In 1994, Jim Carrey went from obscure TV sketch comic to one of the biggest stars in the world pretty much overnight as he starred in three huge box office hits: The Mask, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and Dumb and Dumber. The latter movie is a timeless classic. It’s one of the funniest comedies ever made.
Helmed by the Farrelly brothers at the height of their powers (and ruined by a terrible sequel, two decades later), Dumb and Dumber has an unparalleled gag rate, with every joke landing as a laugh-out-loud moment. So, here are 10 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About Dumb And Dumber.
Nicolas Cage And Gary Oldman Were The First Choices For Harry And Lloyd
As wild as it might sound, Nicolas Cage and Gary Oldman were the producers’ original choices for the roles of Harry and Lloyd. Now that we’ve seen both actors give Oscar-winning performances in harrowing dramas, it’s tough to picture them doing the laxative scene or the I.O.U. scene or the chili pepper scene in Dumb and Dumber.
Still, both actors have incredible range (yes, even Cage, although admittedly not as much as Oldman), so they might’ve been able to pull it off.
Jim Carrey Actually Has A Chipped Tooth
One of Lloyd Christmas’ defining characteristics in the movie is his chipped tooth. This wasn’t achieved using movie magic; Jim Carrey actually has a chipped tooth that usually has a cap on it.
He had the cap removed by a dentist in order to play Lloyd with a chipped tooth. Carrey isn’t the first actor to have dental work done for a role – Robert De Niro had a dentist mangle up his teeth to play Max Cady in Cape Fear.
The Original Script Was Considered So Bad That The Rewritten Version Needed A New Title
Apparently, Bennett Yellin’s initial screenplay for what would eventually become Dumb and Dumber – written under that title – was so poorly structured and disjointed that it became infamous among script readers and movie producers.
When the Farrelly brothers rewrote the script, they had to give it a fake placeholder title (A Power Tool is Not a Toy) in order to even get Hollywood people to read it again. Most investors wouldn’t touch it when it bore the proper title, due to the reputation that the original script had earned.
The Producers Didn’t Want Jeff Daniels To Play Harry
While the producers of Dumb and Dumber desperately wanted Jim Carrey to play Lloyd, they didn’t want Jeff Daniels to play Harry. But Carrey really wanted Daniels in the role. In order to deter Daniels and ensure that he’d turn it down, they offered him a relatively paltry $50,000 for the film.
Despite the low offer, and his agent insisting that it would end his career, Daniels didn’t hesitate to take the part. By contrast, Carrey was originally offered $700,000, which was bumped up to $7 million after the success of Ace Ventura.
John Hughes Wrote A Draft Of The Script
John Hughes, the acclaimed filmmaker behind such comedy classics as The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, reportedly worked on an early draft of Dumb and Dumber.
However, he left the project and the Farrelly brothers came aboard, changing so much from Hughes’ script that he no longer qualified for a writing credit.
During Filming, Jim Carrey Stayed In The Hotel Room That Inspired The Shining
While Dumb and Dumber was shooting in Colorado, Jim Carrey spent a night at the Stanley Hotel – the hotel that inspired Stephen King to write The Shining – and asked to stay in Room 217, the room that’s supposed to be haunted.
A tour guide at the hotel claims that three hours after Carrey went to bed, he sprinted out of the room in terror and left the building. To this day, he refuses to return to the room and he won’t tell anyone why. Knowing Carrey’s zany sense of humor, this could be an elaborate prank.
Initially, The Producers Wanted Mel Gibson To Play Mary’s Husband As Himself
In an early draft of the script, Mary’s husband was Mel Gibson, and the plan was to have Gibson play himself in the movie. The joke would’ve been that, since Gibson was considered to be one of the world’s foremost hunks at the time, Lloyd couldn’t possibly hope to compete with him.
However, this element was later dropped and Mary’s husband was replaced with a fictional character named Bobby.
Jim Carrey And Lauren Holly Got Married In Real Life
In Dumb and Dumber, Lloyd (played by Jim Carrey) obsessed over Mary (played by Lauren Holly), with next to no chance of ever dating her. After they met on the set of Dumb and Dumber, Carrey and Holly started dating, and a year later, they got married. (And a year after that, they got divorced.)
If Mary had ended up with Lloyd in the movie and married him like he wanted – and if she took his last name – then her name would’ve been Mary Christmas.
In An Alternate Ending, Harry And Lloyd Got On The Bus
At the end of Dumb and Dumber, Harry and Lloyd are invited onto a bus with some bikini models and offered jobs to oil them up before every show. Without realizing this, they tell the models they’ll find some guys to take the jobs in a nearby town and get on their way, complaining that they never get a break.
The producers proposed an alternate ending in which the characters actually got on the bus, but Jim Carrey refused to shoot this scene, feeling that the original version was much funnier.
Jim Carrey Improvised The Most Annoying Sound In The World
During one of the driving scenes, Lloyd asks Harry if he wants to hear the most annoying sound in the world, before letting out a howling screech. This wasn’t in the original script; Jim Carrey improvised it on the spot. This is obvious from the look on Jeff Daniels’ face during the scene.
Carrey ad-libbed a ton of the funniest lines in the movie. For example, he didn’t originally have a line when he was leaving the hotel bar, but he improvised looking at the framed 1969 newspaper and saying, “No way! That’s great! We landed on the Moon!”