Peter Farrelly First Thought His Daughter’s Ex Was an Idiot. Then He Read the Script

At first, on that night, Peter Farrelly thought his daughter’s now ex-boyfriend was a “dumb fuck.” But then the kid convinced him to read what would become the director’s next movie.

The screenplay was I Play Rocky, the story of how Sylvester Stallone fought to make his 1976 classic. Written by Peter Gamble, a USC associate professor who had spent years knocking around as a fledgling screenwriter and ghostwriter, it had been passed over by seemingly everyone in Hollywood.

Toby Emmerich eventually slipped the script to Farrelly, who, by his own admission, was a “fucking lazy bastard” and tossed it onto the proverbial pile with countless other screenplays.

Then his daughter’s ex-boyfriend picked it up.

“That night at dinner, he said, ‘I read that script. I think it’s one of the best movies of all time,’” Farrelly tells me on Rushfield Lunch. “And I thought, this fucking kid probably thought since it had a beginning, a middle and an end, it’s a masterpiece. But because he said that, I thought, I gotta look at 10 pages. I never put it down. And I told him afterward, ‘Dude, you could read a thousand scripts before you come across one this good.’”

At the world premiere of Farrelly’s I Play Rocky at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, the packed crowd didn’t just love the Amazon MGM movie; they seemed to worship it — breaking out into spontaneous applause multiple times.

“I was always envious of musicians because musicians can go right up in front of a room and just do it, and get feedback immediately,” Farrelly tells me. “Whereas a filmmaker, you’re not there watching it — and then the movie goes away. But that response felt like I was in Led Zeppelin.”

The reaction also changed the conversation around I Play Rocky, turning an unlikely underdog into a potential awards contender — and apparently surprising even the studio behind it.

“The studio, they get excited in layers,” Farrelly says. Amazon obviously had enough faith in the movie to put it into development, and early test screenings played extremely well. But after Toronto? “They were like, ‘Oh my God, we got a player here. This is a real player,’” Farrelly says. “And up to that point, I don’t know if they thought that.”

Well before that, at CinemaCon, when the first trailer premiered and caused a stir among theater owners and grizzled press like yours truly, Farrelly says he even got a vote of confidence from Ryan Gosling, a fellow member of the Amazon MGM family thanks to Project Hail Mary. Gosling had seen I Play Rocky — “somebody had a screener, I think it was Ari Emanuel; I’m not sure,” says Farrelly — and gave it his full approval.

“He goes, ‘Unbelievable movie. This is the greatest movie. I just love this movie.’ We’re like, ‘thank you!’”

Farrelly knows a thing or two about defying expectations in Hollywood. At 69, he has had quite the career. Alongside his brother, Bobby, he co-directed boundary-pushing classic comedies — including Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary — and later transitioned into prestige filmmaking with Green Book, the 2018 movie that won best picture.

“Making a drama and making a comedy — people ask, ‘Is it harder work to do a drama?’” Farrelly says no. “Making Green Book and making Dumb and Dumber is the exact same thing. It felt the same way. Yes, you’re making a more serious story, but we’re not living that story. We’re shooting it, and then it’s cut — and we’re hanging out. ‘Hey, let’s go get dinner. What are you guys eating tonight?’ We have fun, we have a good time, and everybody has a good time. It’s enjoyable.”

Watch my full interview with Farrelly above — including insights on the state of modern comedy, how he found I Play Rocky star Anthony Ippolito and what he really thinks of Stallone’s best picture winner.