Ben Stiller, who was born into a famous funny family, seems to have been destined for comedy greatness, and, with the bizarre, self-referential, and very funny 'Tropic Thunder', he has hit box-office gold, writes Donal Clarke
WHO IS CURRENTLY the most powerful force in film comedy? Well, after the success of Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen has the world at his feet. For some mysterious reason Adam Sandler continues to draw in the bucks and Will Ferrell gets almost everyone chuckling. Can we call Will Smith a comic? Let's not start on the ubiquitous Judd Apatow.
These are all impressive candidates. But, after a steady assent through the ranks, Ben Stiller might now be the official face of the US when it laughs. A compact, heavy-browed individual, who, unusually for a short man, always seems slightly hunched, Ben Stiller has cornered the market in coiled, comic fury. In such hugely successful films as Meet the Parents, There's Something About Mary and Zoolander, Stiller, now 42, manages to find endlessly entertaining things to do with frustration.
Stiller directs as well. After early success with Reality Bites in 1994, he recovered from the flop that was The Cable Guy to deliver the chortlesome Zoolander. Now, with the bizarre Tropic Thunder, he has really hit box-office gold. This was the film that finally knocked The Dark Knight - currently the second highest-grossing film ever at US cinemas - off the number one spot.
"Oh well. Something had to beat it eventually, I guess," Stiller tells me. "It had to eventually run its course. Though it was some course." Biting the hand that feeds, Tropic Thunder sets out to parody the excesses and the pretensions of Hollywood at its most pompous. Stiller plays one of several differently ridiculous actors working on a supposedly searing Vietnam drama entitled, yes, Tropic Thunder. Ben is the action hero. Jack Black turns up as the low-brow comic. Robert Downey jnr offers us an Australian method actor who, in order to play a black character, undergoes a surgical pigmentation procedure. When word got out about Downey jnr's role, many punters predicted that African-American groups might protest about the film. As it happens, the whingeing came from elsewhere.
Disability lobbyists have objected to the sequences showing Stiller's character delivering a desperately patronising performance as a man with learning difficulties. Though there is some use of the worrying word "retard", it seems clear that Stiller's intention was, in fact, to ridicule Hollywood's superficial treatments of mental disability. Simple Jack, the spoof film, nods conspicuously towards such travesties as Forrest Gump and I Am Sam.
"Yeah. It seemed fairly clear to us what we were saying," he says. "I don't know. You never know what's going to happen with something like that. We are making fun of actors, not of mentally disabled people. When it first erupted it was a group who hadn't seen the movie."
I would guess that, with a project like this, Stiller is half-hoping for a ripple of controversy. Such publicity rarely damages a film's performance at the box-office.
"No. Definitely not. I really didn't think the film was controversial at all."
Oh come along, now. Race? Disability? Add in some mistreatment of animals and you cover the controversy spectrum. "Maybe we expected it a little with Robert's character. But we honestly weren't hoping the controversy would be there. My concern always was making sure it was funny. That's all."
The film is certainly funny. It is also dizzyingly self-referential and furiously ironic. By the close, as ordnance blasts the speakers and life lessons are learned, the viewer does feel he is watching the sort of film Stiller is seeking to satirise. "We definitely were trying to produce something that folds in on itself. That was the fun aspect of the film, but I hope we didn't get so post-modern that the audience loses touch with the characters."
WHEN ENCOUNTERED IN conversation, Ben Stiller does not bother much with jokes. Dressed in a black shirt, his hair teased into very ordered disorder, he comes across as friendly, but businesslike. This, I suppose, should not surprise us. Stiller was, after all, born of comedy royalty. His dad, Jerry Stiller - now, perhaps, best known as George Costanza's father in Seinfeld - worked for many decades in a double act with Anne Meara, Ben's mum, and the house was frequently full of famous comics and distinguished actors.
Was it inevitable that he would take to the family business? "I don't know," he muses. "I was around the business a lot and I guess I always wanted to be part of it. But nobody was saying 'do it' or 'don't do it'. I think my parents were waiting around to see if I would decide to do it myself. They know better than anybody how hard it is. I wanted to direct, but I saw my parents doing comedy and, of course, didn't want to do that. You know how it is with your parents."
Eventually Ben accepted the inevitable and embraced comedy. After a brief stint studying at UCLA, he began shooting his own low-budget skits and eventually wangled his way onto Saturday Night Live. In the early 1990s, he fronted The Ben Stiller Show, an innovative MTV sketch series, but, despite positive critical reception and cult support, the show was axed in 1992. Yet Mother Showbiz never appears to have considered showing Ben Stiller the door. Every lull seems to have been followed by a smash.
"I got enough encouragement from my folks and from friends for me to never consider getting out of the business," he agrees. "I did go through maybe three years early on of auditioning and not getting work. You don't realise how much rejection there is until you experience it yourself. Every time I would get any job I would be so happy I wouldn't think much about what was coming next. I was just so grateful."
VERY SHORTLY AFTER The Ben Stiller Show was cancelled, he got the chance to direct Reality Bites. An attempt to get to grips with the concerns of Generation X, the soapy drama did just enough business to keep Stiller's name in the agents' Rolodexes. But it was not until 1998, when he appeared in the phenomenon that was There's Something About Mary, that he became a proper movie star. The scene in which Stiller catches his privates in his fly has become the defining moment of gross-out comedy.
"That's right. The film did change things for me. But you never know these things as they are happening. All these people were coming up to me and saying: 'Great! I knew it would happen for you.' And I was thinking: What? I already thought I was doing pretty well. But then I realised this was the first time I had really been in a movie that had made money." I wonder if he was aware of his developing comic persona. In both Mary and 2000's Meet the Parents, Ben became the twitching embodiment of a very particular class of simmering repression. You can see it in his father's performances as well.
"Obviously you are going to bring parts of yourself to the part and it's funny how other people see what you do. But, you know, I never foresaw myself having any kind of acting career. I always imagined myself becoming a director. I am grateful to be seen doing anything."
Stiller has never had all that much to do with civilians. Raised in a show business family, he counts many movie stars as his friends and, in 2000, married within the industry. Stiller and Christine Taylor, his co-star in Zoolander and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, currently live in Los Angeles with their two young children. It is, I guess, pleasant to have professional interests in common, but Stiller works so hard and so often that the family must occasionally seem like strangers.
"I never really thought about the notion of marrying within the business," he says. "I have really dated very few women who weren't actors. But when I met Christine we just clicked as people. We never really thought about the fact we were both actors. Our relationship has always been the important thing."
How does he find time for family? "That was difficult at first. But I work less than I used to. And now I do my best to bring the family onto the set with me. They are there at all times."
The family business continues. Expect another generation of performing Stillers to come your way in a decade or so.
Tropic Thunder is on general release