Rewatchables Reference

• Winner (Bill, CR, Sean): Healy meeting Mary at the driving range — '7 Minute Abs', the Joe Jackson flag-football scene, Pat spiking the ball, the cheating-at-checkers reveal. Bill: 'How did Matt Dillon hit the wall on the first range shot?' (Answer: his dad was a golf pro.) CR: 'He's trying to neg her — and the chemistry is palpable.'
• Bill's most-rewatchable: the prom-night sequence — Ted shows up to take Mary to prom, Keith David crushes the dad, Markie Post cracks the wedding photo, Warren attacks Ted, then the bathroom 'frank above the bean' / 'we got a bleeder' sequence escalates to fireman + cop coming through the window. Sean: 'It becomes Naked Gun for a second.' This is the perfect comedy scene, then it goes right into the therapy appointment.
• Other A+ scenes Bill walks through: Richard Jenkins as the therapist ('the stereos are homosexual highway wrestlers'); Healy lying to Ted about Mary post-Miami ('she's a deuce — deuce and a half'); the 'I work with retards' / 'we got this one kid Mongo' scene (golf course); the dog scene with Puffer ('he's only 230, huh' — go away from the light); the hitchhiker '7 Minute Abs' scene with Harland Williams; the masturbation 'choke the chicken' confrontation with Chris Elliott ('you're going out there with a loaded gun').
• CR: tempted to go Richard Jenkins, lands on Healy/Mary at the driving range. 'Outside of the major set pieces, that's the one.'
• Craig: the dog stuff in Mary's apartment. 'The first time I saw this movie at 13, the dog stuff slayed me — pile-driving, the side headlock, the dog goes out, the shocking, ask for a butt cake.'

• Winner (Bill): 'Cops' the TV show being plot-relevant — Woogie watches it while getting his knob polished. Sean: 'Woogie getting his knob polished while watching Cops is elite.'
• Bill's runners-up: being excited to give somebody a Tony Conigliaro-signed baseball ('shelf life of about 2003'); Cool Brett Favre / Brett Favre being a goody two-shoes / any part of Brett Favre; Magda smoking Cools, smoking a whole carton of Cools; getting your scrotum stuck in a zipper as a regional legend ('the kid in the next town over').
• CR: Watching sports highlights at the end of the night being something you build a life around. 'Let's go home and watch game highlights.'
• Sean: Picking up a hitchhiker. Plus 100 gay-panic jokes — 'you would never find that in a 2020 movie.'

• Sean: 'Most comedies age really badly. This one is still really, really funny — it actually makes me laugh out loud.'
• Bill: Magda. 'Anyone in your life who got way too much sun is veering a little toward the Magda side.' 28-year-running suntan joke.
• Bill: Markie Post — 'Just an absolute 80s icon and a legend.' Argues she's like the Dominique Wilkins of 80s actresses (Heather Thomas, Heather Locklear). 'Maybe more like a Terence Stansbury.'
• Bill: 'Flogging the dolphin.' 'Pat Healy teeth' / 'choppers' / 'big white teeth.' These running jokes are now permanent vocabulary.
• Bill: 'The lie that becomes a way bigger cover-up lie' — staple of 70s sitcoms, dead in modern comedies. CR: 'In my life after this movie came out, if a guy ever came home and said she lives with her sister or something, people would be like, first chick in the armored tank.'
• Bill: They have young Cameron Diaz and young Ben Stiller play their teenage selves with wigs and braces and it actually works — 'sometimes when comedies do this, it looks ridiculous.'
• Bill: Tucker calling sex a 'good rogering' — 'I've never heard the phrase before or since.'
• Bill: Mary's theory that we need more meat on sticks. Followed by an extended digression about whether there should be a 'steak dog of some kind.'
• Bill: When Pat Healy is pretending he built the soccer stadium and Norm asks 'You built the Estadio Olympico?' — 'No, just down the street, the Centro Kelly. Ten Towers.'
• CR: Chris Elliott's bus-crash poster: '12 kids killed. What does that cost us?' as an insurance-adjusters meeting backdrop.
• CR: The regional specificity — Rhode Island, Boston, Miami. 'Modern movies are set in Boston but might as well be set in Copenhagen.' Lenny Clarke and Steve Sweeney as a knowing wink to the New England audience.
• Bill: Jonathan Richman as the Greek-chorus troubadour. 'I can't believe this worked, but it did.' CR: 'This kind of speaks to a Jonathan Richman commitment to a bit — if it doesn't work, you're like what the fuck.'
• Bill: The Farrellys' specific approach to Warren — 'You're always on Warren's side. They're not making fun of him, he's just a comedy machine.' He's the trustee, the barometer; his trusting Ted is the most important thing that happens in the movie.

