nationwide. as resources shrink, the fight over what gets cut when the ax comes down is getting louder. here's chris bury with our report. >> reporter: the capitol here is now ground zero. in the national argument over who shares the pain, as states and cities run out of money. this evening, the embattled governor pleaded his case. >> we're going to do what it takes to get this budget on track. >> reporter: today, they were nearly 40,000 strong, state workers and their supporters upset by what they see is a frontal assault on their benefits and their union rights. is there a lot of anger here in wisconsin? >> yes. very upset. >> i think it's frustration more than anger that he's not listening to our our voices. >> reporter: tomorrow, the tea party plans a counterrally in support of the governor. the protesters first descended on the capitol monday, raging at

the new republican governor scott walker. he's demanding workers pay more for pensions and health care. all these protesters, governor, give you some pause? >> i'm not going to let them round out the voices of the 5 million taxpayers across the state, much of whom pay much more for health care and pensions than what we're proposing. >> reporter: by thursday, the protests had reached a fever pitch. but with a new twist. just as republicans prepared to pass the budget bill, key democrats fled the state to stall the vote. >> we are willing to take this action that disrupts our lives because -- for the lives of the workers is much more serious. >> it is not political theater. it is standing with thousands of people that have e-mailed us and called us and they're telling us, don't let the governor do this to us. >> reporter: most infuriating for union employees, the

governor wants to strip away nearly all bargaining rights, everything from wages to work rules. you think he's trying to bust your union? >> of course, he's going to. >> by taking away our right to bargain as teachers, i don't think it's solving a budget in any way. >> reporter: madison has become a microcosm of the budget battles raging in so many states, providing a pulpit for national union leaders. >> this has been going on for too long. now leaders like walker want to take away our break freedom, our new dom freedom to have a voice the job. >> reporter: like a magnet, the crowds and cameras are attracting the nation's activists. >> enthusiasm is infebruary with us. nonviolent, disciplined focus. saving the rights of workers. this is not just about money. >> reporter: but the spectacle in madison is also drawing plenty of high-profile critics. >> if a teacher is protesting while claiming sick leave that

would appear on its face to be fraud? tax payers are not paying for a sick day but a protest day. >> reporter: so many teachers are here calling in sick that madison and milwaukee schools closed for much of the week. governor walker, in office only six weeks, told me he has no choice. why is this so necessary? >> well, for us, we're broke. just like nearly every state across the country. >> reporter: for people like jim and nancy thompson, governor's new budget hits home. how important are these benefits to you? >> well, i was a teacher for 31 years. i've been really tired about 4 years. i've been retired about four years. the benefits mean everything. >> i have some health issues that i would not be covered by any private insurance. they wouldn't take me. >> reporter: so you need this health plan? >> i do. >> reporter: they worry about a growing poisonous atmosphere surrounding this debate. >> it's hostile. we're not the enemy.

we're good, hard-working people. we're not the enemy. we vote. we pay taxes. we pay our bills. >> reporter: 50 miles from madison, delhi owner kim lee has little sympathy for state workers given his own family's health care costs. >> i pay $380 a month. no wellness, no dental, no eye. $5,500 deductible per person. there's four in my family. >> reporter: the debate may grow even more intense. more polarizing. >> we're here today because we elected to make tough decisions. >> reporter: in the meantime, state troopers have been dispatched to find those awol senators. how's it feel to be on the lam? >> well -- [ laughs ] we've been coming up with things, bonnie and clyde, thelma and louis. so it is interesting. >> reporter: this is chris bury for "nightline" in madison, wisconsin. >> tonight, the protests

continue but it's possible this showdown will end in compromise. there was an offer late today from union leaders to back down on pensions and health care if the governor agrees not to gut their bargaining rights. we'll have more tomorrow morning on "good morning america" as well as on "this week" with c t christyian amman more on sunday morning. up next, today, they're as busy as ever, we catch up with the farrelly brothers. ooh, a brainteaser. how can expedia now save me even more on my hotel? well, hotels know they can't fill every room every day. like this one. and this one. and oops, my bad. so, they give expedia ginormous discounts with these: unpublished rates. which means i get an even more rockin' hotel, for less.

