Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Ben Stiller

Episode Date: December 9, 2018

Ben Stiller is known for a great run of comedy hits, including “There’s Something About Mary,” “Meet the Parents,” and “Zoolander.” In this week’s “Sunday Sitdown,” Willie Geist talks with the actor about that long career, as well as his latest project behind the camera, directing the dramatic new Showtime series “Escape at Dannemora.” Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. I think you're going to love this one. It's a long one because it got deep, it got interesting. We went through the entire catalog with Ben Stiller, actor, producer, director. You know, he's been the front for three of the biggest franchises in the history of movies. Meet the parents, Night at the Museum, Madagascar. Then you sprinkle in a little, there's something about Mary, a little zoo lander, a little royal tenen bombs, Tropic Thunder.

And now his latest project, he's not even in it. He's not acting in it. And it's definitely not a comedy. He is the director of the new Showtime series Escape at Danamora, which is the story you might remember it from 2015 of that love triangle. You had the two inmates at this correctional facility in upstate New York. And then you had the prison employee, a woman who was caught in the love triangle with them, and they got her to help them escape from the prison.

and then led authorities on this long manhunt for almost a month. Incredible story. He's the man behind it. It's a bleak story, but it's a riveting, really cool series on Showtime. We also get into his childhood, you know, growing up the son of Jerry Stiller and Anne Mura, two comedy giants, two comedy icons, what it was like in that household. An early stint you may not be aware of at SNL. He was there for all of one month as a writer and a featured player.

You can dig up some old footage of him on that show. and then into the Ben Stiller show, and then the idea of reality bites, the movie that kind of launched him, he directed and acted in that. So there's a ton to talk about with Ben Stiller. Really interesting guy. I hope you enjoy the conversation right now

on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Thanks for doing this, Ben. This is great. Two guys in an empty coffee shop like we do. I like to do it. Have a little capuchino. Talk about prison break. Yeah, exactly.

Well, let's talk about the prison break. What was your experience? experience with the real life story in terms of did you follow it when it was happening in real time? How much did you know about it? I actually didn't follow it because I was out of the country. I was making Zoolander 2 in Italy. So when the whole thing played out, I was not getting the day-to-day. And I know it was all over the news.

So when I came back, I got sent a script of this sort of a proposed idea of doing a series about it. And I knew nothing. So I read the script and I was fascinated. At that point, they didn't know that much about what had happened. So the script had a lot of conjecture in it. And so from there, I sort of said, no, I don't know if I could do it because we don't know enough about what really happened. And then this Inspector General report came out. Well, that's what a lot of people, we talked to people about you and how you viewed this project,

is that you were insistent upon the accuracy of the details of the story. They had to annotate it for you, make sure it was right. Yeah, because I didn't, first of all, I'd never direct. anything in this genre. You know, I've done mainly comedies as a director. And it's something I've always wanted to do. And, you know, the story, to me was just like, okay, the story is the story, the tone will be,

if it's funny, if it's serious, let's just, like, tell it in a real way. But what my hook into it was the actual facts of how it happened. You know, the reality of how something like this happens in 2015 that these two inmates can actually saw their way out of the backs of their cells. I mean, it really does seem like something out of a movie,

and how do you get away with that in this day and age? Right. When we, you know, in this digital era, like, their technology is so sophisticated. Like, what is wrong with the prison system and what's going on there? And what are the relationships that are existing in this prison that allowed this worker to bring them tools to escape? And so they sent me back the script. And they said, well, we made up about half of it because we don't know. And I said, all right, well, you know what?

I think I need to know more about what really happened if I can delve into it. because I didn't want to just do a fictional account. I just felt like that wasn't for me what was interesting about it. Yeah, and I mean, we were talking about this a minute ago, but you couldn't invent drama this good. I mean, obviously you've got the two guys who break out, they got help from the prison guards, but at the center of it is Joyce Mitchell.

Yes. And she sort of swings the whole story from scene to scene. Yeah, she's a very interesting character because she worked in this tailor shop. She was the only civilian in a room with 40 inmates who were all violent. offenders maximum security prison, that she's in charge of sewing uniforms for a company, a private company called Corcraft, that she has to make a quota every month and

she's basically running this room with these guys. There's one corrections officer. I mean, it's just kind of crazy that that's the actual situation. To me, I couldn't believe that that actually existed. Then we actually got to visit and go and see how the Taylor Shop works up there. You know, it's kind of all honor system, you know, in terms of, you know, you've got to just sort of assume that these guys are going to do what they're supposed to do because they know if they break the rules, they'll get in trouble. But they were breaking the rules and there was a back room. And she was, you know, using that environment for, I think, you know, for her being, a 51-year-old grandmother, having this attention from these men.

And I think, you know, it says something about just the reality of, you know, the kind of the sexual. politics of what it is to be a woman in this world, really. Because that's just, that was her only commodity, really. If she wanted to get something, you know, the fact, she was, I mean, she, you know, she obviously was making a lot of bad decisions. But they were using her in that way. And then I think they saw that they could use her to, for more than just sex, they could use her as a way to help them get out. So when you're casting the series, does Patricia Arquette jump to mind immediately? Because when you see her in that first frame, your first reaction is, is that really Patricia Arquette, she is so the character and undergoes this sort of transformation to become

Tilly. Yeah, I mean, she's, you know, she's a glamorous movie star, but she's also a very brave actress who's has no sense of caring about, you know, how she's perceived when she plays a role. She just wants to play the character and she lets it all go. And that, you know, that's part of why she's so brilliant. And I knew that she could get there. I think there was no question in my mind.

I think the only thing I thought was like she's really going to have to disappear into this person so that we're not seeing the Patricia that we're used to seeing. And she was willing to do that. And I knew, for me, from the beginning, she was the one. How did you approach this, Ben, as a director? Because as you say, you've done a lot of comedy from a directing point of view. But this is like, these are each a movie effectively. It's seven one-hour movies.

