Ben Stiller on the Price of Fame and the Power of Failure

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Episode 360.

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Welcome to the 360th episode of the Prof GPod.

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What's happening?

It's Scott-free August, but we're still bringing you thoughtful conversations all month long.

In today's episode, we speak with Ben Stiller, an actor, director, and comedian responsible for many films, including Meet the Parents and Zoolander, as well as the TV series Severance.

We discuss with Ben growing up in a showbiz family, making iconic films, and what he's learned about creativity family and staying grounded.

I've become friends with Ben Stiller.

He's sort of my, is he my first celebrity friend?

I think it is.

He actually reached out to me, and he's a very thoughtful, like impressive guy.

Also, type in Ben Stiller filmography.

This guy has an unbelievable body of work.

Anyways, with that, here's our conversation with the immensely talented Ben Stiller.

Dan, where does this podcast find you?

I am at my house.

Well, we need a little more detail than that.

At my house.

I'm in Westchester, New York, about 45 minutes north of the city.

You know, I guess in my old age, I like just being out in the country and hanging out.

And, you know, when I do like going into the city, I grew up in the city, but I never had like the suburban experience as a kid.

And I think I always kind of wanted that.

And this is kind of, yeah, it's, you know, something about just being somehow connected to nature that I really like.

So people don't know this.

Ben and I started at UCLA the exact same year

and Ben dropped out.

And,

you know, things really haven't worked out for Ben, but Ben, can you, this is a bridge to and things didn't really work out for you, Scott, either.

Yeah, it took me a little bit longer.

Anyways, give us your sort of origin story.

I think people know you by your work, but they don't.

Tell us like becoming Ben Stiller.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I'm a Nepo baby.

You know, I grew up around show business.

I, uh, like my parents, my parents were a comedy team, Stiller and Mira.

They, uh,

and they acted separately together.

And I grew up around that in New York in the 70s and with my sister.

We lived in an apartment on the Upper West Side.

And yeah, like it was show business in our life.

You know, and I knew from a young age I I wanted to be doing something having to do with making movies.

I love making movies as a kid.

You know, so I grew up around

show business.

My parents weren't always making movies.

They were performing, doing comedy,

you know,

nightclub act and commercials and sitcoms.

But I knew movies were what I really wanted to do.

Then I went to, you know, so I kind of grew up in this sort of like, you know, I guess you'd say privileged Upper West Side, you know, Manhattan.

So I grew up in, you know, New York in the 70s was much more, I think,

rougher around the edges.

So like I, I grew up on Riverside Drive in Manhattan, but if you went up to Amsterdam or Columbus, it was, you know, a tougher neighborhood.

And that upbringing for me was sort of,

you know, it was,

you got a lot of tastes of different, you know, experiences of the world as opposed to, I think, you know, maybe if I'd grown up in LA where my parents hated LA and, you know, and been in show business where you'd sort of like living, living, you know, wherever Brentwood or Beverly Hills or something like that, where it was so much more,

you know, segregated, really.

And this experience was, I think, for me, you know, kind of what I grew up with.

I feel like I've seen New York change a lot over the years, not that we're talking about that, but I went out to LA to go be a director and an actor, went to UCLA, hated it.

How did you end up at UCLA?

I applied.

I was not a great student, Scott.

I didn't have great grades.

And UCLA, somehow, somehow I was able to squeak in there.

I thought LA, movies, that world, I loved going to LA as a kid.

I kind of sort of like put it, you know, it was sort of this, you know, wonderful world of, you know, like, I love the history of the movies and the idea of, you know, going out there and becoming a director.

But then, so UCLA, USC, Boston University, and NYU were the four places I applied to.

And I got into those four places, except for USC.

But you got into UCLA because when we applied, I know a lot about you.

I applied the same year.

UCLA had an acceptance rate of 76%.

But at the time, SC was where rich kids who didn't get into UCLA went.

It's shocking you got into UCLA and not into USC.

Well, the film school was a tough film school to get into, I think.

But my grades weren't great.

And so I somehow got into UCLA and thought, okay, I'm going to do that.

And it was such a, I went to this little private school on the upper west side of Manhattan where there were like 60 kids in our whole class.

And there were open classrooms where it was like the whole floor was basically every learning area was divided just by, you know, these sort of like dividers where you could hear everything going on.

So to go to, all of a sudden, to like a history course at UCLA.

where there were like 300 kids in the class and a teaching assistant and all that, it was like, I literally, I didn't know how to do it.

And I was never a great student.

And I wasn't, I didn't really socialize when I was out there.

And I kind of, you know, it's interesting.

My son's going to school now in New York and he's a freshman and he's just turned the corner the last couple of weeks, his freshman year, of like embracing it and loving it.

And I never really opened myself up to that experience.

And what was sort of your first gig?

So you dropped out of UCLA.

What did you do?

I remember very well coming back to my parents' apartment, sitting on my bed on a red eye from LA.

And like, it was like six o'clock in the morning and, you know, got back to New York and sitting on the bed and going like, now what do I do?

I'm out of school.

That moment where you have to figure it out.

And basically

I got a job working as a busboy.

I stayed at home with my parents and I started taking acting classes and I got an agent and auditioned for about three years

and started to get callbacks,

you know, which is where they have to call you back for another audition to get closer and closer to get the part.