• Winner (Sean, CR): The X-ray of the testicle when the doctors examine the zipper damage. CR: 'It's the most confrontational piece of cinema I've ever seen — a torsioned testicle.' Sean: 'Yeah, like several moments in Cruising.'
• Bill's better answer: how they hide the giant wad of come on Ted's left ear for 12 seconds before Mary asks 'what's on your ear?' — they shoot him only from the side and never reveal the left ear, so it really springs on you.
• Sean: All the leering shots of Cameron Diaz through binoculars.

• Bill: 'Mary's Prayer' by Danny Wilson.
• CR: 'Every Day Should Be a Holiday' by The Dandy Warhols.
• Sean: 'Build Me Up Buttercup' (the Foundations) — used as the closing-credits singalong, which then walks so the Dan Band can run with the Hangover and Wedding Crashers.

• Bill: Tucker. 'I just don't understand Tucker's plan.' He pays someone to break his back so Mary can treat him as an orthopedic surgeon, pretends to be an English crippled architect-turned-pizza-delivery-guy — what's his endgame? 'It all falls apart. I don't understand really any part of it.'
• Craig agrees: 'Tucker is the only character where this actually does break the world a little bit. He's not doing something bigger, he's doing something more slapstick and screwball than anyone else.' Bill also flags him for the over-acting category.
• Sean: Doesn't really have a person — 'It's overstuffed with way overqualified actors.'
• Craig's nomination for cuts: the Jonathan Richman musical interstitials and the hitchhiker scene. CR: 'The hitchhiker scene is non-negotiable.' Bill: 'The musical stuff walks so the Dan Band could then run.'
• CR's 'theatrical cut' weak link: the Jeffrey Tambor part. 'In the extended cut he has an entire plotline about him falling off the wagon and being eaten by a python. In the theatrical cut you're just like, why is he in this movie?'

• Bill: Brett Favre. 'It was great casting in 1998, now it's kind of weird to see him.' Plus he played for the Jets.
• Bill: Warren — even the Farrellys have admitted they fucked up casting a non-disabled actor. Peter Farrelly: 'I wouldn't do that today. I would hire an actor with intellectual disabilities. They're all over the place.' Sean: 'It depends on your personal experience. Watching it in a theater with 350 people clearly laughing at Warren is different from watching at home and seeing what they're doing.' CR: 'I know people with special needs family members who were upset. But the movie is celebrating Warren, not making fun of him.'
• Sean's flex (When-Would-I-Have-Died Award): 'It's not the zipper, it's not the date's father coming in — it's when the police officer would come through the window. That's when I would have died, scared stiff.'

• CR: Ted is the most deranged of all the stalkers in the movie. Hotter take than Tucker because Tucker is obviously the worst. 'Ted hangs onto an obsession for so long he's still in therapy about it. Plenty of opportunities to reach out, but he stalks her, hires a private investigator, pursues her down I-95, nearly gets arrested for murder.'
• Sean: Ben Stiller is the greatest cuck actor of all time. 'If you need a guy who's a loser and will lose all the way until the end, but then gets the girl — that's the premise of nine $100 million Ben Stiller movies. There's not even a second choice.'
• Bill: This movie's casting could have rewritten Patriots history. The Farrellys wanted Drew Bledsoe for the Favre cameo; Bledsoe passed because of the Everclear mosh-pit incident. 'If he takes this movie, makes $370M, gets a little cooler, the confidence carries onto the field. Tom Brady might never happen.' Sean: 'You'd rather have Tom and the six Super Bowls?' Bill: 'I'm fine with Brett Favre being who he is.'

