"Ben Stiller"

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Speaker 1 Hey, smart list listeners, it's Will.

Speaker 1 I just snuck in here because I

Speaker 1 really wanted to connect with you guys.

Speaker 1 You know, just us, just one-on-one. just being honest, just sharing experiences,

Speaker 1 and really breaking down all these barriers. You know,

Speaker 1 anyway, this has been great. All right, let's go with an all-new smart list.

Speaker 3 So, listener, Arnett's got his TV hair on right now. He looks incredibly handsome.

Speaker 1 They just snapped it in.

Speaker 3 You're on a lunch break, is that right? Down there in Atlanta? Indeed. And what are you going to have for lunch today, aside from a great interview?

Speaker 1 No, today for lunch, I think I'm having, it's a salad.

Speaker 1 It's a Mediterranean salad. I've been eating these great, by the way.

Speaker 1 If there's anybody in you're in the Atlanta area and looking for some food, my friend Brandy down here, she has a nice little business. She makes food for me.

Speaker 3 Someone just got a deal on their monthly.

Speaker 1 I'm already done. I'm already done.
Tell her last name. No, it's just, I think it's like...
Let's serve website. She works in Atlanta.
Some people, and she, I got to say, incredibly good, delicious.

Speaker 1 I'm already done. I've already fully paid.
So I'm not getting anything out of it other than she's so good at what she does. And I really, and a person who works super hard and always delivers.

Speaker 1 I've been really impressed with them.

Speaker 3 Enough.

Speaker 1 You know what I noticed the other day, too? I want to say this.

Speaker 1 You know, when you go online, sometimes you go on Twitter and you see people going, especially people who have

Speaker 3 relatable.

Speaker 1 Did you just give

Speaker 3 a recommendation for a personal chef if anyone's ever in Atlanta?

Speaker 1 So relatable. Yeah, I'm just sorry, sorry.
To movie and TV stars. Sorry, that's what I meant to say.

Speaker 3 Any jet carriers you want to plug to?

Speaker 1 JetEdge. They're your favorite.
You're the ones who turn me on to them.

Speaker 1 Pretty sweet. You want to go down this road with me?

Speaker 1 I don't think so. So what I want to say is this.

Speaker 1 You know, you go on, you see these blue verified check mark people and they complain about stuff and they they they they they um they tag like uh you know the company like hey coca-cola my i opened up a coke and it was flat or like hey hurts my car was at the and and they're doing it in a public way to complain because they want to get to the front of the line because they're real noisy you know squeaky wheels and they're honest noisy bottom i heard i know but but i almost did well bossy i i was gonna say a bossy boss hey keep scotty out of this so or a power Oh, shawty.

Speaker 1 But you know what? Like the other day, I was thinking, I traveled back and forth from here from Atlanta.

Speaker 3 The plane getting close to the run, to the landings up.

Speaker 1 And I flew on Delta, and I had weather delays both ways. And the people at Delta Airlines, can I tell you something? Everybody was amazing.

Speaker 1 The people who were working the gate, the people checking you in, the people on the plane, all the attendants, everybody was amazing.

Speaker 1 No, I feel like in that moment, I thought, all these people, they get so much shit all the time. And every one of these people was so fucking good.

Speaker 1 And I want want them to, and I thought, like, they need to know that they were doing a good job. I got no skin in this game other than to say they were really nice.

Speaker 1 You had a real nice Easter, I guess, huh?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I did. I did with the kids and stuff.
It was nice.

Speaker 2 Is this before or after you got in a huge fight with the

Speaker 1 flight attendants?

Speaker 1 Well, all I'm saying is, look at the footage. I didn't start it.

Speaker 1 My mask was on. No, it was, honestly, these people were so amazing.
I just thought, why don't they just get some love? How about we just start going? Hey, these people were great. Good job.

Speaker 1 So that's it.

Speaker 3 Well, you're preaching in the choir. You know, my mother was a flight attendant for Penrim all those years, and

Speaker 3 they don't get their due.

Speaker 1 You know what, Jason? Somebody asked me about this today. True story.
Did your mom and dad meet on a flight? True story?

Speaker 3 No, but they did meet. My dad and his buddy went to what they were told was a stewardess party there in New York.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And they were like, well, let's go get laid.

Speaker 3 And they both found their wives there. Wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It was just a party of stewardess or flight attendants, female flight attendants.

Speaker 3 In those days, it was stewardess.

Speaker 1 Pan Am, too, you know, with the bowler hat and the little powder blue outfit. Wow.
Pretty top level. Never knew that.
I can't wait to interview you. It's going to be so exciting.
Gang. Yep.

Speaker 3 Today brings us a fella that I've been watching and studying and admiring for as long as I can remember.

Speaker 3 He is an incredible actor in both comedy and drama and is equally talented as a director in both genres as well.

Speaker 3 At just nine years old, he was immediately one to watch when he shot from the cannon on the short-lived but much-loved series Kate McShane.

Speaker 1 Sean, huh?

Speaker 3 And at 15, he doubled down with a shocking arc on the subversive yet sexy guiding light. What?

Speaker 3 After a brief and inspired take on adult films called The Hustler of Money, he found work at Saturday Night Live.

Speaker 3 Not seeing what he was looking for there, he went on to bring us some of our favorite characters in both television and film: characters like Garth Mother Loving, Cocka Pee-Poo, Pew Pew, Silly Sammy, Gaylord, Chaz, Derek, Guitar Setter Guy, and the deeply sensitive, intuitive, magical Tony Wonder.

Speaker 3 Please welcome Jerry and Ann's boy,

Speaker 1 Mr. Ben Franklin Stiller.
Oh, my

Speaker 1 Ben.

Speaker 1 Jesus, sir.

Speaker 1 Oh, look. I like you out of the Cape McShane.

Speaker 1 That's pretty good.

Speaker 3 Listen,

Speaker 3 Wikipedia really brings all the deep research when you need it. And I didn't know your middle name was Franklin.

Speaker 1 What a hoot.

Speaker 1 No, my middle name is Edward Mira.

Speaker 1 I know, but wouldn't it be great if it was Franklin, too? Benjamin Franklin Stewart.

Speaker 1 Coming out with a laugh?

Speaker 3 That's Jerry and Ann's work.

Speaker 1 First of all, I love the show, guys. Thank you.
And it's really fun to be here. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I was listening to how it gets ramped up and I couldn't tell where it started.

Speaker 1 So the chemistry

Speaker 1 feels very real. It's like a real thing.
It's not something you guys put on for the show. No, as you see, we just connect.
We just start rolling.

Speaker 1 There's no method to it. And it kind of amazing.

Speaker 1 But Will, Will, you look like you're doing a confessional for

Speaker 1 The Bachelor.

Speaker 3 Or hold up a sign and say that you haven't been beaten.

Speaker 1 I'm in an office. I'm in an office, in a production office.

Speaker 1 You've got good lighting there, though. It's not bad.

Speaker 2 Ben, are you in Bruce Wayne's library?

Speaker 1 I am in

Speaker 1 my room, my office at my house in New York, in Westchester. Oh, wonderful.
Yeah. It does have that kind of vibe.
So you're still up there in Westchester, Ben? Yes, for,

Speaker 1 I guess, like the last 12 or 13 years. We kind of go back and forth between New York City and Westchester, but yeah.
That's nice.

Speaker 1 I feel like, Jason, like the last time that we had dinner or hung out was when we were moving from L.A. back to New York.
And do you remember this?

Speaker 1 Walk me through it. But we had dinner.
I forget who else was there. I don't remember much.
Remind him of your name one more time, too. That would be good.
I think J.J.

Speaker 1 Abrams was at the restaurant and came over and said hello.

Speaker 1 That's what I remember. And then you said, I feel like you made a joke about

Speaker 1 you're moving to New York, but you'll be back like in a year and a half or something. Do you remember that?

Speaker 3 I'm shocked that I don't remember that.

Speaker 1 Was I drinking still at the time? Sean.

Speaker 1 I think we both were. No, I

Speaker 3 at least 20 years ago.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, but we have been.

Speaker 1 I've loved being in New York for the last.

Speaker 3 I'm so jealous that you lived there. And you, because

Speaker 3 the Westchester, first of all, I was born in Rye. So I guess that's the reason I've got some sort of hankering to get back there.

Speaker 1 And you've stayed in Rye this whole time.

Speaker 1 You flipped the spelling, but you stayed stayed right in it. I mean.
Did you go to Rye Playland as a kid?

Speaker 3 So they say. I left when I was two, but I've been back there.
I actually shot at Playland. Oh, you did? We shot some of a film there.

Speaker 1 So it's still open. It's still happening.

Speaker 3 It's still open, but it's so pretty up in there. And where you guys are, it's just like.

Speaker 1 This is how, Sean, you'd know Rye. This is where the New York Rangers practice facility is.
Oh, God. I think I have some photos.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I have some photos of me back there. Ben, do you remember the last time we had dinner?

