Learn. Share. Evolve…

0:00:06 people didn’t used to have jobs jobs only came about because all right hold on you’re losing me
0:00:11 what does this have to do with being weird i’m making jobs strange so most people wake up thinking
0:00:20 you have to have a job jobs have always been here what i’m saying is what is a job who invented jobs
0:00:28 who do they favor why do we have this system and is there another one can you think of another one
0:00:33 that’s this week on the gray area new episodes every monday available everywhere
0:00:42 in the u.s there are tons of ways to get where you’re trying to go
0:00:48 unless you’re talking about taking the train what’s the state of high-speed rail here in the u.s
0:00:50 non-existent and terrible
0:01:00 that’s this week on explain it to me new episodes every sunday wherever you get your podcasts
0:01:13 there’s a story sailors used to tell of mysterious rogue waves rising out of nowhere in the middle
0:01:20 of the ocean but it was always just a story until new year’s day 1995
0:01:26 the dropner deep sea oil platform had been weathering a miserable storm for hours
0:01:35 but then suddenly an 85 foot wave rose out of the sea this wave was impossibly steep
0:01:40 a nearly vertical wall of water as tall as a seven-story building
0:01:46 the first rogue wave to ever be recorded
0:01:53 but how do giant walls of water spring out of the ocean seemingly out of nowhere
0:02:03 this week on unexplainable the reality behind mythical rogue waves follow unexplainable for new episodes every wednesday
0:02:14 episode 360 360 is the area code serving western washington in 1960
0:02:19 the fda approved the first birth control pill true story i have found this moisturizer
0:02:26 that is a perfect birth control after applying it for two minutes i no longer need to have sex
0:02:32 all right here’s another one here’s another one you guys like that you didn’t okay here’s another one
0:02:35 i have found birth control that works 100 of the time
0:02:42 you just have to be so careful with it truth is you have to be totally anal
0:02:46 that’s good
0:02:49 go go go
0:03:01 welcome to the 360th episode of the prop g pod i mean come on
0:03:07 come on birth control that’s why the people come here what’s happening it’s scoff-free august but
0:03:11 we’re still bringing you thoughtful conversations all month long
0:03:16 in today’s episode we speak with ben stiller an actor director and comedian responsible for many
0:03:21 films including meet the parents and zoolander as well as a tv series severance we discussed with
0:03:25 ben growing up in a showbiz family making iconic films and what he’s learned about creativity
0:03:31 family and staying grounded um i’ve become friends with ben stiller he’s sort of my is he my first
0:03:38 celebrity friend i think it is he actually reached out to me and he’s a very thoughtful like impressive
0:03:44 guy also type in ben stiller filmography this guy has an unbelievable body of work anyways with that
0:03:53 here’s our conversation with the immensely talented ben stiller
0:04:13 ben where does this podcast find you i am at my house well we need a little more detail than that
0:04:21 at my house i’m in i’m in westchester new york about 45 minutes north of uh of the city
0:04:25 you know i guess in my old age i like just being out in the country and hanging out and
0:04:31 you know when i do like going into the city i grew up in the city but i never had like the suburban
0:04:34 experience as a kid and i think i always kind of wanted that and this is kind of
0:04:40 yeah it’s like you know something about just being somehow connected to nature that i really like
0:04:48 so people don’t know this uh ben and i started at ucla the exact same year and ben dropped out
0:04:54 and you know things really haven’t worked out for ben but ben can you this is a bridge too and things
0:05:00 didn’t really work out for you scott either yeah it took me a little bit longer um anyways give us
0:05:06 your sort of origin story i think people know you by your work but they don’t tell us like becoming ben
0:05:15 stiller yeah well i mean i’m a nepo baby you know i grew up around show business i uh like my parents
0:05:22 my parents were a comedy team stiller and mira they uh and they acted separately together
0:05:29 and um i grew up around that in in new york in the 70s and with my sister we lived in an apartment
0:05:36 on the upper west side and yeah like it was show business in our life you know and i knew from a
0:05:42 young age i wanted to be doing something having to do with making movies i love making movies as a kid
0:05:48 you know so i grew up around around show business my parents weren’t always making movies they were
0:05:58 performing doing comedy uh you know nightclub act and commercials and sitcoms and uh but i knew movies
0:06:02 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
0:06:08 know i guess you’d say privileged upper west side you know manhattan so i grew up in in you know new
0:06:14 york in the 70s was much more i think uh uh rougher around the edges so like i i grew up on riverside
0:06:19 drive in manhattan but if you went up to amsterdam or columbus it was you know a tougher neighborhood
0:06:27 and that upbringing for me was sort of you know it was uh you got a lot of tastes of different uh you
0:06:33 know experiences of the world as opposed to i think you know maybe if i’d grown up in la where my parents
0:06:38 hated la and you know and been in show business where you’d sort of like living you know wherever
0:06:43 brentwood or beverly hills or something like that where it was so much more um you know segregated
0:06:50 really and this experience was i think for me you know kind of what i grew up with i feel like i’ve
0:06:55 seen new york change a lot over the years not that we’re talking about that but um i went out to la
0:07:03 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
0:07:11 great student scott i didn’t have great grades and ucla somehow somehow i was able to squeak in there i
0:07:19 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
0:07:26 sort of this you know wonderful world of you know like i love the history of the movies and the idea
0:07:33 of you know going out there and becoming a director but then so ucla usc boston university and nyu were
0:07:41 the four places i applied to and i got into those four places except for usc but you got into ucla
0:07:46 because when we applied i know a lot about i applied the same year ucla had an acceptance rate of 76 but at
0:07:51 the time sc was where rich kids who didn’t get into ucla went shocking you got into ucla and not
0:07:58 into usc well the film school was a tough film school to get into i think um and uh but my grades
0:08:04 weren’t great and so i somehow got into ucla and thought okay i’m going to do that and it was such a
0:08:09 i went to this little private school on the upper west side of manhattan where there were like 60 kids
0:08:15 in our whole class and there were open classrooms where it was like the whole floor was basically every
0:08:19 the learning area was divided just by you know these sort of like dividers where you could hear
0:08:27 everything going on so to go to all of a sudden to like a history course at ucla where there were like
0:08:33 300 kids in the class and a teaching assistant and all that it was like i literally i didn’t know how