So just as a director in preparing for this, how different is that from shooting a movie? It's going to be a couple of hours or less? It's longer. It's a lot more to shoot. Yeah, I mean, it was a challenge. I never had done it before, but I was so excited by the material. And throughout the whole process, it's been a couple of year of process. It never stopped being interesting or challenging or engaging because the story was so fascinating.

And so every time we get into it and look at how we're going to make it happen, you know, yeah, there's a lot to shoot. It was a long shoot. It was eight months. But we had about a year of doing research and getting the scripts written and getting it together really, finding a home for it. That by the time, that was very important because by the time we were shooting, I felt like we really knew the story and had done the research of being up in the real place and having

that really permeate everything. I think the environment is as important as any character in the story. But it's a kind of a crazy process. You know, I mean, I didn't, you know, actually even just figuring out how many episodes it would be with Brett Johnson and Michael Tolkien who wrote it, we all looked at that together. It said, how much can this actually hold what should happen where in the course of this story in the series? And that was maybe one of the most challenging parts of the whole process,

was just figuring out how to segment it and tell the story. Was it ever a movie in the idea phase or was always a series? It was always, they came to me with that first script with the idea of doing it as a series. And I think because there's so much that went on in terms of the buildup to the escape and the actual length of the escape was about six months, but the period of time that they spent, the way the Inspector General describes it, is grooming Tilly to help them. That to me couldn't have played out in just a two-hour moment. movie because it would have just had to focus on the escape and there's the escape of them

actually getting out that part of the escape and then there's them on the run the three and a half weeks they were out on the run so there was so much story there and to me what was as interesting as anything was the relationships that developed and allowed them to be able to escape to see that play out seemed like it would work well in this sort of this mini series format you mentioned up the Clinton they let you come in and look at the tailor shops you can get a sense of what it looked like and how it worked. I know they didn't want you to shoot at the prison, but you did interview inmates and guards.

Yeah, we actually did shoot at the prison. Yeah, we shot two days at the prison. I mean, first of all, at first, we didn't have any access to the prison for most of the prep period. And then about six weeks before shooting, we got a meeting with Governor Cuomo, and he gave us access to the prison,

which made a huge difference. Because I don't know how we would have done it. We weren't able to shoot them. So every time you see them going in and out of the prison, It's the actual prison. The actual manhole that Sweat and Matt came out of. That's the real one. And then the north yard of Clinton Correctional, which is this amazing space that's in the northwest corner of the prison that overlooks the Adirondacks and has been there for 100 years.

This sort of terrorist system of courts. Yeah. And it's kind of like an amphitheater looking down on a flat area where they say it's the most dangerous part of the prison. But it's also kind of its own city. And there's maybe three or four hundred inmates out there at a time with about five or six corrections officers. So they're really running it out there. And we got access to that to shoot there. And that would have been impossible to recreate.

Right. Right. You said you interviewed Sweat himself. Yeah. What was that experience like? It was really interesting. I'm glad that we had the opportunity to do it. We sat for about five and a half, six hours.

Wow. And he was very forthcoming. He was very affable. He said, what do you want to know? I'm happy to help you. You know, he's an interesting character because, you know, you can't really quite tell how much of what he was telling us was true or not. I think when it came to talking about Tilly, you know, both he and her claim that

there was no sexual relation between the two of them, but there's pretty much overwhelming evidence that there was in terms of the notes passed and the picture she sent him and he gave for his t-shirt and he was kicked out of the tailor shop because they kept going back there all the time. So hearing his perspective on the relationship that he had with Richard Matt was really, really helpful because these two guys came together in prison were cell neighbors right next to each other and Matt and he both painted. Matt helped him learn how to paint. But I don't know, you know, the question of whether or not they were friends was really interesting to me. And I don't know if they were really, actually would have been friends on the outside,

but they both had this common goal of wanting to escape. And when they actually got out there on the run together, things sort of changed because it was a totally different dynamic when they were out in the wilderness and not locked up. And they got separated. What did sweat say about those 23 days when the world was looking for him? It's interesting. You know, when you read the transcripts of his interviews from the police right after. after he was captured, he was very dismissive of Matt. He seemed almost, he made fun of him. He said that he was fat and got, when they were going through the steam pipe,

and he got stuck, and his pants came down. And he was joking about how, you know, just how lazy he was. And he just seemed kind of mad at him. But when I talked to him a few years later, he actually seemed very, to have really warm memories about their time on the run. He laughed a lot about jokes they would make with each other. And he said that he was drinking and he didn't want him to drink out there.

Sweat definitely knew how to survive in the woods. But Matt really was devolved. And so it was interesting to hear his perspective on that compared to what he actually said when they first were caught. I think he had a feeling for him. I think he had a fondness for him. They're both, in case people, know, brutal murderers, which is why they're in Clinton to begin with. Yeah. I mean, that's the other thing when you sit with somebody who's done something.

something like that, you know, and you're seeing this aspect of them that's, you know, that's very different. Yeah. He's also in solitary confinement most of the time. I'm sure that affects your state of mind, too. But, yeah, they both committed heinous crimes, and I think that's an important part of telling the story, too, is just to understand that these guys actually, you know, were not these sort of anti-heroes. And it's hard to, because when you tell a prison escape story, you're going to identify. right those guys trying to get out you know it was important that you know these guys

weren't portrayed to you know other than what they were and I think that was one of the things that was kind of I think flawed in the among many flaws that were going on in Clinton that were eliminated in the Inspector General report but one of the things was that if you if you were on good behavior and you didn't have any infractions you could stay in the honor block right what they called the honor block which was basically special privileges where you could watch television, cable television, you could cook, you could put up sheets in front of your cell. I was amazed to see that. And that's how it was. That was a real thing. It's not there. You can't do that anymore.

