A real flood of Dumb And Dumber stories have begun to rumble up and energetically issue forth from Jeff Daniels lately. After talking about the people who opposed his desire to play the movie’s immortal, floppy-haired Harry Dunne last week, Daniels has now decided to share the story of how Clint Eastwood once approached him to discuss how well he could relate to the scene where a man experiences violent diarrhea in a bathroom with a broken toilet.
During an interview on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Daniels talked again about wanting to be part of Dumb And Dumber in order to have a career where he could alternate dramatic roles with ones where he can stick fight Jim Carrey while wearing a powder blue suit. He says demonstrating this kind of versatility is what helped him earn Eastwood’s admiration (and a part in 2002’s Blood Work).
The more memorable Eastwood story, though, is Daniels recalling the first time he met the actor at the Pebble Beach Pan-Am golf tournament. “I’m in the breakfast tent on Wednesday and I don’t know anybody… and all of a sudden Clint Eastwood comes walking across the breakfast tent and he’s looking right at me,” Daniels tells Colbert. He does an impersonation then of Eastwood telling him, “I saw Dumb And Dumber. The toilet scene… that happened to me.” After sharing this information, Eastwood apparently started laughing and walked away, his mission accomplished.
Hopefully this is the beginning of a new interview trend—one where Daniels tells the world about all the other celebrities who have approached him over the years to bring up Dumb And Dumber scenes they’ve experienced firsthand. Perhaps we’ll learn soon that Dame Judi Dench has confided to Daniels that she once sold a blind boy a dead bird wrapped in duct tape or that Tom Hanks has shared stories of accidentally giving a cop a beer bottle filled with piss.
