In Hall Pass, Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis play a couple of suburban men who, bored by their current sex lives -- often retreating to the bathroom or the mini-van, respectively, for self pleasure -- are given a one week reprieve from their current marriages, no questions asked. Movieline spoke to the Farrellys about directing Hall Pass, their upcoming Three Stooges film, why There's Something About Mary and Stuck on You don't get the credit they deserve (for different reasons), and the intricacies of adult masturbation.
(Also, on a personal note: I always swore to myself that if I ever got the chance to interview the Farrelly Brothers that I would vent my frustration about seeing Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore dancing around the field after the final, agonizing, out of the 2004 World Series, while filming a scene for Fever Pitch.)
I always told myself that if I ever interviewed you guys that I would introduce myself as from the Rhode Island Slut, but then I realized that's stupid.
Peter: [Laughs] Wait, where are you from originally?
Let's just say that I've never forgiven you for putting Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore on the field for that scene in Fever Pitch after the 2004 World Series?
Peter: Were you going for St. Louis or the Red Sox?
I'm from St. Louis originally, so I'm a huge Cardinals guy.
Peter: Ah, I would hope so.
OK, so the concept of a hall pass: is this a real thing? Do people do this?
Peter: Oh, yeah.
Bobby: Starting next month!
Peter: I'm sure that... Bob, who's that basketball player?
Bobby: I'm drawing a blank, but there is a guy in the NBA and we read about him. He's a European player and he happens to be married to a smoking hot wife, too. For whatever reason, she gives him a day or a week off a year to go out so he can sow his oats. So I don't know if it's a European thing or not. But that story did come out, I saw it in the last couple of years. I was like, "Oh my God."
Peter: I'll tell you one thing, I think if women saw the movie they would be more inclined to do it than guys would.
Right, the movie makes the point that most guys aren't going to be as successful as they think they're going to be.
Peter: And this is a guy concept, Hall Pass, but it's a chick flick at heart. The women win on all levels here. They get the hall pass, they get to actually succeed with a hall pass in the sense that they see it through. They get away with the hall pass and their husbands come home changed and humbled from the hall pass. So it's a win, win, win, win, win for women.
Is this Owen Wilson's first "I'm an older guy now" type role?
Bobby: Going into the movie we knew that if we have Owen in it and it's about a guy getting a hall pass and he's the "cool" Owen that everyone's kind of used to seeing, it wouldn't be fair, really. It's like, "Wait a minute, he could probably go out and get some women." But a kind of dorky, suburban dad version of Owen is going to have a harder time, so he understood that going in. I give him full credit because he's totally going against what he typically plays and he does a real nice job of it in Hall Pass.
Peter: What was that movie a few years ago with Russell Crowe where he was the cigarette informant guy?
The Insider.
Peter: Yeah, we were looking at it like that. Russell Crowe can probably do pretty well with the chicks but the guy in that movie couldn't. We've known Owen for years and, believe it or not, Owen's got a side to him that we show in Hall Pass. He's not the coolest dude in the world at all times. He's actually kind of like an intellectual and a history buff and he's got a lot of dorky qualities. And we just thought it would be nice to show that side of him rather than the side that they keep showing over and over.
There's a depressing line in the film about still "having to jerk off even though you're married." Is the greater message of the film "Hey, teenager, don't think you're going to stop masturbating when you become an adult"?
Peter: [Laughs] Well, I think the sooner that you get over that fact the happier you're going to be. I remember being like 18 thinking this is terrible, I shouldn't be jerking off at this point. I should have stopped at 15! What is wrong with me? Now I'm in my 50s and still going away at it. It doesn't end. Nice image for the readers. When you're a kid you think that once you get married, certainly, you'll never have to do that again. But, you know, what you find out is that it's not out of necessity, sometimes it's out of...
Bobby: General maintenance.
Right, I never thought that when I was in my 30s that I would still get a pimple or still have to lock a bedroom door.
Peter: Exactly! You know, I still get an occasional pimple. I didn't expect that! They're not telling us the truth! You're thinking that stuff all going to be gone at 15 or 16 and it doesn't go away.
Speaking of, were you aware that the adult website mentioned in the film actually exists?
Peter: Yes. We had to clear it with the real one. What happened, Bob?
Bobby: I think we had... I believe we have permission to use it.
Peter: Their business is about to go through the roof!
Bobby: The good people at c*ckgobblers dot com.
Are they publicly traded? Should we invest?
Peter: They're on the NASDAQ.
Bobby: It's a penny stock right now but it's probably worth getting into.
Jason Sudeikis is an interesting guy as an actor but he's been criminally underused on SNL this season. What's his future?
Peter: He's taking off. He's going places, big time. To us, he's the second coming of Jack Lemmon. He is the perfect second banana in this movie. He is so funny, so flawed, so quick and brought so much to this role. He's one of the all-time funny guys and I see huge success for him. And, also, because he has this movie coming out later this year -- Horrible Bosses, which has got a huge buzz in town -- his star is going to be rising very quickly.
There is a decently long scene of full frontal male nudity in this film. Is the selection process for that, um, humbling?
Peter: It was fun... It was odd, I should say, to cast. Literally we were given pictures of big c*cks. And it was like, "Which one do you want?" And we're like, "Um, the biggest one. Whatever that is." And then they're like, "Well, that guy, he's not big there but he could pop it up." And I'm like, "Aw, Jesus, we have to actually think about this?" So, yeah, we thought it would be funny and it turned out to be. Of course, it's one of those scenes like in all of our movies: you'll have a scene that's the most favorite scene and the least favorite scene -- and it's the same scene. A lot of people are put off by that but the majority love it.
Looking ahead, you guys still haven't cast any of the roles in The Three Stooges?
Bobby: We've been working hard on the casting but nothing is finalized yet. It should be pretty soon.