But that was one of the, you know, it had nothing to do with the crimes that were committed on the outside. So you have these guys who really, you know, committed these very bad crimes, but were allowed special privileges because of how they, you know, behaved in prison. And that was probably one of the reasons why they were able to get as far as they got. I can sympathize with two murderers. And as you say, they're not really anti-heroes. But was there any part of you in the case? But I think they are human beings. And I think that's what's interesting to see and to watch is to see what goes on with a person who's not all just one thing. So, you know, they were artists.

They had a creative element to what they, you know, who they were. David Sweat was kind of a technical genius in terms of, you know, engineering-wise, be able to figure out how to do what he did. But they also were, you know, very bad people who did bad things. So, you know, that, I think as an audience, if you're watching it, and you're kind of maybe a little confused as how to feel, I think that that might be good. I felt watching it in some way almost sympathizing, not with them, but with Joyce Mitchell. There's a sadness to her.

There's something missing in her life. that these guys are giving her, she's vulnerable to their attention. Yes. And they're kind of playing her. Did you feel that way about it? Did you feel a sense of sympathy toward her? I felt that, again, I felt that she's a human being who has many different sides. And I think that she was definitely a manipulative person, but, you know, what is the motivation

for that? Why is someone the way they are? I think she's definitely narcissistic and put herself first and her needs were important to her to be. to have them met in that tailor shop, I think just for her ego, it seemed to me, the way that she operated. But why? You know, why does anybody do what they do, right? You know, basically, you know, we're all people who have feelings and have desires and needs

and prison sort of exacerbates the confines, you know, on those being met and how do you, how do you operate within that world and what are you, you know, what are you looking for? So it's really, to me, yeah, she, I don't know if we should feel. sorry for her, but she's a human being. And I think that's why Patricia is so great in the role because she's not worrying about making you like her, but she is going to show you a full person. You talked about how you shot this and the look and feel you wanted to have for it. Yeah. And it's the word I kept coming back to was bleak. It's cold, it's gray, kind of in the middle of nowhere up near the Canadian border. The towns run down, the people's lives

are bleak in itself. How did you cast it? that as a director? Well, I think the look of it was really important. I think being there, honestly, being able to shoot up there and around the prison, just in that town, up in Malone and Plattsburgh and Danamora, just having the time up there and actually being able to shoot in the real environment, even if it wasn't actually in a prison all the time. But that informed it.

And then the cinematographer, I worked with Jessica Lee, Gagne, who's a photographer, Jessica Lee Gagne, who's just a wonderful young French-Canadian cinematographer from Montreal, which is actually near there. She and I, I think, both had a similar idea of how we felt it should look. And, you know, tonally, for me, it kept coming back to movies that I grew up watching in the 70s, from my generation that were very realistic. But it's sort of like you try to find some sort of beauty in the realism. And, you know, the bleakness is, yeah, it's there.

It's kind of like you want to try to figure a way to frame it that feels like in some way that you're not just kind of, it wasn't just sort of like haphazard. I think we wanted to have a feeling that there's some sort of humanity in this place. And as the story progresses, they go from winter into summer and when they finally go out into the Adirondacks, it's, to me it was like the sort of like this, the whole thing kind of like turned upside down because now you, you know, you know, you. They went from being in these little cells where we were stuck as a crew filming for months and months to then all of a sudden, you know, out in this kind of almost overwhelming nature that overtook. I think it kind of ended up killing Matt, really, because he couldn't handle it.

So, you know, trying to find the beauty and the bleakness was part of what we were doing too. I mentioned the music, too, which to me really drives home the opening song and the opening credits of the opening episode. Is a girl from North Country, what's the significance of that? You know, I heard that song, and especially this Dylan, Johnny Cash duet. And to me, it's sort of embodied what we were talking about with Tilly is, you know, I think the way that maybe she sees herself, you know, that she's, I mean, there's a human being in there somewhere. And I think she maybe felt that she, you know, there was some dream of what her life

should have been, that it wasn't. And she's living in that reality and that, which is very, very, I think it would be very, very painful. and can motivate people to do the wrong thing. If you, you know, if you cross that moral line, and, you know, she wasn't happy with her life. And I think she saw this, to me, there's a, you know, that's a song about sort of like, you know,

some other sort of ethereal kind of vision of who she might see herself as. That sounds great. No, totally. No, it's such a great song. Did you get the sense? I was reading the IG report again, the highlights of it last night, that these guys viewed themselves almost as character. I mean, they wanted their freedom, first and foremost, but almost as characters in a movie.

I mean, all the taunting with the Tony Soprano painting, the Post-It note on the drain pipe, and then the line that I believe sweats as later, which is Shawshank, ain't got anything on me, paraphrasing that. Yeah. Did they sort of see themselves in any way as, like, celebrities when you talk to him? Um, I, you know, he kind of downplayed it when I talked to Sweat. He didn't, I think he was very, um, quick to say, like, I know that what we did wasn't right. So he was really, you know, cognizant of that. But, but when you read the report and you, you know, you see what, uh, the sort of ethos was between these guys.

