Released in 1998,
"Dirty Work" because one of the funniest, underground, buddy comedy movies. Starring Norm Macdonald and Artie Lange, the film was first lauded as a mega flop, but has since grown to become loved by those with dark humor and a love for the actors in the film. The film starts out with an introduction of Mitch, played by Norm Macdonald, who gets fired from his pizza delivery job within minutes of the movie starting. As soon as life spins into turmoil within the first five minutes of the film, fans knew they were in for a treat.
He eventually is dumped by his girlfriend and is forced to move in with his pizza loving best friend, Sam, who is played by Artie Lange. Sam's father is living in Sam's house, and eventually the boys find out that this man, who was as much of a father to Mitch as Sam during their youth, required a heart transplant. Since Mitch has been fired from his pizza job, the duo set out to start a "dirty work for hire" business. The business plays devious and sometimes harmful pranks on people who are out to get revenge, but require some plausible deniability in doing so.
This film was directed by Bob Saget, popular father on the 90s sitcom, Full House, and later host of America's Funniest Videos. Because of Saget's close connections with the Hollywood comedy scene, comic all starts, Chevy Chase, Don Rickles, and Chris Farley also had roles in the film. Another lover of pizza, Chris Farley's character, Jimmy, is missing half of his nose which had been "bitten off by a Saigon whore." It would eventually be Jimmy, using an army of live skunks and prostitutes who would ultimately help save the day at the end of the film.
The film had a budget of $13 million but was only able to gross slightly over $10 million. In Hollywood, this is often considered a failure of a film, but the two main characters have said publicly how proud they were that it became a cult hit. A constant center of jokes on the Howard Stern show, much of Artie Lange's fanbase cite this film as one of their favorites. Even Norm Macdonald has said that working with Don Rickles for a day was one of the most treasured times of his career. Indeed, working with comics Chevy Chase and Chris Farley must have been absolutely amazing.
The film was written by Frank Sebastiano, Fred Wolf, and Norm Macdonald. It was produced by Robert Simonds, who helped produce other cult classics like Problem Child, Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, Airheads, Half Baked, and most recently, This Means War. While reviewers gave Dirty Work a 17% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a whopping 65% with viewers, proving its cult status among fans of all the fantastic comics in the film.
