Renée Zellweger
“You can’t
imagine some
of the stuff these guys come up with. I still can’t believe it. My dad’s not going to believe this. In fact, my
dad can’t see
this movie!”
Renée
Zellweger
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Carrey on set with the Farrelly brothers.
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“Believe it or not, the first thing we think about is not laughs,” says Peter. “We want to create characters that audiences will love enough for us to get away with murder. That comes first. We will only go as far as that character will allow.”
There’s actually what you might, if you want to be auteurist about it, call a basic structure to the films made by the Farrellys, who began their career writing for Jim Carrey on one of the Ace Ventura movies. In addition to the Mr Nice Guy in the middle, there’s always a trip - like Lloyd Christmas (Carrey) in Dumb & Dumber goes to Colorado and Pat Healy (Stiller) in There’s Something About Mary goes to Florida - and there is what you might call a nemesis; not so much a bad guy (he’s usually too hapless for that) as a Mr Bad Boy who comes between Mr Nice Guy and The Girl.
Me, Myself & Irene certainly has the journey. Mild-mannered Rhode Island state trooper Charlie Baileygates (played by Jim Carrey in his third Farrelly Brothers movie) has to escort the felonious Irene Waters (Zellweger) across state lines to answer her warrant.
“It’s just the same old, same old,” jokes Bobby. “We pretty much rip ourselves off from movie to movie. Seriously, though, we hope this will have as many big laughs as Mary did. There’s a couple of scenes in here that I think will get as big a laugh. Suffice it to say, I don’t think people use the word ‘mature’ with us very often.”
The movie boasts an impressive supporting cast, including a couple of actors who have rarely played comedy before - Oscar nominee Robert Forster as Charlie’s indulgent commanding officer, and Chris Cooper (Lone Star, American Beauty) as one of the cops who ends up tailing him - plus Farrelly regular Lin Shaye (the landlady from Kingpin; the sun-worshipping Magda from Mary) as the wizened Cigarette Lady.
“We have to put her in our films.” says Peter. “It would be bad karma not to; she’s been too good to us. I’ve said it before: our movies would be only half as good without her.”
But the movie is a basically a three-hander, with Carrey playing two of the hands. The real twist in Me, Myself & Irene comes in the identity of Mr Bad Boy: it’s Carrey again, in the form of Charlie’s alter ego, Hank, who is everything Charlie isn’t. He’s aggressive, hard-drinking and makes interesting use of a variety of marital aids. Hank takes over when Charlie forgets to take his medication. What is more, both of them fall in love with Irene. And, wouldn’t you know it, Irene responds to something in each of them.
For anyone other than the Farrellys, making an outrageous comedy about someone with a split personality might have given pause for thought. “How do they keep within the limits of taste?” muses producer Bradley Thomas, who also did Kingpin and Mary and co-produced Dumb & Dumber. “They don’t. They cross the line, totally cross the line. They know when to pull back, but I think their goal is to go as far as possible. Nobody is making fun of anybody, but they poke fun at everybody.”
“This is our take on The Three Faces of Eve,” chips in Peter, “except we call it The Two Faces of Barney Fife, after the beleaguered deputy played by Don Knotts on The Andy Griffith Show.”
Before you get too confused, no, Carrey’s character isn’t really called Barney Fife: he’s called Charlie on good days and Hank on bad ones. And he has a history, which is a characteristic Farrelly Brothers mix of the emotionally devastating and the outrageously comic. The root of Charlie’s problem lies in his failed marriage to Layla (Traylor Howard), whom he adored but who ran off with the vertically challenged African-American limo driver who picked them up at their wedding. Not only that, but she had triplets with the guy, then dumped them on Charlie, who adores them, too. So here he is, an ordinary, peace-living, helping-old-ladies-across-the-street Rhode Island state trooper with three mixed race kids. To make things worse (or funnier), they all have near-genius IQs.
Charlie doesn’t. All Charlie wants is for his three kids to be part of street life, to talk cool. So here’s this dumb white cop trying to teach these three young black Einsteins to be street-wise. Charlie, as you will discover, has some unresolved problems.
“Charlie’s heartbroken,” says Peter Farrelly, “but he never deals with it, never explodes or lets it out to show people how angry he is. He just covers it up. It’s too painful for him to deal with. Finally, 15 years later, he explodes in the guise of this other personality, Hank. All the aggression that he’s kept a lid on over the last 15 years comes out in this other personality.”
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