0:08:37 to do it and i was never a great student and i wasn’t i didn’t really socialize when i was out there
0:08:43 and i kind of you know it’s interesting my son’s going uh to school now in new york and he’s a
0:08:49 freshman and he’s just turned the corner the last couple weeks his freshman year of like embracing it
0:08:54 and loving it and i never really opened myself up to that experience and what was sort of your first
0:09:00 gig so you dropped out of ucla what did you do i remember very well uh coming back to my parents
0:09:05 apartment sitting on my bed on a red eye from la and like it was like six o’clock in the morning and
0:09:10 you know got back to new york and sitting on bed and going like now what do i do i’m out of school
0:09:17 that moment where you have to figure it out and basically uh i got um i got a job working as a
0:09:23 busboy i stayed at home with my parents and i started taking acting classes and i got an agent
0:09:30 and auditioned for about three years and uh started to get callbacks uh you know which is where they have
0:09:35 to call you back for another audition to get closer and closer to get the part uh but it took it took about
0:09:40 two years to even get to that point i just was not great at auditioning i don’t think i was great at
0:09:47 being an actor in front of the camera i wasn’t that comfortable and after a couple of years of
0:09:53 doing it i finally got to a place where i you know started to get better at at that process and then
0:09:59 i got a job in this play uh off broadway called the house of blue leaves by john guare and it was at
0:10:07 lincoln center theater and that production uh was as a small part but the character had a monologue at
0:10:12 the beginning of the second act and the production went to broadway and ended up winning a bunch of
0:10:18 tony awards and i was in that and everybody came to see that and from that a couple of directors came
0:10:23 and i got a small part in empire of the sun that steven spielberg was directing and then i got another
0:10:30 small part in another movie empire of the sun i forgot about that yeah yeah what was your i remember
0:10:36 christian bale but i don’t remember ben stiller yeah ben stiller is one of the uh prisoners of
0:10:43 war in that prison camp with uh john malkovich and i had maybe two lines
0:10:51 and what was what was your quote-unquote big break like what sort of took you what was a step change in
0:10:57 your career i feel like i had a bunch of little breaks that led to a bigger break and so i was
0:11:04 pursuing both wanting to be an actor and a director and you know and also not really knowing what i was
0:11:10 doing honestly in terms of having a sense of like like i wasn’t somebody who came out of the box like
0:11:17 i’m gonna write and direct this movie and i know what it is i was sort of finding it and so uh i did
0:11:24 these little parts in in movies and then i got a chance to be on saturday night live in 1988 i think
0:11:30 and i auditioned with a friend of mine we made an audition tape we were doing this little comedy act
0:11:39 so i was sort of like exploring making short films you know doing being in comedy which i sort of really
0:11:46 kind of not wanted to do for a long time but then started to find um a sense of humor i guess that i
0:11:54 connected with and shows like sctv and and saturday night live too and um and so i auditioned and got a
0:12:01 a job as a i made a short film actually for them that i i sold to them that was a take off on the
0:12:08 color of money with tom cruise and then they hired me to be a writer and or an apprentice writer and that
0:12:14 that was at the end of the 88 season and i knew very quickly that i wasn’t going to do well there
0:12:20 because i i wasn’t great at live performing i didn’t love it you weren’t at us now very long no no i was
0:12:29 there like six weeks and i um and then i had an opportunity to do a show at mtv so mtv was just
0:12:35 starting up in terms of like doing programming that wasn’t videos and that little comedy act i did with
0:12:39 my friend jeff khan we had a show right the ben stiller show the ben stiller show that was on it
0:12:47 was on mtv for like 13 episodes and then somebody at the fledgling fox network which was just starting
0:12:52 they didn’t even have full programming then saw it and they and um there’s a guy named chris albrecht who
0:13:00 ran hbo comedy and he produced basically this show that we worked on for a couple of years that we sold to
0:13:09 fox and then that got canceled after about 12 episodes um but that was probably like my first
0:13:15 you know like i was doing a show and i was working with bob odenkirk and janine garoppolo and andy dick
0:13:22 and um david cross and like all these people were just sort of starting out and that got canceled but then
0:13:31 somebody saw that the some of those sketches and in danny devito danny devito’s production company and
0:13:37 they were making a movie called reality bites that they were developing with helen childress who was a
0:13:42 writer young writer and they put us together and we started to work on that movie together
0:13:51 and winona ryder signed on to it and this was probably 19 1993 94 and we made that movie so that
0:13:56 was my first movie that i ever directed um thanks to winona signing on to it ethan hawke was in that
0:14:05 right exactly yeah ethan was in it and um and then that movie came out and you know did okay but i was
0:14:10 also kind of it’s it’s it’s like kind of interesting i was like doing that as a director and an actor
0:14:15 because i was in that too but nobody was really like banging down the door you know for me to do
0:14:22 the next thing and then judd apatow who i met when we started to work on the ben stiller show on fox a
0:14:32 few years before um had been working with jim carey and jim signed on to do the cable guy and which
0:14:36 originally was a chris farley vehicle and then jim said he was going to do it and judd was going to
0:14:43 rewrite it and judd suggested me to direct it to jim and then we all had a meeting and you know
0:14:49 got along and so this was a you know a point where jim was just you know every movie he was doing
0:14:54 was you know bigger and bigger and so he had total freedom and it was this weird sort of dark
0:15:03 relationship comedy that probably was not a great summer movie for sony but um you know we did it and
0:15:10 it came out and was not super well received was there ever a moment where you thought maybe this
0:15:13 isn’t the industry for me or what were sort of what was kind of can you think of one moment that was
0:15:19 sort of your lowest moment in well i mean i never thought it wasn’t for me i really never thought of
0:15:24 doing anything else and i think when you’re younger and you have this sort of you know sense of what you
0:15:31 want to do or this ambition or this you know kind of like blind sort of just you know uh
0:15:36 motivation to go towards something like i wasn’t self-aware back then to understand what was pushing
0:15:44 me towards it but i did definitely deal with you know cable guy cable guy was a you know there was
0:15:47 like an article in new york times like the first disaster movie of the summer has come out and it’s a
0:15:53 comedy called the cable guy that was the review so that was tough because you know in show business
