Ben Stiller

Interview, April, 1996 by Manohla Dargis

BS: I'll go see them, but I'm not in any rush, especially because I'm in a director's mentality right now. I don't even want to think of myself as an actor because it's such an insecure place to go.

MD: Were you attached to Cable Guy before or after Jim Carrey committed to it?

BS: I'd turned it down when Chris Farley was going to do it because I didn't think the script was very good. But Judd and Jim have been friends for seven or eight years, and Judd and I have been close for the last three. Judd said, "I'm going to rewrite Cable Guy and Jim's going to do it. Do you want to direct it?" Again I said no, because it was this buddy comedy about an obnoxious guy who won't leave this other guy alone, and it was kind of light and airy. I told Judd that I would want to go much darker with it, so it becomes more like a satiric Fatal Attraction or Cape Fear. Judd said, "Yeah? Well, that's what Jim wants to do with it, too, so we should all talk."

MD: So you signed on as director - don't you think it's weird that you're doing it, though?

BS: You mean because I'm Generation X boy?

MD: Your comedy just strikes me as being more cerebral than Jim Carrey's.

BS: I think Jim feels he's kind of maxed out with what he's been doing, especially in the Ace Ventura movies. I guess Cable Guy is a chance for me to take what I did with my television show and meld it with what Jim does. I have a definite visceral sense of which people and situations make me laugh. When I was growing up, This Is Spinal Tap [1984] was the ultimate comedy, and it was the kind of thing I wanted to do. But you get to a point with parody where you can't go much further because ultimately it's feeding off of somebody else's creativity.

MD: You're much more serious than I expected.

BS: it's weird that people expect me to be funny. I find it a real burden when I'm expected to be humorous on talk shows.

MD". Do you find it easy to be funny?

BS: I don't think it's ever easy to be funny. I find it easy to amuse myself with a certain sort of cynical, dark humor that tends toward the meaner side, like my character in Happy Gilmore. Those kinds of characters come easily to me. I'm just not a naturally cheery person. I'm naturally moody. I know that from people who spend a lot of time with me. People who spend a lot of time with me may not wish to spend a lot more time with me. [laughs]

MD: Did your family sit around making jokes all the time?

ss: I don't know what that weird fantasy is that makes people go, "Oh, you must have had a great childhood."

MD: I didn't say that. I suspect the worst thing you can have are parents who are psychiatrists, the second worst being comics.

BS: If you're looking for pure parenting, that's probably true, because entertainers are naturally self-obsessed. I recently watched that Lucie Arrraz-produced documentary [Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie, 1992] about her parents [Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz], and I saw so much of my own childhood there. But I was also able to see that my own parents escaped some of that. They have this great marriage. They've dealt with stuff; we've all dealt with it. We went to family therapy. I think I'm really lucky.