And this is a completely different concept than the Michael Chiklis TV movie that came out a few years ago, right?
Peter: That was a biopic about their real lives, and not really a comedy. It was actually kind of sad. This is The Three Stooges as you watched it on TV. We've written three brand new episodes and the movie is comprised of those episodes and each episode picks up where the last episode left off. Each one starts with it's own theme song [begins humming The Three Stooges theme songs].
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you guys talk about doing this movie in 3-D, quite a while ago before the current craze?
Peter: Absolutely.
Bobby: We believe we inspired James Cameron to make Avatar just mentioning doing the Stooges in 3-D.
Comedy is the one genre that really hasn't been done in 3-D to this point.
Peter: Well, we're not even sure that we're going to do it in 3-D. And the reason being is that 3-D has become so trendy and so unnecessary in so many movies, unless it was going to be a huge advantage and a huge help to the audience, we wouldn't do it. You know, I don't want to do it for a couple of fingers coming at you.
What movie are you most proud of?
Bobby: It's easy to say that the movies are like your kids, you love them all. And it's very true, you do. Because you put so much time and effort into all of them. Honestly, I never look back and don't like any of them. This movie, Hall Pass, is right up there for me because we're dealing with a tricky subject. We're dealing with the institution of marriage and a lot of people don't want to joke about that. It's like a serious thing. But we feel like we can poke fun at it if we do it correctly. And we feel like we did, so, I'm pretty proud of this one.
Peter: Yeah, exactly what Bob says, believe it or not -- and you probably wouldn't believe it -- but we really do love them kind of all equally. I like Stuck on You as much as I like There's Something About Mary. And I know Mary is probably a better movie, everyone seems to think so, but I don't see that. It's like your kids, somebody else might like one of your kinds more than the other, but you like them the same.
OK, let me rephrase: Which movie do you think is the most underrated and you wish that it would have done better?
Peter: Stuck on You, I think, is a sweet little movie and, for whatever reason -- maybe people have no interest in seeing conjoined twins -- but I think that Greg Kinnear and Matt Damon are unbelievable in that movie. They are so there. I'm very proud of that movie.
Bobby: Yeah, the ones that come out and are met with box-office success, you know, are Dumb and Dumber and There's Something About Mary -- that's success in itself. The ones like Kingpin that didn't come out and blow them away at the box-office, but then you find out that people found it on DVD and really enjoyed it. Those are the ones that you feel pretty proud of because people did find it. It wasn't all at the theater, but it did have its run.
Peter: I remember somebody telling me that they went to see David Sedaris at UCLA, he was doing a reading. He did a Q&A afterward and somehow it came up something like, "What are you doing later on today?" He said, "I'm going to go rent Stuck on You," and everybody laughed. And he said, "I'm seriously going to rent Stuck on You, that's one of my favorite movies. It makes me feel good." And when I heard about that I was just so happy because he's such a brilliant guy and it's nice to hear things like that.
You mentioned There's Something About Mary, which was a huge financial success. Personally, I think it's one of the funniest movies to come out in the last 30 years. Why isn't it mentioned more often next to Airplane! or Caddyshack?
Peter: I don't know, I don't really think about that. It seems to get some credit, I have seen it in a few lists. Every now and then someone will send me an email with a list and it's on there. Whatever. We don't live and die by those types of things.
Bobby: Comedy is very subjective. It just is. What one guy laughs at, someone else doesn't. So one guy can say, "that movie sucks," and another guy can say, "no, it's one of the great comedies ever." And, you know, who's to say either one is right or wrong. It's very subjective, much more so than other genres of movies where everyone can agree that Titanic was a great movie, or something like that.
Peter: And, also, things get better with time. Like, all of a sudden... I'll give you a great example. The great example is Dumb and Dumber, when that came out that was crushed. The reviews were horrible. They were saying that this is just garbage, blah blah blah. And then it was a big hit and then it came out on DVD and the reviews were excellent. So things seem to get better with a little distance, or they get thought of better.
True story: I saw Dumb and Dumber in December of 1994 when a friend and I were home from school. After the movie, we didn't even pack, we just drove from Missouri to Winnipeg for no reason.
Peter: [Laughs] Wait. Really? I love that. Where did you go to college?
University of Missouri.
Peter: Oh, because Pete Jones, who we wrote this with -- it was his idea in fact -- he went to the University of Missouri. We have a huge Missouri thing happening in this movie because Pete Jones went to Mizzou, Jenna Fischer is from St. Louis and Jason Sudeikis is from Kansas City. So how long of a drive was that?
It was a good 15 hours. And I know Jenna Fischer is a huge Cardinals fan, too, so I promise she wasn't happy either with that scene in Fever Pitch.
Bobby: [Laughs] We should have let you borrow the Mutt Cutts van for your trip!
Peter: [Laughs] But I've done that. I get that urge all of the time. I've driven across country 20 times. And I've done it 15 alone. I love driving cross country and I love just taking off. A couple of years ago I was sitting in my office and I just had so many decisions to make and my brain was cluttered and I think best on the road. I just called my wife and said, "Honey, I have to hit the road. Like right now. I have to go on the road, I have to think." I got a rental car and I drove straight to Canada, straight up from L.A., just due north. I actually went up to Sandpoint, Idaho, which is right below Canada and then flew back from there. It's the greatest, most therapeutic thing you can do for yourself.
Your movies have been described as "gross-out comedies," and there is one scene in Hall Pass that does qualify, but that's not really an apt description of any of your films. What is your opinion of that label?
Bobby: Thank you!
Peter: We hate it. I can't stand it. It's so demeaning. You know, it really is because it's not what we do. It's not about that. It's so much more complicated and it's a small thing. You know, we don't like it. It sucks. It's not a great thing to hear.