But it took it took about two years to even get to that point.

I just was not great at auditioning.

I don't think I was great at being an actor in front of the camera.

I wasn't that comfortable.

And after a couple of years of doing it, I finally got to a place where I started to get better at that process.

And then I got a job in this play off Broadway called The House of Blue Leaves by John Guerre.

And it was at Lincoln Center Theater.

That production was a small part, but the character had a monologue at the beginning of the second act.

And the production went to Broadway, ended up winning a bunch of Tony Awards.

And I was in that, and everybody came to see that.

And from that, a couple of directors came, and I got a small part in Empire of the Sun that Steven Spielberg was directing.

And then I got another small part in another movie.

Empire of the Sun.

I forgot about that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What was your...

I remember Christian Bale, but I don't remember Ben Stiller.

Yeah.

Ben Stiller is one of the prisoners of war in that prison camp with John Malkovich.

And I had maybe two lines.

And what was what was your quote-unquote big break?

Like what sort of took you, what was a step change in your career?

I feel like I had a bunch of little breaks that led to a bigger break.

And so I was pursuing both wanting to be an actor and a director.

And, you know, and also not really knowing what I was doing, honestly, in terms of having a sense of like, like I wasn't somebody who came out of the box, like, I'm going to write and direct this movie and I know what it is.

I was sort of finding it.

And so

I did these little parts in movies.

And then I got a chance to be on Saturday Night Live in 1988, I think.

And I auditioned with a friend of mine.

We made an audition tape.

We were doing this little comedy act.

So I was sort of like exploring making short films, you know, doing, being in comedy, which I had sort of really kind of not wanted to do for a long time, but then started to find a sense of humor, I guess, that I connected with in shows like SC TV and Saturday Night Live too.

And so I auditioned and got a

job as

I made a short film actually for them that I sold to them that was Take Off on the Color of Money with Tom Cruise.

And then they hired me to be a writer and an apprentice writer.

And that was at the end of the 88 season and I knew very quickly that I wasn't going to do well there because I wasn't great at live performing.

I didn't love it.

You weren't at SNL very long, no?

No, I was there like six weeks.

And then I had an opportunity to do a show at MTV.

So MTV was just starting up in terms of like doing programming that wasn't videos.

And that little comedy act I did with my friend Jeff Kahn, we...

You had a show, right?

The Ben Stiller show?

The Ben Stiller show that was on?

It was on MTV for like 13 episodes.

And then somebody at the fledgling Fox Network, which was just starting, they didn't even have full programming then, saw it.

And

there's a guy named Chris Albrecht who ran HBO Comedy.

And he produced basically this show that we worked on for a couple of years that we sold to Fox.

And

then that got canceled after about 12 episodes.

But that was probably like my first, you know, like I was doing a show and I was working with Bob Odenkirk and Janine Garoppolo and Andy Dick

and

David Cross and like all these people we were just sort of starting out and that got canceled.

But then somebody saw that the some of those sketches and in Danny DeVito

Danny DeVito's a production company and they were making a movie called Reality Bites that they were developing with Helen Childress, who was a writer, young writer.

And they put us together and we started to work on that movie together.

And Winona Ryder signed on to it.

And this was probably 1993, 94.

And we made that movie.

So that was my first movie that I ever directed,

thanks to Winona signing on to it.

Ethan Hawk was in that, right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

Ethan was in it.

And

then

that movie came out and, you know, did okay.

But I was also kind of,

it's like kind of interesting I was like doing that as a director and an actor because I was in that too, but nobody was really like banging down the door, you know for me to do the next thing

and Then Judd Apatau who I met when we started to work on the Ben Stiller show on Fox a few years before

had been working with Jim Carrey and

Jim signed on to do the cable guy

and which originally was a Chris Farley vehicle.

And then Jim said he was going to do it and Judd was was going to rewrite it.

And Judd suggested me to direct it to Jim.

And then we all had a meeting and, you know, got along.

And so this was a, you know, a point where Jim was just, you know, every movie he was doing was, you know, bigger and bigger.

And so he had total freedom.

And it was this weird sort of dark relationship comedy that probably was not a great summer movie for Sony.

But, you know, we did it and it came out and was not super well received.

Was there ever a moment where you thought maybe this isn't the industry for me or what was sort of, what was kind of, can you think of one moment that was sort of your lowest moment in

the industry?

I never thought it wasn't for me.

I really never thought of doing anything else.

And I think when you're younger and you have this sort of, you know, sense of what you want to do or this ambition or this, you know, kind of like blind sort of just, you know,

motivation to go towards something.

Like I wasn't self-aware back then to understand what was pushing me towards it, but I did definitely deal with, you know, Cable Guy.

Cable Guy was a, you know,

there was like an article in the New York Times, like the first disaster movie of the summer has come out, and it's a comedy called The Cable Guy.

That was the review.

So that was tough because, you know, in show business, when you're being unfair, you've had a lot of negative reviews in movies.

I mean, along came Polly.

Like, I mean, there's definitely

MG.

Yeah.

There's well, I didn't get to those yet.

This was just just a little bit of a...

I'm fingering really hard on the cable copy.

Well, I took that one personally because I directed it.

And somehow, and yeah, you're right.