Speaker 1 Uh-oh. Oh, no.
Say yes. I love that it's a circle of people who don't remember dinner with you.

Speaker 1 Do you remember it? No, I don't. We've never had dinner.
It never happened.

Speaker 1 I know it never happened.

Speaker 3 Could you imagine, Ben, if you were like, yes, it was wonderful.

Speaker 1 Thank you for paying. Will, do you remember the last time we had lunch?

Speaker 1 Wait, I do, actually.

Speaker 3 Would it have been during a lunch break on Arrested Development?

Speaker 1 No, it was at the chateau, and we were talking about Burt Wonderstone. Yeah.
Oh, yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 How about this? How about I remembered and you didn't? Nobody can stop me for memory. Was Stuart Carntal there? I feel like he might have done it.
Do you want to know?

Speaker 1 Wait, Stuart, for one second, Ben.

Speaker 2 That's one of my favorite comedies of all time, Burt Wonderstone. I think it's hysterical.

Speaker 3 This is Steve Carell as well.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah, right.
Yes.

Speaker 3 And Abdua is Jim Carrey as well? No.

Speaker 1 I never saw it. You're confronting.

Speaker 1 Ben, we talked about it. Ben and I talked about it years ago when I was still on arrested development.
Yeah. And we talked about it.
And I think Stuart was there, as Farrell calls him, old red beard.

Speaker 1 And every morning we were on Blades of Glory, Ben, which you produced, as you know, with Stuart.

Speaker 1 And Pharrell would walk up to Stuart and grab him by the beard and goes, it looks so real.

Speaker 3 Rest in peace, sweet Stuart.

Speaker 1 He was my producing partner for about a long time, and he was an amazing guy. I love that.

Speaker 1 Fascinating. Fascinating guy.
So, Ben, now you've been,

Speaker 1 I feel like you have just gone down the directing hole. By the way, that's in a good way.
You've just, it seems like you're like, you're just directing series and movies all the time. And it's like,

Speaker 1 are you ever going to emerge again as Ben Stiller, comedic,

Speaker 1 humongous comedic star?

Speaker 3 Ben, he gets on me about this too. Don't, don't, don't.

Speaker 1 I'm going to beat you up. I'm trying to crawl out of the directing hole.
It's a deep hole. You know, I mean,

Speaker 1 I like it. I like being in the hole.
I mean, I do enjoy it. Keep pictures.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I try to not think about acting when I'm directing. I actually don't worry about it when I'm directing.
I enjoy just directing.

Speaker 1 Because a lot of years I spent, you know, directing and acting, which you do, Jason, incredibly well. And I do remember another interchange we had a couple of years ago, maybe like three years ago.

Speaker 1 That's an accurate way of describing spending time with Bateman. Interchange.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Yeah, an interchange we had about directing. It was the night you won.
You won directing, Emmy. Yes.
Well-deserved. Thank you.

Speaker 1 And you were talking about directing and acting, and you said that you like it because you feel like it takes out the middleman.

Speaker 3 That, yeah, and it's one less actor you've got to have this

Speaker 3 sometimes

Speaker 3 delicate creative negotiation with.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You're kind of making it sound easy.
I think it's not that easy, and I feel like you're able to do it very well. But, Ben,

Speaker 1 I would say this, though, Ben, as Jason said, it cuts out that long conversation.

Speaker 1 And Jason, in your case, it cuts out, if you've ever acted with Jason, it cuts out the 30 minutes of questions from Jason. He's his own worst

Speaker 1 director or actor.

Speaker 3 I'm watching me ask myself questions, though.

Speaker 3 Because what I do is I switch over to the other side and I answer it. And then I can do it.

Speaker 1 What he likes to do is go like, well, this is a really simple situation. There must be a complicated reason for why.
it's like this

Speaker 1 but but ben do you do you like to watch playback of yourself do you do that because i i worked worked with a director-actor once a long time ago who loved to watch himself

Speaker 1 in playback. And we would just watch him watch himself and laugh at himself.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, that's

Speaker 1 three guesses at that.

Speaker 3 No, I won't do that.

Speaker 3 But don't you, I mean, I've been trying to do what you do from an acting standpoint my whole career, and that is basically this great proxy for the audience. You are the audience.

Speaker 3 You are the everyman. You are the straight man.
You are the person the camera needs to cut to after something outrageous has happened or something dramatic has happened or something like that.

Speaker 3 Don't you find that when you were acting and directing, that you had this great sort of ease

Speaker 3 that you knew that the sort of the grounding element was taken care of, that you didn't have to worry that there was going to be this person at the center that is normal so you could take these bigger swings comedically around with the other.

Speaker 3 characters and stuff?

Speaker 1 Sometimes I felt like that. I mean, I did feel like once it came around to having to do my stuff, I kind of had a sense of what I wanted to do.

Speaker 1 But I also felt a lot of the time, and maybe it's because I did it over a number of years and sort of got to the point where I just, it felt like a lot of work to then have to jump, like set up the shot and then jump in front of the camera.

Speaker 1 And then you have to act. Then you have to do it.
And I felt like that was

Speaker 1 harder to do than I felt like I couldn't concentrate on both. And the first day that I started on Escape at Danora, which is like the first thing I directed, I didn't act in.

Speaker 1 The first day, I was so happy.

Speaker 1 I was so relieved. Not like to set up a shot and then not have to jump in front and sort of care what, you know, like my hair was and all that stuff.

Speaker 3 What isn't acting? Acting seems as comfortable for you as it is for me. I'm not saying it's easy, but it seems comfortable enough for you where it wasn't that much of an effort to act.

Speaker 3 And instead, it was actually, here's somebody who's in front of the camera that is mindful of all the other technical things that are going on that you can actually help by how you are acting or by hitting that mark or not shadowing that person or did you find that it was nice to have a a soldier there that was taking care of all this stuff for you a soldier in myself you mean yeah exactly yeah somebody that's making it all kind of come together yeah but i never really i never really thought about it that way because i felt like okay that's just part of everything that's going on you know i mean what do you think though when you're doing it and you're doing

Speaker 1 one second no no no you know what this is fascinating because this is much more

Speaker 1 i'm waiting for somebody to start snoring it's much more of a deep dive into how Jason works than you at every moment.

Speaker 1 And what's great is that his sort of his acting ambition is to just provide a blank slate for the audience for the editors to cut to. I mean,

Speaker 1 what an artistic objective to have. Fucking great.
I just want to give them

Speaker 1 just a cut point.

Speaker 1 Somebody's not locked the light. His nickname has become Cut Point,

Speaker 1 which is great. You'd think that he'd be insulted, but

Speaker 3 now, Ben. All right, so then so there's no answer.

Speaker 1 Wait, wait, I was just going to say this, Jason, kind of, kind of to what you were saying, Jason, which is I don't know if it's entirely true.

Speaker 1 You have played characters who have been at the center of a bunch of insane situations, but you, and who are sort of put upon,

Speaker 1 but you've also,

Speaker 1 your bread and butter has also been playing characters who are completely unhinged or completely out there. You've actually moved quite seamlessly between

Speaker 1 the two. And I wonder, actually, I've always wondered, like, do you, which do you like like playing?

Speaker 3 A bunch of characters are going through my head right now.

Speaker 1 I know, same here. Between unhinged and blank slate.

Speaker 1 Yeah, between unhinged and blank slate. What would you rather do? Because the robot loves big blank slate.
Go ahead.

Speaker 1 I enjoy. I mean, honestly, it's been a few years.
I never thought I'd go this long in my life without acting, really. It's been like five or six years.

Speaker 1 And I never, as a, just as an actor over the years, thought, oh, I take that much time off.

Speaker 1 And I think when I look back at it, I enjoyed, I enjoyed all of it, enjoyed the different, you know, some of those broader characters were, you know, tonally things that are just so like over the top that I felt like it was like more fun to do that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 But then I'd also enjoy being in somebody else's movie where I could just be, you know, a real human being and try to also like kind of maybe not have to worry about really, maybe not be as self-aware.

Speaker 1 about what I was doing. Right.
Yeah. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Do you ever get like, like, all four of us, we all produce stuff as well, right? And I find myself,

Speaker 2 when I'm producing something and an actor has an issue or wants to discuss, I'm like, God, I don't want to fucking deal with that. They're crazy.
Actors are fucking crazy.

Speaker 2 And then I'm an actor in something and I turn into a crazy person. Like, do you feel that way when you direct?

Speaker 2 Are you like, I know how to deal with this kind of situation or this pathos of this human being because I've been there?

Speaker 2 It's just shorthand, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, I think that's what. Yeah, what Jason is saying, like, you don't have to worry about that with yourself, you know, that you can just kind of do your thing.

