“True. I was an idiot,” director Peter Farrelly said in a statement. “I did this decades ago and I thought I was being funny and the truth is I’m embarrassed and it makes me cringe now. I’m deeply sorry."
The Cut's Anna Silman, knowing full well that Oscar momentum was now with "Green Book," had posted a hit piece about Farrelly today.
Silman unearthed info from the mid to late ’90s that had Farrelly jokingly whipping out his privates in front of then-20th Century Fox boss Tom Rothman and then another incident in which he, again, flashed Cameron Diaz in the same way, right before casting her in "There’s Something About Mary." Not surprising coming from the director that all but invented the gross-out comedy in the '90s. Rothman jokingly said “it wasn’t a pretty sight…in fact, I’m still recovering.” Diaz, meanwhile, laughed it off by saying “When a director shows you his penis the first time you meet him, you’ve got to recognize the creative genius,” Diaz said at the time.
The descriptions of said behavior was dug up from two 1998 articles (Newsweek and The Observer). Newsweek had this to say about their archival find: “In these stories, it’s notable how Farrelly’s behavior is treated like a cute running prank instead of egregious sexual misconduct, illustrating just how much things have changed in the past two decades — indeed, much of it in the past year.”
Edward Berger seems to have settled on what comes next. His Lance Armstrong biopic, starring Austin Butler, is now holding casting calls, with production eyed for January.