Prolific director, screenwriter and producer Peter Farrelly reflected on some of his most famous films Saturday at Deadline’s Contenders Film Los Angeles event.
Contenders Hall of Fame honoree Farrelly talked with Deadline’s Mike Fleming Jr about his most recent film I Play Rocky and the process of bringing it to the screen. Earlier, Farrelly had appeared on the film’s panel with star Anthony Ippolito, who plays Sylvester Stallone in the film, and talked about the uphill battle to making the crowd-pleasing underdog tale.
Farrelly revealed that it was his daughter’s ex-boyfriend who first read the script and told Farrelly it “was the best script he had ever read.” Farrelly agreed and pushed forward with the film, noting it was imperative that he had Stallone’s approval on the script, which came quickly.
He also shared his own “Rocky” moment: “The bravest thing I ever did in my life was decide to write when I was in my mid-20s,” he said.
Farrelly also talked about his years and years of getting turned down for scripts and having to push through the rejection and not give up. As for 1994’s Dumb & Dumber, “We wrote that script five years before it got made, and it was the exact same script,” he shared. “Every studio passed, every actor passed.” He acknowledged that he changed the title to A Power Tool Is Not a Toy and “everyone started reading it.” It was the eventual film’s star Jim Carrey who told him Dumb & Dumber is the title, “so we went back to that,” he said.
“You’ve got to believe,, that they’re wrong and you’re right,” he said regarding the rejections. “You know, year after year getting turned down, it’s hard. You just gotta stick out and hope that you’re right.”
One of the most memorable and hilarious scenes in Farrelly’s films was in There’s Something About Mary and Cameron Diaz’s “hair gel.” “I realized we were going to have to go to R [in that film] because we were right on the PG-13 line.
“There’s two things that the studio didn’t want was the zipper joke in the beginning and the hair gel thing of course, and we understood that, especially the hair gel.” But of course, the hair gel stayed in and the rest is history.
Check back Monday for the panel video.
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