0:15:59 when you make something unfair you’ve had a lot of negative reviews movies you’ve i mean along came
0:16:06 polly like i mean there’s definitely oh my god yeah um there’s well i didn’t get to those yet this
0:16:12 was just i think you’re being really hard on the cable guy well i took that one personally because i
0:16:18 directed it and somehow and yeah you’re right like i remember i think david denby came out once in the
0:16:23 new yorker and wrote like a seven page article about why i shouldn’t be in the heartbreak kid
0:16:30 starsky and hutch which i enjoyed sarah i mean come on this is we’re gonna need a bigger boat i mean
0:16:35 this is this is not your press tour ben i’m not here to just blow you and talk about asking your vision
0:16:42 for severance wait hold on you are also in mary madagascar let’s talk a little bit about that
0:16:49 oh my gosh and then madagascar too escape to africa that’s right oh yeah night at the museum
0:16:54 battle of the smithsonian yeah i’m sure that wasn’t for the money hold on and madagascar
0:16:59 three too fresh horses i don’t even know what that is of lucy fell well i could tell you i
0:17:05 could tell you about all of these because each one has an amazing story to it oh my god if you
0:17:08 type in ben stiller’s worst movies there’s three pages
0:17:17 oh my god yeah you’re literally you’re the advice you are the living embodiment of the advice i give
0:17:22 these young dudes and i’m like go up to everyone and ask them out and eventually something’s gonna
0:17:30 work something’s gonna work you have taken so many shots here like i i this i’m a i’m similarly
0:17:35 one out of seven businesses work so i’ve started nine oh right okay right let’s yeah it’s a law of
0:17:43 averages anyway sorry sorry no it’s okay i mean you know it was an interesting time in terms of you know
0:17:49 like all those movies making those movies because they were just sort of you know when the first
0:17:56 movie that i ever was in that really did well was there’s something about mary and and that was in
0:18:05 1998 and uh you know i’d been doing it for a number of years and then after mary i did get a lot of you
0:18:09 know opportunities and like yeah like i think right after that it was like dupe you didn’t mention duplex
0:18:17 duplex envy i was i was holding that but you know that that’s a weird it’s a weird thing to go through
0:18:22 for sure though right when you’re like kind of given these opportunities and coming off of one that
0:18:28 finally worked and then a couple of them that really didn’t you know that didn’t work uh was you know
0:18:34 it’s kind of like you have to look at yourself and go what am i doing here what pieces of work surprised
0:18:39 you to the downside and that is you thought they were going to be i’ve i’ve never i’ve started nine
0:18:43 businesses which is not nearly as romantic as cool as making a movie but i couldn’t tell you when i
0:18:48 started a company what was going to be successful and what wasn’t and sometimes i was surprised at
0:18:54 the upside and sometimes surprised at the downside what pieces of work surprised you that they weren’t
0:18:58 as successful as you thought they were going to be and what other pieces of work you thought this
0:19:03 is good but it ended up being a huge commercial hit you know i don’t know it’s it’s really hard
0:19:08 to tell what’s going to work and what’s not going to work um like i wouldn’t have known there’s something
0:19:15 about mary was interesting because it didn’t open at number one this was in in 98 when movies were you
0:19:21 know in through comedies and theaters and that movie might have opened like number three or four or
0:19:27 something like that but over the course of the summer it worked its way to number one after like
0:19:34 nine weeks and that hardly ever happens and so that was a surprising thing for sure and but then to see
0:19:39 how that movie worked and then for me what i was surprised by how that changed all the opportunities
0:19:45 for me because at that point i’d already you know i’d done reality bites in 19 in 93 94 so i’d been around
0:19:51 for a while doing it and was actually really i was really happy in my career getting all these
0:19:56 opportunities to do different things but then being in a movie that was a box office success
0:20:03 really changed then the sort of like i think the you know lens that people looked at what i was doing
0:20:06 and because they were like well what’s the next thing and then all of a sudden people were paying attention
0:20:11 and yeah you know people were going to a lot of those movies some of them didn’t work but then some
0:20:17 of them really did work and um for the audiences and you know comedies critically have always been you
0:20:22 know it’s always a crap shoot in terms of whether critics will go for them or not but i never ever
0:20:26 had the feeling going into something like this is going to be the one you know what i mean except for
0:20:34 maybe fresh horses because fresh horses was i was it was that was 1987 and i was just uh you know just
0:20:39 starting out and it was andrew mccarthy and molly ringwald and they were coming off of you know
0:20:43 breakfast club and all these movies and it was like this was the brat pack and i was like oh man i’m
0:20:49 gonna be in the brat pack i’m gonna be in the movie this is it this is my moment the movie just tanked
0:20:56 and but it was literally to this day my favorite experience ever making a movie really yeah because
0:21:03 it was you know it was like six twenty something year old kids in a motel in kentucky outside of
0:21:09 cincinnati for three months making a movie and having fun and hanging out and hooking up and doing everything
0:21:15 it was just like you know it was it was like the dream it was it was so much fun so i know you’re
0:21:20 dying to know what my favorite uh works are of yours uh first off my my partner is literally obsessed
0:21:28 with severance for me your two favorites probably the royal tannenbaums actually you know what i think
0:21:35 i think tropic thunder i think our friend our friend wrote it justin theroux and then uh you
0:21:41 directed and starred and robert downey jr was nominated i thought that thing was so
0:21:50 unusual i can’t even imagine pitching that movie and then the tom cruise um character anyways but i still
0:21:55 like the royal tannenbaums the most i think also i think it was one of gene hackman’s kind of crowning
0:22:00 performances which leads me to my question what and don’t say robert de niro you’ve got a pretty
0:22:08 deep body of work here who are some of the most talented actors that you have directed or worked with
0:22:14 that may not be on the tip of our tongue like we know we know gene hackman’s incredible right who are
0:22:19 some of the people you thought wow this person is not really appreciated for the depth of their talent
0:22:26 well i mean i would start with saying that you know in tropic thunder you know he is appreciated
0:22:34 he just won an oscar last year but downey for sure is a genius and working with him on that movie i felt
0:22:41 like i was working with somebody who was um sort of just channeling something in terms of that character
0:22:48 of that actor playing that role and the courage he had doing that and also just the like he kind of just
0:22:52 watching his process working with him i love working with him i love him as a person