• Owen Wilson and Jon Stewart were the other two finalists for Ted (Bill: Stewart was 'always wondering if he was an actor or what').
• Bill Murray was considered for Pat Healy but the Farrellys felt he was too old. Vince Vaughn and Cuba Gooding Jr. also considered. Bill: 'I think Vince Vaughn could have done it.' CR: 'He'd have mugged into the camera a little.'
• The Brett Favre cameo: offered first to Drew Bledsoe (passed — Everclear mosh-pit incident), then to Steve Young (passed — Mormon image concerns).
• Chris Farley turned down Warren. He did 'Dirty Work' instead and died during its filming. Bill: 'I think that ruins the movie.' Craig: 'It would have aged worse.'
• Sean's flex: the genre. 'You can remake the movie exactly the same but as a lurid thriller — like a from-hell movie or Pacific Heights, with five stalkers all going after Mary at once.'

Bill: Tucker (Lee Evans). 'He really dials it up one of the times.' Connected to the weak-link discussion — his physical performance is bigger and more screwball than anything else in the movie.

• Winner: W. Earl Brown (Warren). Sean: 'Deadwood fans rejoice. The master. He was Kenny the cameraman in Scream, three years on NYPD Blue, the brawler who fights Joaquin Phoenix in The Master.'
• Sean's deeper cut: Rob Moran — Stanley Osmanski in 'Kingpin', the bartender in 'Dumb and Dumber', here he plays Krevoy / Tyson's partner. Farrelly Brothers' utility man.
• Bill: Lin Shaye (Magda) — 'Robert Shaye's sister.' Plus Willie Garson (Sanford from Sex and the City) is in here in a long wig. Bill nominates Richard Tyson (just covered two weeks ago in Kindergarten Cop) but Craig isn't sure people know his name.
• Bill rules ineligible: Lenny Clarke, Steve Sweeney, Harland Williams (he's hot off Spaceman/Rocketman).

• Bill: Keith David — 'I said Avery Brooks and I meant Keith David. We did a whole segment before about how those guys, you could have swapped them in.' His prom-night two-minute appearance fucking with Stiller is flawless. Sean: 'My energy was up just watching him fucking with Ben Stiller.'
• Other contenders Bill ran through: Richard Jenkins (the therapist — CR's dark horse), Jeffrey Tambor, Magda, Harland Williams (the hitchhiker — '7 Minute Abs'), Chris Elliott, Brett Favre, Mongo, Jonathan Richman.
• Note: there are like 10 Dion Waiters in this movie all coming in hot.

• Bill's test drive: Norm Macdonald as Tucker (drop the British accent), or Norm as Pat Healy, or Norm as Woogie. 'He could have been Wogie. I just feel like we needed him in this movie.' Sean: 'He's busy making Dirty Work.' Bill: 'Norm is Tucker. This movie is better.'
• Sean: Recast the genre — turn it into a lurid stalker thriller. CR: 'Like opening up her heart and getting it lied to and finding out the guy is a complete sham. It's like Power Season 7.' Craig agrees Chris Elliott's turn is 'legitimately chilling — like Pacific Heights.'

• $23 million budget, $370 million worldwide, 4th biggest movie of 1998. Zero Oscar nominations.
• The scrotum-in-zipper bit was inspired by a real incident — a friend of the Farrellys' sister had it happen while they were listening to records.
• Stiller's tumble off the stretcher was unscripted. They kept it. He grabs his arm kind of realistically.
• The Miami waterfront house where Mary lived was destroyed in a 2008 construction accident.
• The Plantation City Hall used for the Florida high-school scenes asked not to be acknowledged in the credits after seeing the rough cut. 'When you offend Florida, you've really pulled something off.'
• The hair-gel ear-cum gag was so risky that Diaz negotiated they shoot two versions. The crew hired a guy specifically to make the loads — he showed up with a leather briefcase containing 30 or 40 different prop loads, like an earring tray, and they auditioned them one at a time. They never saw him again. Peter Farrelly: 'Who is that guy and how does he have that job?'
• Jeffrey Tambor's plotline (falling off the wagon, being eaten by a python) is in the extended cut but cut from the theatrical release. Same with extra family stuff for Ted (kidney donations).
• Mary was their last shot — Kingpin had bombed and the Farrellys knew if Mary didn't work, it wasn't going to happen for them.
• Original screenplay was by Ed Decter and John J. Strauss; the Farrellys were friends with them, bought it, and rewrote it. They wanted to do an Animal House for adults.

