Re-Mission

Brian De Palma on withholding information

BOBBY FARRELLY, the honorary chairman of the Rhode Island International Film Festival again this year, is Li'l Rhody born and bred. He and his brother Peter co-wrote the slap-happy Dumb & Dumber, in which two guys from Providence demonstrate the consequences of calamari with pepper rings being the state appetizer. They also co-directed Kingpin and the current hit There's Something About Mary, which respectively answer the questions, "What do the Amish do for exercise besides raise barns?" and "How can stalking a woman be really cute and appealing?"

The Cumberland natives moved to Los Angeles in 1985, banging on the doors of the TV and movie industries, making the usual rounds of pitch meetings and learning to schmooze like pros. There they wrote 15 screenplays together, and their TV work included a couple of Seinfeld episodes, including a classic where Jane Leeves (Daphne in Frasier) is a virgin with a thing about organizing closets, and Jerry and George discuss what exactly a girlfriend is.

Brother Peter is the one with the Masters degree in creative writing from Columbia University. But it was Bobby, the geological engineering graduate from Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, who wrote Kingpin without his sibling. (Here's a piece of Hollywood trivia: What well-known fraternal creative team wrote much of the comedy Bushwacked but were not in the screen credits? Very good.) As well as co-producing the $250-million grossing (pun unavoidable) Dumb & Dumber, the brothers produced the soon-to-be-released Outside Providence, based on Peter's novel, which fellow Rhode Island native Michael Corrente directed.

Bobby spoke by phone from his home, nearby over the line in Massachusetts, where he has been living for the past two years.

Q: This little state now has two international film festivals. Are you impressed?

A: People are very film-friendly in Rhode Island. Everywhere that we go, people want know how we did it, and they want to get into the movies, and they want to be an extra. They really enjoy film.

Q: Don't you find that everywhere?

A: No. In some places, people are just generally apathetic. They don't have the passion that the people in Rhode Island have.

Q: You're not just talking about those jaded L.A. folks?

A: No. I'll give you a for instance. When we shot Dumb & Dumber, we shot a little bit of it in Rhode Island. We were here for a few days, we did a lot of the exteriors and things like that. I myself was driving around in that Mutt Cut car, and there was a film car following it. You can imagine the attention that gets you, driving by the State House in that car. No matter where we went, everybody had to know what was going on, what is this, and they were all very excited. It actually becomes a concern, because you need everyone in the background to act normal instead of waving and all this. Well, from there we went to Colorado and Utah. Same car, same cameras. We'd drive that thing down the streets of Salt Lake City and, I'm telling you, people wouldn't even turn their heads! It was like: Wow! It just reminded me that in Rhode Island they stand up and take notice.

Q: How does Rhode Island stack up with its competition around the country for making films?

A: Maybe the only thing that keeps it from being the top spot around is the fact that we have weather to contend with much of the year. Just the sheer beauty of it: all the ocean, you've got the cities, you have towns, you have countryside. You just have a lot of locations to choose from.

It's very film-friendly. Almost every town in Rhode Island -- and maybe every one -- will be more than happy to have your film company come in and film there. And that's not true of everywhere in the world. A lot of people just don't want it. They don't want what goes along with it. They don't want half the town tied up -- you have to make some concessions when a film company comes in. There are a lot of actors and actresses in the area, between here and Boston. And there are a lot of crews, working crews. Those are all things you need to consider when you're going to an area. And it's all here.

Q: With your work on the West Coast, why did you move back to the area?

A: In my heart I never left. I always considered Rhode Island my home. I enjoyed being in L.A. Pete and I felt we were going in the right direction. Things were fun out there. But I have two children now -- both about to go to first grade. It was all right when they were just babies. Now they're growing up and you need a place where you can put them in the yard and let them run around and not worry your brains off every day.

Q: And you don't want to raise surfers.

A: It is that, it really is. I always take a look at the kids that you meet there and say, "Well, I don't know. That could be my kid. Do I like that kid?" They're spoiled. It has to do with a lot of things, but maybe the weather a little bit, too. Every day's a nice day.

Q: What do you say to people who feel that Dumb & Dumber made out guys from Providence to be urban hicks?

A: Ahhh. I guess they might have had a case with Dumb & Dumber (laughs). The idea we had was that you get these two knuckleheads who go to Aspen. That was always the first idea for the movie, in one line. Well, Aspen was kind of like Oz. It was a place that they didn't belong in. So we had to set them up from a place that was the antithesis of Aspen, that was nothing like that, to make it more fish out of water. Coincidentally, we said, "Hey -- why don't we go back to Rhode Island and shoot there?" We weren't really saying that Rhode Island is like that, it just maybe came across that way.

Consciously, in There's Something About Mary we wanted to make sure that we did portray Rhode Island in a more favorable light. Not that, maybe, we accomplished it, but we tried to!

-- B.R.

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