0:22:59 he puts this energy into his work that he’s aware of the fact that he needs to sometimes be
0:23:06 not aware of what he’s doing he has to allow it to flow and go and try things and i think in movies
0:23:13 you have to be feel free to try things because you’re not going to know what works until you find it but
0:23:17 sometimes it’s going to be bad and you’re going to put it out there and you have to feel that freedom
0:23:22 and i really felt like that’s what he was doing with that character and a real humility about the
0:23:30 work but also an incredible sense of confidence too in in taking the chances so i think uh with him in
0:23:33 that movie and i think everybody in that movie like jack black everybody was just kind of like
0:23:39 doing that on a certain level where they’re just kind of going for it and that’s not easy i don’t think
0:23:43 you know especially in a you know because comedies can go bad you know and you but you have to take
0:23:51 those chances i think uh you know working with greta gerwig and greenberg with noah bomback um
0:23:57 which was like her first sort of role that people sort of you know discovered her in
0:24:05 uh and and watching you know the simplicity of what she was doing was um very you know but that
0:24:11 helps when you’re working with an actor who’s so real in a scene you know that that changes everything
0:24:18 for you because you’re just you know i think so much of acting is reacting and so that’s why doing
0:24:22 something like with de niro is great because you know you have this amazing person giving you all this
0:24:30 and you just have to kind of like take it in we’ll be right back after a quick break
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0:25:54 in 1961 president canady’s fcc chairman newton minnow gave a speech deriding commercial tv programming
0:26:00 i can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland he wanted to do something about it
0:26:05 is there one person in this room who claims that broadcasting can’t do better so congress created
0:26:09 something called the corporation for public broadcasting you might not have realized when
0:26:15 you were interacting with the cpb but it happened all the time when you were tickled by elmo happy
0:26:22 international joke day when someone moved you on the drive home this is fresh air i’m terry gross cpb is
0:26:27 the reason you’re hearing my voice right now but due to big beautiful cuts the organization announced
0:26:34 on friday that it would be shutting down next year what’s taken its place if you ask this white house
0:26:42 they might say something like prager u what is prager u on today explained support for the show comes from
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0:27:54 that’s shipstation.com slash prop g let’s talk about failure where everyone’s literally everyone’s
0:28:01 glomming all over you on severance i really talk about failure let’s talk about madagascar three come on
0:28:07 dude we only have an hour and a half here okay all right you know you’re when you talk about business
0:28:13 right you do learn you really do learn more from the things that don’t go well as we all know it’s
0:28:18 very true i don’t know if you’ve heard this but my pivot co-host kara swisher has her own podcast
0:28:22 called on and you went on there before you went on my podcast despite the fact that we’re good good
0:28:27 friends and i’m constantly talking you up and apologize and saying that no night at the museum the
0:28:33 smithsonian meets the focus meets whatever uh anyways you said you had to make the show as
0:28:39 soon as you read an early version in a writing sample from its creator dan erickson what drew you
0:28:44 to this because when i and this is why i would never be successful in your industry when i’ve watched the
0:28:48 show it reminds me of game of thrones every time i watch game of thrones one of the things i appreciate
0:28:53 most i’m being serious now about severance is what i appreciate about game of thrones and that is
0:28:58 i can’t even imagine pitching this to people and asking them for money to make this it seems so
0:29:05 if i if i had read if someone had pitched something about the seven realms and sword fighting with
0:29:11 dragons but there’s there’s a there’s a a red woman who’s got mystical power and then someone said okay i
0:29:18 have this dystopian this dystopian drama about relationships and are severing between our work and
0:29:25 our personal lives i would have as a studio exec thought this could be such a bomb and the thing
0:29:30 about severance reminds me a little bit and i think apple’s smart in terms of brand positioning
0:29:37 between the talent you know christopher walken john tutura and the production values i mean there’s just
0:29:41 some certain there’s some shots where i think i would just want to leave this shot for three minutes
0:29:47 because it’s so beautiful you can see the money dripping off the screen screen quite frankly the
0:29:52 talent the production values that show must have cost a lot of money to produce and i would have thought
0:29:58 there is a high probability of failure it just really impressed me that you were able to talk them into
0:30:04 this what about it was so intoxicating for you that as you said on on you thought i got to do this
0:30:12 i mean it was it all started with a script that dan wrote this this um you know script that he wrote on
0:30:20 spec to to send around to get people to meet with him um and it was so clear to me the tone of it and
0:30:26 what what it evolved into is probably its own thing that maybe wasn’t quite on the page but i think the
0:30:34 combination of what dan wrote and kind of what it sparked in me um was this you know basically you
0:30:42 know that it reminded me of these workplace comedies that that i really loved like office space or
0:30:48 the office and yet it was in this weird world and that to me was the kind of hook of it i give apple
0:30:53 credit for reading the script and saying yeah we like it we want to do it you know they were starting
0:30:58 up it was like a weird confluence of events where apple hadn’t quite wasn’t streaming yet it was all
0:31:03 sort of theoretical in a way because they were they were saying like okay you know go ahead develop these
0:31:09 scripts we like it um at first i think they thought i was going to like find an office like an abandoned
0:31:13 office and just shoot it there and then when we started to talk to them about no this is actually going
0:31:20 to be you know like a kind of a weird surreal world that we have to create um it kind of evolved into
0:31:27 something but i think you know people say yes to things because for some reason they connect with
0:31:32 it but maybe what i was connecting with was maybe a little different than what apple saw but i think
0:31:38 i have to give them credit for saying yeah like go ahead and do it but it’s i don’t know how things
0:31:43 evolve in this way where you’re given the freedom maybe it’s because of like stuff i’d done before where
0:31:49 i was given a little more leeway to experiment um i think when we put together the cast we had
0:31:54 they were excited about that but nobody knows you know you don’t know what it’s going to become and
0:32:01 yeah and we never tested it we never did any you know um focus groups or anything like that too which
