Peter Farrelly Recalls Every Studio Passing on Dumb & Dumber

Peter Farrelly says every studio and every actor turned down Dumb & Dumber before it was made. He told the story on Saturday at Deadline's Contenders Film Los Angeles event, where he is a Contenders Hall of Fame honoree. He spoke with Deadline's Mike Fleming Jr about his new film, I Play Rocky, and about the years behind his earlier comedies.

The Dumb & Dumber script, Farrelly said, was written five years before the film was made, and it was the same script. Nobody wanted it at first. He said he retitled it A Power Tool Is Not a Toy, and that people began reading it once it had that name. Then Jim Carrey told him the title should be Dumb & Dumber, so they went back to that. Deadline reported the account in the interview.

Farrelly also described the rating fight over There's Something About Mary. The film, he said, had to go to an R rating because it sat on the line between PG-13 and R. The R rating is the US classification that restricts viewers under 17 unless an adult is with them. The studio, he said, did not want the opening zipper joke or the hair gel scene. Those choices were made in the editing and negotiation stage, long after the script had been written.

I Play Rocky is the film he was promoting. Anthony Ippolito plays Sylvester Stallone in it. Farrelly said getting Stallone's approval for the script was imperative, and that it came quickly. He also said that his daughter's ex-boyfriend was the first person to read the script, and that he called it the best script he had ever read.

Asked about the hardest moment in his career, Farrelly pointed back to the start. He said the bravest thing he ever did was decide to write, which he did in his mid-20s. For a writer who spent years hearing no, that decision carried the rest of the story.

Contenders events bring filmmakers, actors and awards voters together in Los Angeles during the run-up to the awards season, and interviews like this one give studios a public chance to frame their films before the year-end release calendar fills up. Farrelly's account is one more look at how a script can sit unsold for years before it finds a buyer.