Look, we're all influenced by pop culture, you know? You know, I mean, Richard Matt was doing paintings of Tony Soprano. David, Swet told me that he saw him. himself as sort of a Tony Soprano type of guy, you know, kind of a gangster, almost like a Tony Soprano wannabe. Right. I've seen, I actually found an interview with him from a current affair, from back in like 1980 something, where he's being interviewed about another crime that happened where he

knew this guy. It's a very interesting thing. I actually never saw it on television. It's Richard Madd interview, and he's like wearing this kind of long gangster he coat, his hair slicked back and he's smoking a cigarette and it looked to me like he was kind of like acting a role. I think David Sweat, you know, was different because he wasn't, he wasn't as outgoing. I think Matt was much more of sort of, you know, much more social in prison. And Sweat kept himself because he was known as a cop killer in prison and he felt he was always at risk from the corrections

officers and from other inmates too because he was skinny and he wasn't you know so he built himself up lifted weights and acted tougher than he was he says this you know he'll he says it in the interviews that he said I was trying to be something I wasn't which I found really exhausting in prison yeah so I think they were both kind of playing roles and and you know the the Shawshank thing is you know it's kind of ironic we actually considered using that line in the show and then we ended up not using it because it felt almost too meta or something within the reality. Well, he even talks about in the report

about remembering Andy Dufrain hitting the rock against the pipe. And he considered doing that and realized it would take too long and make too much noise. That was sort of the original blueprint was a movie. Yeah. Well, that's just, you know, that's movies and pop cultures influence all of us.

And they were in there for, he was in there for 12 years. So probably Shawshank was, you know, they didn't get to see that much once they were in. Right. Yeah. It's amazing. It's still amazing just that they got out of there in 2015.

Yes. That, I mean, if Josh Shank has like the olden days of maybe they could have pulled it off. This is a... Josh Shank didn't happen. Right. No, no, no, of course. But I mean, you could... It's believable there.

And here you'd go, they can't get out of a modern prison that way. Yes. Right. I mean, that, that to me was what was so amazing that that actually could happen. And also what we take for granted as like, oh, you know, well, if you're going to do a prison escape, this is the way it happens in a movie. But these guys actually did it the way it happens in a movie for real. And the IG report shows how many times they could have been caught if things had been working the way they should have at Clinton probably 400 times.

They said there were 400 different instances if the bed checks were being done properly. At one point there was a disturbance, which is another word for a small riot at the prison, where they should have got on lockdown. And Albany didn't want to pay for the overtime. So if they had done that lockdown, they would have probably tossed the cells and seen that they had holes in the backs of their cells. The other side of it we haven't really talked about is the guards that help them. I'm watching him going, so it's a good deal for you to get this painting in exchange for putting your job and everything else on the line by helping these guys escape from the prison. Do you get into the psychology of the prison guards? Yeah, David Morris plays Gene Palmer, and I think he's an amazing actor who gave her a lot of nuance to this guard who was the one who was bringing the meat in, the frozen meat that Tilly gave.

Matt and she stuck the hacksaw blades in, but Palmer didn't know that the hacksaw blades were in the meat, or at least he claims he didn't know, but he was breaking the rules by bringing Richard Matt meat. Right. And there was this sort of relationship between different corrections officers and prisoners that were either good relationships or bad relationships. Sweat did not get along with Palmer. Right. He said he told me he was on what they call the beat down crew And so he feared him Matt had a good relationship some people said you know question how deep that relationship was, how deep that friendship was. But there was definitely this sort of symbiotic relationship. Because look, these guys, the corrections officers are spending eight hours a day, five days a week, whatever it is, or if they're doing a double shift in the prison.

So they're basically in prison with these guys almost as much as the prisoners are in there. And so, you know, they're living in the North Country. They're dealing with the winters too. Their jobs are really hard. They don't get paid a lot of money. Most people are working multiple jobs. And so yeah, you know, if they go out hunting and they have some extra venison meat, you know, and the guy, you know, makes a painting for him of his girlfriend and, you know, they do a trade. Like, why not?

Why not is because it's not a good idea. As they tell you when they train you, but look, it's easy to kind of say it in a flippant way. But when you're living that life, right, I could understand, you know, this very tense, stressful job in a bleak place every day, you know, a little here. human interaction, we're human beings. Like, you know, you meet a guy you like, you talk to him, who happens to be an inmate. You know, it helps pass the time or, you know, you want to take a couple hour nap on the night shift

because you're working another job. And, you know, it's easy to judge it from the outside. But when, and it's all wrong, but the reality is, these are human beings living in this system that's been like that for, you know, years and years and generations. Fathers and grandfathers have worked as, corrections officers there. So this is you know how the complacency and all that stuff happens but you can understand it I think when you go up there and you see

what the reality of life is for these people. It show is really excellent. People are gonna love it and I think people are gonna want to know is this sort of like a turning point for you in your career of drama intensity long form or is this just like a stop along the road? I don't know I'm not making any rules. I love doing it. I love directing this. I love not acting in it and just directing which I've until now kind of done both whenever I directed something and I always wanted to do that and so I really enjoyed that part of it I love movies and and stories like this so I'd love to do different

you know genres and you know if I'd love to keep doing comedies too as an actor or you know comedies as a director that's really hard it really is well what's the difference for people who don't get that people expect to laugh when they go to a comedy. And if they don't, then they get upset. It's true. It is true. I mean, it's a pressure, you know, as a comedy actor or director when you make a, you

can make like the most well-made film with incredible production design and cinematography. But if it's a comedy and people aren't laughing, they're like, hey, come on, I came here to laugh. Which is understandable. So it's fun, and you want to have fun doing it when it becomes pressure, pressure and too much pressure or you feel that pressure then you know then you don't want to be doing it and for me I think you know I've gone through the kind of the gamut of the ups and downs of that and This was such an enjoyable experience kind of not having that expectation on right for me just as also as an audience. I love to watch this kind of thing So I see you know doing both hopefully so you obviously people know you as a comedic actor and director you've been

directing effectively since you were a kid, right? At home, running around with your 8mm camera? Back in the olden days. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when I was probably like 9 or 10 years old, yes, my dad got me a, I guess it was like an Elmo camera, a Japanese camera. And yeah, Super 8. It was really fun and did that. But also wanted to be an actor also and, but wanted to be a serious director when I was a kid. That was my dream. So these were like serious shoots. You had set-ups and planning and all with your sister, obviously. My sister, yeah, my sister and my parents and some, I don't know how serious the sheds were.

