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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
In March, seventy years after the release of the first Three Stooges short, "Woman Haters"--the only one spoken in rhyming couplets--Peter and Bobby Farrelly met up in a hotel in the ski resort of Sun Valley, Idaho, to resume work on a script that they started two years ago and that some people hope they never finish. The brothers, who wrote and directed "Dumb & Dumber," "There's Something About Mary," "Shallow Hal," and other vulgar, warmhearted comedies, had a month to produce the second draft of "The Three Stooges," a script that places the trio in the present day, and gives them a degree of present-day frankness about bodily functions--as well as access to chain saws and microwave ovens. The deadline had been set, in part, by Russell Crowe, whom they were hoping to cast as Moe, the angriest and most violent Stooge.
The afternoon of their first day in Idaho, the Farrellys and their co-writer on the script, Mike Cerrone, a friend since childhood, were in Peter's room, scrutinizing a scene that updates a familiar Stooge setup. Moe (pudding-bowl haircut), Larry (unruly hair), and Curly (no hair) are dressed in white medical scrubs, standing around a nun lying semi-conscious on an operating table with her abdomen cut open. The Stooges work on her with an electric toothbrush, and then with a vacuum cleaner. Peter--a little clump of beard on his chin, loose corduroy pants--read aloud from the script while Bobby sat in an armchair, his feet, in clean white sneakers, propped on the coffee table: "As Moe sticks the nozzle in and starts vacuuming, we hear some big stuff clanking and rattling up into the machine. Suddenly, there's a whining sound, as if something's stuck. Curly turns it off and Moe holds up the vacuum nozzle, revealing a wishbone stuck in the end. Larry and Curly each grab an end and start pulling." Peter paused. "You know, I think Moe should take the thing. He's got to use it as a weapon. He wouldn't let that get by."
Should Moe, in typical fashion, jam the wishbone up Larry's nose? Should Moe use the wishbone to hook Larry's nose and, holding him off the ground, give him a karate chop to the neck? Or should the bone go in one nostril and out the other? As the three men debated the matter, they wandered in and out of the bathroom and then out onto the terrace. It offered a sunny view of the valley, which was beginning to thaw and drip; below, a few people were skating to Sinatra songs on an ice rink.
Bobby, who, at forty-five, is the younger of the brothers by eighteen months, answered his cell phone--"Mmm-yello!"--and talked with his wife and children, who have been living with him in a rented house in Sun Valley for the past year. Peter, who has longer hair and a longer face than Bobby, brewed green tea and took vitamins. (Both Farrellys are family men who like to golf, and although their films are known for drawing likable, romantic-comedy characters into graphic sexual and digestive set pieces, they are not in a perpetually boisterous, spring-break mood. "There's a lot at stake," Peter had said earlier. "It's the Stooges. There's a huge fan base. To some, this is sacrilege.") Cerrone began whistling the Stooges' "Three Blind Mice" theme. A big, square-jawed former pro-hockey player and car dealer, he is a kind of Farrelly muse, for whom lust and anger are similarly expressed through gritted teeth.
"You took the turd out, yeah?" he said, recalling a gag from an early draft.
"What turd out?" Peter replied, distractedly.
"You remember the turd."
"Oh, yeah, it lands in a woman's mouth, and Larry says, 'Hey! What's the big idea? No smoking!' ''
They returned to the wishbone, and agreed that it should go up one nostril but not out the other. "We don't want a special-effects fest," Bobby said. Peter began to read again, switching voices from Stooge to Stooge. "Moe: 'Forceps.' Larry: 'Sorry, my rabbi got mine. . . .' Moe: 'Oh, a wise guy, eh? Open your mouth.' Larry does so and Moe jams an eggbeater in and begins twirling. . . ."
In the early decades of cinema, a feature film was likely to be preceded by a burst of slapstick: a two-reel comedy, fifteen or so minutes long. The Three Stooges made a hundred and ninety of these shorts for Columbia Pictures. Shot cheaply over a few days, and originally with a lineup of Moe Howard, Curly Howard, and Larry Fine--their given names were Moses Horwitz, Jerome Horwitz, and Louis Fienberg--a Stooges comedy typically featured three short men failing badly as detectives, firemen, or veterinarians. Plots...
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