Like, I remember, I think David Denby came out once in the New Yorker and wrote like a seven-page article about why I shouldn't be in movies.

The Heartbreak Kid, Starskin Hutch, which I enjoyed.

Sarah Cooper.

I mean, come on.

This is, we're going to need a bigger boat.

I mean, this is, this is not your press tour, Ben.

I'm not here to just blow you and talk about, ask you your vision for severance.

Wait, hold on.

You were also in Mary Madagascar.

Let's talk a little bit about that.

Oh, my gosh.

And then Madagascar 2, Escape to Africa.

That's right.

Oh, yeah.

Night at the Museum, Battle of the Smithsonian.

Yeah, I'm sure that wasn't for the money.

Hold on.

And Madagascar 3, too.

Fresh Horses.

I don't even know what the fuck that is.

If Lucy Fell.

I could tell you about all of these because each one has an amazing story.

Oh, my God.

If you type in Ben Stiller's worst worst movies, there's three pages.

It's like, oh, my God.

You're literally, you're the advice.

You are the living embodiment of the advice I give to young dudes.

And I'm like, go up to everyone and ask them out.

And eventually something's going to work.

Something's going to work.

You have taken so many shots here.

Like, I, I, this, I'm a, I'm, similarly, one out of seven businesses work.

So I've started nine.

I'm like, right, okay.

Right.

Well, it's, yeah, it's the law of averages.

Anyway, sorry.

Sorry.

No, it's okay.

I mean, you know, it was an interesting time in terms of, you know, like all those movies, making those movies, because they were just sort of, you know, when the first movie that I ever was in that really did well was There's Something About Mary.

And, and that was in 1998.

And,

you know, I'd been doing it for a number of years.

And then after Mary,

I did get a lot of, you know, opportunities.

And like, yeah, like I think right after that, it's like, you didn't mention duplex too, duplex envy.

I was holding that.

But, you know, that's a weird, it's a weird thing to go through for sure, though.

Like when you're like kind of given these opportunities and coming off of one that finally worked and then a couple of them that really didn't, you know, that didn't work was, you know, it's kind of like you have to look at yourself and go, what am I doing here?

What pieces of work surprised you to the downside?

And that is you thought they were going to be,

I've never, I've started nine businesses, which is not nearly as romantic as cool as making a movie, but I couldn't tell you when I started a company what was going to be successful and what wasn't.

And sometimes I was surprised at the upside and sometimes surprised at the downside.

What pieces of work surprised you that they weren't as successful as you thought they were going to be?

And what other pieces of work you thought, this is good, but it ended up being a huge commercial hit?

You know, I don't know.

It's really hard to tell what's going to work and what's not going to work.

Like I wouldn't have known.

There's something about Mary who was interesting because it didn't open at number one.

This was in 98 when movies were, you know, in were comedies and theaters.

And that movie might have opened like number three or four or something like that.

But over the course of the summer, it worked its way to number one after like nine weeks.

And that hardly ever happens.

And so that was a surprising thing for sure.

And, but then to see how that movie worked.

And then for me, what I was surprised by how that changed all the opportunities for me, because at that point, I'd already, you know, I'd done Reality Bites in 1993, 94.

So I'd been around for a while doing it and was actually really, I was really happy in my career getting all these opportunities to do different things.

But then being in a movie that was a box office success really changed then the sort of like, I think the, you know, lens that people looked at what I was doing.

And because then they were like, well, what's the next thing?

And then all of a sudden people were paying attention.

And yeah, you know, people were going to a lot of those movies.

Some of them didn't work, but then some of them really did work

for the audiences.

And, you know, comedies critically have always been, you know, it's always a crapshoot in terms of whether critics will go for them or not.

But I never ever had the feeling going into something like, this is going to be the one.

You know what I mean?

Except for maybe Fresh Horses, because Fresh Horses was, I was, it was, that was 1987.

And I was just,

you know, just starting out.

And it was Andrew McCarthy and Molly Ringwald.

And they were coming off of, you know, Breakfast Club and all these movies.

And it was like, this was the brat pack.

And I was like, oh, man, I'm going to be in the brat pack.

I'm going to be.

And the movie just.

This is it.

This is my moment.

The movie just tanked.

But it was literally, to this day, my favorite experience ever making a movie.

Really?

Yeah.

Cause it was, you know.

It was like six 20-something year old kids in a motel in Kentucky outside of Cincinnati for three months making a movie and having fun and hanging out and hooking up and doing everything.

It was just like, you know,

it was like the dream.

It was, it was so much fun.

So I know you're dying to know what my favorite works are of yours.

First off, my partner is literally obsessed with Severance.

For me, your two favorites, probably the Royal Tannenbaums.

Actually, you know what?

I think Tropic Thunder.

I think

our friend wrote it, Justin Thoreau, and then you directed and starred, and Robert Downey Jr.

was nominated.

I thought that thing was so unusual.

I can't even imagine pitching that movie.

And then the Tom Cruise

character.

Anyways, but I still like the Royal Tannenbaums the most.

I think also I think it was one of Gene Hackman's kind of crowning performances, which leads me to my question.

What, and don't say Robert De Niro, you've got a pretty deep body of work here.

Who are some of the most talented actors that you have directed directed or worked with that may not be on the tip of our tongue?

Like we know, we know Gene Hackman's incredible, right?