0:32:06 is also kind of weird because all those comedies back in the day where you always did test screenings
0:32:10 and focus groups and all that and this was one of the first things i did where i didn’t have to do
0:32:16 any of that there’s i mean from an outsider standpoint you look at the kind of the streaming wars and
0:32:22 netflix spending 18 billion and everybody having to massively increase their budgets you would logically
0:32:29 think wow there’s never been a better time to be in the creative side of hollywood and yet you talk
0:32:36 to people you talk to creatives in hollywood or in the business and they say it is awful here right now
0:32:43 awful so try and reconcile the two you’ve been in the business a long time and you see and you’ve been a
0:32:47 producer and you’ve had to pull the money together you see the business side of this you’ve worked with
0:32:52 i think most of the major streamers most of the major movie companies what observations would you have
0:32:58 about how the dynamics of the industry and the biggest shifts how did how do you perceive it as
0:33:04 a creative having been in the business for pretty much 40 years now yeah it feels to me that it’s
0:33:13 upside down in that nobody really knows um how it’s going to shake out with the streamers and movies and
0:33:19 people are watching and what’s a movie now and and how do they make money from the streaming i you know
0:33:24 you know you know more about this than i do but there’s i don’t there used to be this model that
0:33:29 you make a movie and then you’d you know you’d release it in theaters you make money there and then
0:33:38 you go to dvd and vhs right and that that was the the dvd streaming um thing became like basically
0:33:45 you know dead after when streaming happened dvds died and that’s changed everything and i remember my
0:33:50 agent telling me that like i don’t know like eight nine years ago saying like it’s all going to change
0:33:55 it’s all changing and it was kind of hard to believe but it really has i don’t think anybody knows
0:34:02 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
0:34:08 theaters that those studios have so they’ve just retreated to making you know things that are safe that
0:34:14 that they know you know that that that you know that’s what sequels are that’s what uh you know known
0:34:19 ip is so it’s become sort of polarized in a way where there are these giant movies and then there are
0:34:24 these movies like the brutalist that are made for you know nine million dollars or whatever and win
0:34:30 academy awards but it’s two different worlds and you have to struggle to make the you know the things that
0:34:38 aren’t going to be you know a slam dunk in in a pitch so it’s really hard because then post strike there’s
0:34:43 been so much retraction too and the economy is really in a in a tough place too and that that affects
0:34:51 that affects everything so it’s um i would say it’s it’s really tough it’s really tough to go out there and
0:34:59 pitch an idea if you don’t have you know some star attached or some ip that it’s based on or something
0:35:05 that you know is going to basically you know guarantee the the streamer or the movie studio that
0:35:09 they know they’re going to get an audience and as we all know in show business nobody knows anything
0:35:13 you never know what’s going to work so people you know are not taking as many chances and it’s it’s
0:35:18 really tough out there so i don’t know you well but i’ve gotten to know you a little bit
0:35:25 and whenever we talk uh you inevitably bring up your parents and you bring up your kids
0:35:31 and i want to talk a little bit about i mean we all like to think of ourselves as being close with
0:35:36 our parents but you you’re making a documentary where you’re literally going through my understanding
0:35:42 as old photos and and it feels like just sort of an ode or a nod to them in their life lives i believe
0:35:48 your mom died in 15 your dad in 2020 talk a little bit about your parents their approach to raising you
0:35:54 and you know i don’t say the impact they had on you but i i don’t think i’ve ever been with you and
0:35:59 within an hour you don’t reference your parents interesting yeah well i mean i think they’ve been
0:36:06 in my mind a lot and just with me a lot because i’ve been working on the documentary so the last five years
0:36:13 i’ve been working on it and just just mixing it and finishing it now um so i think i’ve been you know
0:36:20 looking at at my relationship with them i miss them i think uh i think probably when they first
0:36:27 passed away i didn’t know how to deal with it as much and still i’m trying to figure out how to deal
0:36:31 with i think anybody when you lose your parents there’s such an you know important relationship
0:36:36 in your life and i love my folks and um it’s interesting when you have parents who are supportive
0:36:43 and love you and you don’t have something to rebel against or to say you know my dad was this awful
0:36:50 person and i had to get out of the house or whatever you know my they all they both had their issues um but
0:37:00 they were very loving parents who were also actors and very much about the process of creativity for
0:37:06 themselves which i am too and that’s the thing i’ve been kind of thinking about a lot the last
0:37:14 few years working on this movie is how my own you know uh process as a as an actor and filmmaker and
0:37:19 creative person affects my relationships with my kids because you have to have a certain amount of
0:37:25 selfishness as a creative person where you go i need to take this time to work on this thing because
0:37:31 that’s going to make me happy but then how do you balance that with being there for your family and
0:37:38 that’s what i experienced with my parents too and i you know experienced it as a parent with my kids
0:37:44 and i think that’s um you know what i grew up around was my parents working all the time in an apartment
0:37:49 on the upper west side in manhattan where they had a room where they had an office and they’d write
0:37:56 commercials and write sketches and go off and do like a part in a sitcom or go do uh you know do their
0:38:01 act at a nightclub or you know do a little part in a movie or something like that but they were constantly
0:38:08 having to work because they weren’t super rich or anything they had to work for a living and um they
0:38:15 never wanted to move to la and be a part of the whole kind of hollywood world my mom had a real aversion to
0:38:25 that my mom was a tough irish catholic very acerbic very funny um you know still would you know say she
0:38:32 loved me but it was it was it wasn’t like warm and cozy like i i think i’d share my mom’s sense of humor
0:38:40 more than my dad’s um and my dad was much more kind of uh of a soft touch but he grew up he grew up in the
0:38:45 depression with parents who were not that supportive of what he was doing my mom lost her mom at a young
0:38:54 age and my then she was an only child and i think she built up some walls but um you know she was
0:38:59 committed to my dad and this this work relationship that they had and they were trying to make a living
0:39:05 and they were trying to just kind of you know do well in in show business and as parents they were you
0:39:10 know there’s a lot of laughing a lot of fun but it was also a lot of feeling the stress of
