Who you calling dumb and gross?

>> >> The Farrelly Brothers on Me, Myself & Irene, black midgets, the mentally ill and other people they root for

by MATTHEW HAYS

Peter and Bobby Farrelly refuse to think of themselves as gross-out kings. Though they admit to being low brow, often describing themselves as the anti-Coens, they insist their humour hangs on character and not cheap gags.

"When Ben Stiller has sperm hanging off his ear [in There's Something About Mary], it's not about being gross," argues Peter, apparently in all honesty. "It's about a situation: Stiller hasn't seen this girl in 15 years, he finally gets a date with her, opens the door with this on his ear. It's the situation."

One half of the fraternal directing team is describing what is perhaps the most famous gag in their oeuvre, the one where Stiller jerks off and can't find his sperm, culminating in Cameron Diaz mistaking it for hair gel and gooping it into her hair.

Now, the Farrellys are back with Jim Carrey, the star of their first blockbuster, Dumb and Dumber. In Me, Myself & Irene, Carrey plays a sweet, naive police officer, so kind as to be taken advantage of too often. When he gets pushed too far, Carrey finally snaps, breaking into two personalities, à la Jekyll and Hyde. The film has both of Carrey's personalities falling madly in love with Renée Zellweger, who plays a woman on the lam.

Offending the insane

While the brothers Farrelly might not be openly admitting to being gross-out kingpins--Peter insists he's never even seen a John Waters film--Me, Myself & Irene certainly has its share of crass imagery. There are gags involving breast-feeding, a seemingly endless cow-death scene and another species of barnyard animal being stuffed up someone's butt as an act of revenge, among many others.

Surprisingly enough, the animal-rights lobby isn't up in arms about the film's fur-and-feather-related jabs, but Me, Myself & Irene is taking heat from the mentally ill and their advocates. It seems Carrey's caricature of someone suffering from a split personality disorder is so rife with errors in psychiatric know-how that many feel it will lead to further misconceptions about the condition. For his part, Carrey seems to let the criticisms roll off his back, smiling and saying the whole film "is in good fun. We're having fun with this, taking things to extremes."

With the Farrellys, extremes would seem to be the norm. But the two are sensitive to what's funny and what goes overboard, when something's simply taken too far--in a way that feels unexpected. "We do a lot of audience screenings," says Peter. A surprise, considering most filmmakers can't stand the process and feel it's simply another method for interfering studios to interfere even more. "You don't test with the studio, is the key," Peter continues, letting me in on the secret. "We're big believers in the tests. If things are too mean-spirited, audiences don't like it. For example, there's the scene in Dumb and Dumber where Jeff Daniels hits a woman in the face with a snowball. It gets a huge laugh. But there was a trace of blood under her nose. Then it wasn't funny, because she was hurt now. We had a computer remove the blood from under her nose. We learn as we go: comedy plus blood equals tragedy."

Funny but sweet too

Certainly, Me, Myself & Irene doesn't really take mental illness very seriously. But, one might ask, when was the last time someone went to a Farrelly Brothers film expecting to learn something? They are truly silly, absurd films, intended primarily to make people laugh. But they are also, insist Peter and Bobby, films with heart.

When Carrey's wife gives birth early in Me, Myself & Irene, for example, Carrey is horrified to see that the triplets she spawns are black, and thus clearly not his children (the result of a fling she had with a black midget). But he proceeds to raise them as his own, playing single dad to these three kids, who grow up to be adoring, ebonics-speaking members of the Mensa club. The triplets' status is in itself a gag, but, as the Farrellys explain to me, they become included in the family, making them endearing and not merely a joke.

"I was with one of my friends when he broke his neck years ago, which is why he's in a wheelchair today," recalls Bobby. "He always says, 'Why is it everyone in a wheelchair is sweet? What the fuck is up with that?' We go out of our way to break the stereotypes.

"A reason to use disabled people, retarded people and others in our films, we're using them as a device to win the audience over. Because ultimately, these are the people who get their asses kicked in society. These are the people your heart goes out to. To pull them onto our team, I think you root for them in the end."

But the Farrellys acknowledge the occasional misfire, sometimes a very, very public one indeed. Almost exactly a year ago, they flew out to L.A. for the MTV movie awards, at which they won the Best Movie award for There's Something About Mary. "When we flew out, that day, the L.A. Times had a front-page headline story about Hollywood and Columbine, and how the violence in movies was connected to the school shooting," recalls Bobby.

"We got up to accept the award," continues Peter, "and said, 'Finally we win an award and everyone's blaming Hollywood. Next time there's a school shooting, maybe they'll think of us.' It came across like we were supporting or joking about the Columbine thing, like a very tasteless crack. But you can't do a retake."

"Ultimately," philosophizes Bobby, "you tell a thousand jokes, and there's going to be one bad one.

"And that was it." :

Me, Myself & Irene opens Friday, June 23