There's Something About Mary

Peter Farrelly directed this 1998 comedy with his brother Bobby, from a script by Ed Decter and John J. Strauss with the Farrellys. Almost all of it was shot in Miami, the hair gel scene at the Cardozo Hotel. Narration goes to a singer: Jonathan Richman keeps walking into frame with a guitar to put the plot into song, so the film advertises its machinery rather than hiding it. The footballer ex role went to three men in turn. Drew Bledsoe declined over a nightclub incident in the papers. Steve Young called it the funniest script he had read but refused, saying Mormon kids would sneak into an R-rated film. Brett Favre took it third. Made for 23 million dollars, it passed 369 million worldwide, the fourth biggest film of 1998. Cameron Diaz won that year’s New York Film Critics Circle prize for Best Actress, and she and the film each took a 1999 Golden Globe nomination without winning. In 2024 Farrelly said the one thing he would change is Warren: he would cast an actor with an intellectual disability, and did not know that then. A good fit if you want the singing narrator interrupting to comment. Not for anyone who cannot take the jokes routed through Warren, a choice the director now says he would make differently.