There were setups. You took them seriously. Yeah. A lot of them were just sort of these, I grew up on the Upper West Side and in the 70s was a, you know, it was a little edgier in New York and you could get roughed up by neighborhood kids and there were a lot of sort of death wish revenge fantasy type movies where like I would get mugged by a kid, like he'd like shake me down, like take my watch or something and then like my friend would run and pick me up and then we go into the park and

find the kid and then bing the hell out of it. Yeah yeah these are dark these are dark yeah this is a return actually from it. You're going back right all the way back but they were I mean that was yeah we just were kind of going on instinct and having uh but you know having those exist anywhere by the way um there are some yeah fragments of those films wow yeah I think they're in the Smithsonian yeah of course they have of course they have We're going to get them for this piece. And I imagine growing up in the household you did with your parents, there was encouragement of performance and creativity and all those things.

Yeah, I mean, it was, you know, it was kind of like, it was more than encouragement. It just kind of was what the, you know, what the universe was. It was just my parents were living and breathing that because that was what they did. They worked together. So they were always working on material or rehearsing sketches or writing commercials or going off to do, you know, playing in a nightclub or go do summer stock plays or act in a TV show.

My dad was in The Taking Appellum 123, which is one of the first movie sets I was ever on. And that's actually for me, one of my favorite films and of that era in terms of like a gritty kind of action movie that also had humor in it. And being on that set with him, I think I was probably like eight or nine, was like very exciting to me because I was like,

This is great. I'd like to do this. They get to stay up all night. Right. They're shooting a night scene. They were shooting a night scene where they were driving into the Tri-Burro Bridge. And Walter Mathi, and my dad were in the car. And they're trying to get, they're playing transit cops.

And they want to get through the toll booth. And they tell the toll guy, hey, we're transit cops. Let us through for free. And the guy won't let them for free. And Walter Math, I was, like, giving him a look, like, you know. And I was in the back of the car. And I was in the back of the car, watched them to do the scene. And they did it over and over.

And they stayed up all night. And I was like, this is the best. I want to do it. So it's fair to say there was never really a chance you weren't going to get into this business. I think there probably was very little chance just because we were around. But you know, it's interesting. Like my kids, my son doesn't seem that interested in movies, you know, which I think is really healthy and great.

For me at that age, I was just eating it up. That was all I wanted. So, you know, I think in a way I kind of wish that I had not locked in on it so young because, you know, then you just sort of like, you focus in and you kind of have that tunnel vision. And, you know, I'm hoping that my kids will let go get a liberal arts education. A doctor, a lawyer. Yeah. Yeah.

Something totally different. Yeah. So when was the moment then when you realized this is actually going to be a career for me? That this isn't just something I'm visiting my dad on the set. I know you were excellent in Guiding Light, by the way. Thank you very. I loved your work on Guiding Light. That was not where I realized I was going to have a career.

I was going to skip past that. Yeah, yeah. Was it when you were hired by SNL off the color of money spoof? Or what was the moment where you're like, I can do this? Well, that was a big moment, just the fact that we actually made this little film, this little, you know, sketch and then got it on television and on Saturday Night Live, that kind of blew all of our minds. How old were you at that point? I was probably like 21 or something like that. And I think, you know, it was sort of a gradual process, but I started working basically from that age on.

I got a small part in Empire the Sun, which Steven Spielberg was my hero. So to be able to be around watching him do that was really at him saying like, hey, you know, he actually, I showed him that short, the color of money short, when we were on location in Spain. And he watched it and he came back and said, yeah, it was really funny. The fact that he even took the time to do it was like, all right, this is encouraging to me. I'm going to keep doing this. And I got little parts and things and SNL. And then I went to do this MTV show. And I, you know, I was just doing it.

you're at that point in that age, you're kind of just, you don't even think about the other options. If you're lucky enough to be in it, you're not thinking, oh, I'm lucky enough to be in it. You're just thinking, okay, all right, I'm doing this now, and I want to keep doing it and maybe, okay, I'll go this way that way, but there wasn't an awareness of kind of, you know, the pitfalls of what could happen if you, you know, if you're not, if you don't get work. Right. You're in the writer's room trying to put a show in the air. Yeah, you're just going, you're just kind of finding your way. And if nothing was happening, which a lot of times nothing was happening, I would audition.

I wasn't a really good auditioner, and I wouldn't get a lot of roles. So then I'd go off with my friends and make a short film, or we would, you know, do an audition tape for Saturday Night Live. Or, you know, just kind of self-generate. Nowadays, it's very, very different because there's, you know, YouTube and the Internet and really, you know, Instagram. People are doing that, naturally. That's how you do it now, actually. because there's really no excuse now if you're not creating your own thing. But back then it was kind of harder to figure out how to do that within the way things used to work.

Did the Ben Stiller show, which jumped from MTV to Fox, the season each, won an Emmy. We won an Emmy nine months after we were canceled. Right, right, which is crazy. But was a critical darling and remained so today. It's a cult favorite. Did it feel like a success to you or did it feel like, wow, we got canceled? No, it actually felt like a success because it took us so long to get on the air. And it's what I was just saying.

I wasn't thinking about sort of like what wasn't happening. It was the fact that we actually had this show on the air. We did two pilots or three pilots for it. They kept them kind of coming back and saying, no, it's not quite right, but why don't you try again? And so it was two years until we finally got on the air. And at that point, the fact that we were doing it was the success. And then we didn't expect it to really run. We were on against 60 minutes.

