The Farrelly Brothers went on a social media blitz yesterday in the bay area visiting YouTube and Twitter among other companies. At the end of the day they popped into a San Francisco screening of their new movie Hall Pass which comes out today. A very loyal reader sent us this Q&A that they did at the end of the movie so I tried to transcribe and edit it to the best of my abilities. They talk about the new movie, their beginnings in film, Twitter, and The Three Stooges.
We originally thought Owen is probably too good looking, probably too cool to play that role. We wanted a guy to go out there and seemingly have some difficulty out there but we figured Owen is a great actor and he could play it in different ways.
The very first draft we did, by the way, we showed it to our wives and they couldn’t stand it because the wives were pretty much sitting around biting their nails while the guys had a Hall Pass. So we went in and realized if the guys having a hall pass, the girls would take it upon themselves to have their own.
In terms of their chemistry, were you expecting that right off the bat, did they know each other?
They [Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis] did not know each other, we hoped for that would come across, but day one, when they met each other, they bonded. They did seem like they knew each other forever.
Sudeikis is really funny, we knew him for a long time and he’s a cool dude, good guy, great actor. You see him on SNL, he’s funny but you really don’t know how he’d do over a long form and he blew us away, we thought he was shockingly good
The Farrelly Brothers directing Owen Wilson on the set of Hall Pass
Seems like you have so much fun on your set…
We’re drinkers. So, uh
Oh, you drink on set?
Ah, no, not on set, afterwards. No, I’m kidding. We have some fun. We believe, you know a lot of people say comedy is hard work but we feel like you gotta be having a good time so the actors will feel secure and take chances. I feel if there’s a stressful feeling on the set and the actors won’t go on a limb because it doesn’t always work, a lot of the times they fail. A lot of times they fail and you want them to feel like they’re failing amongst friends so that they can try again. Even the best: Bill Murray, Jim Carrey. One out of four times they try something, it’s not funny and you don’t want them to feel embarrassed but you want them to feel like haha, that’s stupid ok, well let’s do it again.
Do you want to tell that story about how you directed Bill Murray?
When he was in Kingpin, he showed up on the set first day and we were shooting with him, we pulled him aside and he was like ok well whatever, I’ll figure it out and it was so much better than what was actually written what he did, it was amazing. But it’s hard to direct because you come up and you’re like, “Hey Bill, why don’t you try it this way?” and he’d say, “Awww yeah, the obvious choice.”
So how much is improve vs staying in script?
Well we work along a timeline script, this one was probably over three years so when we get there, our first thought is let’s do what’s there. But then you have a guy like Jason Sudeikis whose from Saturday Night Live expert and Owen is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter so we’re nothing if we don’t listen to them. So we do what’s there on script, we try do that, and any extra time we have, we try whatever comes along. You know when you start a movie, you think you’re 100% there, at least you probably wouldn’t be starting it if you didn’t think the script was perfect but of course you find out it’s not perfect. Some things aren’t working when you’re shooting it. Something on paper could be funnier than actually seeing it. So it’s your job as the director to fill in that 25% but also that’s why you work with great actors because they come up with the stuff that’s not all you.
Three years, that seems like a long time to get it off the ground. What’s the process you take?
Well, we love the original script, because it was a great idea but there were problems in it that we didn’t follow through on the girls or it didn’t have the right tone, there are little things, so you keep working on it and working on it we make mistakes too and we just didn’t feel like it was ready to shoot.
You’re walking a fine line with this concept and we wanted it to be true. There’s an old saying in theater when you bring a loaded gun on stage, it must go off. So when you have a concept like this, some body’s gonna get laid and then the question was, “Who? Who gets laid?” and then if they do, I mean it could be all of them for all we know but then how do you have a satisfying ending. Not necessarily a happy ending, but an ending that’s real and we thought about it for a long time.
As brothers, you have to work together all the time, obviously. What’s the work flow like between you two?
They say you make a movie three times. You make it once when you write it, you make it once when you film it, and you make it again when you edit it. The filming of the movie is the most fun part, it really is, we do have a lot of fun making a movie.
We have well defined role, we talk amongst ourselves after every take and one or the other would go over and talk with the actors, but not both. And the writing and the editing, we both have the same goal and we both use each other.
The Farrelly Brothers on the set of Hall Pass
Dumb & Dumber was their first film, they never had directed anything. But that wasn’t your first script, though, right?
No, we’ve been writing films for 5-7 years but we never got anything made and we sort of got frustrated because we write the script and we also thought well this one has a good chance but it wouldn’t get made for one reason or another. And then finally, after about 7 years we thought, well we can’t get a director to direct any of these so maybe we’ll just direct it ourselves and we’ll try to do it real low budget and once we did that, it became a reality and all of a sudden it took off and we were in the director’s seat and we felt like we were a big fraud because we didn’t know what we were doing and nobody fired us so it all worked out.
It seems like you always shoot guys and you always have the duo. Do they represent you two at all?
No. It’s easier to have two guys because they can joke with each other, have someone to talk to. We relate better to two guys. Maybe the movie that we did called Stuck on You was a little more biographical than the others and maybe Dumb & Dumber. Actually, Outside Providence is probably closer to the guys we grew up with.
