” That’s what you need when you are writing a comedy.
HW: It’s been years since you worked with Ben. How did you nab him for this movie?
BF: We have been wanting to work with Ben–ever since we made There’s Something About Mary and we had a great time with him. Of course he went off on his own and he’s had a pretty good career on his own too. We always [said] “Jeez, it would be great to work with Ben again.” But you have to get the right role. The right role is a guy, like in The Heartbreak Kid where what Ben does well is that you like him, you understand him, and you know he’s coming from a good place. You are allowed to beat on him a little beat in the movie though. The audience will go with it, I don’t know what it is, but he can take a beating and the audience is fine with it and they laugh at it.
HW: How great was it to have Ben and Jerry playing father and son for the film?
BF: I wasn’t sure exactly how it was going to work. We had written the role that Jerry eventually played, we had written it and fashioned it after our own Dad. Tells you a lot doesn’t it? [Laughs] So, we had Ben in the movie and we were thinking “Jeez, who can play his dad in the movie?” We were throwing out a bunch of names of guys, respected actors, and then all of sudden it occurred to us “Well, what about Jerry Stiller? He should know how to play Ben’s dad.” We really didn’t know what Ben would think of it, so we ran it by him, and he said “I love it.”
[IMG:R]HW: Malin Akerman’s career has really taken off this year. Did you see the star power potential as soon as you met her?
BF: We knew it was a juicy role. It’s probably the funniest female character that my brother and I have been involved with. We’ve had some great female characters, but not this level of comedy. We took it upon ourselves to audition almost everyone that was around. We brought in all the young gals in town and we hoped that somebody would have a take on the character that would blow us away. She was the one. She came in, when she read for that part, we were like “Oh my God, who is this gal?”
HW: Did you warn her about all the outrageous sex scenes she would have to perform in the movie?
BF: Just to make sure we got it right we did bring her onto the casting couch … No, I’m joking. [Laughs]
