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Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels star in "Dumb and Dumber To," which is scheduled for release on November 14.

(Twitter photo)

Jeff Daniels is not only in the midst of a Midwest music tour with his son's group, the Ben Daniels Band, but in July, filming wrapped on the HBO series he anchors (pun intended), "The Newsroom," and on November 14, the much anticipated sequel to his most commercially successful movie, "Dumb and Dumber" (1994), hits the big screen.

And unlike his “Dumb and Dumber To” co-star, Jim Carrey – who has done some terrific work in dramatic roles, but has struggled with audiences wanting him to stay in his “comedy” box – Daniels has long been able to move freely from project to project without regard to staying within a single genre.

Part of that may be because Carrey enjoyed blockbuster, mainstream success in comedy films very early in his career, while Daniels seemed to work more often in the periphery, quietly building up a highly diversified resume.

But Daniels’ careful decisions about what projects to pursue also played a role. When the offer for “Dumb and Dumber” came through, Carrey had found success with “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,” and “The Mask” was about to be released – “He was about to become, you know, Jim Carrey, and everybody knew it,” said Jeff Daniels – while Daniels had just done the Civil War feature “Gettysburg.”

“The agents and other people said, ‘You can’t do “Dumb and Dumber,” it would be a huge career mistake,’” said Daniels. “But I wanted to go from ‘Gettysburg’ to ‘Dumb and Dumber,’ while they wanted to establish a brand and play to it. L.A. wants that. New York doesn’t want that, because it’s not like you’re going to be in the same play over and over, but Hollywood’s the other way. Hollywood wants you to just do what you did before, and I wanted to beat that.”

To illustrate the point, one need only look at what film projects Daniels pursued after “Dumb and Dumber”: a TV adaptation of Lanford Wilson’s drama, “Redwood Curtain”; the family-friendly “Fly Away Home”; the multi-narrative crime thriller, “2 Days in the Valley”; the live action version of “101 Dalmatians”; and the nostalgia-packed comic drama, “Pleasantville.”

“I knew I was all over the place, but as long as I believed in each one, I could do what I wanted, and they couldn’t peg me, couldn’t pigeonhole me,” said Daniels. “After ‘The Squid and the Whale,’ I was offered 12 different [expletive] father roles, and I just kept turning those down. Then [the Tony Award winning play ‘God of Carnage’] came along, then (Aaron) Sorkin came along with ‘The Newsroom,’ and then Jim (Carrey) and I started talking and saying, ‘Let’s do a (‘Dumb and Dumber’) sequel.’ … I love that after winning the Emmy for ‘The Newsroom,’ the next thing I was getting attention for was filming ‘Dumb and Dumber To.’”

Jeff Daniels tweeted this photo of himself and co-star Jim Carrey on the "Dumb and Dumber To" set last fall.

The film shoot for “Dumb and Dumber To,” which began in Atlanta, happened in the fall of 2013 (September through November), but getting there took a long time and lot of legwork. Directors (and brothers) Bobby and Peter Farrelly announced their intentions to pursue a sequel in 2011, and Carrey and Daniels reportedly signed on in 2012.

Later, Carrey temporarily pulled out, due to concerns about Warner Brothers’ lack of enthusiasm for the project; but when Carrey stepped back in, the production team shopped “Dumber To” around and found an indie company, Red Granite, to finance the movie for $35 million. (Universal Pictures is “Dumber”’s North American distributor.)

This eventually led to legal battles regarding whether or not the sequel’s producers owe the original film’s producers a film credit and compensation, but when the parties reached a settlement agreement, the project was back on, and casting announcements (Kathleen Turner, Jennifer Lawrence, etc.) began to appear.

Fans of the first movie rejoiced when Daniels tweeted a photo of himself and Carrey in full Harry-and-Lloyd mode on "Dumber To"'s set.

But because Daniels had recently starred in the dark comedy “God of Carnage” on Broadway, I wondered about whether it was harder to perform comedy on a film set, since you don’t have the immediate feedback and laughter that a live audience provides.

“No, not really,” said Daniels. “If you get to where I am, you know the drill. You have to trust your instincts, especially when you’re working with a guy like Jim Carrey. You can’t teach someone where the ‘funny’ is, or comic timing. You either have it, or you don’t. … We both have that. … So when you’ve got 2 guys working who know where the ‘funny’ is, you focus on landing it, and you get out.”

Of course, the film editors have to share the Farrellys’ comic sensibilities, besides also know where the “funny” is, in post-production.

“When they’re screening it, they’re looking at the pace - some things aren’t as funny as we thought, and some things are slowing it down, so they’ll make cuts to fix it,” said Daniels. “But we leave the set knowing whether we have it or not.”

And if you've seen Daniels and Carrey on late night shows, talking about "Dumber To," you get the sense that they genuinely enjoy playing off each other.

“We’re friends now,” said Daniels. “In the time before the deal was in place, we rekindled the friendship and hung out a bit. We’ve talked about how for years, people come up to us, people from age 8 to 80, and say, ‘God, that movie makes me laugh.’ So to return to those characters, and spend 9 weeks doing that – it all came back pretty quickly. … And the chemistry (between Daniels and Carrey) is there, and it bleeds in, so we use it. It worked the first time, so we thought, let’s do it again, and try and go even further.”

Jenn McKee is an entertainment reporter for The Ann Arbor News. Reach her at jennmckee@mlive.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.