How did you get Jim Carrey for Dumb and Dumber, he was a ridiculously big deal at the time, right?
No, he wasn’t. Actually, when we got him, he was the white guy on In Living Color…Ace Ventura hadn’t come out yet.
We love Richard Jenkins, we had him in Outside Providence and There’s Something About Mary. Almost every time we go to make a new movie, we tend to think where can we put in Richard Jenkins. He doesn’t ordinarily do comedy, he’s a very well respected actor. We love him so we hope to get guys like that but we always want to bring in new guys too but we do use certain actors over and over.
If you two had a Hall Pass, what would you do?
Guess I’d try and get laid. Uh, no, the truth is if I had a Hall Pass, my wife would want a Hall Pass so that would just squash it…I wouldn’t do it.
Well let’s just say I’m a Genie-
Yeah, I can see you as a Genie.
…and she wouldn’t know about, what would you do?
I’d do exactly what the guys did, I’d chase Nicky Whelan, the Australian actress. I think they did well by chasing her.
Did you meet real people who had Hall Passes?
No, but there is a guy. The concept came from Keith Jones, that’s his idea. But there is a guy in the NBA called Andrei Kirlenko. He’s European Player in the NBA and his wife gives him a Hall Pass 1 day a year. So it does happen apparently…not our wives.
Since you started filming the script and then started filming whatever…how much of the movie was actually improv?
That’s a really good question. Probably about 20/25% but it’s more like .. basically it’s there but they’re making it funnier. Like in Mary, when he says Brett Fav-re. That wasn’t scripted…that was something he was winging.
ESPN did a poll: What’s the most quoted line in any of our movies. Our guess was going to be from dumb and dumber, when he said “Are you telling me there’s a chance?” I was thinking, “We got a bleeder” from There’s Something About Mary. It was when Jim Carrey said, “Oh, Big Gulps, huh? Well, see ya later.” Number one quote, that was an ad lib.
It’s always the end of the scene stuff. Like in this, for instance, one of my favorite lines is at the end of the coffee scene where they first see the coffee girl and the guy pounds his potato and leaves and they say I’d like to pound his potato, Owen looks at Sudeikis and says nah, he’s a nice guy. Yeah, he’s a nice guy that was just an ad lib, they were just winging it.
The Farrelly Brothers with Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis in Hall Pass
You guys have a twitter account, also, you’re going into the future. @FarrellyBros.
We got a twitter stream today. Our first tweet. We tweeted Alyssa Milano and asked her if it was ok if we followed her. The reason why we asked is because she has a restraining order against us.
That was a fun cameo, Alyssa Milano is great, she’s big on Twitter.
Yeah, that’s what we hear.
Did she give you twitter advice? Did she tweet on set a lot?
A tweeter, yeah she does it all day. But it was fun to have her, she was only there for a few days. But it’s fun to have people like that come in and play a small part.
You went to Twitter’s headquarters today, also. That must’ve been fun. What kind of tweets can we expect from you?
We were there today, it looked like they were going out of business…we saw like nobody there. We were like where is everyone? Well they went home, in the afternoon, they can work from home. Do they take their phones? There’s like empty desks, no phones, no lamps. We had a good time. But it was a little deserted, curiously.
What kind of tweets can we expect from you? Comedic?
Filthy jokes, can you tell filthy jokes on twitter?
Yeah, you can do anything you want…that’s the great thing about twitter.
I don’t know, recommendation things, bands you like, just something you think’s funny, I guess whatever anybody does on twitter, that kind of thing.
And of course, lastly, you have Three Stooges coming up which is really exciting project so just tell people about that because I’m sure a lot of people out there want to know.
We grew up watching a lot of Three Stooges, they inspired us and those guys did their thing in the 1930s, 40s, and even today as we watch we find them very very funny. So we were hoping one day we could re-do them, bring them back and reintroduce them to a generation of kids that aren’t really familiar with them. We’ve been working on it for about 10 years, we kind of see it like it’s Dumb and Dumber-ish, it’s Dumb and Dumber and Dumberer…three of em. It’s that style of humor which we really enjoy doing and a lot of slapstick and we just think their the funniest guys going and we want to bring them back.
Also, it’s not a biopic, it’s three episodes just like you watch on TV only a little longer like 27 minutes long. Each episode we pick up where the last one left off. It takes place present day, we’ve written all new material. It’s going to be a fun movie, we feel good about it. We’re going to get a lot of shit about it because all of a sudden, this is where the critics come out and say, “How dare you remake The Three Stooges!” like Fuck You! Motherfuckers! You know, The Three Stooges were always given 2nd-class treatment their entire careers. They never did movies until the very end when they were done. They were never Laurel and Hearty, or the Marx Brothers, or Abbott and Costello. They were beneath it, they were before movies. They were looked down upon and now cute little kids don’t know who they are. We love these guys and we want to bring them back. We want to give them the A-class treatment they deserve. So anybody who criticizes, I’m coming right at them and like I’m not taking any shit.
Tags: Alyssa Milano, Bobby Farrelly, Jason Sudeikis, Owen Wilson, Peter Farrelly, Richard Jenkins, The Farrelly Brothers
Matthew Fong created advancescreenings.com and is the lead contributor. He watches every type of movie and will try almost anything twice. You can follow him on twitter here: @matthewfong
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