Who are some of the people you thought, wow, this person is not really appreciated for the depth of their talent?

Well, I mean, I would start with saying that, you know, in Tropic Thunder, you know, he is appreciated.

Just won an Oscar last year, but Downey for sure is a genius.

And working with him on that movie, I felt like I was working with somebody who was

sort of just channeling something in terms of that character of that actor playing that role and the courage he had doing that.

And also just the like he kind of just watching his process, working with him.

I love working with him.

I love him as a person.

He puts this energy into his work that he's aware of the fact that he needs to sometimes be not.

aware of what he's doing.

He has to allow it to flow and go and try things.

And I think in movies, you know, you have to be feel free to try things because you're not going to know what works until you you find it but sometimes it's going to be bad and you're going to put it out there and you have to feel that freedom and i really felt like that's what he was doing with that character and that real humility about the work but also an incredible sense of confidence too in in taking the chances So I think with him in that movie, and I think everybody in that movie, like Jack Black, everybody was just kind of like doing that on a certain level where they're just kind of going for it.

And that's not easy, I don't think, you know, especially in a,

you know, because comedies can go bad, you know, and you, but you have to take those chances.

I think,

you know, working with Greta Gerwig and Greenberg with Noah Bombach,

which was like her first sort of role that people sort of, you know, discovered her in,

and watching, you know, the simplicity of what she was doing was

very, you know, that helps when you're working with an actor who's so real in a scene, you know, that that changes everything for you because you're just, you know, I think so much of acting is reacting.

And so that's why doing something like with De Niro is great because, you know, you have this amazing person giving you all this and you just have to kind of like take it in.

We'll be right back after a quick break.

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Let's talk about failures.

Failures.

Literally, everyone's glomming all over you on severance.

I've heard talk about failure.

Let's talk about Madagascar 3.

Come on.

Dude,

we only have an hour and a half here.

Okay.

All right.

You know, when you talk about business, right, you do learn.

You really do learn more from the things that don't go well, as we all know.

It's very true.

I don't know if you've heard this, but my bivacos, Kara Swisher, has her own podcast called On, and you went on there before you went on my podcast, despite the fact that we're good, good friends.

And I'm constantly talking you up and apologizing and saying that, no, night at the museum, the Smithsonian meets the folks, meets whatever.

Anyways.

You said you had to make the show as soon as you read an early version in a writing sample from its creator, Dan Erickson.

What drew you to this?

Because when I, and this is why I would never be successful in your industry, when I've watched the show, it reminds me of Game of Thrones.

Every time I watch Game of Thrones, one of the things I appreciate most, I'm being serious now about severance, is what I appreciate about Game of Thrones, and that is, I can't even imagine pitching this to people and asking them for money to make this.

It seems so

if I, if I had read, if someone had pitched something about the seven realms and sword fighting with dragons, but there's, there's a, there's a, a red woman who's got mystical power.

And then someone said, okay, I have this dystopian, this dystopian drama about relationships and our severing between our work and our personal lives.

I would have, as a studio exec, thought, this could be such a bomb.

And the thing about Severance, it reminds me a little bit, and I think Apple's smart in terms of brand positioning, between the talent, you know, Christopher Walk and John Tutura, and the production values.

I mean, there's just some, there's some shots where I think, I would just want to leave this shot for three minutes because it's so beautiful.

You can see the money dripping off the screen, quite frankly.

The talent, the production values.

That show must have cost a lot of money to produce.

And I would have thought there is a high probability of failure.

It just really impressed me that you were able to talk them into this.

What about it was so intoxicating for you that, as you said on On, you thought, I got to do this.

I mean, it was,

it all started with a script that Dan wrote, this you know, script that he wrote on spec to send around to get people to meet with him.

And it was so clear to me the tone of it.

And what, what it evolved into is probably its own thing that maybe wasn't quite on the page.

But I think the combination of what Dan wrote and kind of what it sparked in me

was this, you know, basically,

you know, it reminded me of these workplace comedies that I really loved, like office space or the office.

And yet it was in this weird world.

And that to me was the kind of hook of it.

I give Apple credit for reading the script and saying, yeah, we like it.

We want to do it.

You know, they were starting up.

It was like a weird confluence of events where Apple hadn't quite, wasn't streaming yet.

It was all sort of theoretical in a way, because they were saying, like, okay, you know, go ahead, develop these scripts.

We like it.

At first, I think they thought I was going to like find an office, like an abandoned office, and just shoot it there.

And And then when we started to talk to them about, no, this is actually going to be, you know, like a kind of a weird surreal world that we have to create,

it kind of evolved into something.

But I think, you know, people say yes to things because

for some reason they connect with it.

But maybe what I was connecting with was maybe a little different than what Apple saw.

But I think.

I have to give them credit for saying, yeah, go ahead and do it.

But

I don't know how things evolve in this way where you're given the freedom.

Maybe it's because of like stuff I had done before where I was given a little more leeway to experiment.

I think when we put together the cast we had, they were excited about that.

But nobody knows, you know, you don't know what it's going to become.

And yeah, and we never tested it.

We never did any, you know,

focus groups or anything like that too, which is also kind of weird because all those comedies back in the day where you always did test screenings and focus groups and all that.

And this was one of the first things I did where I didn't have to do any of that.

