When you get a comedy script, what makes you think it might work?
It’s rare when you get a script that is brilliant. The Harrison Ford’s and the Cruise’s and such, those guys get the scripts that cost millions. You read them and you go, “This is literature.” For most scripts, there are degrees of how good they are. You look at them and you can see flaws here and there. For me, in these comedy scripts, you look for the ‘vibe’ of the script, what the vibe of the comedy is.
Even with great scripts, most of the things I do I have to rework anyway. I’ll look at the script and go, “This is great and I like this character but I’m not thrilled at the way it’s written.” But you can see how the character should work so I do a lot of rewriting to make sure the character comes through my own eyes.
What changes did you make for “Dumb and Dumberer?”
The attraction about this movie was I love 'dumb.' A lot of characters that I do - going back to SCTV - for the most part are not the sharpest pencils in the drawer. I do like that dumb quality to characters and I think the audience loves rooting for the underdog characters, the guys with the small brains and the big hearts. This was really 'dumb,' and “Dumb and Dumber” was a funny movie. I love the ‘stick your tongue on a frozen light pole’ bit. That’s funny and it makes me laugh. So the vibe of the movie I loved, and I loved how stupid it was.
I loved the fact that it was kind of cartoon-ish. It is a heightened reality to the point of - they don’t make any bones about it - you are not going to take this seriously. The story isn’t Dostievsky, it’s dumb and more dumb than that. This is where you start to build your character. This is more of a cartoon-ish thing for me and it kind of took me back to SCTV in a way. Where the characters are just a little broader and you can have that kind of fun going a little over the edge. That’s something I haven’t done in a little while.
Do you like playing a villain?
That’s also fun. I can’t remember the last time I played a bad guy, so that was kind of an appeal. I like playing villains [especially] villains that aren’t that bright. That’s always good. You experiment with a look and everything else. I’m thinking, “Okay, this is a guy that I think I can finally bring some moustaches out of the drawer.” I think I can see exactly what the look is. This is set in the mid-80s so already I’m ahead of the game. The moustache is somewhere between Hitler and Groucho. You find the line there that just gives it that look and then you just go with it.
NEXT PAGE: Levy on Developing a Character and Being 'Jim's Dad' in the "American Pie" series
