cover story - BEN STILLER

Ben Stiller gives The Heartbreak Kid a second chance

The first time Ben Stiller worked with the Farrelly Brothers, Bobby and Peter, the result was There’s Something About Mary. The crude, slapstick comedy was a huge success, thanks in part to several memorable bits of physical humour, including a scene in which Stiller’s character gets his privates caught in his fly, and another in which Cameron Diaz mistakes a bodily fluid for hair gel. Funny, yes. But not exactly family fare.

Which might explain why fans have been waiting nine years for the trio to reunite. In that time Stiller and his wife, actor Christine Taylor (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story), have had two kids, daughter Ella and son Quinlin. And, like so often happens, living in a house full of rugrats made Stiller’s movie choices more, shall we say, conservative. Witness last year’s surprise hit Night at the Museum, or the voice work he did for the animated feature Madagascar.

“When you have kids, you want to be able to go to movies that you can take the whole family to and actually all enjoy together — especially if you are starring in it,” says the 41-year-old native New Yorker in a recent L.A. interview. That desire to show his kids his movies meant a shift away from hard-edged comedies like Mary, Zoolander and Meet the Fockers. “I remember trying not to even use the word ‘Fockers’ around my daughter for as long as I could, because I didn’t want her going around saying it.”

But Stiller started to feel that he was limiting himself.

“Like any parent, I realized that if I didn’t want my kids to see some of my movies until they were older, then I could always change the channel, block it or something like that,” says Stiller, whose own parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, have been successful actors since the 1950s.

While there have long been rumours of a There’s Something About Mary sequel, one Farrelly brother says it just ain’t so. In a phone interview last year, Bobby Farrelly told me that he and Peter had considered the idea, but quickly rejected it.

“The studio that we did Mary at wanted another one really bad,” he says, “but we had a lot of other ideas that we wanted to try out first. Will we ever do one? You learn to never say never, but there’s not one planned in the immediate future. I think people just get anxious when we are making a movie and just call it Untitled Farrelly Brothers Project, thinking we are trying to hide the fact it is a Mary sequel.”

Stiller says he loved Charles Grodin’s performance in the original, and thinks director Elaine May — whose directing career came to a crashing halt with 1987’s Ishtar — did a tremendous job. “So when Peter and Bobby started talking to me about doing an updated version of it, I knew it would have to be something that just knocked me out,” he says. “The first one was very much about love, relationships and the society of the 1970s. It was funny, but in that ’70s cynical kind of way.

So the guys completely updated everything, and it has made it so fresh and funny.” This time, Stiller plays Eddie Cantrow, an aging bachelor who’s worried he may end up old and alone, particularly after attending an ex-girlfriend’s wedding. So, just six weeks after he starts dating the lovely Lila (Malin Akerman), he proposes.

After the wedding, Eddie and Lila take off for a honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. And that’s when Eddie starts to realize he’s made a huge mistake — Lila is crude, dumb and has terrible taste in music. Just as this sad picture is becoming clear, Eddie meets Miranda (Michelle Monaghan) and instantly feels she’s the one with whom he should spend the rest of his life.

“It definitely earns its R-rating,” Stiller says. “The Farrellys aren’t worried about being politically correct or if anyone is shocked by some of the scenes, they just want every joke, gag or antic to be hilarious. The thing about The Farrellys is that you know what you’re going to get before you walk into the theatre. It might make you blush at times, but it’s always going to make you laugh.”

Intensely close to his folks, Stiller was delighted when The Farrellys asked if he’d like his own father to play Eddie’s dad. “It’s always great to work with my parents, it’s really an honour for me because I consider them both such great actors and comedians,” says Stiller, who worked with his mom in last year’s Night at the Museum. “It’s interesting to kind of go back and forth with someone you’re related to, especially when you’re playing father and son,” he says.

Stiller says he often wonders what line of work he’d be in had he not grown up surrounded by actors, but insists that he and his wife won’t be disappointed if there is no third generation of acting Stillers.

“We’re going to let [our kids] make their own decisions and definitely not throw them in front of a camera until they want that,” he says. “I’d like to give them a fighting chance to decide what they want to do. If either of them decides to become an actor when they’re older, that’s cool with me. I’ll support them 100 percent, just like my parents stood behind me.”

Earl Dittman is a Houston-based entertainment writer.