Speaker 1 But Jason, you have to deal with this. And when you're directing and acting with other actors,

Speaker 1 every actor has their own thing, has their own point of view, where they're coming from, and you have to figure out how to connect with them.

Speaker 1 And sometimes when you're acting in a scene with them and you have to also give them something or try to give them some direction, that can be, I mean, I would imagine on the show, since you worked with these same actors for a long time, you guys have a...

Speaker 1 sort of a shorthand.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, but then you but then there's also there's the the day players as well that you don't have that history with or any other project where, yeah, it's, you know,

Speaker 3 there's a different thing you need to do as a director as opposed to an actor, for sure, with respect to making sure people are comfortable.

Speaker 1 But there's also that thing, Jay, I mean, I don't know, Ben, I don't know how much of the stuff that you directed, you also wrote.

Speaker 1 I did a short-lived series, two seasons, called Flake that we did on Netflix. Little Slovakia.
Ultra applause, please. No, no, no.
There's no applause to be had.

Speaker 1 But it was like, it was an experimentation. It was an experiment in, I don't know.
But we

Speaker 1 did it. But having written it, thank you.
But I wrote it and then and then show ran it and acted in it and then second season directed. So I'd be in the scene with another actor and great.

Speaker 1 I loved everybody who we had on the show and they were great. However.

Speaker 1 However, having written the scene and so then I've already got it coming from that and then showrunning and then think and then thinking about, well, we're never going to use this.

Speaker 1 And, you know, so I was constantly in that and I found it very...

Speaker 1 difficult sometimes. The last thing on the list was acting in the scene.

Speaker 1 So and I felt like that was the thing that that I was like, I should be paying more attention to the acting in the scene, but I'm thinking about all these other things first.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and ironically, that's the most important thing. Yeah.
At the end of the day, you know,

Speaker 1 that's what I would feel like, okay, at the end of the day, I have to make sure that I'm in present in the scene and somehow connecting. And, you know, that's.

Speaker 1 Well, like, I was going to say, so, so Tropic Thunder, for instance, who you wrote with our

Speaker 1 applause. Massive applause.

Speaker 1 Justin Thoreau, who's not a listener of the show, so we can mention. No need to hold for applause at all.

Speaker 1 Right? I heard the Justin episode that you guys did. Yeah, sorry.

Speaker 1 And talk about a guy who gets down to it, and you guys wrote together, and he got down into it, and if he had sleeves, he would have rolled them up.

Speaker 1 But you guys

Speaker 1 own

Speaker 1 any sleeves. He owns

Speaker 1 no sleeves.

Speaker 3 Didn't you almost buy him a box of sleeves for Christmas? I did.

Speaker 1 I did. For Christmas.
And I was going to buy him. Yeah, Ben, I was going to buy him a box of sleeves.
But if you had such veiny biceps, come on, would you? That's true. Yeah, that's true.
Sleeveless.

Speaker 1 At 50, I mean, the guy looks like he's beautiful. He's veiny biceps.
He's beautiful. He's gorgeous.
He sent us a photo yesterday to Jason and me from the

Speaker 1 jungle of Mexico. He's wearing a hat, and he said, I'm Jonesing for adventure.
And then you sort of see the whole photo. He said, Indiana Jonesing.

Speaker 1 And I was like, hey, buddy, didn't know there was a Nick Fouquet hat store down in the jungle. But anyway, my point is.

Speaker 1 My point is this. You write Tropic Thunder and then you're in the scene.

Speaker 1 Do you have those moments when you're in a scene as the writer where you're going, huh, this is going differently than I thought?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I think it just comes down to it when you're doing the scene. What's going to make the scene work? Does it feel like it's working? You know, and it becomes its own thing.

Speaker 1 And I think that's no matter what, even if you are the writer and you're not in it, you have to let go of your idea of what the scene, you think the scene was or what you wrote and just look at what's happening in front of you.

Speaker 1 right as a director and then figure out how to find the life in it in the moment, which is, I think that's just directing.

Speaker 2 Can I ask you something? First of all, Ben, I have to say, you were one of those actors that I've always looked up to my whole life

Speaker 2 and one of those people, you know, we all have those kind of inspirational, especially in comedy. And I was like, oh my God, I would kill to have Ben Stiller's career.
He seems like such a great guy.

Speaker 2 He's super talented.

Speaker 1 You actually said I'd kill Ben to have his career. That's what you said.
That was the actual quote.

Speaker 2 Just to be.

Speaker 2 And then going on to directing, and I was like, wow, that's just so cool. I'm getting to my favorite show of all, one of my favorite shows of all time now is Severance.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you've, if anybody's seen it. Oh, that chorus.

Speaker 1 It's incredible.

Speaker 2 It's amazing. I don't know if you know I'm in a play with one of your lead actors now.

Speaker 1 Tramel Tillman, right?

Speaker 2 Trammel Tillman, yeah. He's amazing.
Incredible.

Speaker 1 Don't say anything about that. I haven't finished it yet.
Oh, 101. Okay.
But

Speaker 2 can you please, just as a huge, huge fan of you and that show, tell me the genesis of how that came about and

Speaker 1 without ruining the ending thing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, you know, in the finale,

Speaker 1 I would kill. No, it's incredible.

Speaker 2 By the way, that finale is amazing.

Speaker 1 No, the it's a great show business story. The writer, Dan Erickson, had been trying to get something produced as a writer for a while, and he sent the script to our production company.

Speaker 1 This is five plus years ago. He sent as a writing sample.

Speaker 1 And Jackie Cohn, who's the creative executive of our company, gave it to Nikki Weinsack, who is working at the company. And we read it and was like, this is great.

Speaker 1 It's a great writing sample. But I was like, this would be a great show.
And so we just just got it set up at Apple. They were the only people who wanted to develop it.

Speaker 1 You know, you have a piece of material, you take it around town, you pitch it, and you see who wants to do it.

Speaker 1 And I find that a lot of the time, it's like usually just one or two places that want to do something.

Speaker 1 They were the ones who wanted to do it. They were just starting up.
They didn't really exist yet.

Speaker 2 And Christopher Watkin, John Tutoro, Patricia Arquette, Adam Scott. I mean, it's the CAS is Tramel Tillman.

Speaker 1 CAS is amazing. I didn't know Chris Watkin was in it yet because I'm only

Speaker 1 next dollar in John.

Speaker 1 No, no, no. Fucking go.
I'm going to kill you. Help, help.
You're one episode in. No, I'm three episodes in.
That's incredible. That's incredible.
It's such a great show.

Speaker 1 We will be right back.

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Speaker 2 And now back to the show.

Speaker 3 When you look at something

Speaker 3 as precise as what Severance is, as far as filmmaking goes,

Speaker 3 who is that inside you? Where did that guy grow from somebody who

Speaker 3 was a child of two incredible comedy stars, who, and you coming up in sort of sketch world and and and then pure comedy world and then maybe some dramatic work and like how did that muscle sort of develop in you where it was like you're such an incredible filmmaker the the precision and the the focus to detail and camera work and and sound and lighting and all of this stuff where did that

Speaker 1 how did that develop I mean I feel like it's always been a part of what I love since I was a kid. And I don't know, I'm curious.

Speaker 1 I'm not just throwing this back to you, Jason, but since you do this, like you've always, have you always loved directing? I have, yeah. Yeah, right? Since you were a kid.

Speaker 3 But did it come like I did, where it was just from watching people around on the set like, oh my God, look how you make fake life. It's like I became fascinated with what a crew does.

Speaker 3 Like the cast and stuff, acting and all that stuff. Yeah.
It was like, but that was familiar to me. But seeing how people created like, oh, this is how you put, make an audience a little bit scared.

Speaker 3 You put the camera on your shoulder and you get like all these little tricks.

Speaker 1 I love that. I loved all of the nuts and bolts of filmmaking as a kid.
I would get American cinematographer. You mentioned Kate McShane, my early credit.
That was my mother's show.

Speaker 1 My mother had a series on CBS, An Hour Drama, where she played an Irish lawyer who, you know, solved cases every week. It only lasted for half a season.

Speaker 1 But I remember going on the set of that at Paramount Studios and I played Susan Strasberg's son. who was Lee Strasberg's daughter.

Speaker 1 And I had one scene. I was, you know, nine years old.
And I remember I was waiting around a corner on the set.

Speaker 1 I remember how the set smelled, how the fresh paint and the lights, and there was a cue light for me that was that when the light, when the red light, yeah, when the red light went off, then I would go in.

Speaker 1 And I just remember thinking, oh, that's so cool. And I was just fascinated with all of it and special effects makeup and, you know, just the process.

Speaker 1 So it was always, you know, I was obsessed with all those Planet of the Apes movies and Poseidon Adventure and all that.

Speaker 1 So actually the outside part of it, sort of the mechanics of it, it was more interesting to me at first than the actual telling of stories or expressing some sort of, you know, emotion.