• Cameron Diaz: Yes (Bill). 'My Best Friend's Wedding the year before, then this — she gets the juice that leads to Charlie's Angels and $20M.' She kind of takes Julia Roberts's title here.
• Matt Dillon: Probably the 80s teen-actor run (Outsiders, Rumble Fish, My Bodyguard). Bill: 'He felt like the biggest teen actor in the world in the '83-'84 range.' Sean wonders if dating Cameron Diaz freed him up here to be funnier than he'd ever been.
• Farrelly Brothers: Yes (combined). Peter Farrelly later won Best Picture for Green Book, but this is bigger together. CR: 'You can't have a comedy do better than this.' Leads directly into 'Me, Myself & Irene'.
• Chris Elliott: Probably yes. 'After Get a Life, after Cabin Boy, after a bad SNL run — Woogie is so gross and it's a fearless performance.'
• The Providence Bruins (poster in Stiller's bedroom): they won a couple of AHL titles — possibly bigger then.
• Miami movies: Yes? Sean: 'Miami Vice is hilarious to me.' CR votes Miami Vice the show (1985); Sean votes Scarface.
• Funny cum scenes: This is the apex. Bill: 'Buffalo Migs is up there for funny cum scenes, but unintentional comedy.' This is the most intentional cum scene.
• Funniest penis injury ever filmed: Yes (CR).
• 'Franks and beans' as a phrase: yes, a running joke in the Simmons house ever since (especially diaper changes). 'Make sure you get under the franks and beans.'

CR: 'It's Marty, and it's Cape Fear. It's basically just a thriller.'

• Bill: Mary is an orthopedic surgeon but lives in this weird complex where she shares a balcony with Magda. Wouldn't she be on the 34th floor of some Miami high-rise? Craig's defense: she's the most altruistic human ever, keeping widowed Magda company. CR: 'And then Magda just starts nailing the homeless dock worker.'
• Bill: Does Mary have patients? Is she ever working? Sean: 'She sees Tucker in her office.' Otherwise it's just driving the cart and playing checkers for Warren.
• Bill: Wouldn't Ted have known Woogie went to the same high school as Mary? He knows the guy's name is Don Wuganowski. 'I guess Ted's not a rocket scientist.' CR: 'He's just a magazine writer.'
• Sean: How would Ted ever get hold of Brett Favre the week of a Dolphins game? Branches into a whole bit about which current QB you could most easily reach (consensus: Baker Mayfield — 'Baker would be like, yeah man, I'll come hang out on a Thursday'; Bill: Drake May, through his wife on social media; CR: Bryce Young).
• Sean: Pat's plan falls apart the moment he gets together with Mary — he'll have to uncap his teeth at some point.
• CR: Tucker's plan is similarly baffling — and if Mary's an orthopedic surgeon she'd see new X-rays of his back and realize he's been healed.
• CR: What was Dom's plan? He's relieved Mary is fat, then once he learns it was a ruse, he heads to Florida himself. 'Was he just at home watching Cops thinking maybe I'll go down there anyway?'

Untouchable. Sean: 'I assumed they had a chance to do a sequel.' CR: 'A bad sequel screws up the integrity of this movie.' Bill: 'I just it's the all-time layup. Stiller is way bigger after this. Diaz is way bigger. The Farrellys needed a comeback in the 2005-06 range — they made a Dumb and Dumber sequel, the Three Stooges movie, remade Heartbreak Kid. They didn't even think about a Mary sequel.' CR: 'They essentially needed to make this movie before 2008 to get under the social media wire — after that, it's like, yeah, I know what Mary's doing, I look at her on Facebook.'

• CR: Fergie the Florist. 'You're going to do this for me, you're going to go down to Miami and find this Mary, or I'm going to clip you.' But: 'Fergie watching Cops is not OK.'
• Bill suggests Robert Evans narrating Mary: 'Mary had the kind of legs that could stop a room. She had Nelly Korda's golf swing. She loved meat on a stick and she could hit a three iron 190 yards. I introduced her to Steve McQueen and I never saw any of them again.' CR: 'I introduced her to Brett Favre — she was living in Green Bay this time next year. Brett Favre never won another game that year.'

