20 Questions: Ben Stiller

Growing up on the road with his actor-comedian parents Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Ben Stiller often watched six hours of television a day. He felt at home with "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie." He could recite every word of every episode of "SCTV." He was more familiar with Will Shatner than with Will Shakespeare. Eventually, Stiller learned to read, write and direct. Predisposed to a career in show business, he studied theater at UCLA for a year before opting out of college and heading home to New York, where he made his professional acting debut on Broadway in "The House of Blue Leaves." Stiller persuaded some cast members (including Swoosie Kurtz and Stockard Channing) to appear in a short comedy film he directed, "The Hustler of Money," a spoof of Martin Scorsese's "The Color of Money." The film aired on "Saturday Night Live," and Stiller was soon hired as a featured player and apprentice writer. After an unhappy five-week stint, Stiller left the show and created "The Ben Stiller Show" for MTV. That show moved to Fox, where it won an Emmy for comedy writing but flopped in the ratings. It was during the series' run that Stiller established his on-going comedic collaboration with Janeane Garofalo. They shared the big screen with Winona Ryder in Stiller's feature-length motion picture directorial debut, "Reality Bites." Stiller followed with a leading role in the hit "Flirting With Disaster," then turned director again for the controversial $40 million Jim Carrey film "The Cable Guy." Now Stiller is back to acting, with starring roles in "Zero Effect" opposite Bill Pullman and "Permanent Midnight," based on Jerry Stahl's dark Hollywood memoir. Stiller is working on an adaptation of Budd Schulberg's unrepentant Hollywood novel "What Makes Sammy Run?" which he hopes to direct and star in.

Robert Crane caught up with Stiller at the King's Road Cafe in West Hollywood. He reports: "For me, Ben--handsome, unshaven, wearing a white T-shirt and black pants--could have been the guy behind the counter, the owner or the poetry reader on Friday nights. He definitely does not have an entourage."

1.

[Q] Playboy: The real scourge of today's youth--drugs or TV?

[A] Stiller: It's probably a combination of the two. I've had more experience with television. It's detrimental to your thinking process. Once in a while I run into somebody who doesn't watch television at all, and it's astonishing the way he or she talks about ideas and books. When you stop watching TV, it's like coming off a drug. I'm not into prime-time television. I watch the late-night stuff or the fringe cable channels. Television has become an atmospheric presence in my house, which is probably even scarier.

2.

[Q] Playboy: You're one of the chief theoreticians of and apologists for the post-Generation X mind-set: Ironic disposition, deadpan demeanor, dark clothes. Are we missing something?

[A] Stiller: I like dark clothes. When Reality Bites came out, there was so much Generation X bullshit about it, I wanted to jump off the Eiffel Tower. It got ridiculous. I never viewed myself in any way except by what I was doing. Reality Bites was written by Helen Childress. If anybody deserves credit for a generational voice, it's her.

3.

[Q] Playboy: There isn't a lot of nudity in Gen X movies. Why all the modesty?

[A] Stiller: Reality Bites isn't really about sex. It focuses on two people who have been in love with each other for a long time. It's not supposed to be a Red Shoe Diaries episode. I like sex in movies as much as the next guy. I'm considering doing a movie about the porn industry. If the sex scenes were relevant to what the movie's about, I'd show as much sex as the next guy. I'm constantly asked to do sex scenes. I'm sick of people seeing me as just a piece of ass. I'm self-conscious about my body. I had a scene in Flirting With Disaster in which I had a boner. I had to deal with the fallout from that. It seems to be people's favorite: "Oh, man, the scene where you had the boner--that was the best. How'd you do that?" It was fake, but I had to walk around all day with it on. Somehow, it wasn't embarrassing for me to do that scene. I felt silly and funny. The sex in that movie was dealt with in a very real way as opposed to being romanticized; it wasn't meant to be hot or erotic. People in this society are so repressed about sex. That's why Playboy is successful. I started reading Playboy when I was ten.

4.

[Q] Playboy: Describe the lifestyle of the posthip.

[A] Stiller: My dad had a hip replacement and he's doing fine. He has much more mobility.

5.

[Q] Playboy: Janeane Garofalo says she's self-hating but has high self-esteem. Is that common among the posthip?

