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Spelling on DVD
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The Farrelly Sisters
One is a seasoned Farrelly Brothers veteran and the other is an enthusiastic newbie. Meet Lin Shaye and Wen Yann Shih, part of the DVD fraternity known as Stuck on You.
Thursday, April 8, 2004
By Ian Spelling
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The Farrelly brothers like to spread the wealth. And so, even though Stuck on You stars Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Cher and Eva Mendes, actresses Wen Yann Shih and Lin Shaye get to yuk it up too.
Damon and Kinnear are Bob and Walt Tenor, conjoined twins who share everything, in part because they have to and in part because they want to. And so, when Walt decides to follow his dream of achieving stardom in Hollywood, Bob makes the trip, too. Wen plays May, Bob’s Internet girlfriend of three years, while Shaye elicits laughs in a small role that’s credited as, ‘Makeup Babe.’
Wen is new to the Farrelly stable of actors, while Shaye rates as a Farrelly regular: she played the sun-worshiping Magda in There’s Something About Mary and was also in Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin and, just in the end-credits sequence, Me, Myself & Irene. Now, on the eve of Fox Home Entertainment’s April 27 DVD release of Stuck on You, Wen and Shaye took a few moments to talk with FilmStew about the film, the Farrellys and their futures.
“My character was originally Caucasian,” says Wen, an up and comer who was born in Manhattan, raised in Maryland and counts among her credits TimeCop: The Berlin Decision, guest spots on 7th Heaven, Felicity and Strong Medicine, as well as a role as the villainous Vypra on Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue. “At some point they thought the character just wasn’t working, so they opened it up to other ethnicities,” she recalls.
“I came in, the casting director like what I did, and I met Peter Farrelly the next day,” she continues. “I’ve heard Peter say that I just blew him away in the audition, but I’ve never asked them [why they cast me]. I just count my lucky stars and thank them profusely.”
Shaye laughs when asked how she consistently ends up with roles in Farrelly films: Do they pick a role for her? Does she choose from a selection of roles? Do they say, ‘Hey, there’s no role for Lin in this one, so let’s just throw her into the end credits?’
“It’s a little bit of all of it,” says the actress, whose non-Farrelly credits include Boat Trip, Detroit Rock City, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, The Hidden, as well as episodes of Crossing Jordan, Becker and Frasier. “Sometimes they have me in mind for a certain role, but they didn’t have me in mind at all for Magda and they didn’t for Kingpin, either.”
“They didn’t even want to see me at all for Kingpin,” adds Shaye. “I created that character in my bedroom over a period of three months, with the hair and the makeup and the nose hairs. I’d used eyelashes and adhesive to make it look like I had nose hairs. I went nuts with that and up until the last minute they were saying, ‘Lin, we love your work, but we just don’t think you’re right for this.’ So I had to fight for that one.”
At one point, there was a discussion to have Shaye play a different role in Stuck on You, a wonderfully tough waitress who interacts in a diner with the twins and a disabled man. “Actually, other people read the script and thought, ‘Oh, that’ll be Lin,’” she acknowledges with a laugh. “Then Pete called me and said, ‘We wouldn’t put you in that role because you’re too recognizable. We really want to hire a real older lady.’”
“Then they planned a sequence at the end that was supposed to be a spoof on Cuckoo’s Nest, and they wanted me to do the Nurse Ratched part, but they couldn’t get the rights to it, apparently,” adds Shaye. “So at the last minute, they asked if I’d come and do the ‘Makeup Babe.’ They sort of honored me by calling me ‘Makeup Babe’ instead of ‘Makeup Lady,’ which means they still think I’m cute.”
As you might expect, Wen and Shaye both report that they had a blast making Stuck on You. Wen, in fact, jokes that she had too much fun to call it work – but she took the check anyway.
“Before my first day of shooting, I remember the Farrellys calling me at home and welcoming me aboard,” Wen says. “From that moment on, I couldn’t wait to get on set. I got to do more improvising than I had expected. The Farrellys were always either adding physical comedy and/or changing lines.”
“I got on set once and Pete had decided to completely change the dialogue to my most emotional scene,” she recalls. “He stood there and just came up with it off the top of his head. It was great. The Farrellys encourage talent to explore just as much as they’d like. They are incredibly receptive.”
Adds Shaye, “Just walking on that set… it’s hard to explain. It’s like walking into a magic kingdom. Not to overuse the Disney term, but there are always all these people who they brothers love. They’re family. They’re friends. They’re people working on the film, people not working on the film, guests and tons of children.”
“Peter is like the Pied Piper,” she continues. “He’s always got children running after him and he’s got two gorgeous little children of his own. I joke that, ‘All you have to do is work on a Farrelly film and you get pregnant.’ All these women are walking around with brand new babies, pregnant or getting pregnant.”
“It’s just a joyful set to be on. It makes me cry when I see them, because they’ve done so much for me and I’ve had so much fun with them.”