0:39:19 you know what they had to do to to make ends meet really um and yeah so so i i feel like they were um
0:39:25 i don’t know i i but i really yeah i really love them i feel like i had issues with them when they were
0:39:31 alive with my dad i always had um sort of this push pull where i was like i wanted him to treat me like
0:39:40 an adult and he kind of always coddled his kids and was overprotective and that led to tension and i
0:39:49 think also part of it was you know my mom uh drank uh and later got sober in her life and talked about
0:39:55 it a lot and i think my dad was always trying to like you know to to balance that and that and i think
0:40:01 that came out of the tension and stress of having to perform live which she didn’t love to do my dad
0:40:08 sort of drew her into comedy um she was a dramatic actress who then was really good at comedy and he
0:40:12 said hey we could do an act together we can do a comedy act and that can make ends me because they
0:40:17 were starving living in an apartment on the upper west side in the 50s trying to you know make money and
0:40:22 and then that act you provided a living and an identity for them and she never really loved doing
0:40:29 it as much so i i didn’t connect the not dots i didn’t i’ve never heard the story or the the reference
0:40:33 of your mom and drinking is that one of the reasons why you don’t drink that’s one of the first things i
0:40:40 noticed about you is that you you don’t drink yeah i mean about i i i think i stopped drinking about seven
0:40:46 years ago um yeah i mean there was always an awareness in our family i mean like i said my mom
0:40:52 was amazing in the last you know 10 years of her life she got sober and uh quit smoking she smoked her
0:41:00 all life and um and talked about it and was you know very committed to a program and that in turn for me
0:41:09 when i got into my 20s you know i started to realize what that dynamic was in our family and went
0:41:15 my own way to deal with that and and find a program to help deal with that for myself
0:41:22 um and yeah an awareness of that has always been part of um i think you know for me you know looking
0:41:28 at the lens of how our relationships with our parents when we’re young affect our our current relationships
0:41:35 and i think for me when you know christine and i um separated about seven years ago and we were
0:41:39 separated for about three three or four years and when we separated that was when i stopped drinking
0:41:49 because i felt like i wanted to just um you know be present for whatever i was whatever was going on
0:41:55 which was you know feeling a lot of feelings and uh and it felt to me like i could go down a road that
0:42:01 would not be dealing with the things i needed to deal with if i if i kept drinking do you think your
0:42:07 sobriety led to ultimately some sort of recognition or realization in your life that resulted in your
0:42:14 reconciliation well i think yeah i think you know you have to be present for a relationship uh you know
0:42:22 and be available and be you know i’m not saying you have to be completely sober and not drink to be in a
0:42:27 relationship but like you have to just you know you have to be who you are and acknowledge and take take
0:42:35 responsibility for you know for being there and if someone isn’t then you know it’s it’s hard it takes two to
0:42:43 tango so um i think both you know christine and i the the for us when we came back together was um
0:42:50 i think we both done work on ourselves on on some level that was uh important so that we could be
0:42:59 together and and the great thing is now i i recommend if it’s right to come back with somebody
0:43:01 because a lot of times it’s not right to come back somebody i didn’t know we were going to come back
0:43:07 together but now every day it’s that that acknowledgement of like okay this is good
0:43:15 i appreciate this and it could go away so i’m gonna just i’m gonna be i’m gonna be grateful for it and
0:43:20 i’m gonna be present and then you figure out for yourself like what that means in terms of your own
0:43:27 choices we’ll be right back
0:43:33 support for the show comes from linkedin one of the hardest parts about moving to a new city is finding
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0:44:35 i’m jesse dave fox senior writer vulture and host of good one a show with the best interviews with your
0:44:42 favorite comedians ever and this week on our podcast stand-up comedian bill burr yes that bill burr my new
0:44:47 perspectives there’s nothing wrong with being a billionaire but if somebody is working 40 hours
0:44:53 a week 160 hours a month and they can’t make their rent you’re not paying them enough money
0:44:57 maybe you should just be worth 900 million you can watch good one every week at youtube.com
0:45:12 what’s a kennedy doing in rural america i was in west virginia met with this young organizer that young
0:45:18 man said we’ve got an idea of what we want to do help us realize it don’t tell us what we’re doing
0:45:23 wrong don’t denigrate us in this process and he’s right i’m preet barara and this week former
0:45:29 congressman joe kennedy the third joins me on my podcast stay tuned with preet to discuss the
0:45:35 democrats condescension problem his controversial uncle rfk jr and why he’s going to deep red states
0:45:41 to build a movement from the ground up the episode is out now search and follow stay tuned with preet
0:45:47 wherever you get your podcasts
0:45:52 we’re back with more from ben stiller
0:46:02 we have a lot of young men who listen to the podcast and i’m curious what and a lot of these
0:46:08 men are starting families what advice and none of us have got this figured out figured it out but in
0:46:14 terms of your own approach to being a dad the role that your parents have had on you trying to
0:46:18 straddle line between that tension we’re talking about around your own creative process and focusing
0:46:22 on your own career such that you can be a provider while being present as a parent
0:46:29 being separated for a few years um that always creates a different dynamic with your kids what
0:46:34 advice would you have for dads as they are thinking about or just starting their journey around fatherhood
0:46:42 oh wow that’s a good question oh man well i would say that you know coming out the other end here with
0:46:51 the kids who are in their 20s now practically my son’s 19 dar’s 23 um it goes by quickly and there’s a
0:46:58 really um short amount of time that you’re able to really you know be connected to your kids before
0:47:01 they go out into the world it’s not it’s not even when they’re in their 20s you know it’s by the time
0:47:07 they’re whatever 13 14 years old they’re they’re socializing and you know there’s so many other
0:47:14 influences that are coming in and i i think when i was younger with my kids when they were that age um
0:47:24 i was i was a little bit daunted by by parenting and i might say that my mother you know talking about
0:47:31 my mom’s influence my mom was daunted by parenting too i think engaging with your kids trying to
0:47:39 set an example of what you do in terms of to be healthy for yourself taking care of yourself
0:47:49 um but also reaching out to your children and being open to what they’re giving back to you