Implied unanimous: Cameron Diaz as Best Actress, per William Goldman's argument and the table consensus. The Best Actress nominees that year: Gwyneth Paltrow (won for Shakespeare in Love), Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth), Fernanda Montenegro (Central Station), Meryl Streep (One True Thing — 'kind of like when Kobe would make all-defense near the end of his career'), Emily Watson (Hilary and Jackie). CR could squeeze Matt Dillon in for Supporting Actor, displacing one of: James Coburn (Affliction, won), Robert Duvall (A Civil Action), Ed Harris (The Truman Show — Sean's Best Picture pick too), Geoffrey Rush (Shakespeare in Love), Billy Bob Thornton (A Simple Plan).

• What replaced rest areas as the bath houses of the 90s? 'The 0-zeros.' Bill: 'I think Tinder hopped in there.' CR: 'Online swipe-left, swipe-right stuff.'
• Did Ted and Mary actually get married? Bill: 'No, they date for like six weeks and break up. He can't carry this. She's like marrying Ronnie.' CR: 'Plus Sarah Silverman's character would jump him before he'd been with Mary five seconds.'
• What's the podcast equivalent of emptying the baby batter before a date? Bill: 'When I do the watch before the rewatch.' Sean: 'Bill said you guys fresh — done any pods today? Don't want to be all used up trying to squeeze the second one out.'
• Catherine Trammell 'would you throw your life away for this' Stay-Away Award: Mary, just because she has a lineup of stalkers. Craig: 'You'd get murdered by some stalker just looking off your shoulder the entire time.' Bill: 'I would still throw it away.'

• Bill (winner): The leather briefcase of 30-to-40 prop hair-gel loads from the gel-scene casting. 'I want the whole package. People come over like, hey do you like Something About Mary? Have you seen my load case?'
• CR: Mary's signature golf bag.
• Sean: Warren's red earmuffs. 'Earmuffs!'

• Mary's theory that we need more meat on sticks. Bill takes the position seriously — runs through corn dogs, kebabs, fried teriyaki beef appetizers. 'I always like having this stick.'
• Implicit: 'Nobody ever sells a friend out without getting some leverage on him first.' Implicit Pat Healy life lessons: when a man is at his most honest, it's the few minutes after he's blown his load. 'It's a medical fact.'

• Bill (winner): Dumb and Dumber. 'Let's just laugh for three and a half hours.'
• CR: Kingpin — round out the Farrelly Brothers oeuvre.
• Sean: American Pie. 'Two summers, two Julys in a row, that held us down.'

• Bill: Ben Stiller. 'He goes from I didn't know you could be the lead of a comedy to ripping off 11 straight years of comedies. I don't know if it happens without this movie.'
• Sean: Cameron Diaz. 'I think there's a really good case for both. Matt Dillon's the funniest part. Stiller goes on to the greatest amount of success. But it's Cameron Diaz on the poster, her character's name in the title — this catapults her.'
• CR: Matt Dillon for this viewing — 'going back, you're just so surprised at how funny he is. I can't believe he didn't go on to do more comedy.'
• Craig: At the time, Cameron Diaz. Watching now, Matt Dillon.
• All four also nominate: the prop master ('puffy, lobe come, you know') and the Farrelly Brothers themselves ('I would have been like, give me season tickets now, I'm with you guys').

• Craig loved the movie. 'The script is really impressive — the amount of callbacks woven back into the story. There is no stone left unturned. Every little mention — her having an ex-boyfriend named Brett — everything ties up in a really impressive way.'
• Craig's broader theory: 'There was a sweet spot for set-piece comedies — when you had to live in the reality of what you were physically able to do while shooting a movie. Set pieces were way funnier because it was real humans doing real stuff. CGI ruined that. And there was a 10-15 year sweet spot.' CR: 'Warren beats up Ted — it's real. Now they would do it the way John Wick movies / Bob Odenkirk action movies do it, flying through windows.'
• Craig also wants a driving range on the water in LA. 'Why isn't there one of those in LA? I bet there is somewhere in the valley.'