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their films are a bit of a

rorschach test. your opinion may be highly influenced by your gender. many guys tend to like them. many women not so much. we're talking about the farrelly brothers. the writer/director duo who have taken crass to the bank. is it a guy thing? david wright takes a look for our series "seriously funny." >> ahhh! >> we got a bleeder! >> reporter: if there's such a thing as the anthesis of the chick flick -- that's the genre mastered by the farrelly brothers. whether it's "dumb and dumber" or "there's something about mary," they specialize in a brand of humor that's guy centric. movies like "stuck on you," about two brothers literally joined at the hip. >> siamese twins ain't the

easiest i've ever had. >> we're not siamese, we're american. >> reporter: they're the cinematic authors the frat pack, writing, producing and directing movies that unapologetically go for belly laughs. it feels to me like you guys do guy humor. is that fair? >> absolutely. >> we probably have definitely done a lot more guy humor than girl humor. our new movie "hall pass." >> reporter: not exactly a chick flick. >> it's about marriage. we try to make sure the girls are well represented too. >> reporter: "hall pass," opening next week, features owen wilson and jason sudeikis as two husbands granted a one-week reprieve from married life. >> six days. >> let me logout. >> i'm going to try to bang your receptionist. >> these guys aren't cheaters. but they always look. they're like, you know, bobble heads in the car. so the wives say, all right, take a week off from marriage, do waver you want. the guys go straight to the bar at applebee's. >> are you guys sure applebee's is the best place to meet women

at? >> what are you thinking, olive guarden? >> they have no clue. along the way, the wives realize, if they have the week off, then who are we married to? and they start going out. and that's the scarier side. it gets way more complicated. >> i'm giving you a hall pass. >> a what? >> a what? >> a hall pass. >> reporter: do you see "hall pass" as a kind of farrelly brothers chick flick? >> it's a guy concept but the women win in this movie in a huge way. >> i was just wondering what your experience was like working with the farrelly brothers? >> reporter: on "inside the actors studio," matt damon told the audience that peter farrelly gave him the most memorable acting note he's ever sev edrec on a movie set. >> he comes up to me and he goes, yeah -- suck less. >> reporter: so trying to connect the dots and figure out how you get from providence, rhode island, to becoming the kings of comedy in hollywood.

>> took a bus originally. >> reporter: i heard you got your start selling round beach towels? >> yeah, the idea was when the sun move across the sky, you have to get up and reposition your towel. big round one, you just spin on it. >> reporter: how'd that go? >> you didn't buy one, did you? >> reporter: no. >> that's how it went. >> reporter: they quickly had other ideas. >> we thought, hey, everyone else is writing screenplays. maybe we should give it a try. >> reporter: their first big break came on "seinfeld." >> somebody got us on the door. we pitched them a bunch of ideas. met with, like -- no laughs. they told us -- >> said, we're not laughers. don't let it get you down. we plowed ahead. they said thanks. that's it. i remember we were sick about it. they didn't hire us. about a month later, we get a phone call out of the blue. by the way, they shot one of the things you pitched. what? yeah, the virgin episode. >> virgin. >> hello.

>> so you didn't actually get to write it -- >> no, we got our name on it. we were happy to have our name associated with "seinfeld." >> reporter: and it's just as well because they probably wouldn't have had time to make movies. >> you're saying it hopefully like -- >> reporter: and "dumb and dumber" came out while "seinfeld" was still on the air. >> yeah, came out in '94. >> reporter: there are a lot of people who think you push it too far. >> it's usually people who haven't seen our movie. i'll go back to "the ringer." the special olympics infiltration so he can bet on the outcome. >> my name is drunk and i have a slice of your duty. people are like, you can't make fun of that. eunice shriver who created the special olympics loved what we did. >> reporter: what's intriguing about the comedic potential is the guy in the wheelchair can be a son of a bitch.

