Peter Farrelly on the script nobody wanted and the hair gel joke the studio hated

<p>Peter Farrelly sat on a Deadline Contenders stage in Los Angeles Saturday and traced the through line from a stack of rejection letters to the hair gel gag that almost sank There's Something About Mary.</p><p>The director was there as a Hall of Fame honoree. He talked I Play Rocky, the biopic about the making of Stallone's 1976 classic, and the long gestation that preceded it.</p><p>Farrelly said the script landed in his lap via an unlikely reader.

His daughter's ex-boyfriend read it first and called it the best script he had ever read. Farrelly agreed. He also knew he needed Stallone's sign off. The actor approved fast.</p><p>Farrelly's own Rocky moment came decades earlier.

The bravest thing I ever did in my life was decide to write when I was in my mid-20s he told Mike Fleming Jr.</p><p>Dumb & Dumber sat in a drawer for five years. Every studio passed. Every actor passed. The script never changed.