I will admit to being one of those people who are easily influenced by movies, even bad movies. Back in the winter of 1994 when the movie Dumb & Dumber hit the theaters, my life was in a little bit of a rut. I was a big Jim Carrey fan and really needed a good laugh so I went to see it.
If you don't know the plot it is rather simple. Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) and Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels) are a couple single guys in their twenties living in Providence, Rhode Island. They are down on their luck in large part because they are not very bright. Lloyd, working as a limo driver, picks up a pretty lady named Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly) who loses her bag in the airport but Lloyd scoops it up and decides to deliver it to her... in Aspen, Colorado. This sets the stage for a wild and crazy road trip across the country where hilarity ensues.
The critics kicked it pretty hard by stating that it was little more than a collection of slapstick jokes, pranks and exploited stereotypes designed for a cheap laugh. On the better side some recognized that there was more going on underneath the guilty pleasure of scatological humor. What critics couldn't know was what the movie meant to people like me.
Rewind to my life in the winter of 1994. My friend Derek and I were sharing a one room apartment with a broken heater that sat above a pizza shop in downtown Middleboro, Massachusetts. Neither one of us had a home to go home to, we were rejected by our families and had to scrounge to survive. Derek was driving a snow plow on those rare occasions when a drift collected and I was delivering lunches for a gourmet shop two towns away. Our meals came in the form of fast food or were cooked on a camper sized twin burner on the counter. I've had some very tough times in my life and this definitely belongs in the top ten.
Watching Dumb & Dumber was like looking at our lives from an outsiders point of view. Lloyd and Harry are destitute outcasts. They both have menial driving jobs, they're living in a crap apartment and their dreams, silly as they might be, are falling apart.
For me this movie became more than just a comedy when the two men hit the ultimate low point. Both become unemployed and for once looked clearly at their lives to see that it's just not happening for them. In the midst of this heart felt awakening came the lines that hit me the hardest. The words of Lloyd's epiphany rung in my ears, "I've had it with this dump!" "What the hell are we doing here?" "We've got to get out of this town!" Then finally the three sentences that made the biggest impact on me, "I'm sick and tired having to eek my way through life. I'm sick and tired of being a nobody. Worst of all, I'm sick and tired of having nobody." I had to hold back the tears.
Before you fall into characterizing me as a sentimental fool, let's talk about what it means to be dumb and what it means to be unstable. For some reason these terms are often misunderstood.
I grew up believing that when someone is unstable that it means they have something wrong with their brain. It implies a character flaw or a psychological disorder. What I have come to understand over the years is that being unstable demands a literal meaning. If you don't have a stable home, stable family life, the social or emotional bonds that develop one into a well rounded, empathetic human being that's when you should more accurately be characterized as unstable. An unstable person is someone without support, a person truly alone in the world. They didn't piss away their fortune, they simply never had one to begin with.
Now a word about being dumb. People who meet me now just assumed that I have a college degree. They assume that someone who has written several books and several hundred articles must have been great in school, especially English. The truth is that I was terrible in school. I got my first D in the 6th grade and after that I never organized myself for the disciplines of scholarly life. All my early assessment tests placed me in the median range at best. At 15 years old I took the ASVAB test and scored a dismal 28. At 19 years old I took it again and still only scored a 49. I didn't even qualify for full time military service - not smart enough. It took another decade of self guided study to earn the adjectives associated with intellect.
So there I was at 21 years old living in that tiny apartment with my friend Derek. I was not smart and I was not stable. I had a terrible job that barely paid 50 dollars a week. I was a night school graduate and a college drop out. I felt no brighter than those characters on the big screen because I probably wasn't.
So after the epiphany, Lloyd and Harry agree to go on this epic road trip. Here were two guys who had clearly never left New England, breaking out on an adventure across the country. They had nothing more than a dog shaped van, a paper map, a pocket full of petty cash and a briefcase. None of that really mattered because for once they had a sense of direction.
It couldn't have been more than a few days later when my boss, Shauna, requested that I learn how to work in the shop helping to make the sandwiches that I would later deliver. At the time I was working for a set fee per delivery with tips added. I thought I was getting a promotion so I asked about pay. She said there would be no extra pay. Excuse me? She wanted me to do more work, more time, more effort, more hours for no additional money. She implied that I should be grateful for having a job at all.
If there was one thing I have always had, it is dignity. No one steps on me. Unfortunately when you accept part time jobs many employers think of you as undeserving. So I took my final paycheck in cash and drove away. It wasn't really about the work, it was about my then meaningless life. I couldn't do this anymore, "Eek by." I didn't want to drive back to the apartment so instead I parked at the edge of Woods pond and forced myself to make a decision. After skipping rocks along the ice for an hour I had made up my mind - I was leaving Middleboro tonight!
Was Dumb and Dumber just a silly movie about comedians doing anything for a laugh or was it about aspiration? Here were two guys with no means and no support who enjoyed every second of their lives. It was about breaking out of the comfort zones we were born into. It was about striving for something better even when it feels like you have no chance in hell of making anything happen.
Lloyd and Harry travel across the country and climb the mountains into Aspen where they end up discovering that the briefcase they were carrying all along was filled with money. You can call it an easy plot twist but I prefer to see it as a metaphor for the unexpected riches that come from chasing your dreams. Sure there is a secondary plot surrounding a kidnapping and a bunch of bad guy characters who are after the money but that stuff is just filler.
I believe that a movie becomes art when it inspires you to action. Thanks to Dumb & Dumber I broke free from my freezing one room apartment and drove my car 1,500 miles to Florida. This trip provided a huge confidence boost that allowed me to start living on a higher level. I would return to Florida several times over the years. I met my future wife there, got married in Punta Gorda and ended up staying as a full time resident. And we lived happily ever after...
