Harry Romm: The studio, it made you! If it hadn't been for us, you'd be living out on the street!
Moe Howard: That is exactly where I am!
The Three Stooges is a 2000 television biopic about the life of the titular comedy act. It stars Paul Ben-Victor as Moe Howard, Evan Handler as Larry Fine, and Michael Chiklis as Curly Howard.
Not to be confused with the 2012 film.
This film features examples of:
- Artistic License – History:
- Moe is shown doing odd jobs at the studio to make ends meet. In reality, he had been quite shrewd with money and through a series of careful investments, he had made enough to live comfortably by the late 50s.
- When they sign on to work at Columbia, Moe is surprised that they are being assigned to the shorts department instead of features. In real life, Moe actually believed that their routine worked better with shorts.
- Curly joined the trio while they were still working with Ted Healy, and it was he who suggested shaving his head.
- The film makes a habit of sometimes meshing the actor's stage personas with their real life ones. Moe for example, while still a Mean Character, Nice Actor to some level, is shown to be more genuinely cynical, bossy and gruff than accounts say he was offscreen. The film also takes Joe Besser's infamous adversity to slapstick and portrays him as The Prima Donna, while the real Joe was supposedly anything but disdainful of the Stooges otherwise. It also inverts Besser's input, the real Besser shirked from the Stooges' Comedic Sociopathy (mostly because he wasn't experienced with performing it), but did plenty of light slapstick such as pie fights, where as in the film, he is compliant to Moe's physical comedy but snobbishly treats a pie to the face as The Last Straw.
- The film really turns Shemp's known phobic personality up to eleven and portrays him as both terrified of Healy (He wasn't. He was just sick of Healy's abusive personality and outright told him so). It also portrayed his first short ("Fright Night", which was actually one of Shemp's favorites) as a miserable experience for him where he suffers a real punch to the face which he finds deeply upsetting. This is very much not how Shemp was known to behave if he got a real knock (which he did, ending up with a broken nose in "Brideless Groom" for example).
- Much like onscreen, Shemp and Curly do not interact at all, even though in real life, they were very close and Shemp was known to be the only one who could get Curly out of his terminal shyness.
- Ascended Fanboy: At the end of the film, Moe gives Tom, the young TV executive, a patented Stooge eyepoke.
- Bait-and-Switch: After performing in a hotel, Curly complains to Moe about slapping him...only to say he wants him to slap harder so they can hear it in the back row.
- Blatant Lies: Harry Cohn asks the Stooges if they've been waiting long. Moe says they hadn't, even though they just spent two hours in his waiting room.
- Exact Words: Harry Cohn tells Moe and Larry that, as long as he's around, the Three Stooges will have a place at Columbia Pictures. The minute he dies, the shorts department is closed and the two find themselves out of a job.
- Fake Shemp: Referenced. While auditioning for a third Stooge after Shemp's death, Jules White says that they cannot keep reusing his old footage.
- Important Haircut: After arriving in California, Curly's head is shaved so that he has his own distinct look.
- Ironic Nickname: Once his head is shaved, Jerome remarks "Ain't I curly?" as he looks at his mustache. Moe and Larry then like "curly" and so use that as his nickname.
- Mood Whiplash: In one scene, after a night on the town, Curly comes into the fancy hotel where the Stooges are staying, attracting the attention of several couples who recognize him. Two of the women approach and ask to meet him, to which he happily obliges. But the women, not realizing everything in the shorts is staged, accidentally injure him with a cigar and whiskey, leaving him lying on the floor weeping in pain. The women are taken aback and rejoin their dates, at which point Moe comes downstairs. He sees Curly, puts two and two together, and is clearly enraged by what's happened, but only directs a Death Glare their way in favor of helping Curly up and out of the room.
- Quantity vs. Quality: When the Stooges arrive in Harry Cohn's office, he's on the phone yelling at someone to ensure that Columbia's writers are writing new pictures and tells them "not to worry about good, just make it fast."
- Real Footage Re-creation: The film features restaged routines from several of the Stooges' Columbia shorts. One notable error occurs in the depiction of Curly's career-ending stroke; the film shows him collapsing in the middle of a take while shooting Half Wits Holiday, despite eyewitness accounts saying that it happened while the cameras weren't rolling.
- Rule of Three: After performing at an upscale hotel, the Stooges are approached by Jack Warner of Warner Bros, then Louis B. Mayer of MGM, and finally Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures.
- Spinning Clock Hands: As the Stooges wait to meet with Harry Cohn, a clock spins as they wait for over an hour once they're told he'll "be right with them."