Speaker 1 It was more about that stuff. And for a while, I thought I wanted to be a cinematographer when I was a kid.
But both of you guys had very, so if you think about it, you explained, you guys had very...

Speaker 1 Not the same trajectory, but you had very, there was similar that you were both young. Jason told the story recently how the first time when he lost his virginity, he had a cue light.

Speaker 1 Isn't that right, Jason? Yeah.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I said, can we just hold the cue just a little bit longer for me?

Speaker 1 And they kept telling him, you jumped your cue, you jumped your cue.

Speaker 1 But that was.

Speaker 2 The light was flashing.

Speaker 1 Premature key light, huh? Yeah, but I mean, both of your parents were, of course, your mom and dad, your mom, who I had the pleasure of knowing a little bit.

Speaker 1 And I did that movie with her years ago, Southie, with the great Anne Mira, and a lovely lady, and was always so kind and sweet whenever I interacted with her.

Speaker 1 And then your dad, of course, was just the great Jerry Stiller.

Speaker 1 I mean, you grew up with these, you know, these people, people, these comedy, you grew up in a comedy environment and to Jason's point, in a cinema environment.

Speaker 1 And Jason, your dad was a director and a writer, and your sister was an actor and is an actor. And you guys both grew up in it.
Was there any other way for you to go, but to both become directors?

Speaker 1 I don't know. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I don't know.

Speaker 3 Or just staying in this business. I mean, I would have been screwed, you know, if I was forced to do anything else.

Speaker 1 I never thought about doing anything else. I, you know, for better or perfect.

Speaker 1 did you go to college did you did you get a degree in anything else no I went to UCLA for nine months and then I quit I went to the acting drama department because I wanted to go to the film

Speaker 1 department but they didn't have it didn't start until junior year back then and so and I couldn't get into USC film school you know and I not great grades so I went to UCLA which I had you know good enough grades to go there harder to get into UCLA now yeah yeah and I is that true yeah I I did not do well there I just sort of didn't assimilate and I kind of just was like well I wanted to be doing it.

Speaker 1 So I quit and came back to New York.

Speaker 3 So then did you feel a pressure just to

Speaker 3 make ends meet? Knowing that, okay, now I'm all in. I'm not going to study any other career.

Speaker 3 I'm quitting college. I'm moving to New York.
Did you have that sense of like, well, I'm going to have to make rent and provide?

Speaker 1 My parents were like, you could come home, stay home and figure it out. And, you know, they didn't kick me out.
They didn't kick me out.

Speaker 1 But there was that feeling when I came back, when I finally quit school, and I remember just coming back to my parents' apartment and then just like, and thinking, now what? Now what do I do?

Speaker 1 How do I go forward? And so I started, you know, I would, I, you know, worked as a bus boy at a restaurant on Columbus Avenue. And then I started going to acting classes and started auditioning.

Speaker 1 But it took me about three years to actually get any work.

Speaker 3 Did you worry that you were going to get out from under the

Speaker 3 immense shadow of your parents?

Speaker 1 I don't, I, you know,

Speaker 1 I I guess somewhere I did, but I think when you're that young and you just sort of have this idea of what you want to do, you don't think about it that way. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't know how you felt, but I just never, I never thought about it that way.

Speaker 1 I knew that I had to figure out how to do my thing, but and it was a little bit sometimes daunting because I would go in and, you know, sometimes you're not, when you're not anonymous and you're not, and I wasn't very good too.

Speaker 1 I wasn't great at auditioning. I wasn't really that comfortable as an actor.
And so I would sort of fail a lot and not anonymously.

Speaker 1 You know, I'd be like, oh, Jerry Nann's kid came in and it wasn't that great.

Speaker 2 Did you ever see, though, your mom or dad, like with the ups and downs of getting parts, not getting jobs, struggling here and there, then maybe soaring and then maybe coming back down and all the roller coaster of doing the business.

Speaker 2 Did that ever sway you from not wanting to do it?

Speaker 1 No, it didn't.

Speaker 1 I mean, I was, I don't, you know, at that time, I was so thinking about my own thing and like where I was, I wasn't even thinking about where my parents were because they were who they were.

Speaker 1 But when I look back at it now, and I've been working on a documentary about my parents. Oh, that's cool.
And that's really cool. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's been really interesting to kind of, you know, kind of look at their, you know, my dad saved everything. So there's so much

Speaker 1 footage and writing and all these great, you know, archives of stuff that they had. But they were going through kind of a tougher time when I quit school and came back.

Speaker 1 And they were trying to figure out who they were at that point in their career. But I was so unaware of that because I was just...
thinking of my own thing.

Speaker 1 And now when I look back at it, you know, they were, they were having to figure out, like, I was probably,

Speaker 1 I'm now my dad's age when I came home from school, you know, and I'm thinking like what he was doing then and trying to find himself, not till Seinfeld really, because he loved performing.

Speaker 1 He loved being, you know, he just loved doing it. And at that time, that was pre-Seinfeld.
He was sort of trying to figure out not being in the comedy act with my mom anymore,

Speaker 1 you know, how to figure it out.

Speaker 1 Ben, do you ever wonder about just sort of in the context of your own relationship to your parents who were performers and then your kids and think about what their perspective is of of you guys or jason do you think about it because i i've thought about it a few times now recently especially as the kids are getting older and becoming teenagers about how what a weird i always make the joke when the kids come to anytime they come to work with me i'd be like hey is it fun watching dad get his makeup put on you know um

Speaker 1 because how fucking weird is that or watching them you know 50 people dress trying to make my hair look okay and then like will put that other shirt on like in front of my son who's 13 he must be like what is going on uh-huh do you guys think about that i don't i don't i don't know just because you're used to it yeah well i think they get it at this age now i guess but it's um

Speaker 1 it is it is odd for sure um yeah i mean my kids are my daughter's 20 and my son's going to be 17 and they both have very you know clear points of view on show business and acting and you know their perception of my career and christine's career and you know they've grown up around it so they have their own ideas about it, which is interesting to me.

Speaker 1 And they've, they've watched all of that stuff. And I think it is, a lot of it is kind of weird, but it's also they see the perspective on it too.
And, you know, that I love doing it.

Speaker 1 And I think they get the positive part of it too. But it's something that I grew up with too.

Speaker 1 I was around my parents getting makeup on and all I have these visceral memories of that and loving it, you know, like loving being around the backstage of it.

Speaker 1 Because it's different. They're not going to an office.
Now, you mentioned Christine, of course. Jason and I know Christine very well from arrested Arrested Development days.

Speaker 1 And we got to spend a lot of time with her and amazing, just awesome.

Speaker 1 And every time I think about the other thing I think about when I think about you and Arrested Development, it reminds me of the Ben Stiller show because you guys were on the air for one year and you won the Emmy for Best Comedy.

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 1 Which is very.

Speaker 1 It was crazy because we'd already been canceled, too. We were already.
You'd already been canceled.

Speaker 1 And so when we won, David Cross said to Jason and me, I don't know if, Jason, if you remember, like, uh-oh, this doesn't look good. I've been down this path before.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Talk to us a little bit about the Ben Stiller show, how it came to be and how it burned so bright and so quickly. Now, was this before or after SNL?

Speaker 1 This was after SNL.

Speaker 1 I was at SNL for literally for six weeks. Six weeks.

Speaker 3 And why did you jump?

Speaker 1 Yeah, go SNL first. I mean, it's...

Speaker 3 You've probably told the story a million times.

Speaker 1 I'm so sorry. Well, you know, yeah, no,

Speaker 1 I basically got on SNL because I made a short film that was a takeoff on the color of money, which was called The Hustler of Money.

Speaker 3 This is the adult film.

Speaker 1 Yes, and I was doing an impression of Tom Cruise and Jim Downey, who was the head writer at the time,

Speaker 1 he, you know, he liked it, and they, and Lorne put it on the air. And then they said, you can come and audition and be an apprentice writer and a featured player.
And I wanted to make short films.

Speaker 1 I wanted to do, I wanted to direct little films like Albert Brooks did, and, you know, which I grew up watching and thinking thinking that's, you know, that's the funniest thing, like him doing, you know, the new fall season where he'd, you know, make fun of the shows and the shows were coming out and things like that.

Speaker 1 And they weren't doing that at the time. It was pre-all the Lonely Island guys and all that.
So I was just there as like as a featured player, and I was not great at live performing.

Speaker 1 I did not like it. I would get nervous.
I didn't feel like I could really do my thing. And it was hard to navigate.

Speaker 1 And I had a chance to do what I wanted to do on MTV because MTV was doing these little, they, you know, sort of like half video shows. Like basically like they show videos.

Speaker 1 If you showed videos, you could do comedy sketches, but it had to be like half and half videos and comedy. And so they were basically saying, if you want to do that, you can do that here.

