It's not everyday you can go to the last Tuesday class before Thanksgiving and meet one of the guys responsible for Dumb and Dumber. For professor John Michalczyk's Comic Film class, that was exactly what happened. Bobby Farrelly, of the famous Farrelly brothers comedy team, came to speak to a Boston College class about testicles, Brett Favre, and making it in Hollywood.
As it happens, I never got into Dumb and Dumber, the brothers' first industry success. There's Something About Mary and Fever Pitch I can get behind, but most of their work is geared toward an audience in which I rarely find myself. Regardless of my personal inclination toward their brand of humor, Bobby Farrelly has made the kind of impact on American cinema that an aspiring filmmaker can only envy. Not only did he and his brother Peter make Jim Carrey an icon, but they also got a rabid Yankees fan (Jimmy Fallon) to woo the hearts of a sentimental Red Sox nation (Drew Barrymore, in Fever Pitch).
At 4 p.m. on a drizzly Tuesday, with a campus eerily vacant of the student hordes, Bobby first shared his thoughts on bringing the brothers' work into the classroom. Apparently, in 1997 they brought a version of There's Something About Mary into another BC classroom. Despite their request for no pirating, leaking of information, or unintended publication of anyone's opinion, a student's extensive review of Mary made its way online the next day. Initially, Bobby remembers, they weren't inclined to look upon the leak agreeably. But after reading the critique, some of the kid's criticisms were actually spot-on. They contacted the student, and told him they'd have a job waiting for him after graduation.
Bobby wasn't also an industry man. Growing up in Rhode Island, he was as far removed from the smoggy Los Angeles climate as one could hope. Yet the brothers' beginnings would make for a story of circumstance as unexpected as one of their own. After college, Bobby ended up selling round beach towels - yes, round beach towels - in Southern California. Peter, a business major, was also in California. Everyone around them, Bobby said, was writing screenplays, so they decided to write screenplays also. Time passed, and after writing credits on some episodes of Seinfeld, they struck comedy gold with their 1994 comedy.
2008 Woodie Awards