Although Shaye’s appearance in Stuck on You is relatively brief, the actress didn’t hesitate to reference her own experience on other Hollywood movie sets. “I wanted to use a slight Southern accent, I wanted to chew gum,” she explains. “I think about the makeup women I’ve had and a lot of them smelled like Juicy Fruit [gum]. They think it’s appealing, but it’s not at six in the morning. So we tried all these different ideas.”
“People were laughing because I was really flirting with Greg [Kinnear]’s character,” she continues. “This happened to me; this woman was making me up and she kept getting between my legs to get close to my face. It was very disconcerting. She didn’t have to get so close. I would have moved my face closer to her. So I was doing that to Greg, making him really uncomfortable, and we did a lot of funny stuff.”
But when Shaye finally rehearsed the scene, the Farrellys pointed her in a somewhat unexpected direction. “They came out and said, ‘That was really great. We really loved it, but here’s what we want you to do. We want you to be as deadpan as you can be. We want you to be as boring as you can be. We want you to read it like you’re reading a telephone book. You couldn’t care less about any of this, or anything you’re doing or saying.’”
“[So] that’s what we did,” admits Shaye. “It felt like I was doing absolutely nothing. And they came back and said, ‘You nailed it. That’s exactly what we wanted.’”
So what is Wen’s verdict on the finished film? “Horrible!” she replies. “The only reason I didn’t walk out halfway through was because I’m in it. Just kidding! I absolutely love the Farrelly brothers.”
“I was big fan of their movies before Stuck on You and now I’m a big fan of them,” she adds. “I couldn’t be more proud to have worked on this project. It’s a charming story with a lot of heart.”
Unfortunately, Stuck on You never caught on at the box office. The film opened and closed without much fanfare, but it seems tailor-made for a warm welcome on DVD and video. Among the DVD extras are a Farrellys commentary, deleted and extended scenes, a blooper reel and a trio of featurettes.
“I think that people are still stuck with There’s Something About Mary on their minds,” suggests Shaye. “This was a bridge movie for the Farrelly’s, I felt. I loved it. I loved it because it was low-key.”
“I thought Matt and Greg were amazing,” she continues. “They were so charismatic, so not disabled as these characters and so loving as brothers. I thought the whole family relationship was so fulfilled and so well rounded out. The idea of it sounded like real slapstick, and it wasn’t a slapstick movie. It was really a story about two brothers.”
At one point, Jim Carrey was attached to Stuck on You and the Farrellys were talking to Woody Allen about coming on board as the other sibling. That never came to fruition, but Dr. Benjamin Carson Sr., the man who in real life was the first to ever successfully separate conjoined twins, makes an uncredited cameo in the film as the medic who is called upon to do the same for Walt and Bob.
“The story is really about Peter and Bobby,” maintains Shaye. “I thought the whole family relationship was so fulfilled and so well rounded out. The idea of it sounded like real slapstick, but it wasn't a slapstick movie. It was really a story about two brothers. You see how they miss each other when that relationship is severed. And Peter and Bobby, well, they’re joined at the hip, whether they are physically or not.”
“I think the film will definitely get discovered on DVD,” Shaye adds. “Look what happened with Kingpin. That film was dumped at the box office, but I can’t tell you how many people still stop me about Kingpin. The longer these movies are on DVD, the more people see them and appreciate them.”
“I think that’s going to happen with Stuck on You. It’s got so much dimension to it, and I think the audience has to be educated about what the Farrellys can do.”
| In the meantime, enough people in Hollywood saw Stuck on You to have taken notice of Wen. “There have been more auditions and a few offers to develop projects,” she notes. “But I’ve been most surprised by the fan mail. People have been so supportive and generous with compliments. I check my ego just to make sure I don’t lose perspective.”
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For her part, Shaye is of course one of the busiest character actresses around and, yes, for the record, she is the younger sister of New Line boss Robert Shaye. She’ll be seen next in A Cinderella Story, 2001 Maniacs, Drop Dead Sexy and The Hillside Strangler.
And, of course, she hopes to snag a role in the next Farrelly film, The Three Stooges. “People just know my face from these Farrelly movies,” Shaye marvels. “Even if they don’t know my name, they’ll say, ‘I know you from somewhere.’”
| “People will sometimes sneak around me and take a look, and I’ll hear them say, ‘I don’t know if that’s her, but I’m too embarrassed to ask,’” she adds. “I get such a kick out of it because it’s all about the fact I got to entertain people. I was in the gym the other day and this young guy behind the counter looked at me and said, ‘You made me laugh so hard.’ Then they usually crack up about it because the image of whatever scene made them laugh is running through their mind.”
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[Twice a month, FilmStew columnist Ian Spelling takes an insider’s look at the home video and DVD scene through interviews with some of the industry’s main players and those associated with the latest noteworthy new releases. To reach the author, please email ianspelling@filmstew.com.]
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