Speaker 1 So I decided to go do that.

Speaker 1 Who championed you at MTV? Do you remember?

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, Doug Herzog. Yeah, he was crazy.
He was running the network. Yeah.
He's crazy. And Freston, too.
Yeah, Tom Freston, he gave us a shot. Great Tom Freston.

Speaker 1 They were the most interesting man in the world, Tom Freston, by the way.

Speaker 3 Who inspired that whole campaign for Dusty? He really is.

Speaker 1 Not a lot of people know that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he is.

Speaker 1 He truly is.

Speaker 1 I've never really known him that well, but he always seems incredibly intriguing. He's the best guy.
He's the most interesting.

Speaker 1 You can walk into a room with the biggest music stars on the planet, and everybody just wants to talk to Freston. It's a true story.

Speaker 1 And that was an interesting time at MTV because they were just starting to do programming. So they let us do our thing.
And then from that, someone

Speaker 1 at the Fox fledgling Fox Network saw what we were doing and said, hey, come and develop something. HBO was producing it.

Speaker 1 Chris Albrecht, who was an executive at HBO, and we were doing it for HBO and Fox, HBO Independent Production. So we were basically for like two years developing this sketch show.

Speaker 1 And we did like three pilots for it. Every time we couldn't figure out, they couldn't figure out what was the best way to frame the show.

Speaker 1 Who was writing that with you? It was you. You were at the helmet and you were Hodenkirk.

Speaker 1 First, it was me and Jeff Kahn, who was my roommate and writing partner, and we were doing an act that we then turned into that MTV show. And then I met Judd,

Speaker 1 and Judd and I clicked. He was doing stand-up, and

Speaker 1 I think he was doing like the Young Comedian Special or something, and we just started hanging out. And I was going and hanging out at the improv and watching Janine Garofilo.

Speaker 1 Bob, and Bob and I had met at SNL when I was there, and he was writing at the time with Conan.

Speaker 3 Was Andy Dick doing stand-up?

Speaker 1 Andy Dick was actually in Chicago at the time.

Speaker 1 And I had did a movie in Chicago called Next of Kin, this Patrick Swayze movie, and I made a short while I was there. And I met Andy Dick.

Speaker 1 Andy Dick came. Yeah, and literally Andy Dick, the way I met Andy Dick was I was at my hotel in Chicago and he knocked on the door.

Speaker 1 I opened the door and there was just an infant laying on the floor in the hallway.

Speaker 1 He left his infant son on the floor for a gag. As his way of, yeah, for a gag.

Speaker 1 Who I later adopted. And no.

Speaker 1 So, yeah. So anyway,

Speaker 1 that's that's how the group came together. Yeah.
That's crazy. All right.

Speaker 1 So you do, you do, I just want to get, you've got this whole crew because I just love the genesis of all this. So you've got like, it's like you and Bob and

Speaker 1 Judd, and you're doing the Ben Siller show. You guys get canceled.
You win the Emmy for best comedy

Speaker 1 after the show is canceled, which is like,

Speaker 1 what was your speech? Like, hey, fuck you, Fox?

Speaker 1 Something like that. It wasn't very articulate.
I was like, I think it was like, hey fox you missed something here or something

Speaker 1 so then so then you do that that'll show them you go right on to reality bites actually well i was gonna say so like within a couple years you go on to reality bites which you act in which you direct did you write your first film as a director right no helen childress wrote it yes it was my first film as a director i'd been developing it while we were working on the ben stiller show with helen who wrote it about her life and then the show got canceled and just about the time when nona ryder said she wanted to do the movie which made it happen So that was the reason.

Speaker 3 Wasn't Jon Stewart in that as well?

Speaker 1 Jon Stewart? No. Was he? No? Who was in that film? In reality,

Speaker 1 Ethan Hawk. Yep.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 I always get those two confused.

Speaker 1 It always happens to me.

Speaker 1 I'm an Ethan Hawk fan. I'm going to go on the record and say I'm an Ethan Hawk fan.

Speaker 1 Ethan's amazing. Yeah, so he's amazing.
So taste. Did you see him do True West recently? No, I wanted to.
With Paul Dana. Oh, my God.
I've been observing a thing called the pandemic, Ben. Go on.

Speaker 1 Pre-pandemic.

Speaker 1 Did I go to the thing? What are you talking about?

Speaker 3 Do we go right into There's Something About Mary after Reality Bites? And if so, no.

Speaker 1 No, no, no.

Speaker 1 There's like a five-year gap. Ready to go, Jason.
Your guest. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Sorry. Well, it's Wikipedia.
It's their fault.

Speaker 3 Was Cable Guy before There's Something About Mary?

Speaker 1 Yes. Yes.
Okay.

Speaker 3 So that was your second film that you directed.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Cable Guy. Incredible film.
I love that film too.

Speaker 1 Not really well received at the time.

Speaker 3 They just didn't get it.

Speaker 1 They didn't get it at the time. Oh, I thought it was.

Speaker 3 Just like the Ben Siller show.

Speaker 1 Ben, did you put,

Speaker 1 we're firing away questions now. Did you put

Speaker 1 a cable guy? Owen Wilson's in there in a small role.

Speaker 1 That's right. That's how I met Owen.
And it was right after Bottle Rocket because that came out about 95. That's exactly right.
I'm so good with dating. I saw that Bottle Rocket short.

Speaker 1 There was a black and white Bottle Rocket short short at Westmade, yeah. Incredible.
Incredible. And the film, Bottle Rocket, is one of the best films.

Speaker 1 And I remember one time, here's my recollections of Owen Wilson. I see that movie.
I was living in New York at the time. I was like, this is fucking cool, this movie these assholes made.

Speaker 1 And then I go to L.A. and I happen to see him like at Valet.
And I'm like, look at that. That's the guy from Bottle Rocket.
And then he's in Cable Guy. And then I'm like,

Speaker 1 I sort of fell in love with Owen Wilson. I was like, this guy is the...
funniest guy I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 I went to see Bottle Rocket by myself at like Century City Theater or something. And I had just hired him for Cable Guy.

Speaker 1 And I watched that movie and I started laughing like five minutes in by myself for the whole movie. I was just like, I was like, this is the funniest.
Like, oh my God, this guy is incredible.

Speaker 1 So funny. His delivery was so peculiar.
Oh, man. I know.

Speaker 3 So, how many films have you done with him? And was the next one after

Speaker 3 A Cable Guy?

Speaker 3 Did you guys work together again before Starskin Hutch?

Speaker 1 I'm stressing out now because I can't remember. What is that? Zoolander.
Zoolander was 2001. Yeah, we did.
I mean, we did a movie called Permanent Midnight. Yes.

Speaker 1 which where it was like this little indie where I played Jerry Stahl, who was a comedy writer who was addicted to heroin, and he played my best friend in that. That was 98.
He wrote on ELF.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. And which my mom was on, actually.
And then what did we do?

Speaker 1 And then we did Zoolander together, which was like 2000, 2001. Then I think Starskin Hutch was after that, which was, of course, Jason.

Speaker 3 You've probably done like, what, six with him, seven with him?

Speaker 1 I think somebody said we've done like 11. No way.
Right, because then you did all the night at the museum movies together. Exactly, that's three.

Speaker 1 Except we never actually worked together because he was like a little person in it. Oh, yes, right, right, right, right.
Like a little figurine. So I would go.
Oh, that's right.

Speaker 1 This is how they would work. It's like we would go to the Museum of Natural History in New York at the beginning for a day or maybe two days to shoot the exteriors.

Speaker 1 Then we would go to Vancouver for...

Speaker 1 five months in the middle of winter and be in this studio where it was the you know the fake museum and then owen would come in the last three days and shoot all of his stuff and you know steal the movie against a green screen Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 With the incredible Canadian rocket ship, Sean Levy.

Speaker 1 Oh my god, I love him. The ball of fire.

Speaker 2 I auditioned for the sequel, The Night at the Museum 2. Really? And I went in and

Speaker 2 read for Sean Levy. And I go, you know, I did the scene and I go, you know, maybe funny if this thing and this, and I took out the thing here and I did this.
And he goes, yeah, you want to direct it?

Speaker 1 Thanks for calling.

Speaker 1 No, seriously?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I came in with a lot. Too many of them.

Speaker 3 He's got a sneaky knife there in that Canadian kind suit of his.

Speaker 1 He sure does.

Speaker 3 He'll whip it out every once in a while.

Speaker 1 He's a friend of the program. He's a friend of the program.
Sean's a friend of the program.

Speaker 1 He's crazy. He's great.
So what did you answer? Do you say yes, you wanted to direct it? Because what an opportunity. By the way, she's the opportunity.

Speaker 1 We bonded. We bonded on that movie.
So, Ben, how hard was it? Do you wish, like, regret-wise career, do you wish cut Bateman out of Starsky? Would that be up there? It's simple. It's a real easy cut.