There's, I mean, from an outsider standpoint, you look at the kind of the streaming wars and Netflix spending $18 billion and everybody having to massively increase their budgets, you would logically think, wow, there's never been a better time to be in the creative side of Hollywood.

And yet you talk to people, you talk to creatives in Hollywood or in the business, and they say, it is awful here right now.

Awful.

So try and reconcile the two.

You've been in the business a long time

and you've been a producer and you've had to pull the money together.

You see the business side of this.

You've worked with, I think, most of the major streamers, most of the major movie companies.

What observations would you have about how the dynamics of the industry and the biggest shifts?

How do you perceive it as a creative having been in the business for pretty much 40 years now?

Yeah, it feels to me that it's upside down in that nobody really knows

how it's going to shake shake out with the streamers and movies, and people are watching, and what's a movie now, and how do they make money from the streaming?

You know, you know more about this than I do, but

there's, I don't, there used to be this model that you make a movie and then you'd,

you know, you'd release it in theaters, you make money there, and then you go to DVD and VHS, right?

And that, that was the DVD streaming

thing became like basically, you know, dead after when streaming happened, DVDs died.

And

that's changed everything.

And I remember my agent telling me that like, I don't know, like eight, nine years ago, saying like, it's all going to change.

It's all changing.

And it was kind of hard to believe, but it really has.

I don't think anybody knows where it's going.

So there's a lot of fear of, you know, what people are going to go and see in the movie theaters that those studios have.

So they've just retreated to making, you know, things that are safe, that they know, you know, that, that, that,

what sequels are, that's what

known IP is.

So it's become sort of polarized in a way where there are these giant movies, and then there are these movies like The Brutalist that are made for $9 million or whatever and win Academy Awards, but it's two different worlds and you have to struggle to make the

things that aren't going to be

a slam dunk in a pitch.

So it's really hard because then post-strike, there's been so much retraction too.

And the economy is really in a tough place too.

And

that affects everything.

So it's,

I would say it's really tough.

It's really tough to go out there and pitch an idea if you don't have

some star attached or some IT that it's based on or something that is going to basically guarantee

the streamer or the movie studio that they know they're going to get an audience.

And as we all know in show business, nobody knows anything and you never know what's going to work.

So people, you know, are not taking as many chances and it's, it's really tough out there.

So I don't know you well, but I've gotten to know you a little bit.

And whenever we talk,

you inevitably bring up your parents and you bring up your kids.

And I want to talk a little bit about, I mean,

we all like to think of ourselves as being close with our parents, but you...

You're making a documentary where you're literally going through, my understanding, as old photos.

And it feels like just sort of an ode or a nod to them and their lives.

I believe your mom died in 15, your dad in 2020.

Talk a little bit about your parents, their approach to raising you.

And,

you know, I don't want to say the impact they had on you, but I don't think I've ever been with you.

And within an hour, you don't reference your parents.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I think they've been in my mind a lot and just with me a lot because I've been working on the documentary.

So the last five years, I've been working on it and just mixing it and finishing it now.

So I think I've been

looking at my relationship with them.

I miss them.

I think probably when they first passed away, I

didn't know how to deal with it as much.

And still I'm trying to figure out how to deal with it.

I think anybody when you lose your parents, there's such an important relationship in your life.

And I love my folks.

And

it's interesting when you have parents who are supportive and love you and you don't have something to rebel against or to say you know my dad was this awful person and I had to get out of the house or whatever you know my they all they both had their issues um but they were very loving parents who were also actors and very

much about

the process of creativity for themselves which I am too and that's the thing I've been kind of thinking about a lot the last few years working on this movie is how my own, you know,

process as an actor and filmmaker and creative person affects my relationships with my kids because you have to have a certain amount of selfishness as a creative person where you go, I need to take this time to work on this thing because that's going to make me happy.

But then how do you balance that with being there for your family?

And that's what I experienced with my parents too.

And I, you know, experienced it as a parent with my kids.

And I think that's,

you know, what I grew up around was my parents working all the time in an apartment on the Upper West Side in Manhattan where they had a room, where they had an office, and they'd write commercials and write sketches and go off and do like a part in a sitcom or go do

their act at a nightclub or do a little part in a movie or something like that.

But they were constantly having to work because they weren't super rich or anything.

They had to work for a living.

And they never wanted to move to LA and be a part of of the whole kind of hollywood world my mom had a real aversion to that my mom was a tough irish catholic very acerbic very funny um

you know still was you know say she loved me but it was it was we it wasn't like warm and cozy like i i think i share my mom's sense of humor more than my dad's um and My dad was much more kind of of a soft touch, but

he grew up in the depression with parents who were not that supportive of what he was doing.

My mom lost her mom at a young age, and my,

and she was an only child, and I think she built up some walls.

But,

you know, she was committed to my dad and this

work relationship that they had.

And they were trying to make a living and they were trying to just kind of, you know, do well in show business.

And as parents, they were, you know, there was a lot of laughing and a lot of fun, but it was also a lot of feeling the stress of, you know, what they had to do to make ends meet, really.

And yeah, so I feel like they were,

I don't know, but I really, yeah, I really love them.

I feel like I had issues with them when they were alive.

With my dad, I always had

sort of this push-pull where I was like, I wanted him to treat me like an adult.

