ME MYSELF AND IRENE

Or, to put it another way, there are gross-out things in Me, Myself and Irene, but I’m not going to tell you what they are. Even Renée Zellweger, who stars in the film as Irene, isn’t going to tell you what they are. You’ll have to find out for yourself.

"There’s good taste, there’s bad taste and there’s Farrelly taste," says Zellweger, a new recruit to the Rhode Island brothers’ universe, who first rose to stardom when she appeared with Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire. "I’ve never done anything like this in my whole life, ever! You can’t imagine some of the stuff these guys come up with. I still can’t believe it. My dad’s not going to believe this. In fact, my dad can’t see this movie!"

"Of course we offend some people,"

What makes this all the more intriguing is the fact that what does make it into Me, Myself & Irene is apparently only the tip of the iceberg. "Of course we offend some people," says Peter, the older of the two by a year and the one who does most of the talking. "But our general rule is, if we offend more than we don’t offend, we cut it. We’ve discovered in our test screenings that people will not laugh if it’s truly offensive."

Working on that principle, if Jeff Daniels and the non-flushing toilet in Dumb & Dumber and Ben Stiller and his zip in There’s Something About Mary is OK, where does the line get drawn? Don’t even ask. And see: here I go talking about gross-out humour, whereas what the Farrellys say they’re trying to make is sweet-natured films about really likeable people. They don’t start out looking for some new outrageous scene that will have everybody talking - which is perhaps just as well, since the Something About Mary zip would be a tough act to follow. No, they start out with characters.

"Believe it or not, the first thing we think about is not laughs," says Peter. "We want to create characters that audiences will love enough for us to get away with murder. That comes first. We will only go as far as that character will allow."

There’s actually what you might, if you want to be auteurist about it, call a basic structure to the films made by the Farrellys, who began their career writing for Jim Carrey on one of the Ace Ventura movies. In addition to the Mr Nice Guy in the middle, there’s always a trip - like Lloyd Christmas (Carrey) in Dumb & Dumber goes to Colorado and Pat Healy (Stiller) in There’s Something About Mary goes to Florida - and there is what you might call a nemesis; not so much a bad guy (he’s usually too hapless for that) as a Mr Bad Boy who comes between Mr Nice Guy and The Girl.

"We pretty much rip ourselves off"

Me, Myself & Irene certainly has the journey. Mild-mannered Rhode Island state trooper Charlie Baileygates (played by Jim Carrey in his third Farrelly Brothers movie) has to escort the felonious Irene Waters (Zellweger) across state lines to answer her warrant.

"It’s just the same old, same old," jokes Bobby. "We pretty much rip ourselves off from movie to movie. Seriously, though, we hope this will have as many big laughs as Mary did. There’s a couple of scenes in here that I think will get as big a laugh. Suffice it to say, I don’t think people use the word ‘mature’ with us very often."

The movie boasts an impressive supporting cast, including a couple of actors who have rarely played comedy before - Oscar nominee Robert Forster as Charlie’s indulgent commanding officer, and Chris Cooper (Lone Star, American Beauty) as one of the cops who ends up tailing him - plus Farrelly regular Lin Shaye (the sun-worshipping Magda from Mary) as the wizened Cigarette Lady.

"We have to put her in our films." says Peter. "It would be bad karma not to; she’s been too good to us. I’ve said it before: our movies would be only half as good without her."

But the movie is a basically a three-hander, with Carrey playing two of the hands. The real twist in Me, Myself & Irene comes in the identity of Mr Bad Boy: it’s Carrey again, in the form of Charlie’s alter ego, Hank, who is everything Charlie isn’t. He’s aggressive, hard-drinking and makes interesting use of a variety of marital aids. Hank takes over when Charlie forgets to take his medication. What is more, both of them fall in love with Irene. And, wouldn’t you know it, Irene responds to something in each of them.

"They cross the line"

For anyone other than the Farrellys, making an outrageous comedy about someone with a split personality might have given pause for thought. "How do they keep within the limits of taste?" muses producer Bradley Thomas, who also did Kingpin and Mary and co-produced Dumb & Dumber. "They don’t. They cross the line, totally cross the line. They know when to pull back, but I think their goal is to go as far as possible. Nobody is making fun of anybody, but they poke fun at everybody."

Carrey’s character is called Charlie on good days and Hank on bad ones. And he has a history, which is a characteristic Farrelly Brothers mix of the emotionally devastating and the outrageously comic. The root of Charlie’s problem lies in his failed marriage to Layla (Traylor Howard), whom he adored but who ran off with the vertically challenged African-American limo driver who picked them up at their wedding. Not only that, but she had triplets with the guy, then dumped them on Charlie, who adores them, too. So here he is, an ordinary, peace-living, helping-old-ladies-across-the-street Rhode Island state trooper with three mixed race kids. To make things worse (or funnier), they all have near-genius IQs.

Charlie doesn’t. All Charlie wants is for his three kids to be part of street life, to talk cool. So here’s this dumb white cop trying to teach these three young black Einsteins to be street-wise. Charlie, as you will discover, has some unresolved problems.

"Charlie’s heartbroken," says Peter Farrelly, "but he never deals with it, never explodes or lets it out to show people how angry he is. He just covers it up. It’s too painful for him to deal with. Finally, 15 years later, he explodes in the guise of this other personality, Hank. All the aggression that he’s kept a lid on over the last 15 years comes out in this other personality."

"It’s an extremely demanding role,"

It’s a role that might have been tailor-made for Carrey, but it wasn’t. Me, Myself & Irene is a script that the film-makers wrote in 1990, before they really became the Farrellys. Eight years later, it found its way to Carrey. "We knew it was good," says Mike Cerrone, one of many childhood and school friends who tend to show up on the brothers’ movies and who wrote this screenplay with them a decade ago, "but we felt it was haunted because it had been around for so long. Then Jim read it and contacted Peter and Bobby and said he wanted to do it. That made it happen."

"It’s an extremely demanding role," says Peter, "because Jim has no props or make-up to clearly delineate between the two characters. It’s not an easy thing to do. He uses voice changes, but mostly body-language and mannerisms."

"I’ve never seen anybody do what he can do," says Zellweger, who admits that the two hardest things about working with Carrey were keeping up and keeping a straight face. "We’d perform a scene and, in the next instant, he’d be somebody completely different, completely unrecognisable. It was kind of scary, because even his eyes were different. It was magical to see what he could do."

Meanwhile, Zellweger herself had no difficulty in understanding why her character should be attracted to the two sides of Charlie. And that was always part of the Farrellys’ plan.

"We always thought this comedy would work best if we played it like a traditional love triangle," says Bobby, "with the girl and the two guys both fighting for her. Usually, in that situation, one of the guys is a nice guy and the other one is a bit of a bad boy. And the girl usually goes for the bad guy. We thought we had to write it so audiences didn’t know which guy is going to get the girl."

"Renée has that kind of appeal."

And the girl herself? "We wanted her to be the type of woman who, the more you looked at, the more you fell in love with her," says Bobby. "Renée has that kind of appeal."

Amen to that. But she isn’t all sweetness and light, surely? Doesn’t she have a criminal past? Why else would Charlie/Hank be escorting her across state lines? What is it exactly that she has done?