Speaker 3 Not a lot of trimming.

Speaker 1 No, but then you guys also do.

Speaker 1 I was joking because you guys did a few movies. You also did Dodgeball.
That's right.

Speaker 3 That was an afternoon.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I feel like that afternoon really made a mark. I mean, I see it.
It memes. It helped me.
Jason, you were hilarious in that.

Speaker 3 Thank you. That was during a lunch hour from Arrested Development.

Speaker 1 Oh, really? Are you serious? Yeah, I remember that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Oh, my God. We drove down to the, where did we shoot it? Like the Rose Bowl, I think.

Speaker 1 It was, well, the, oh, did you do that at the Rose Bowl? Because we also shot down in Long Beach, too. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, really, that was really fun. It was a really fun experience.

Speaker 3 I remember walking out of that screening. I was sitting next to Todd Phillips at the screening, the premiere of that in Westwood.
I remember watching it, and I had no idea what the movie was.

Speaker 3 I mean, again, I was only there for a half an hour, you know, doing, doing this, you know, basically a lock off, me behind a microphone, playing some idiot color announcer.

Speaker 3 And I had no idea what the tone, the comedic tone of that. And so I didn't really know what the film was about until I saw it at the screening.
And we finished the screening, and obviously

Speaker 3 dodgeball. Very, very funny, incredibly broad.
But I guess I just wasn't prepared for

Speaker 3 the style, the flavor of humor. I remember walking out with Todd Phillips and doing the taboo thing when you're going up the aisleway talking about the film.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 1 I said, boy, I don't know.

Speaker 3 I mean, what do you think? He's like, I thought it was pretty damn good.

Speaker 1 I go, really?

Speaker 3 He said, yeah. I said, I'll tell you what, Todd, I'll make you $100 bet this thing doesn't do a dollar over $50 million.

Speaker 3 He goes, I'll bet you thousand i said you're on i think it does what does it do like i think it did that in the first weekend or something did well it actually yeah it opened number one i know that it was

Speaker 1 surprising that um did you pay funny jason did you pay with i don't think so no todd's doing okay that's why he's todd phillips come on yeah you owe him a thousand dollars and he can but you but that's that's funny though jason because i feel like you totally hit the tone of the movie without because i remember

Speaker 1 you were in your own movie you had your own little movie going which was amazing I remember when I first got to the set, I remember going down.

Speaker 3 I found you and Ross in Video Village. You guys were shooting a different scene, and I got there a little early to get into makeup

Speaker 3 because my hair had to get all spiked up and stuff. And so I was like, so, guys, so the spiky hair, like, that's the tone, that's the funny.
And you guys were both like, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I go, huh.

Speaker 3 And then I don't know whether it was my idea or Ross's or yours, maybe, Ben. I said, well, like, is it like, would this guy have like a flaming neck tattoo of like a dodgeball on it?

Speaker 1 And they were like, Yes,

Speaker 1 do that.

Speaker 3 It's like a flaming dodgeball neck tattoo. I was like, I think I got the tone now.
I think I get it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know, who never really understood was Rip Torn, who was so funny in the movie. He never got, and my, my brother-in-law was in charge.

Speaker 1 Brian Taylor was in charge of taking care of him for the movie. Like, he was sort of like his handling.
And got in some, yeah.

Speaker 1 Um, and he never really, you know, jumped on board, but he was so funny because he was just being ripened.

Speaker 1 My favorite, my favorite Rip Torn story was, I remember Jeffrey under Russia telling us when they were doing

Speaker 1 Larry Sanders and they were in their last season, and they go, they decide that they're going to get Gary Shandling. Everybody's going to chip it and buy him a car.

Speaker 1 They've done the show for five, six seasons. And everybody's going to chip in as this big rap.
Then, as a thank you to Gary, they're going to get him a car.

Speaker 1 So Jeffrey's tasked with going and getting it. And he goes up to Rip's dressing room and he

Speaker 1 knocks on the dressing room door and he goes,

Speaker 1 Rip opens it and goes, Yeah, what?

Speaker 1 And he goes, Oh, hey, Rip,

Speaker 1 we're all pitching in. We're going to get

Speaker 1 Gary a gift for a wrap for the whole series. And he goes, oh, yeah.
What are we going to get him? And he goes, well, we've decided we're all going to chip in. We're going to get him in a car.

Speaker 1 Rip looks at him and goes, go fuck yourself. And he slams the door shut up.

Speaker 1 His answer was, go fuck yourself. I think one day on said he decided he was just going to go fishing.
He like left to go fishing.

Speaker 1 It did.

Speaker 3 And we will be right back.

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Speaker 2 And now, back to the show.

Speaker 3 When you read the script script for There's Something About Mary,

Speaker 3 did you have like incredible faith in those directors, writers, that it was all going to be

Speaker 3 a target that is hit? Or it seemed like a big swing?

Speaker 1 It was. Yeah, I remember reading the script very clearly and laughing out loud reading the script and thinking that this will either be really, really, really funny or it'll just be awful.

Speaker 1 It'll be like just like the worst movie ever. Like it will not work.

Speaker 3 But like, that's a perfect example of like the value you bring to something that's taking swings as big as that. You need a Ben Stiller in the middle of it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but they weren't, they weren't coming after me for that movie. I was, I wanted to be in that movie.
I was trying to, you know, get in that movie. You were chasing it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And because I really did think it could be really funny, but I didn't know.

Speaker 1 And then like working with them, working with the Pharoles on the set, I was actually, that was where I was like, wait a minute, is this actually going to work?

Speaker 1 Because it was such a weird environment. Hell's a lot of fun.
I mean, because it wasn't, it was just not like any movie set I'd ever been on.

Speaker 1 There was like, they were just having so much fun and playing practical jokes on each other, you know, very politically incorrect practical jokes. Right.

Speaker 2 Putting all their friends in scenes and stuff.

Speaker 1 Yeah, putting friends in scenes and not really talking about like motivation or things like that.

Speaker 1 And, you know, like I would get into like arguments with them about like the logic of a scene or, you know, like, oh, I'm in the bathroom and my, you know, my dick's in the zipper, but like, why are all these people walking by the window?

Speaker 1 It's like, I felt like I was in a Marx Brothers movie or something, you know?

Speaker 1 Or like, there was like, you know, the scene where it's like dripping on my, my ear, you know, and I was like, why don't I feel that on my ear? Why wouldn't I feel it?

Speaker 1 Should we set up that I had like that I lost sensitivity in my ear when I was a child or something? My earlobe doesn't feel anything. And they were like, no, it's going to be funny.

Speaker 1 A lot of those conversations. Yeah, Ben, don't worry about it.
Don't worry. Fucking Ben.

Speaker 1 I was the pain-in-the-ass actor, Jason. Right.
You were the Jason. You were the Bateman on that set.
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 Well, I've always felt like if we just work just two minutes longer, we can establish that he's lost sensitivity in the ear. And then for anyone who's a cynic in the audience, we got him covered.

Speaker 1 That's a real conversation I had. I had a serious conversation.

Speaker 3 And I would respond to that conversation.

Speaker 1 Jason would have turned that into a song.

Speaker 3 I'd be like, yes, on page 20, we can drop that little breadcrumb.

Speaker 1 Good idea, Ben. Exactly.
We used to always say,

Speaker 1 by the way, their answer, I'm sure, was always like, you know what, Ben, don't worry about it. Cam Neely thinks it's funny.

Speaker 1 And also that, like, I used to say to Jason sometimes

Speaker 1 asking questions. Yeah, I know, by the way, what's up, Cam, one of the great all-time hockey players.

Speaker 1 Jason, we sometimes go, hey, you know what? Why don't you take that over to workshop on the workshop stage over on stage seven? Okay, we'll talk about that over there.

Speaker 1 Let's just get the scene today, huh? Hey, Ben.

Speaker 2 So when you, now that you are on to bigger things like directing great shows like Severance and whatever else you have.

Speaker 3 Less cum-laden projects.

Speaker 1 Are you

Speaker 3 He's finished with the hustler of money and there's something about Mary?

Speaker 1 Are you looking for less common in your future projects?

Speaker 1 Go, Sean.

Speaker 2 Are you what attracts you to certain projects? Are you like, for example, like Severance is a little sci-fi-y. Are you a sci-fi fan? Did you accept that because of the challenge?

Speaker 1 Shot Star Trek. Or did you know that?

Speaker 2 Or do you only choose things that are like,

Speaker 1 what wouldn't you you choose? At this point, I kind of just go

Speaker 1 with a gut feeling, honestly. Like, if I read something or I start to develop something, it's because it's something that I'm really, I just really feel turned on by and I really like.

Speaker 1 Would you ever do a horror film? Maybe, but I wouldn't want to do it just to do it. Horror.