It's tough program. You remember that show? They're doing 25 million viewers. Yeah. And at that point, Mike Wallace was already 75 or something. You know, it was like, it just been on forever. And Fox wasn't even a thing. It was like on three or, no, it's not,

maybe like five nights a week. They had, you know, four hours of programming or something like that. Was the Simpsons even on that get at that point? I think it was, it was right at the beginning. But there were shows like, Toby McGuire was in a show called Great Scott that he started in. And there was a show called Herman's Head of Hank Azaria. They were trying all sorts of comedies and sitcoms.

And then we somehow got in there. So when we got canceled, we were like, all right, well, nobody's really watching. We didn't take it personally. And it was just like, all right, just keep going. You know, just keep going and figure out what the next thing is going to be. This week on this show, my guest is Ethan Hawk. Oh, yeah.

We talked a few days ago. And I told him that in January, it'll be 25 years since we when you rolled it out at Sundance. Yeah. And he used an exploit to say, oh my God, he couldn't believe it had been that long. But he also talked about what a hugely important experience that was in his life and in his career, both.

What did it mean to you in both ways? It was, yeah, it was definitely a formative experience for me. Actually, it was what I went into right after the show was canceled. I'd been working on that script with Helen Childress, who wrote it and they, Danny DeVito and Stacy Cher were producing, and they invited me to come on to develop the script with her and the show got canceled and then we kept working on the script and then Winona Ryder said she wanted to do the movie and when Winona said you want to

do it that was it and it was very very exciting to work with her and Ethan and then I got to be in it also I think I had no idea what I was doing I know I had no idea what I was doing I think I thought I knew what I was doing right I look back at footage of myself and like kind of behind-the-scenes stuff and I'm like kind of walking around making jokes with the crew and I just looked like a total ass I really I think I was like kind of cocky and thinking right you know and I think that came sort of out of the naivete of somehow okay I'm just gonna do this and I think as you go along in life you realize what you don't know and so I had that going on which was sort of like blind sort of

just okay I'll do this I'll do that and that kind of got me through it But the experience of working with Helen who wrote it and being able to work with Danny DeVito as a producer who was such a great mentor. And yeah, we're actually, they're going to do a reunion at the Tribeca Film Festival this year. It's just crazy. It's 25 years ago. But I'm so happy I had a chance to cut that on film. Yeah. Because now everything is edited digitally and that was just around the time when it was changing over.

Right. And just that experience for me was because that's how movies all used to be made. And it's just such a different experience to actually work with the physical film because you'd have to think about every edit before you did it. Because then you had to actually cut the film and tape it together. Literally doing that. Yeah, literally with an editor who would cut it, it's an amazing art form. It cut it.

And then if you say you took out like six frames from a shot, you'd have to save the six frames and put it on a little hook in a bin. Because if you wanted to put back the six frames, you had to go and find it. So it just changed the way people made decisions because you'd have to have to have to to sort of consider something before you did the work. So I'm glad I had that experience. And really, you know, looking back 25 years, there's been so many changes in movie making

and the way that we all sort of experience stories and with digital media and everything. That's kind of been an interesting time, transitional time, really. I think you should have done Danamora that way. Just chop it up, eight hours. Let me tell you something. I wanted to shoot it on film. We didn't shoot it on film because ultimately,

we ended up shooting 400 hours of, would have been 400 hours of film. But to me, I love film, and I'm so happy that film hasn't gone away, and there's great filmmakers like Chris Nolan, who just won't abandon it and keep it alive, because there's a texture there. And both, I mean, the editing is one thing, because I think digital editing is amazing,

because you really can try anything. But in terms of shooting on film, I hope that, you know, I could always go back to shooting on film. I promise I'm not going through your IMDB page, movie by movie. But just... But just broadly, your run, as I look at it, from 1998 with something about Mary to Tropic Thunder on the other side of that decade, let's call it, right? About 10 years apart.

It's just an unbelievable run. I mean, you've got three of the biggest franchises in there in the history of music. You throw in a Zoolander, you throw in a ten in bombs. And I think you've said that something about Marion 98 showed you that, like, you could be a box office draw, and then, like, you could do this. Well, I mean, it just was a different experience because up to that point, which was, you know, reality bites up to that point was probably, you know, five or six or seven years maybe, I guess. That up to that point, it was, I was happy that I was, I was really doing great. And then when I was in a movie that actually made money, people were like, oh, congratulations, you know.

And I was like, what? I thought everything was great. Right. Right. I was happy. It was just a different experience because all of a sudden, you know, people were offering movies as a an actor. Up to that point it had kind of been more, like, do this, and then maybe, you know, I'll direct this or try to develop that, and things were available, but it was still like finding it and figuring it out, but when that happened, it became a different experience,

which I don't think was necessarily altogether positive in terms of, you know, how it affected my experience of kind of just, you know, like up to that point, it was a little bit looser, I think, for me, because I wasn't aware of how well a movie did, or, you know, it was. didn't do. Did that add professional pressure to you? Okay, the next one has to be this big. It was just an awareness of that I'd never had. Yeah, all of a sudden, like, oh wow, that movie did that amount at the box office. And up till then, it just hadn't been a thing. So, yeah, it changed things, for sure. How about for you personally? Now all of a sudden, everybody knows your face. A lot of people knew your face from reality bites and MTV, and you had this following.

But now, around the world, everyone knows who Ben Stiller is. Yeah, that was a strange transition. to go through. But not a total, you know, it wasn't sort of like zero to a hundred sort of thing. Like, oh, so nobody knows. I was around, you know. I was the guy I was in reality bites. I was, you know, kind of like people kind of, so, you know, for my own experience of it, I wasn't totally like, you know, oh, what's going on.