And he kind of always coddled his kids and was over protective.

And that led to tension.

And I think also part of it was, you know, my mom drank

and later got sober in her life and talked about it a lot.

And I think my dad was always trying to like, you know, to balance that.

And I think that came out of the tension and stress of having to perform live, which she didn't love to do.

My dad sort of drew her into comedy.

She was a...

a dramatic actress who then was really good at comedy.

And he said, hey, we could do an act together.

We can do a comedy act act, and that can make ends meet because they were starving, living in an apartment on the Upper West Side in the 50s, trying to make money.

And then that act provided a living and an identity for them.

And she never really loved doing it as much.

So I didn't connect the dots.

I've never heard the story or the reference of your mom and drinking.

Is that one of the reasons why you don't drink?

That's one of the first things I noticed about you is that you don't drink.

Yeah, I mean,

I think I stopped drinking about seven years ago.

Yeah, I mean, there was always an awareness in our family.

I mean, like I said, my mom was amazing in the last, you know, 10 years of her life.

She got sober and quit smoking.

She smoked her whole life and

talked about it and was very committed to a program.

And that in turn, for me, when I got into my 20s, you know, I started to realize what that dynamic was in our family and

went my own way to deal with that and find a program to help deal with that for myself.

And yeah, an awareness of that has always been part of,

I think, you know, for me, you know, looking at the lens of how our relationships with our parents when we're young affect our current relationships.

And I think for me, you know, Christine and I separated about seven years ago, and we were separated for about three, three or four years.

And when we separated, that was when I stopped drinking

because I felt like I wanted to just,

you know, be present for whatever whatever was going on, which was, you know, feeling a lot of feelings.

And

it felt to me like I could go down a road that would not be dealing with the things I needed to deal with if I, if I kept drinking.

Do you think your sobriety led to ultimately some sort of recognition or realization in your life that resulted in your reconciliation?

Well, I think, yeah, I think, you know, you have to be present for a relationship,

you know, and be available and be,

you know,

I'm not saying you have to be completely sober and not drink to be in a relationship, but like you have to just, you know, you have to be who you are and acknowledge and take responsibility for, you know, for being there.

And if someone isn't, then, you know, it's, it's hard.

It takes two to tango.

So I think both, you know, Christine and I,

for us, when we came back together was,

I think we'd both done work on ourselves on some level that was

important so that we could be together.

And

the great thing is

now

I recommend if it's right to come back with somebody, because a lot of times it's not right to come back with somebody.

I didn't know we were going to come back together.

But now every day, it's that acknowledgement of like, okay, this is good.

I appreciate this.

And it could go away.

So I'm going to just, I'm going to be,

I'm going to be grateful for it.

And I'm going to be present.

And then you figure out for yourself, like, what that means in terms of your own choices.

We'll be right back.

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Hey, everybody, it's Andy Roddick, host of Serve Podcast for your fix on all things tennis.

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We're back with more from Ben Stiller.

We have a lot of young men who listen to the podcast, and I'm curious what, and a lot of these men are starting families, what advice, and none of us have got this figured it out, but in terms of your own approach to being a dad, the role that your parents have had on you, trying to straddle a line between that tension you were talking about around your own creative process and focusing on your own career such that you can be a provider while being present as a parent, being separated for a few years, that always creates a different dynamic with your kids.

What advice would you have for dads as they are thinking about or just starting their journey around fatherhood?

Oh, wow, that's a good question.

Oh, man.

Well, I would say, you know, coming out the other end here with kids who are in their 20s now, practically, my son's 19, my daughter's 23,

it goes by quickly.

And there's a really

short amount of time that you're able to really, you know, be connected to your kids before they go out into the world.

It's not even when they're in their 20s, you know, it's by the time they're whatever, 13, 14 years old, they're socializing and, you know, there's so many other influences that are coming in.

And I think when I was younger with my kids when they were that age,

I was a little bit daunted by parenting.

And I might say that my mother, you know, talking about my mom's influence, my mom was daunted by parenting too.

I think engaging with your kids, trying to set an example of what you do in terms of to be healthy for yourself,

taking care of yourself,

but also

reaching out to your children and being open to what they're giving back to you in a way that might not be what you had imagined.

In other words, like with my daughter, when she was younger, you know, I used to, we had a tougher relationship, but it was more because I wasn't meeting her where she was.

I wanted, I like, I, you know, I would want her to be interested in something that I was interested in.

And she was interested in what she was interested in.

And so

having a willingness to

go, to, to do that, it's, you have to kind of sacrifice a little bit of like what you think you're, you know, you, you want that relationship to be and

be there

and open to it and not run away from it.

Because I think it's, you know, for some guys, it's, you know, having babies and infants and toddlers, it's really intimidating.

And I think leaning into it and just knowing that it's a time that's going to go by very quickly, even if it's not the most comfortable for you, because it's a world that you're not that confident in.

And being able to just

like, just be open to what your kids are giving you back is really important.

It's not that easy, I don't think.

Yeah, agreed.

And what you said really resonates in that is

I imagine that my sons would just naturally be fascinated by CrossFit and World War II history because they would have such a fascination with all things dad that they'd want to be into what I'm into.

And then I found out, no, they have no interest in these things.