[A] Stiller: I think most actors have incredibly big egos, but they're also incredibly insecure. That's a bad combination. I include myself in this group. For whatever psychological reasons, we want and need approval from everybody in the universe, though we also think we're totally unworthy of it. We need to validate ourselves through our work.

6.

[Q] Playboy: Why is the literacy rate in the U.S. among the lowest in the developed world?

[A] Stiller: The U.S. is geographically isolated from other countries. We don't come into contact with other populations. I just got back from Europe, where everybody is at least bilingual, usually trilingual, because the countries are so close to one another and people are in contact with different nationalities and cultures. American culture is sedentary. There's something very wrong with the educational system in this country. I went to a private school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I was able to skate along and not work very hard because I knew my parents had money and would be able to send me to college.

7.

[Q] Playboy: Say you're doing a remake of War and Peace. Would you get the book or the Cliffs Notes or rent the original from the video store?

[A] Stiller: I would probably use the notes as a guide as I watched the video. I'm a multimedia sort of person. I used to read and have the TV on and listen to a CD all at once. I've been trying to focus on one thing at a time. So I'd start reading the book, and as time progressed, I'd realize I wouldn't ever get through it. Then I'd switch over to the notes and watch the end of the movie to figure out what happened. That would take two hours. I usually flip through a script to the end to see if my character is still there. Now I'm trying to enjoy the experience of just reading.

8.

[Q] Playboy: People call you the nicest guy in Hollywood. What would they be shocked to know about you?

[A] Stiller: I'm repressed. Every once in a while my dark side comes out--in a way that has never hurt anyone. I don't really do drugs. I have never done heroin. I have experimented with the minor drugs. I've never done cocaine either. I'm taking this opportunity to tell you which drugs I've never done. Once in a while I have weird little adventures. All those things we repress in American culture are present in me. I'm working hard with my therapist to bring them all to the surface in a way that will be safe for everybody to deal with.

9.

[Q] Playboy: We understand you dislike jokes. Which joke forced you into a joke-free environment?

[A] Stiller: Right now I don't think I could recall one joke, except maybe a riddle from when I was ten years old. My parents never really told jokes in their act. They did sketches and characters. Humor catches you off guard. So when somebody says, "here's a joke," the laugh is never going to be genuine. I was watching Harold and Maude recently by myself, and a couple of times I laughed out loud. Also, I love Hal Ashby movies.

10.

[Q] Playboy: Of the jobs you've had, which should have been fun that weren't?

[A] Stiller: For a summer I was a busboy and waiter at a place in New York called Café Central, which was a hip, trendy restaurant in 1985. First I bused tables and was really bad at it. I'm clumsy at carrying plates and glasses. You had to have a swiftness and a facility for carrying stacked objects. That wasn't me. I was interested in who was coming in, because it was an actor hangout. I would want to see who was talking to whom and what they were saying--basically, stuff you shouldn't do as a person of service. Dudley Moore came into the restaurant and I was really interested in what he was saying. I kept going over to make sure that he and his companion had enough coffee and that their plates were cleared. I think I really annoyed him. I kept changing the ashtrays with that move where you put the clean ashtray over the full ashtray and remove both and put back the clean ashtray. I think I did that one time too many. Then I became a waiter there, and dealing with orders and the kitchen was worse. It prompted me to get acting work.

11.

[Q] Playboy: We hear you dislike auditions. What happens when you're directing a film and a friend does a bad audition for you? Can you say, for instance, "Janeane, you blew that one"?

[A] Stiller: First of all, I don't think I could get Janeane in to audition. She's too difficult to get on the phone now. She's doing films with Sylvester Stallone. Second only to auditioning on my own, in terms of torture, would be to watch a friend audition. It's hard to maintain a sense of dignity in an audition. I have done so many auditions where I've put it out there and have been met with that kind of blank stare--"Great! Thanks! OK! Great work! Thanks for coming in!" At the door I'm thinking, What the hell am I doing with my life? If I want to work with friends, I just offer them the parts.

12.

[Q] Playboy: What about the appropriation of contemporary movie titles by the X-rated industry? For example, The Cable Guy could become The Able Guy. Is there a pornoproof movie title?

[A] Stiller: I haven't seen one for Get Shorty. That's not going to bring a lot of people to a movie theater. I enjoy seeing what they do with the porno movie titles. I never fail to chuckle when I see a clever one.