But it still was a transition for me, I think, just to kind of get used to that. And, you know, really to get used to the fact that people then perceive me in a certain way that I wouldn't know what it was they were, you know, seeing. I wasn't quite, you know, I don't know, are you, you know, recognizing me from, there's something that Mary is that guy or, you know, as the kind of years would go by, like, or is it from, you know, ten and bounds or this? Like, what's your perception? It's very exhausting to try to figure that out.

Right, right, right. So for a while, I tried to figure that out. Right. And then I was like, oh, this is way too exhausting. Do you find it as a comic act of people expect to be funny in real, life and when you're not they go yeah I'm a serious guy yeah I get a little bit of do you yeah over the years for sure but I never really felt that pressure because I wasn't it wasn't something that I lived for I didn't want to you know I think like my father

loved comedy and does love comedy and grow but growing up like he wanted to be a stand-up comedian and that was his dream and that's what took him you know from basically like from you know growing up in poverty to like having this amazing career that was his thing like he really wanted. And I think I was always trying to figure it out because like I said, I kind of first wanted to direct movies, but then I really liked acting, but I never did stand-up. So it wasn't, you know, and then all of a sudden I was in that movie and then I'm, you know, that guy from that movie. Right. So I wasn't, you know, it's all, it was all wonderful and exciting and I loved it and enjoyed it, but it was a little bit of a process of, you know,

kind of trying to find myself within that. If I asked somebody on the street, what's, what's the Ben Stiller movie? You could give 10 different answers. Which I think is a good thing for you. If I asked you that, what's the Ben Stiller movie? I don't think there is one for me, honestly. You know, I don't think there's, in terms of, like, what, as who I am as a person? Like the defining Ben Stiller. If you could have a say in that, what would you like that to be?

I would like it to be kind of somewhere in the, I don't know, like reality bites, actually, to go back to reality bites. I love that role and that tone and kind of is like funny but real and I, you know, human but a flawed guy. And I don't know, like, you know, kind of that, that world. I mean, not that I don't love dodgeball and all the thing. But, you know, it's such a personal thing when you're doing the work you do where you're at. You know, it's where you're at in your life at that moment. And for me, I go back to reality of that kind of, you know, that kind of tone is what I really. enjoy. But I also like, I mean, I like doing the crazy, silly stuff, but lately not really as much.

You've established yourself there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's never been a preconceived sort of like, I'm going to do this and now I'm going to do this. I'll do the crazy movie. Now I'm going to do, I mean, you're always trying to sort of, you know, find things that excite you and hopefully not, you know, be pigeonhole. But, you know, definitely, you know, as doing comedies, people see you a certain way. And it's, you know, it's not been something that I've struggled with it only in wanting to do different kinds of things, but never struggle with the fact that, you know, people enjoy that because it's never a bad thing when people come up to you and say, gosh, you know,

you really made me laugh or really, really love that movie. But, you know, it's also, you know, you want to do different kinds of things, too. It must be really gratifying too for, I have an 11-year-old and a 9-year-old, and when they see you in this interview on my show, because I force them to watch my show against their will, they'll say, oh, Night at the Museum. Right. That's sweet. So, like, kids and adults, everyone has a different view of who you are. And I've come to really appreciate that, for sure, you know. Night at the Museum is probably, like, the only movie that my son has watched that I'm in.

Really? Yeah, maybe, like, a little bit of dodgeball. You got to show him Zoolander. I tend to try not to force my children to watch my colleagues. Just as a parenting technique, I feel just down the line. Be weird if you did. Yeah. That doesn't mean I don't want them to see them.

Right. They just haven't shown a lot of interest in them. Until they're coming to me with it. You know, and look, I remember growing up with my folks, you know, there were certain things I was interested in that they were doing. And there are other things like I had no, you know, is you can't, you know, you can't, you know, you can't, you can't. you can't, you know, you can't force that. But don't you find that to be a good thing? I do on some level where they're like,

your dad, you're not like, oh my God, you're in a museum. Yeah, I think it would be weird if they were somehow looking at me that way. And there's no danger of that happening. Don't worry. You know, you're always going to be dad. And I'm, you know, very happy to be dad to them for sure. So they have not seen the zipper? They have not.

Okay. Yeah, they have not. and hopefully no time soon. It's important that they don't see that. I think that, you know, they might get anecdotal descriptions of it from people down the line, but yeah. I mean, there are a lot of things when I think about those, I mean, and other movies too, where you go just, you know,

you can't even really think about it in that way. It's probably best. It'd be a little confusing for everybody. It's confusing for everybody involved, especially when you're trying to, you know, discipline your children. Right. Then they can go to that. Yeah, it loses your credibility a little bit.

there. After that part of the conversation, Ben and I moved over to the counter for a little coffee and talked about his early jobs in New York City when he was a struggling actor, and did you know, his short-lived music career, which now involves the re-release of an album he put out in high school with his punk band. So we were talking about your early days in New York City. As part of those early days, you were a bus boy at a hot New York restaurant. Remember your job? I do remember. I remember it very well.

I was at Cafe Central, which was sort of an industry hangout. Yeah, so it was a popular place in the 80s. Right. Bruce Willis worked there as a bartender. He did? Yeah, before I was there, like right before I was there. Then he got discovered. I did not get discovered there.

I was a bus boy, and thank you very much. Not a good one. I was not great at it. Thank you. You're welcome. A little clumsy sometimes. Oh, really? Yeah.

Make some drops. And I was also interested in people's conversations. You were one of those posts. Yeah, I was totally one of those. Like I was, you know, be like, and there would be a lot of actors who would come in there. So I would be like, oh wow, that's, I remember, I literally remember once, you didn't have to change the ashtrays. And you know how you change an ashtray? Do you guys have ashtrays here?

No. Nobody smokes in restaurants anyway. I'm dating myself. All right. Back in the day when people used to smoke in restaurants and on airplanes. Right. You do the ashtray swap out, which was you take the ashtray, the clean one on top, and then there's the dirty one, and you pick up the dirty one.