And being a dad means you have to fake interest in what they're interested in.

Like, oh, yeah, let's go get Pokemon cards.

Totally, totally.

And by the way, once you do that, you do get a lot back because all of a sudden you're engaged with your kids.

How is your approach to your primary relationship different post-reconciliation than it was pre-reconciliation?

What advice would you have for young men trying to have a fruitful and rewarding relationship with their partner?

Well, it's a lot of it is, I think, compromise.

And,

you know, if you really care about this person,

you have to figure out, again, like how to meet them where they're at also.

If you have a career or something that you're really focused on or,

you know,

revolves around, you know, the things you want to do.

You have to

communicate and really talk about, you know, what's important to both of you.

And that's the thing, I guess, like, you know, I just said it before, but the gift of getting back together is that you realize that, you know, just because you're married or just because you say you have a commitment to each other, it doesn't mean that it's going to work.

You have to, you have to

be present every day

and have a back and forth where you can say, like, you know like hey you know i i want to do this thing for me can you be there for me and then when they have something that they need you for be willing to sacrifice it i mean i think sacrifice your own stuff and i don't know you know like things like just i think a lot of human nature comes out of you know insecurity and jealousy in relationships and you know if you can have that confidence of like saying, okay, you know, I'm, I'm going to be okay with you going out and doing your thing.

If you're in a good relationship, that's going to, you know, that's going to help you so much.

And it doesn't always work out because sometimes people are in different places and they're not doing what they should be doing.

But if you're, you know, if you are a good couple and you're meant to be together, you have to give each other the freedom and have the trust.

So I affectionately say we're the exact same age.

I affectionately say we're kind of on the back nine, kind of hanging out and waiting for the ass cancer.

Like what, what is literally?

I had the prostate cancer already.

Oh, that's right.

Oh, my God.

That was so

that was so that was so uncouth of me.

That's right.

You actually had prostate cancer.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Talk a little bit about that experience and how it, how, if and how it changed you.

Well, it's scary.

It's scary.

That makes sense.

That was so awful.

I make a, I make an irreverent reference to ass cancer, and you raised your hand.

By the way, well, I did have ass cancer.

I have prostate cancer.

Scott, I've spent a little bit of time with you, and as much as I talk about my kids and my parents, you talk about ass cancer.

Look, are obsessed with you?

I think we have the beginnings of the Madagascar VI, prostate cancer.

I think it's coming.

There it is.

And didn't I tell you that if you get a colonoscopy, I think I told you this at the wedding.

You get a colonoscopy, you go to the right doctor.

He explains to you why colonoscopy is a good thing because

if there's stuff in there, they can get it before it gets bad.

So anyway, it was very scary because all of a sudden it's like everything is like, boom, stop.

You know what I mean?

Everything we're talking about.

It's like stop.

You don't know if you're going to be alive in, you know, six months if you don't, you know, if this doesn't get dealt with.

It's like your worst fear.

And I had a bad diagnosis in terms of like the doctor wasn't great when he told me, you know, he's like, I'm going to, you know, first of all, it's like, you know, you do a DSA test, which I recommend every guy who's like 45 and up.

Even that's kind of unreliable, though.

Yeah, but you have to watch it.

And my doctor started testing me early.

It was supposed to be 50, but he started testing me around 45 and he saw it growing.

And then you do a biopsy when they see something that's spiking up there,

which is scary.

And they stick a needle in that

butt, and it's not good.

And then all of a sudden,

you know, you're in a room with a guy saying, like, yeah, yeah, it's cancer.

So,

wait, let me check my notes again.

Yeah, yeah, it's definitely cancer.

He's like, yeah, so it's cancer.

And

it was, I got a different doctor because I wanted a better person.

Hoping for a different diagnosis.

Yeah.

No, I just wanted a guy who was going to actually like just, you know, I felt

more

empathetic.

But then I went to this amazing guy, Ted Schaefer,

Dr.

Edward Schaefer, who's now chief of oncology at Northwestern.

He was at Johns Hopkins at the time, Johns Hopkins at the time.

And he, you know, met with me and

he laid it out and said, you know, you got to do this operation and that's the only choice.

And

did the operation and that was it.

That was 10 years ago.

Yeah.

So cancer-free.

So, but is it one of those things where it was a speed bump and you're back to what you do?

Or are there certain instances where you think you approach it or perceive it differently, kind of post that scare?

Well, the great thing about human nature is that, you know, when you get further away from an event that's painful, you you kind of, you know, you forget it a little bit.

My first PSA test that came back,

you know, zero after operation, whatever, when it was like, yeah, you're officially, you know, it's cancer-free, you know, that was, I cannot tell you like what a great feeling that was.

So whenever anybody I know or even somebody I see on Twitter or something says, hey, you know, just got my cancer-free diagnosed, that's to me, I know what that feeling is.

And I tried to hold on to it.

But if I'm being honest, as the years go by, you start to, you do put it in the rearview mirror.

But you walk around with a sense of like at any moment, something could happen.

And, you know, this, obviously, just because you had cancer once doesn't mean you can't get cancer again.

And, or something else can happen to us, obviously.

So it's an appreciation, I think,

and something that you kind of carry with you.

There's also, you know, It's traumatic.

It's traumatic to go through anything like that.

I was really lucky.

I was really, really really lucky.