13.

[Q] Playboy: Is irony the only form of rebellion left when you admire your parents and their work?

[A] Stiller: My early rebellion was that I wasn't going to be funny. That's what I thought when I was in high school. I was going to be a serious actor and make serious movies. I tried to do that for a while, but unfortunately you can't help what's in your system. As much as I tried to get away from it, I kept coming back to things that made me laugh--SCTV and things like that. You have to rebel against your parents when you're that age, so what happened was that my humor took on the second-generation cynical edge that I saw in all the show-business parodies they did on SCTV. That show was made for me. Nobody else got it as much as my sister and 1. We would watch it when we were both 14 and see things like "The Sammy Maudlin Show" and think, Oh my God, we've actually lived this. We've seen this happen.

14.

[Q] Playboy: What was the most unreasonable position that your parents took with you?

[A] Stiller: The time my mother forced me to go to camp comes to mind. She insisted I go and I hated it. I couldn't understand why it was so important. Now I see she was helping me grow up. My parents put me on an airplane and I freaked out and made the pilot turn the plane around. I went home that day, but the next day they made me go back. At the time I thought my mother was Hitler. I wanted to stay home: "I love you. I want to be with you and Daddy." Now I realize they were doing the right thing. They were great parents. I love them.

15.

[Q] Playboy: What would life be like if you were going through it as Ben Meara?

[A] Stiller: I'll always be associated with both of my parents in some way. You have to embrace that. I've been lucky enough to carve out my own career. It's hard for the kids who have to live in the shadows of these huge celebrities. A friend saw my dad and me at a Knicks game. He saw a father and son watching us. The father said, "Look, there's Jerry Stiller." The son said, "There's Ben Stiller." Neither knew who the other guy was. It's different audiences.

16.

[Q] Playboy: Is David Letterman the spiritual leader of Generation X?

[A] Stiller: I think David Letterman is the comedic persona of the Eighties and Nineties. Letterman's attitude has been copied by so many shows. He has influenced a generation of television personalities. Letterman is the guy Generation X grew up with. It's been interesting to watch him mature and become like the establishment. Now there's a counterculture to him, but he'll always be the king to Generation X. He is funny five nights a week. I did The Ben Stiller Show for 13 episodes. I was almost relieved when we got canceled. It's hard to keep up the quality.

17.

[Q] Playboy: Describe your perfect world since Reality Bites.

[A] Stiller: A world with no indecision. I'm really indecisive. I wish I didn't have to make choices all the time because they drive me crazy and I always second-guess myself. A perfect world would be to know what's right and what's wrong and act on it and not worry about hurting people's feelings. I have a lot more to learn about life. I need to experience the world more. I like to explore, but I also like to go home to my comfortable bed.

18.

[Q] Playboy: Given that Gen Xers don't exercise, tell us about your workout regimen.

[A] Stiller: I'm working on my abs a lot, and my glutes. I have a treadmill in my house and I like to run at this lake in Hollywood. I just try to run a lot. I like to swim when I have access to a pool. Once in a while I lift weights, but I start to look like Stretch Armstrong. I need to do more of the aerobics stuff. I can get neurotic about that. There is a real advantage to working out. When you're not feeling well or you're depressed and you go out and do something physical, it can change your attitude.

19.

[Q] Playboy: Discuss the topic: Jim Carrey--sure thing.

[A] Stiller: That's what the money people in Hollywood like about Jim Carrey, that he's a sure thing. Because of Jim, even a dark, strange film like The Cable Guy will gross more than $100 million worldwide. Sadly, that's all the money people see him as. They don't see him as what he is, which is an incredibly talented guy who's willing to take chances and who totally commits to what he's doing and really wants to grow.

20.

[Q] Playboy: Does how you treat your car say something about you? Do you wash yours, take it to a car wash or have it detailed?

[A] Stiller: I made the mistake of taking mine to this car wash in Los Angeles, which I guess is like a big gay hustler pickup type of place. You have to wait 20 minutes for the car to go through and I had nowhere to go. I got trapped there for a while. Don't get me wrong, I'm open to all--it's just not my bag. I care enough to get the car washed, but I just don't think I'll do it at that place anymore.

a young prince of hollywood sounds off on self-hatred, self-esteem and the downside of the onscreen boner