BONUS: Test your Lloyd & Harry knowledge with UPROXX Trivia: Dumb and Dumber!
The DD sequel is just days away and — like many of you, I’m sure — I’m wondering if Harry and Lloyd can deliver again. The original was such an out-of-nowhere tour de force of comedy. Still, if the sequel is even half as funny as the first, I’ll leave the theater sides aching and happy.
We know Dumb and Dumber To picks up with Harry and Lloyd 20 years later, but what about that original road trip to the magical town of Aspen and their quest to deliver a brief case to Mary “Samsonite”? To celebrate the return of Harry and Lloyd, here are some facts you might not know about their 1994 cross-country adventure in the Shaggin Wagon.
1. “We’ve landed on the moon!” was improvised by Jim Carrey. Many of the movie’s most memorable lines were simply thought up on the spot, and the Farrelly brothers gave Jim Carrey free rein to try stuff out. Jim simply thought of the moon line after noticing the newspaper headline hanging on the wall.
2. Jim Carrey negotiated a $6.3 million pay raise for his part. As mentioned back in our facts post for The Mask, 1994 was a very good year for Jim Carrey. When producers came to him with the part in 1993 they offered $700,000, which was still pretty good for a guy who was only known for In Living Color. Then Ace Ventura: Pet Detective came out and broke the movie industry. This bumped Carrey’s salary up to $7 million in the course of about a week.
3. Jeff Daniels got the part because of an old Pepto Bismol commercial. Jeff Daniels was a well-established actor by the time Dumb & Dumber went into production, but it was an old — and kind of weird — commercial he had done in the early 80s that had the Farrelly brothers convinced he’d be a good fit for the part of Harry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2EmQRjZDDs
4. The most annoying sound in the world was improvised. The line where Lloyd asks Harry if he wants to hear the most annoying sound in the world wasn’t in the script. That look on Jeff Daniel’s face is one of genuine curiosity.
5. Harry had already pulled the Sea Bass scam in 1986. The scam that Lloyd pulls on Sea Bass at the diner is of course a reference to a movie he saw on TV once. What you might not know, is that the character who pulled that scam — but only nearly had his throat slit — is Jeff Daniels in the 1986 movie Something Wild.
6. Harry and Lloyd could have been Nicholas Cage and Martin Short. Several actors were offered the parts before they were finally given to Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels. Nicholas Cage was offered the part of Harry and both Martin Short and Steve Martin turned down the Lloyd role.
7. Lloyd’s watch is a knockoff of an already very affordable brand. Nothing wrong with a Casio watch, they do the job and are affordable, retailing about $16. Even that hefty price tag is too much for Lloyd Christmas, though. If you look closely during the bathroom stall scene, you’ll notice that he’s wearing a knockoff of the Casio Alarm Chrono called “Casino Alarm Chronograph.”
8. The writings on the gas station wall are as follows: “Why are you looking up here when the joke is in your hand?,” “Bye Bye William Frawley,” “NAMBLA Rules,” and “Why the hell is everyone so goddamned angry?”
9. The script was briefly called A Power Tool is Not a Toy. Most of the studios showed little interest because of “dumb” being in the title, so a fake title of A Power Tool is Not a Toy was used to convince them to read it.
PETER FARRELLY: Dumb and Dumber didn’t have any meaning in the world at that point.
BOBBY FARRELLY: It didn’t sound good.
PETER FARRELLY: No, it didn’t sound good at all. And then we named it A Power Tool is Not a Toy, which sounded hip, and they started reading it. It actually worked. And then we went back to Dumb and Dumber.
10. The movie has an alternate ending. The ending to Dumb & Dumber is pretty perfect as is, but the Farrelly brothers shot an alternate ending as backup. Lloyd and Harry are offered a job at the hotel, but laugh the offer off because they’d rather do something where “you don’t have to have your nose up people’s butts all day.”
Bonus: Jim Carrey held the sequel up for 20 years. The Farrelly brothers and Jeff Daniels admitted they would have probably done a sequel to the film years ago, but Jim Carrey was just too busy being a movie star and the project was pushed back. Jim didn’t come around to the idea of revisiting Lloyd Christmas until watching the movie in his hotel room a few years ago.
Peter: And about five years ago, Jim called me. He was on the road, he was in a hotel room and he turned on the TV and Dumb and Dumber was starting. He said he watched the whole thing and he called us and said, “I gotta do another one of these.” I remember he didn’t say how f*cking funny it was, it was more like “there’s so much love between those guys. It makes me miss Jeff, it makes me miss you guys. I just love the feeling I get from watching this movie. We gotta do another one.” Via Crave
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article listed an incorrect statement regarding fact #9.
