It’s been over 15 years since Seinfeld left the airwaves, and it remains at the center of a multitude of TV conversations. One of the series’ best episodes from its early years is Season 4’s “The Virgin,” known for being one of the first things that directors Bobby and Peter Farrelly did before breaking into Hollywood with Dumb and Dumber and the rest of their comedy career. Only they might have had a little less to do with the episode than history and Wikipedia are telling us.
For a Reddit AMA promoting the long-gestating sequel Dumb and Dumber To, both Farrelly brothers shared a lot of insightful info about their comedic resume, and the topic of “The Virgin” indeed came up. Here’s their explanation behind their “story” credit, and what kind of an audience Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David are.
PETE: Well, we hate to burst your bubble. But we sold the idea…and were given story credit for that one. But the actual script was written by Peter Mehlman. We sold the idea in a room where we pitched to Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld, and Larry Charles. By the way, those guys don’t laugh when you pitch them ideas; it was very scary. At least, they didn’t with us.BOBBY: So it was very scary.PETE: But we were very happy that they bought at least one of our ideas, and that was “The Virgin.”
I’m guessing they sold the idea of Jerry dating a virgin and how that could have ramifications for his personal life. “The Virgin” was the slightly risqué appetizer to the masterful masturbation episode “The Contest,” and featured Julia Louis-Dreyfuss doing some of her best “Elaine infringing on Jerry’s life” acting, by inadvertently getting Marla (Jane Leeves) off of the idea of having Jerry be her first fully sexual partner. Here’s a clip of Elaine’s unbashful small talk.
Having someone talk on an and about a diaphragm seems like just the right kind of subject matter for the Farrelly brothers, who are of course the men responsible for cinema’s greatest diarrhea scene and “sperm as hairgel” scene. (Not to mention Kingpin’s vomit-inducing post-sex scene.) “The Virgin” also had a great exchange between Jerry and George where the latter figures out Susan is his girlfriend because he has Tampax at his house. There’s all kinds of slightly risqué-for-1992 stuff here.
I, for one, would love to see Bobby and Peter Farrelly getting into TV again in a much larger capacity. More so if the stoic and unlaughing Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David are involved. How about you guys?
