Peter Farrelly's Balls Up Comedy

Peter Farrelly joined Rich to promote Balls Up, his new Prime Video comedy starring Mark Wahlberg, Paul Walter Hauser, Molly Shannon, Benjamin Bratt, and Sasha Baron Cohen. The plot: a pair of guys at a condom company invent a product that covers both the penis and testicles, win the World Cup contract, and things escalate from there. Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the Zombieland and Deadpool writers, wrote the script. Farrelly said he was in after one page.

The real joy of the interview was the vault. Rich asked about the moment in Something About Mary when Mary says she wants to watch SportsCenter. Rich was on SportsCenter for those two years. He said the line sent an electric jolt through the newsroom. Farrelly confirmed they wrote her wanting to watch SportsCenter as part of making her the perfect woman.

Steve Young was the first choice for the quarterback cameo in Something About Mary. He called Farrelly, said the script was hysterical, but passed. He was Mormon and worried kids would sneak into theaters to see him. Drew Bledsoe was the second choice. He wanted to do it, then got caught up in a mosh pit incident in Boston and had to pull out. Brett Favre took the role. Ben Stiller ad-libbed the butchered pronunciation of his name.

On Kingpin: it bombed at the box office, did about $5 million, and became a cult classic on video. Woody Harrelson was Farrelly's roommate for four years in LA before Cheers. Bill Murray showed up three weeks into the shoot and improvised everything, including the comb-over, the fake commercial, and every Big Ern line. Farrelly's rule with Murray was simple. Don't yell cut.

The hair gel scene from Something About Mary came from a drive with his brother Bobby. They were originally pitching it for Seinfeld, realized it could never air on network television, and banked it. When they shot the movie, the studio said the scene would earn an NC-17. Farrelly argued that if it's for laughs, it's R. It stayed in.

He also previewed I Play Rocky, his film about Stallone writing the Rocky script while homeless and living in Penn Station, refusing to sell the script unless he got to play the lead. Anthony Ippolito plays Stallone. Stephen James plays Carl Weathers. Tracy Letts plays the studio head. It drops in November on the 50th anniversary of Rocky.

The Kingpin bowling ball story landed the interview. Farrelly kept one, lent it to a friend's bowling alley in Boston. The other went up for auction and sold for $350,000. More than the whip from Indiana Jones. More than the hatchet from The Shining. Bill Murray touched it. That is what people pay for.