Frank Beddor
A 1998 trade advertisement for There's Something About Mary. Puffy the dog, in a full plaster body cast covered in passport stamps from twenty countries, is carried by the handle of his cast. Beside him: “$330,000,000 gross worldwide! And still traveling.”

There’s Something About Mary

Thirteen years after the prom went spectacularly wrong, Ted hires a private investigator to find the girl he never got over. The investigator finds her — and decides to keep her for himself.

“Almost thirty years ago, I was getting on a chairlift above Deer Valley during the Sundance Film Festival, back when studio executives spent as much time skiing as they did watching movies.

Dylan Sellers, then an executive at Fox, was getting on with me. I told him, ‘I’m going to pitch you a movie on this chairlift.’

The screenplay was written by my friends John Strauss and Ed Decter. It was an outrageous comedy about a man who hires a private investigator to find his high school dream girl. I thought it was absolutely hilarious.

By the time we reached the top of the mountain, Dylan said, ‘Let’s make this movie.’”

Frank Beddor
The theatrical one-sheet. Cameron Diaz in a pink slip dress, leaning forward with her hands on her knees, beside the title and a yellow warning strip reading “The guys who did ‘Dumb & Dumber’ and ‘Kingpin’ bring you a love story.”

That movie became
There’s Something About Mary

Frank produced it with Michael Steinberg, Charles B. Wessler and Bradley Thomas, Peter and Bobby Farrelly directed, and in the summer of 1998 it became the comedy everyone had seen.

The door it came through was a ski slope. Two freestyle world titles led to stunt skiing in Hot Dog…The Movie and Better Off Dead, stunt work led to acting, and acting led to the room where the people making films were standing around.

Frank tells the whole story on the blog.

BackStory

Gallery

Frank Beddor and Cameron Diaz between takes, sitting together in canvas chairs on a darkened set with her head resting on his shoulder. The empty chairs around them carry the other producers’ names. A studio portrait of Frank Beddor and Cameron Diaz against a white ground: he stands with his arms folded in a dark jacket, she rests a hand on his shoulder.
Frank Beddor on set, grinning, holding the border terrier who plays Puffy in both arms like a baby. A black-and-white set photograph: six of the crew crowded round a monitor at the video village, most of them in headphones, with Cameron Diaz waiting behind them.
A black-and-white portrait from 1998: Beddor leaning in from the right of the frame between two posters. Behind him is the one-sheet for There’s Something About Mary; in his hand, held up to the camera, is the poster for Wicked with its 1998 Sundance official selection badge. Beddor in a white shirt, cap and sunglasses, laughing with Cameron Diaz beside a green open-wheel race car numbered nine, in a paddock lined with palm trees, sponsor banners and spectators.
Beddor backstage on a set, in a white sweatshirt and white trousers, an arm around a dark-haired man in a blue waffle shirt. Bare plywood flats, a stepladder and lighting stands are stacked behind them. Seven of the crew lined up along a white wall outside a soundstage, in caps and sunglasses, one in plaid pyjama trousers.
The cast on a living-room set: Cameron Diaz in a blue cardigan among the men, one of them in a red T-shirt reading Dance Contest Winner.
Beddor on location beside a white production trailer under a grey sky, in a baseball cap, sunglasses and headphones round his neck, one arm across the shoulders of a younger man in a tie-dyed T-shirt. The People’s Choice Awards 25th Anniversary certificate, in grey script on cream: congratulating Something About Mary, voted by the American public in a Gallup poll one of the top three Favorite Comedy Motion Pictures. Dated the 10th day of January 1999.
Frank Beddor on set with his arms round two others — Matt Dillon on the right in Pat Healy’s moustache and pale shirt, and a third man on the left.

Credits

Produced by

Frank Beddor

Michael Steinberg

Charles B. Wessler

Bradley Thomas

Directed by

Peter Farrelly

Bobby Farrelly

Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin

Written by

Ed Decter

John J. Strauss

Peter Farrelly

Bobby Farrelly

Released by

Twentieth Century Fox

July 1998