Speaker 1 Horror. Horror? Yeah.
Okay. Horror.
Sorry. Horror.
Okay, right. Horror.
Horror. Okay, good.

Speaker 1 You know, but like with Severance,

Speaker 1 I thought it was funny, actually, when I read it. Yeah, it is.
Because it reminded me of the office and office space and that kind of humor. You know, that thing that's developed.

Speaker 3 Melancholy, bleak humor.

Speaker 1 No, it became much less funny than that.

Speaker 3 Like that Adam's awesome at, you're awesome at.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I just thought conceptually it was really interesting to do that kind of humor, but yet the people had no idea who they were or what they were doing or why they were there, but yet they're in this sort of rhythm, you know?

Speaker 1 I love knowing both you and Adam.

Speaker 1 I love, and being such a fan of both of yours in every respect, and watching the scenes and thinking about you guys collaborating uh to me is very exciting to watch because i i see both you guys he's operating at such a high level and i can feel your your hand in it as well but not heavy-handed but i can feel both of you guys working because you met on walter mitty right yeah it's so good ben it's so good man thanks you really

Speaker 1 well thank you but i i think adam is amazing i mean we met on walter mitty i saw him in step brothers which really just blew my mind how funny he was in that movie.

Speaker 1 It was just, like, I couldn't stop watching him do those scenes where, you know, the dinner table scenes were, and, you know, and it was more than just being like a dick or whatever.

Speaker 1 Like, he had just this level of specificity that just was incredible to me. I love him.

Speaker 3 I want to talk about like your ability to direct and write and act in stuff that's like epic, but also like Walter Mitty and Tropic Thunder, I think the scope and scale of those movies are just enormous, but you're still able to get real small and and specific with some character comedy that's not, it's not jokey.

Speaker 3 It's not this. I mean, I guess there's incredible jokes in Tropic Thunder, but it's still, I don't know, you're able to manage, it seems like, multiple genres in one project.

Speaker 3 There's no real question here. It's just, just, not that much.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think it's like not, you know, getting away from genres. Did you see that movie, The Worst Person in the World? Not yet, but I

Speaker 3 think Paul Thomas Anderson was on the podcast and he was talking

Speaker 1 really big about it, yeah. Well, it's incredible, and he does it too.
It's, you know, I admire filmmakers, and I haven't done this, but filmmakers who just say, screw it with genre.

Speaker 1 I don't care about the genre.

Speaker 1 Who are able to just say, I'm going to make them, and maybe in their head they're thinking it's this genre, that genre, or relates to that, but they're just going to make something that to them is a movie that

Speaker 1 they relate to and that they feel makes them feel something.

Speaker 1 And that's a f for me, like I try not to think about the genre, you know, that much and just try to go, okay, what's going to make this funny? What's going to make this real in this moment?

Speaker 1 And that's what tone is.

Speaker 3 But what's going to make it powerful? Like with MIDI, it was just

Speaker 3 so powerful and heavy at times. And when it wanted to become sort of this epic fable, it did.
When it wanted to get really small and intimate, it did.

Speaker 1 And that was a passion project for you, Ben. It took you a long time to get that up there.

Speaker 1 And Steve Conrad did such an incredible job writing that. It's all Steve Conrad.
He wrote the script and it came to me. And then there was one I also wanted to be a part of.

Speaker 1 And then Steve and I were able to connect on it. And I really loved working with him on it because.

Speaker 3 He's doing incredible work on television, too.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. Patriot.
That show. Like, talk about defying genres.
Ben, you've always had a really great eye for, and we mentioned Owen, but you've had a really great eye for emerging talent.

Speaker 1 And you've always stayed really close to what's going on, especially in comedy, not in film in general, I think, as well,

Speaker 1 but especially comedy. Who are the people these days who are making you laugh? You're going, fuck, this is new.
This is somebody doing something in a different way.

Speaker 1 And you've always respected people who do it in a way, like you said about, Owen, again, people who do it differently.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I feel like I'm, you know, I feel sometimes that I'm not as connected as I should be.

Speaker 1 I'm not seeing everything and out there because I kind of get wrapped up in working on the project I'm working on. And so I'll see people who come in and audition or read.

Speaker 1 I don't watch as much television as I feel that I should.

Speaker 3 Are you good about watching films?

Speaker 1 I am not as good at, lately I'm not. I'm not as good at watching a lot of stuff.
I get inundated. I feel like it's like there's so much to watch.
Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You know, I did get recommended to watch this show Dave.
And

Speaker 1 I think about that. I really think it's good.
Yeah, Dave Bird. It's funny.
There are some moments in that that are so funny. He's really specific.
He's really honest.

Speaker 1 You know, he's the rapper Lil Dickie.

Speaker 1 I thought it really developed over the two seasons. There's an episode with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar that is so funny.
Really? Where, yeah, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is so good.

Speaker 1 I mean, he was good in airplane, but like he's really good.

Speaker 1 But Dave, to me, it's like this guy is doing, he's just being really, really honest and creating his own tone, but it's really funny. And, you know, it's just, it's self-effacing, but it's honest.

Speaker 1 And I think that's, you know, to me, when you see somebody doing that,

Speaker 1 it's really exciting.

Speaker 3 Having done so much at such a high level for so long,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 this qualifies as a completely fully realized career, yet you're still a young man. So the stuff that I'm assuming you want to still get done since you've kind of checked all boxes

Speaker 3 is just what, just a

Speaker 3 continues sort of an escalation in your taste, your talent in the same genres, the same, you know, television, film, comedy, drama, whatever it is. It's just your taste is going to continue to evolve.

Speaker 3 And that's what you want to continue doing is just keeping it in the middle of the story.

Speaker 1 He wants to know. He's trying to ask, Ben, sorry, it's a long way to go.
He's trying to ask if you're Oscar hunting.

Speaker 1 That's what he wants to know. Who isn't, Jason?

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Or do you want to do something about a guy who's like in his early 50s who started working out and he went to fight camp and he probably plays 38? You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Is that a story that interests you? Like a guy

Speaker 1 He's kind of dry. Shut it, Sean.
I'm telling a story about a guy who nobody's ever seen before. Who's very well lit.
Yeah. He's very well lit.

Speaker 1 No, you know, it's a good question, Jason. It's a really good question.
And

Speaker 1 I am sort of constantly asking myself that, I guess, as I go through life these days, because I'm trying to find the balance.

Speaker 1 And, you know, that's really important to me is the balance of being able to have a personal life that I feel good in.

Speaker 1 And I've found over the years, and, you know, I'm sure you've experienced, you've all experienced this, that it's challenging to do that.

Speaker 1 And I think I'm more self-aware these days about that. But

Speaker 1 I love directing. I'm trying to reconnect with my acting self.

Speaker 1 I'm really trying to figure it out. I know I love acting, but I don't want to also do it.
There's something, just to be honest, there's something very...

Speaker 1 enticing about being an actor and being a star of things and having, you know, all that attention.

Speaker 2 Well, and also it's of all the jobs, producer, writer, director, actor, whatever, it's kind of like you have your shit and you don't have to worry about all the big picture stuff.

Speaker 2 You have to worry about your scene work.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 But I'm trying not to go, I don't want to go back to it just because I've kind of enjoy that part of it, you know? Yeah, or the Moolah. The Moolah.
Yeah, the Mulah, the Moolah.

Speaker 1 The Moolah is really good, too.

Speaker 3 But you're enjoying working as an actor in what are like director vehicles, like working with some of your heroes and stuff.

Speaker 1 I would love to work.

Speaker 1 I i would love to do that yes i'd love to keep acting in other people's movies um or even television shows too figuring out a comedy to do i would i would love to jump back in i've been talking to mike judge about something and i think i love mike judge and

Speaker 1 so what a what a brilliant jason you worked with him what a great what an incredible comedic voice what about doing something like sean does though like would you be able to go sean's in chicago talk about sacrificing he goes there and he he's rehearsing and doing this play non-stop every day to Ben, I don't know if you know this.

Speaker 1 Sean's had incredible reviews

Speaker 1 for his film. Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1 I want to see this play. And I had a personal interest in the Oscar Levant story because Stuart Kornfeld had championed it for a long time.
Oh, no kidding.

Speaker 1 I've got up in my living room a Richard Avedon portrait. of Levant from late in his life.

Speaker 1 Incredible shot when he, you know, very near the end, which is just really kind of a striking photo. Yes, I know the line.
Sean, you totally, it makes sense for you to give it to Sean.

Speaker 1 Yeah, to just give it to him.

Speaker 1 Or come over to my house and look at it. I'll just commit to giving it to him now here on the show.
But could you ever see yourself Ben doing that, doing eight shows a week on Broadway?

Speaker 1 You've done that. Yes, I could.

Speaker 1 I have done it, not for a long time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I've been thinking about that too. It could be really, really,

Speaker 1 it's scary. But I'm curious, Sean, have you enjoyed the process of you?

