My purgatory for watching "Godzilla" -- and dragging friends along with me -- has come to an end this week. Not only did I see the wacky French existentialist film with two minutes of motorcycle action and rioting poets this past weekend ("Orpheus"), I also watched one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long, long time, "Something About Mary." We'll ignore "Armageddon"-as-comedy.
"Something About Mary" is a great screwball romantic comedy starring Matt Dillon, Ben Stiller, Chris Elliot and, as the luminescent Mary, Cameron Diaz. The film opens in high school, early 1980s, with an awfully nerdy Ted (Ben Stiller) -- bad hair, thick-rimmed glasses, braced teeth and all -- about to go to the prom with Mary. Mary is a pure vision of light and beauty, able to bestow grace on this corrupt old world by her mere presence. Ted, at her house to pick her up for the prom, uses the bathroom and has an accident with his tuxedo zipper. It's a shocking accident, making even hardened cops and firemen wince when seeing it: "How did you manage to close the zipper?" While this gag is drawn out for an amazingly long time, it maintains its effect. In any case, it's only two weeks in the hospital for Ted, but no prom with Mary; she moves away the next month.
Thirteen years later, Ted still thinks about Mary, and hires Pat, played by Matt Dillon, a part time private investigator, to find her in Miami. He does, but is utterly smitten with her. Pat lies to Ted, describing Mary as 250lbs of paraplegic trailer trash, then moves to Miami, where he creates a false identity for himself, haphazardly constructed from eavesdropping on Mary and her friends, as they talk about what they're looking for in men: a worldly architect, with ties to Nepal, able to be kind to Mary's mentally challenged brother, Warren. In the meantime, Ted realizes that he's been lied to, and heads down to Florida to see Mary.
Yes, the stalking themes are blatant in this movie (though, you know, with the Web, we have things like the Cameron Diaz Internet Shrine, http://www.geocities.com/~camerondiaz/shrine.html). There's also an extremely violent fight with a dog on speed, public masturbation, a prison scene with a huge cell-mate, references to serial killing and the wonderful, glorious Buttercup song, all done with cleverness and care. The Farrelly Brothers, who wrote and directed the film -- they also did "Dumb and Dumber" and "King Pins", but don't hold it against them -- basically string a series of very funny episodes into the story, some pushing the boundaries of good taste. 1990s Woody Allen this ain't. Some are wonderful, almost wordless set pieces of physical comedy, true ROTFL material. They have their timing dead on, and the cast is wonderful. Ben Stiller makes you care about Ted (I had braces, bad hair in high school), and Cameron Diaz makes Mary into a vision. I've actually only seen her in "The Mask" before, but she's fantastic.
Thinking a bit about Ben Stiller, this is a better film than "Flirting With Disaster", with him, Patricia Arquette and Tea Leoni. Not quite the semi-serious theme of questing for one's identity, one's roots -- "Mary" is pure romantic comedy after all -- but just funnier. The Farrelly's take more liberties with reality, coming up with more bizarre scenarios as the film goes on, and they get away with it.
Oh, part of the film was filmed in Providence, RI. The Farrelly Brothers are apparently from there. I actually thought some of the scenes were at Harvard Square, but what do I know? Brown U. folks may be pleased.
Since this was part of that film class thing, there were interviews. Actually, two of them, before and after the movie. Before the movie, we had Steve Buscemi, talking a bit about "Armageddon", and then Ben Stiller. I was hoping for Cameron Diaz, but, alas.
Buscemi was talking about the casting process for "Armageddon": they had the Rockhound role sort of ready for him, and, after he signed on, tailored it to be a Buscemi character. He said he signed the day after buying a Brooklyn brownstone. Other trivia included talking about the premiere party at NASA, Cape Canaveral, where they got Aerosmith to perform. This party probably cost much more than "Tree's Lounge". As he noted, big films have certain perks, like meeting astronauts and walking underneath the space shuttle as it was being prepped for launch ("Don't touch!"). The "Armageddon" shoot was 6-months, with a lot of his time spent waiting around. This diverged into a brief discussion of how important scheduling is for film making, especially a picture as large as this. There was a "Reservoir Dogs" note, also: Mr. Blue, Edward Bunker, was an ex-con -- armed robbery -- who became a novelist in later life. He did informal technical advice for "Dogs". I don't remember what Mr. Blue looks like.
Ben Stiller talked a bit about his career, and a bit about shooting "Mary". The trivia included the dog fight scene. He apparently spent a good part of one day with a fake dog attached to his crotch. When they said, "Action!", he's start spinning around, screaming. When they said, "Cut!", he'd stop, and wait around for the next sequence, still with the dog attached to his crotch. They also had to sing "Buttercup" at the end of every scene: the outtakes from this was used in the end credits. It's a wonderful way to cap off the film.
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