0:47:55 in a way that might not be what you had imagined in other words like with my daughter when she was
0:48:02 younger you know i used to it we had a tougher relationship but it was more because i wasn’t
0:48:07 meeting her where she was i wanted i was like i you know and i would want her to be interested in
0:48:12 something that i was interested in and she was interested in what she was interested in and so
0:48:21 um having a willingness to to go to to do that it’s you have to kind of sacrifice a little bit of
0:48:28 like what you think you’re you know you you want that relationship to be and and be there and and and
0:48:35 open to it and not run away from it because i i think it’s you know for some guys it’s you know having
0:48:43 babies and infants and toddlers it’s really intimidating and i i think leaning into it and
0:48:48 just knowing that it’s a time that’s going to go by very quickly even if it’s not the most comfortable
0:48:56 for you because it’s a world that you’re not that confident in um and being able to just like just be
0:49:01 open to what your kids are giving you back is really important it’s not that easy i don’t think
0:49:08 yeah agreed and what you said really resonates in that is i i have i imagine that my sons would just
0:49:12 naturally be fascinated by crossfit and world war ii history because they would have such a
0:49:17 fascination with all things dad that they’d want to be into what i’m into and then i found out no
0:49:22 they have no interest in these things and being a dad means you have to fake interest in what they’re
0:49:27 interested like oh yeah let’s go get pokemon cards i mean totally totally and and by the way once you
0:49:32 do that you do get a lot back because all of a sudden you’re engaged with your kids
0:49:39 how is your approach to your primary relationship different post-reconciliation than it was pre-reconciliation
0:49:44 what advice would you have for young men trying to have a fruitful and rewarding relationship with their
0:49:53 partner um well it’s a lot of it is i think compromise and you know if you really care about this person
0:50:00 you have to figure out again like how to meet them where they’re at also um if you have a career or
0:50:08 something that you’re really focused on or um you know your revolves around you know the things you
0:50:15 want to do you have to uh communicate and really talk about you know what’s important to both of you
0:50:21 and that’s the thing i i guess like you know i just said it before but the gift of getting back
0:50:26 together is that you realize that you know just because you’re married or just because you say you
0:50:32 have a commitment to each other it doesn’t mean that it’s going to work you have to you have to um
0:50:39 be present every day and have a back and forth where you can say like you know like hey you
0:50:45 know i want to do this thing for me can you be there for me and then when they have something that they
0:50:51 need you for be willing to sacrifice it i mean i think sacrifice your own stuff and i don’t know you
0:50:58 know like things like just i think a lot of human nature comes out of you know insecurity and jealousy
0:51:04 and relationships and you know if you can have that confidence of like saying okay you know i’m
0:51:10 i’m gonna be okay with you going out and doing your thing um if if you’re in a good relationship that’s
0:51:15 gonna you know that’s gonna help you so much and it doesn’t always work out because sometimes people
0:51:20 are in different places and they’re not doing what they should be doing but if you’re you know if you
0:51:24 are a good couple you’re meant to be together you have to give each other the freedom
0:51:30 and have to trust so i affectionately say we’re the exact same age um i affectionately say we’re kind
0:51:37 of on the back nine kind of hanging out and waiting for the ass cancer like what what is literally i had
0:51:42 the prostate cancer already oh that’s right oh my god that was so yeah that was so that was so uncouth
0:51:47 of me that’s right you actually had prostate cancer yeah yeah talk a little bit about that experience
0:51:53 and how it how if and how it changed you well it’s scary it’s scary that makes sense
0:51:59 that was so awful i make a i make an irreverent reference to ass cancer and you raised your hand
0:52:04 and said oh well i did have ass cancer i had prostate cancer i’ve spent a little bit of time with you and
0:52:11 i as much as i talk about my kids and my parents you talk about ass cancer look i think we have the
0:52:16 beginnings of the madagascar six prostate cancer i think it’s coming there it is and didn’t i tell
0:52:22 you that if you get a colonoscopy i think i told you this at the wedding uh you get a colonoscopy you
0:52:28 go to the right doctor he explains to you why colonoscopy is a good thing because it’s if there’s stuff in
0:52:35 there they can get it before it gets bad so anyway uh it was very scary because all of a sudden it’s like
0:52:39 everything is like boom stop you know i mean everything we’re talking about it’s like stop
0:52:44 you don’t know if you’re going to be alive in you know six months if you don’t you know if this
0:52:55 doesn’t get dealt with it’s um like your worst fear and i had a bad diagnosis in terms like the doctor
0:53:00 wasn’t great when he told me you know he’s like uh i’m gonna you know first of all it’s like you know
0:53:07 you do a psa test which i recommend every every guy who’s like in 45 and up that’s kind of unreliable
0:53:12 though yeah but you have to watch it and my doctor started testing me early it was supposed to be 50 but
0:53:16 he started testing around 45 and he saw it growing and then you do a biopsy when they see something
0:53:24 that’s spiking up there um which is scary and they stick a needle in your in that near butt and it’s not
0:53:32 good and then all of a sudden you know you’re in a room with the guy saying like yeah yeah it’s cancer
0:53:39 so uh wait let me check my notes again yeah yeah it’s definitely cancer he’s like yeah so it’s cancer
0:53:47 um and it it was i got a different doctor because i wanted a better hoping for a different diagnosis
0:53:53 yeah no i just wanted a guy who was gonna actually like just you know i felt like yeah empathetic but
0:54:01 then i went to um this amazing guy ted schaefer uh dr edward schaefer who’s now chief of oncology at
0:54:07 northwestern he was at john hopkins at the time johns hopkins at the time and he um you know met with me
0:54:13 and he’s any and he laid it out and and said you know you gotta do this operation and that’s the only
0:54:19 choice and and did the operation and that was it you know that was 10 years ago yeah so cancer free
0:54:25 so but is it one of those things where it was a speed bump and you’re back to what you do or are
0:54:31 there certain instances where you think you approach it or perceive it differently kind of post that scare
0:54:37 um well the great thing about human nature is that you know when you get further away from an event
0:54:44 is painful you kind of you know how you forget it a little bit um my first psa test that came back
0:54:52 you know zero after operation whatever when it was like yeah you’re officially you know it’s cancer
0:54:58 free you know that was i cannot tell you like what a great feeling that was so whenever anybody i know