I have friends who have dealt with, you know, cancer where the treatments have gone on for years,

even successful treatments, but

put them through the ringer and you know what toll that can take.

And the tough thing is being able to go forward and do all this stuff you want to do in your life and just not think about it.

But yet, it's like in three months, I got to get that scan, you know, and see if I'm.

And I've had so, I mean, so many people.

Why can't we, Scott, why can't we cure cancer?

That's a very good question.

These like moonshots and money and like could you know one of these billionaires just put you know all the money in the world?

We're curing it slowly.

I think just seven years ago we passed a threshold where more people survive cancer now than die from it.

So I don't think we ever cure it.

I think we just get better at figuring out a way that you die from something else and you can treat it really well.

But it's it's also you know so

it's just like it takes such a toll on people even when they're being you know it's just off.

I mean, but look, it's also And you had money.

Think about it.

What it's, you know, 40% of American households have some sort of medical or dental debt.

It's like, hi, I've got bad news.

Your wife has lung cancer.

I've got worse news.

It's going to bankrupt you.

Yeah.

I was incredibly lucky that I didn't have to worry about that at all.

And when I think about, you know, just what people have to deal with,

you know,

on a daily basis when they do get these diagnosis and also like access to good doctors and, you know, people who care.

Cause like I was able to find a different doctor when I didn't like my doctor, but most people can't do that.

You know, I have a friend who's involved with AI and I'm sure you know much more about AI than I do, who says that like in the next seven or eight years, they'll be huge.

They keep saying that, Ben.

We keep waiting.

The whole singularity, we're going to grow limbs and petri dishes and flying cars.

I've gotten pretty cynical.

We're just going to figure out.

So you think AI is?

We're just going to figure out new applications that depress our daughters.

I've become very cynical about it.

I don't.

I hope there's a

we've been on the age of this great great dawn of discovery for what feels like 40 years now, where everyone's saying we're on the edge of unbelief.

So AI has obviously tremendous opportunity to speed the cycle time of testing and discovery.

Yeah.

So let's cross our fingers, but I'm, as you can tell, and you know me a little bit, I'm a glass half empty kind of guy.

Just in our remaining time here, we only have a couple minutes.

You've been very generous.

Where I was headed with our age, if you will, you got a good relationship.

My sense is you have a good relationship with your kids.

You've obviously had had a pretty,

you know, other than, you know, several thousand misfires, you've had,

you occasionally get lucky, occasionally with the buckshot of your career, hit something.

You know, you've had, you really have, from all dimensions, you've had a pretty storied career.

Like, what

trying to

literally just, if you can, lowering your guard,

what do you want to accomplish

in 10 years?

What are you hoping to accomplish that you haven't yet?

Or is it just more of the same?

That's a really good question because I think about that a lot at this age.

I'm sure you do too.

It's like so clear that what the runway is, right?

And time goes by so quickly.

I feel like I want to

make some more movies

that are closer.

Like this documentary is probably the most personal thing I worked on.

And I realized, oh, for me, for a long time, I started working before I even knew why I was doing it.

I just had this instinct to do it.

And now I have a sense of wanting to,

I guess, just explore

filmmaking in a way for me that will allow me to get closer to

expressing myself and

trying things and not being afraid of failure and going out and just doing it because I love doing it.

And so in 10 years, I hope that I continue to do that and then also found

the

time to

just do the things I love doing and be places I love being.

But the creative process is really important to me.

And honestly, like, I just hope, you know, in 10 years, 20 years, I still have my faculties and I can enjoy the people I love and

keep asking these questions of why we're here and what is it all about and

connect with people

in some way through the creativity.

You know, I love comedy too, because I find it really challenging.

But when it's done well, it can really, you know, it really can unlock a lot for people.

But I don't know.

Like, for me, I'm still trying to find my voice, I think, even at this late age, to tell you the truth.

Ben Stiller is an actor, director, and comedian responsible for many films, including Meet the Parents, Zoolander,

Meet the Fokers, Fokkers, Focus, Fockers.

The Fokkers.

Sounds like Fuckers.

I mean, just there's like Tropic Thunder.

Just, it's, it's staggering

the book of work here.

And most recently, the hit TV series,

which is just kind of at least rocking the Galloway household.

Jesus Christ, I'm sick of hearing about it.

Severance, which is

airing now on Apple television, he joins us from his home in Westchester.

Ben, you know, occasionally you meet people and you have this image of what they be like.

You are literally, and this doesn't happen that often, you're exactly as I'd imagined.

You're this nice man who has managed to maintain some semblance of humility.

I remember when we went to the U.S.

Open together, every person that kind of walked by and saw you and was like, oh my gosh, that's Ben Stiller and would stop.

And this happened a dozen times.

Every time you made an effort to be thoughtful, act really receptive and warm.

And I can't imagine, and you seem like you like people, but that's at some point, that is an effort.

But you make that effort.

You're generous with your time and you never, I never got the sense that you took for granted you're celebrity.

So anyways, I've really enjoyed, obviously, your body of work, but I've enjoyed, it's just nice nice to meet someone who kind of is exactly as you would imagine and hope they would be.

Congratulations on all your success, bud.

Thanks, man.

I appreciate you.

I love what you do, and I feel the same way about you.

Thanks, brother.

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