php curl -k or --insecure, -X

With PHP & curl, I need to connect via a proxy to a SSL secured site, and, ignore certificate warnings. My curl command line looks like this:

curl -k -u username:password -X GET https://someURL

Looking through curl.php, I see what I think are the correct options to set. With them, I end up with something like this:

  $ch = curl_init("https://someURL");
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false); // Ignore cert errors?
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, true);           // Proxy true?
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "GET");     
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);            
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "username:password");      
  $result = curl_exec($ch);

But, $result always returns false. My password has a special character in it, "!". Perhaps I need to escape it? Other than that, any other ideas?