0:55:03 or even somebody i see on twitter or something says hey you know just got my cancer free diagnosed
0:55:09 that’s to me i know what that feeling is and i tried to hold on to it but if i’m being honest
0:55:14 as the years go by you start to you do put it in the rearview mirror um but you walk around with a
0:55:19 sense of like at any moment something could happen and you know this obviously just because you had cancer
0:55:26 once doesn’t mean you can’t get cancer again um and or something else can happen to us obviously so it’s
0:55:32 an appreciation i think um and something that you kind of carry with you there’s also you know
0:55:38 it’s traumatic it’s traumatic to go through anything like that i was really lucky i was really really
0:55:43 lucky um i have friends who have dealt with you know cancer where the treatments have gone on for years
0:55:49 even successful treatments but you know put put them through the ringer and you know what toll that can
0:55:53 take and the tough thing is being able to go forward and do all this stuff you want to do in your
0:55:58 life and just not think about it but getting it’s like in three months i got to get that scan you know
0:56:06 and see if i’m um and i’ve had so i mean so many people why can’t we scott why can’t we cure cancer
0:56:12 that’s a very good question these like moonshots and money and like could you know one of these
0:56:17 billionaires just put you know all the money in the world hearing it slowly i think just seven years ago
0:56:21 we passed a threshold where more people survive cancer now than die from it so i don’t think we ever
0:56:25 cure it i think we just get better at figuring out a way that you die from something else
0:56:32 yeah we can treat it really well but it’s it’s also i you know so it’s just like it takes such
0:56:37 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
0:56:42 money think about what it’s you know 40 of american households have some sort of medical or dental debt
0:56:47 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
0:56:52 yeah i was incredibly lucky that i i didn’t have to worry about that at all and when i think about
0:57:00 you know just what what people have to deal with uh you know on a daily basis when when they do get
0:57:06 these diagnoses and also like access to good doctors and you know people who care because like
0:57:10 i was able to find a different doctor when i didn’t like my doctor but most people can’t do that you
0:57:16 know i have a friend who’s involved with ai and i’m sure you know much more about ai than i do who
0:57:21 says that like in the seven next seven or eight years they’ll be huge they keep saying that ben we
0:57:26 keep waiting the whole singularity we’re going to grow limbs and peach petri dishes and flying cars
0:57:31 i’ve gotten pretty cynical what do you think so you think we’re just going to figure out new applications
0:57:37 that depress our daughters i’ve become very cynical about it i don’t i hope there’s an we’ve been on the
0:57:42 age of this great dawn of discovery for what feels like 40 years now where everyone’s saying we’re on
0:57:48 the edge of unbelief so ai is obviously tremendous opportunity to speed the cycle time of testing and
0:57:54 discovery but yeah so let’s cross our fingers but i’m i’m as you can tell and you know me a little
0:57:58 bit i’m a glass half empty kind of guy just in our remaining time here we only have a couple minutes
0:58:04 you’ve been very generous where i was headed with our age if you will you got a good relationship
0:58:09 my sense is you have a good relationship with your kids you’ve obviously like had a pretty
0:58:15 you know other than you know several thousand misfires you’ve had you occasionally get lucky
0:58:21 occasionally with the buckshot of your career hit something um you know you’ve had you really have
0:58:29 from all dimensions you’ve had a pretty storied career like what trying to trying literally just
0:58:36 if you can lowering your guard what do you want to accomplish and in 10 years
0:58:42 what are you hoping to accomplish that you haven’t yet or is it just more of the same
0:58:50 that’s a really good question um because i think about that a lot at this age i’m sure you do too
0:58:57 it’s like so clear that we’re what the runway is right and like that’s it’s and it it it’s um
0:59:10 and time goes by so quickly um i feel like i want to make some more movies that ex that are closer like
0:59:14 this documentary is probably like the most personal thing i worked on and i realized oh
0:59:21 for me i for a long time i started working before i even knew why i was doing it i just
0:59:29 had this instinct to do it and now i have a sense of wanting to um i guess just explore
0:59:41 filmmaking in a way for me that will allow me to get closer to um expressing myself and and
0:59:48 trying things and not being afraid of failure and going out and just doing it because i love doing it
0:59:58 um and so in 10 years i hope that i continue to do that and then also found the uh time to
1:00:05 to just do the things i love doing and be places i love being but the creative process is really
1:00:09 important to me and honestly like i just hope you know 10 years 20 years i still have my faculties and
1:00:16 i can enjoy the people i love and uh keep asking these questions of why we’re here and what is it all about
1:00:27 and um and connect with people uh in some way through through the creativity um you know i i love comedy
1:00:34 too because i find it really challenging but when it’s done well it can really you know it really
1:00:42 can unlock a lot for people um but i i don’t know like for me i’m still trying to find my voice i think
1:00:48 even at this late age to tell you the truth ben stiller is an actor director and comedian responsible
1:00:57 for many films including meet the parents zoolander um meet the focus focus focus focus the fox sounds
1:01:05 like fuckers um i mean just there’s like tropic thunder just it’s it’s staggering the the the book of
1:01:13 work here and most recently the hit tv series which is which is just kind of at least rocking the
1:01:20 galloway household jesus christ i’m sick of hearing about it uh severance which is uh um airing now on
1:01:25 apple television he joins us from his home in westchester ben you know occasionally you meet
1:01:29 people and there you have this image of what they be like you are literally and this doesn’t happen
1:01:35 that often you’re exactly as i’d imagine you’re this nice man who has managed to maintain some
1:01:40 semblance of humility i remember when we went to the us open together every person that kind of walked by
1:01:45 and saw you and was like oh my gosh that’s ben stiller and would stop and this happened a dozen times
1:01:53 every time you made an effort to be thoughtful act really receptive and warm and i can’t imagine
1:01:58 and you seem like you like people but that’s at some point that is an effort but you make that effort
1:02:03 you’re generous with your time and you never i never got the sense that you took for granted your celebrity
1:02:08 so anyways i’ve really enjoyed obviously your body of work but i’ve enjoyed um it’s just nice to meet
1:02:13 someone who kind of is exactly as you would imagine and hope they would be congratulations on all your
1:02:31 success man thanks man i appreciate you i love what you do and i feel the same way about you thanks brother