 Charlie (Jim Carrey) on his wedding day, top; and, centre, with his three boys (see, what happened was, his wife - in the top picture - goes off with the limo driver - also in the top picture - and Charlie brings up the kids).
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It’s a role that might have been tailor-made for Carrey, but it wasn’t. Me, Myself & Irene is a script that the film-makers wrote in 1990, before they really became the Farrellys. Eight years later, it found its way to Carrey. “We knew it was good,” says Mike Cerrone, one of many childhood and school friends who tend to show up on the brothers’ movies and who wrote this screenplay with them a decade ago, “but we felt it was haunted because it had been around for so long. Then Jim read it and contacted Peter and Bobby and said he wanted to do it. That made it happen.”
“It’s an extremely demanding role,” says Peter, “because Jim has no props or make-up to clearly delineate between the two characters. It’s not an easy thing to do. He uses voice changes, but mostly body-language and mannerisms.”
| GLADIATOR |
Twentieth Century Fox presents a Conundrum Entertainment production. A Farrelly Brothers movie.
Prod: Bradley Thomas; Exec prod: Charles B Wessler, Tom Schulman; Co-prod: Marc S Fischer; Dir: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly; Scr: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly, Mike Cerrone; Ph: Mark Irwin; Prod des: Sidney J Bartholomew, Jr; Cost des: Pamela Withers; Ed: Christopher Greenbury.
With Jim Carrey (Charlie/Hank Baileygates), Renée Zellweger (Irene Waters), Robert Forster (Captain Partington), Chris Cooper (Lieutenant Gehrke), Richard Jenkins (Agent Boshane), Daniel Greene (Dickie Thurman), Anthony Anderson (Jamaal), ‘Mongo’ Brownlee (Lee Harvey), Jerod Mixon (Shonte Jr), Michael Bowman (Whitey), Traylor Howard (Layla), Lin Shaye (Cigarette Lady).
International
distribution:
Twentieth Century Fox.
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“I’ve never seen anybody do what he can do,” says Zellweger, who admits that the two hardest things about working with Carrey were keeping up and keeping a straight face. “We’d perform a scene and, in the next instant, he’d be somebody completely different, completely unrecognisable. It was kind of scary, because even his eyes were different. It was magical to see what he could do.”
Meanwhile, Zellweger herself had no difficulty in understanding why her character should be attracted to the two sides of Charlie. And that was always part of the Farrellys’ plan.
“Our general rule is, if we offend more than we
don’t offend, we cut it. We’ve discovered in
our test screenings that people will
not laugh if it’s truly offensive”
Peter Farrelly
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“We always thought this comedy would work best if we played it like a traditional love triangle,” says Bobby, “with the girl and the two guys both fighting for her. Usually, in that situation, one of the guys is a nice guy and the other one is a bit of a bad boy. And the girl usually goes for the bad guy. We thought we had to write it so audiences didn’t know which guy is going to get the girl.”
And the girl herself? “We wanted her to be the type of woman who, the more you looked at, the more you fell in love with her,” says Bobby. “Renée has that kind of appeal.”
Amen to that. But she isn’t all sweetness and light, surely? Doesn’t she have a criminal past? Why else would Charlie/Hank be escorting her across state lines? What is it exactly that she has done?
“A very suspicious traffic violation,” mutters Peter darkly.
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