You put the dirty one in your hand and have the clean one. You put it down. Right. That was the way you did it. And I just remember Dudley Moore was sitting at a table talking to somebody. I was like, oh, my God, it's Dudley Moore. And I came in for the ashtray swap, and he was talking about something, you know, some show business thing, and I started listening to what he was saying.

And I had my, like, I sort of stopped in the middle of my ashtray swap, and then he kind of looked at me and went, I was like, kind of, and I totally was like busted by Dudley Moore. Did they get complaints? No, but I got a dirty look from Dudley Moore. That was it. Yeah. And he was, you know, like, I mean, it was Arthur. But it worked out.

That's cradle of greatness. You, Bruce Willis. I mean. Yes, it was cradle of greatness and other things that were going on. in the 80s there. Oh my God, 80s, New York. In the bathroom. You must have stories.

I mean, you know, 80s in New York, there's a little crazy time. But it was, and then I got upgraded to Waiter, and that lasted for about a month. And I couldn't really get the multiple plates on the arm. That's hard. Are you good at that? Oh, yeah. Yes, right. How many can you do?

Right. Yeah. Big ones. Didn't have what it took. No. It was very stressful, very stressful to me. It is. Yeah, sometimes they get heavy.

Yeah. Sure, sure. You have to have grace and sort of, you know, come in. So, but it was a, it was a good period. That was fun. I was going to acting class and, and you weren't just acting. You were also playing music. Sylvie, do we have a thing to show Ben here?

It's fun. This is your life. You might remember your music teacher from fourth grade. Come on out. This is Blatowski. Look at this. There it is. That's the new one.

What are we looking at here? Capital Punishment. That's me there. See, I'm the drummer. Oh wow. Yeah. This is like, this is not a real thing. I'm not actually like, I'm not like Kevin Bacon and the Bacon Brothers.

I'm not that, doing that. You're not trying to have a second. I'm not. This is my high school band. In 1982, we recorded an album that our parents funded and an outsider music label decided to release it this year. this year. So the album, the original album is called Roadkill, and the band is called Capital Punishment.

Available on iTunes now or maybe not. Oh, is it? No, it is. It actually is. Spotify, iTunes. What's the sound? What was the style for Capital Punishment? The sound is very experimental, kind of Brian Eno-Boe-esque of that sort of scary monsters

period with a little kind of post-punk sort of edge to it. And then this is the album that the E-Obey-Ey-E-E-E-Sk of that the EASK, of the EOEASC of the EADSK EP that we recorded in the last couple of years for fun. Because we all started to get together again. Yeah, but the bass player is a chief judge of the Arizona Court of Appeals. Is that right? Yeah. He just got re-elected.

So, and our guitarist is a professor of Czech literature at the University of London. So, and Chris Robling is sort of the mastermind trades futures. So that actually is the great greatness then. I mean, four for four, right? And the band members turned out pretty well. Yes, yeah, we all went our separate ways, but it came together again for- And did you have the old recordings somewhere?

Yes, you did. Well, there actually were albums, so we pressed these albums that found their way out into the world and some people found them, that's how, and then they reissued it. And then we decided to do the, this is the sophomore effort. This is capital punishment.

It's available, well, it already would have been available by the time. It is. Yeah. That's not people are listening right now. Yes. It's number one on iTunes right now. That's right.

You also do a lot of work outside the show business. A lot of philanthropic and charitable work, including with the UN. Why is that important to you? I just, well, about three years ago I went to visit a refugee camp. It was around the time when there was that influx into Europe. And I happened to be in Germany. And I was just curious about what was going on. And I met these people who were in this, basically in this relocation camp.

And I realized these are just people like you and I who are, their lives are totally affected by war or some natural disaster. And they're fleeing for their lives. Or, you know, in the case in Central America, from gang violence and persecution. And there are just people like you and I who happened to just be in the wrong place. And it's upended their lives. And I think there's so much ignorance and fear around the issue. I felt it was important to try to do something to shine a light on it and just humanize these statistics because these are real people who were. And so I started working with the UN Refugee Agency and going on some trips with them and then became a Goodwill ambassador,

which was basically just being able to talk to people about what's going on in their lives and different places and show people that, you know, a refugee is not a scary thing. It's a refugees or human beings, people who are really just trying to get back home. And right now, I think there's so much fear associated with that word. And, you know, it's felt to me it's something to sort of get involved with. It's a problem that never goes away. You probably were starting about Syrian refugees. Right. And now we have the case that's in the news now with refugees from Central America.

Yeah, yeah, who, you know, really there's basically, these aren't the scary people who are, you know, trying to These are people are fleeing violence and are being hurt. And there are 68 million displaced people all over the world. It's just a huge issue. And the core problems, the root issues are really much bigger in terms of these conflicts getting resolved. But in the meantime, we have to help these people and try to put their lives together because they're basically being, their lives are just being stopped. And whether it's trying to find housing and food and on a basic level

or really just trying to find a way to integrate into society so that they can have a productive life and be happy. And, you know, it's just helping people. So, you know, I think it's an important thing. Thank you, Ben, so much for the time. You're talking to me, man. Such a pleasure talking to you. Thanks.

My thanks again to Ben for spending a bunch of time with us. You can catch his new series, Escape at Danamora, Sundays at 10 p.m. Showtime. And my thanks, as always, to all of you for listening in with us this week. If you like what you hear, be sure to check out the library of extended conversations with all of my guests. And don't forget to subscribe to hear new episodes every Sunday. We've got some good ones coming up, including next week. You're ready for this? Jerry Seinfeld, the goat himself. Be sure to tune in also to Sunday today every weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist. We'll talk to you next week on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.