Speaker 2 Yeah, very much so. I mean, talk about, you know, I think it's right up your alley, Ben, not that you don't know that already, but just the day-to-day scene work, the dramaturgy of discovering

Speaker 2 intense.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 When you keep going with something, because you never get to do that when you're doing a movie that's going to be

Speaker 1 that you get into episode, I mean, to Performance 100 or 150, and all of a sudden you're having to discover new stuff, and it can open up in a way that it never did before.

Speaker 2 It's really cool, and you discover, and through the rehearsal process, you break down just every word. word, every sentence, every moment,

Speaker 2 and you refine it. It's really cool.

Speaker 1 And isn't there also a great simplicity to doing theater, too, where it's like you live your life, you wake up, you know, you have your routine, you maybe ride your bike to the theater, you know, you have your backpack.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 2 it's simple if you're not a crazy person like I am, which is like I wake up, I'm like,

Speaker 1 I gotta warm up my

Speaker 2 do the voice thing, and then you gotta make sure you drink and eat the right thing, and then you gotta go early, get yourself.

Speaker 3 Finger exercises for all the piano playing, right?

Speaker 1 Are you actually playing the piano?

Speaker 2 I'm actually playing the raps.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, he's a classically trained pianist.

Speaker 1 He's doing wow, yeah, wow, he's incredible. Well, thank you.
And so everything is leading to that performance time. Well, yeah, it's a really cool concept.

Speaker 2 Doug Wright, who wrote it,

Speaker 2 it's a true story that Oscar Levant got a pass from the treatment center that he was in, a four-hour pass, to get out and appear

Speaker 2 on a game show for our play. We switched it to the tonight show because everybody knows the tonight show.
So he's got four hours to appear, then he has to go back to treatment.

Speaker 2 And it's what happened in that.

Speaker 1 And Sean does it every night, and he plays the piano and he does all these. And he's got like 80 monologues and does this all on a belly full of McDonald's every night.
Right.

Speaker 1 Will actually ran line.

Speaker 2 Will ran lines with me on the tour and he was like, you have to fucking say.

Speaker 1 It was, honestly, Ben, I thought like, oh, this, I just, I would call it and just say, I'm not showing up. I'm sorry.
I quit. That's incredible.

Speaker 1 Speaking of quitting. Yes, Spen.
Ben, we've taken up, we could do two hours, three hours with you. I loved being a part of your show.
Your show is awesome.

Speaker 1 By the way, in our family, it's the one podcast because we're not a big podcast family, but

Speaker 1 you reach the whole family. My daughter, I think, has listened to every single episode.
No way.

Speaker 1 Yeah, tell us, please. Big family.

Speaker 1 Even Christine, who's not a big podcast listener, really enjoys the show.

Speaker 1 I thought you were going to say, even Christine, who dislikes Will immensely.

Speaker 1 Here's how much my daughter likes it. She has no interest in F1 Formula One racing.
I'm really into it. My son, Quinn is into it.
I'm getting into it too. Willie's into it.

Speaker 1 But she and I were driving from Boston to New York, and we listened to the Daniel Ricardo episode.

Speaker 1 And she sat through it because she cares nothing about F1, but because she loves the show, she listened to it. I thought that was a fascinating episode to hear him talk about it.

Speaker 1 I thought it was great. It was huge.
So fascinating. But anyway, the show is awesome and happy to be with you guys today.

Speaker 3 We didn't even cover any of the Torrid love affair between Tony Wonder and Joe Bluth.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 3 But if you guys want to have a private moment, there's...

Speaker 1 Ben, do you ever have people come up to you and just say same?

Speaker 1 Do you remember, Ben? Do you remember how insane that day was when we were shot that stuff?

Speaker 1 We laughed so hard.

Speaker 1 Ridiculous.

Speaker 1 It's so funny.

Speaker 1 Sean,

Speaker 1 our characters on Arrested. Sean's never arrested development was a show that used to be on Jason.

Speaker 1 And Ben was on, and his wife, Christine, the whole Stiller family was on, you were not on it, and you've never watched it. And it's nice of you, Sean.

Speaker 1 But, but Ben and our recurring thing over the years was that our characters were

Speaker 1 competing magicians.

Speaker 1 And at the very end, it turns out that maybe they were in love with each other, but maybe not. But maybe neither of them had never really had a friend.
So that's why they liked each other.

Speaker 1 That's hysterical. It was insane.
Very ambiguous.

Speaker 1 We were really connected when we got together. Yeah.
Both

Speaker 1 in sort of like, you know,

Speaker 1 same, same.

Speaker 1 That's really funny. So funny.

Speaker 3 Well, we love you here at Smartless, Ben.

Speaker 1 We love you, Ben. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 3 Part of the family. And thank you for saying yes to sitting with us for an hour.

Speaker 1 Great to see you all. And hopefully we'll see each other soon.
Great to see you, too. That'd be great.
All right, buddy. Talk soon.
Bye, guys. Bye, Ben.
Bye, Colonel. Bye, Ben.

Speaker 3 Ben Franklin Stiller.

Speaker 1 Unbelievable. He's great.

Speaker 2 I mean, isn't he? He's one of the most famous comedic actors of our generation.

Speaker 1 He's done so much. I mean,

Speaker 3 there's a little bit of history on him.

Speaker 1 I know, it's not.

Speaker 1 If you had done any research at all, Jason, then you're then here for three hours. Some of the stuff.
Just anything.

Speaker 1 But Jason, do you remember that first day when he showed up on Arrested and we only had him for like two hours because he was in the middle of like eight big movies? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And just the whole set, we were like, everybody was just a buzz.

Speaker 1 Ben Stiller wanted to do our show. And we got to do this.
We had him for like 12 minutes.

Speaker 3 It was crazy. I was so glad that I didn't have to work with him.
I would have been a nervous wreck.

Speaker 1 I was with

Speaker 1 Tony Hale, I guess, with Buster that first time.

Speaker 1 So nerve. I was so nervous.
Yeah. And I'd met him just a couple of times.
He'd done that movie with Amy and but you used it though, right?

Speaker 3 Because I seem to remember Job sort of like took on this air of like, oh, here's my competition. Yeah.
You know, like being kind of like all nervous and kind of uptight and aggressive.

Speaker 1 I was mad at him, but I was also still like, you know.

Speaker 3 Deeply in love.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Making faces. Jay, have you had a chance to check out Severance yet?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Oh, it's bitching.

Speaker 1 I haven't. I'm only a few.
I'm only three, like I said, three episodes in, so please don't say anything. I love this show.

Speaker 2 I didn't even, no, I won't. But I didn't even, I didn't know he directed it.
I watched it. Oh, really? And then I was like,

Speaker 2 I really, I said this guy and I was like, God, this is directed so well. I'm not making that up.
And we looked it up. I was like, Ben Stiller directed that.

Speaker 1 That's crazy.

Speaker 3 I mean, something that specific and that precise doesn't just happen. Like, there is a really qualified hand at a time.

Speaker 1 You know, well, Jason, you were kind of saying when he sets up the, like, shooting the thing, when they do those huge establishing shots of that place where they work and just the way it looks and the tone of the

Speaker 1 shot, just

Speaker 1 aesthetically relevant, you're like, it's so different and new from what you know of his body of work. And you're like, oh, he's doing something totally new.

Speaker 1 And I get that he's trying to go genre lists,

Speaker 1 that he's just like, yeah, I'm going to do this now.

Speaker 3 But he's just basically, I mean, he's listening to his taste, I guess. And that was my question.

Speaker 3 Like, how does a guy that comes from what is traditionally, you know, like the sketch world doesn't put a big, a big value on, you know, aesthetics and like, you know, focal length on lenses and things.

Speaker 3 Like, you know, it is all about, well, let's just write some funny stuff and make sure the camera's pointed at the person talking.

Speaker 3 You know, how does he develop that kind of taste and affinity for, you know, the stuff he's doing now?

Speaker 3 I don't know. But clearly, it's a whole other side of him that I don't know.

Speaker 1 And he's he's probably inspired by lots of different, you know, obviously he's an incredibly funny comedic actor, then an incredibly funny comedic filmmaker because he kind of did those two things simultaneously.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And then now he's just going and people are sending him scripts and he's just, and he's just getting inspired by whatever's nearby.
Oh, fan. Wow, that looks

Speaker 1 make it up from the rear. That's how you do a fucking bog dip.

Speaker 3 Unbelievable. Well, I'm going to to go think about it.

Speaker 1 I hate having to teach so much. You must be exhausted.
I'm exhausted from teaching. I am teaching and I'm learning.

Speaker 1 Smart.

Speaker 1 Smart.

Speaker 1 Smartless is 100% organic and artisanally handcrafted by Rob Armjarv, Bennett Barbicoe, and Michael Grantary.

Speaker 1 Smart Less

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