Dumb And Dumber | 1994

Harry and Lloyd (Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey) travel from Providence to Aspen, to return a money-packed briefcase to Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly) in the film that launched the Farrelly brothers’ brand of hi-jinx, lo-taste filmmaking.

Although most of the film was shot in Colorado and Utah, as usual for the Farrellys, there’s a little scene-setting in their home state of Rhode Island, with establishing shots of Providence, including the famous Big Blue Bug – the 58-feet-long mascot which has graced the roof of the Big Blue Bug Solutions pest control company since 1980. See it overlooking I-95 at O’Connell Street, in Lower South Providence.

Mary Swanson’s ‘New England’ mansion is actually in Utah. It’s La Caille, a 20-acre estate built in 1975, at Quail Run, Little Cottonwood Canyon in the city of Sandy.

Most of the transcontinental journey, the highways, fast-food joints and truckstops, were filmed around Fort Morgan (boyhood home of bandleader Glenn Miller) on the eastern plains of Colorado.

The arrival of Harry and Lloyd in ‘Aspen’ actually filmed on Main Street, Breckenridge, central Colorado, which is at a higher altitude than the swanky ski resort, and therefore was more likely to be snow-covered in late spring. It’s not unlikely that Breckenridge was a bit cheaper to film in, too.

The mini-bike ride through ‘Aspen’ was shot on Main Street, Park City in Utah.

The lavish ‘Danbury Hotel’, in which Harry and Lloyd stay (and treat themselves to a Lamborghini too), after dipping into the case of money, is the Stanley Hotel, 333 West Wonder View Avenue, Estes Park in Colorado.

The grandly imposing hotel became the inspiration for the ‘Overlook’ in The Shining after Stephen King stayed there in 1973. The Stanley Kubrick film of The Shining wasn’t filmed here, but the TV remake, sanctioned by King (who didn’t care for the changes made to his story for the big screen version), was.

The ‘Avalanche Bar & Grill’, where Lloyd waits in vain for Mary Swanson, is the Stanley’s bar.

Harry is meanwhile meeting up with her at Copper Mountain Resort in Breckenridge, which is where he licks the frost on the ski lift.

The ‘Snowy Owl Benefit’ was filmed in the 1909 Union Pacific Railroad Depot, now reborn as live music venue The Depot, 400 West South Temple, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The ‘Aspen’ chalet and the home of baddie Nicholas Andre (Charles Rocket) both filmed in Dee Valley, adjoining Park City, Utah.

Most interiors were filmed, by the way, in Intermountain Studios, Orem in Utah, the studio built by The Osmonds for The Donnie and Marie Osmond Show.

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