>> one of the problems with the way people with disabilitied have been portrays over the years through fill and television is they're always portrayed as the weak person or the angel person. what we found is they're all like this. some are nice. some aren't nice. >> reporter: helen keller might have had a dark side. >> we don't know. >> reporter: their next project may be the ultimate guy movie. a remake of "the three stooges." there's sort of a rorschach test about "the three stooges" that guys laugh, women just turn off. >> that's one reason this was so hard -- this is by far the hardest movie we've ever gotten made. we really love the stooges. our feeling is the stooges never got the grade a treatment they deserved in their lives. >> reporter: as with the stooges, brotherhood is an essential component of the farrelly's humor. >> the thing about the brother teams is they have kind of a distinct stamp. everybody wants to make your movie a little bit more vanilla

that you originally see it. when there's two of us, when one guy gets weak, the other guy says no, and then we hold each other up. fight the fight better. >> reporter: you guys friends? >> absolutely. >> reporter: seems like it. >> yeah. we like to drink. but we grau up -- you know, twin beds but we always slept in one bed -- no, i'm kidding. >> reporter: they crack each other up. with a shared sense of humor developed over a lifetime. these two brothers are living out their own buddy movie. >> what's with the helmet? >> chicks dig motorcycles. >> reporter: to what they hope will be another huge success at the box office. i'm david wright for "nightline" in hollywood. >> the farrelly brothers new film "hall pass" opens in theaters next friday, february 25th. inventors of the round beach towel. up next, they've kicked cancer, conquered obesity and now they're beating balding. a trip to the hardest working animal in science, the mighty mouse.

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well, they say that dogs are a man's best friend, but when it comes to research, no species has been a better friend to man than the mouse, from cancer research to the benefits of red wine drinking, mice have been the guinea pigs of the research world. for neal karlinsky, mighty mice are a "sign of the times." >> reporter: if you happen to be a prematurely balding mouse, this was a very good week. researchers at ucla say they've made a break through in the prevention of hair loss in mice, that is. they hope to spread the good fortune to the rest of us. then again, we've heard that before. >> these two mice are racing towards the elusive fountain of youth.

>> prevented tumor from forming in mice. >> when the mice were treated with vitamin d, the tumors began to shrink. >> reporter: science has told us red wine makes fat mice healthy. they've made break throughs in mice with hearing loss, diabetes, just about any health problem you can imagine a mouse having, there's a cure for it. scott adams, creator of the cartoon dilbert wrote, if i were a mouse, i would start smoking, drinking, overeating and having unsafe sex because those tiny [ bleep ] can be cured of anything. it is a cure that comes with a police and sometimes a hangover. mice were given the equivalent of 35 bottles of wine a day for the famous red wine is if for you study. and they had to drink the mouse equivalent of 60 cups of green tea a day for alzheimer's research. >> a lot of research came on the backs of mice. a lot of little tiny mice graves now, went into that giant mouse wheel in the sky, so we could have better medicine, better

health. >> reporter: what about us? tonight a mouse is getting a cure for baldness it doesn't even need while the likes of such folicically challenged manly men as bruce willis, sean connery and homer simpson are left to comb the few strands they can find. we're talking about rodents getting better health care than most of the country according to the dill gert blog. it's bad enough i live in a country that ranks 37th in health care. the thing that really upsets me is that i have worse health care than mice. no offense to all the mighty mice we know and love, mickey, speedy gonzales, jerry, even that chuck e. cheese mouse. as scott adams writes, just once i would like a headline that says scientists discover a cure for human diabetes. followed by a statement that for mice it would give them the side effects. >> maybe there's hope for the three blind mice.

finally tonight, the topic of our closing argument. in light of the events in wisconsin, unions have outlasted their usefulness. where do workers need them now more than ever? we've already heard from many of you. we invite the rest of you to join the discussion on the "nightline" facebook page and at abcnews.com. that is our report for tonight. from all of us here at abc news, good night, america, and have a terrific weekend. tonight on jimmy kimmel live, adam sandler. >> she is nude down there but andy roddick's down there with a tennis racket going yeah. >> lindsay lohan was back in court today. i don't know why she needed a necklace. the police gave her an ankle bracelet for free. >> chef bobby flay. >> his whole crusade, you don't understand, he wants to win. >> and music from ke$ha. >> i plan to bury bobby flay inq

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