Previously I had the pleasure of writing a tribute to the great actor, Jerry Stiller, pop culturally famous for his roles on Seinfeld and The King of Queens. A man with a resume far greater than those two sitcoms. I imagine he would say that his greatest contribution to the world was not his work, but his family. One of the many performers in his family, is his son Ben Stiller.
I first became aware of Ben Stiller in the fall of 1992 when I came across his show, The Ben Stiller Show airing on the Fox Television Network. At that time, Fox was still very early in its history as a television network. More young, more experimental that its older cousins, CBS, NBC, and ABC. In the Detroit area, at that time, Fox aired on WKBD, channel 50. Growing up, Channel 50 had always been the independent station in town. Free from any network affiliations, it carried lots of sports. The Red Wings, Pistons, and eventually the Tigers were all carried by channel 50. The late 1980’s had very talented and popular hockey and basketball teams in the Detroit area. In addition, channel 50 carried all the best afternoon cartoons (Inspector Gadget, GI Joe, Alvin and the Chipmunks), the best repeats (Honeymooners, Hogan’s Heroes, Brady Bunch, What’s Happening, Leave It To Beaver). And the only 10pm newscast in town, featuring the face of the channel, Amyre Makupson. I assume it would be the equivalent to stations such as WGN in Chicago or WOR in New York.
Channel 50 eventually became affiliated with Fox, but for the longest time that meant very little, since Fox only had enough programming to fill up a night or two of each week with shows. Eventually, as Fox expanded its nightly lineup, this led to many conflicts with all of the sports programming that channel 50 carried. The television shows would get bumped to weekend afternoons, or even very late at night (after Star Trek: The Next Generation repeats). That is where I stumbled on to The Ben Stiller Show, after watching Captain Jean-Luc Picard take on the Borg. Here was this sketch comedy show, starring a guy I never heard of, which was cracking me up.
As most red-blooded, suburban American teenagers of that era, I was a fan of Saturday Night Live. It was weekly appointment television, unless of course, Saturday Night’s Main Event was on instead, which to a 12-year old kid was pretty much just as awesome as SNL. Hulk Hogan could be taking on Zeus or Earthquake! Or maybe the Mega Powers would break up! But I am getting way off the subject. Perhaps that is another article for another day.
I first discovered SNL during the era with Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, Dennis Miller, and Jon Lovitz. Ironically, Ben Stiller was a featured performer on SNL in 1989, which would have been right during the timeframe I would have been watching the show, but I have zero memory of him being part of the cast. The Ben Stiller Show ran on MTV for the year prior to it being on Fox. Even though I watched my fair share of MTV (Totally Pauly, The Real World, Kennedy, Duff, Cherry Pie by Warrant), I have zero recollection of the MTV version of The Ben Stiller Show. Once I finally stumbled onto his show during that late night on Fox’s Detroit affiliate, however, I would become an instant Ben Stiller fan. Looking forward to and following his films for decades to come.
The Ben Stiller Show really has a remarkable cast of players. Performers that would go on to much greater success. Co-Created by Judd Apatow, he would later go on to co-create the phenomenal television show, Freaks and Geeks, as well as numerous films such as Superbad and The 40-Year Old Virgin. The four members of the cast of The Ben Stiller Show were Ben Stiller, Andy Dick (Newsradio), Janeane Garofalo (Larry Sanders Show, Reality Bites), and Bob Odenkirk (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul). All would go on to success in future endeavors. Bob Odenkirk and David Cross were among the show’s writers, and would later create another great sketch comedy show, HBO’s Mr. Show with Bob and David.
I did not know any details about the cast of the show back then, I was just a teenage kid that found a show that made me laugh. And I loved it. Nobody really watched it, as best as I could tell. There was no discussion of the show in the cafeteria at school the next day. Perhaps that was because of the crazy time slots in which the show would frequently air in the Detroit area. (I can remember programming my VCR to record the show at 2am. Or staying inside on a beautiful Saturday afternoon because channel 50 was going to be running The Ben Stiller Show at 3:30pm, sandwiched in between an infomercial and a Red Wings-North Stars game.) But it wasn’t just because of the strange pre-empted time slots in Detroit, it was low-rated everywhere. The Ben Stiller Show was quite literally one of the, if not the, lowest rated shows on TV. I received Entertainment Weekly Magazine every week in the mail back then. The Bottom 10 TV shows would be listed each and every week. The Ben Stiller Show was neck and neck with other Fox shows, but quite often most weeks it would be the least viewed show on all of American network television.
Ben Stiller came from a showbiz family and got into the business at a young age. He would appear on the soap opera Guiding Light as a teenager. In the 1980’s he would appear on Broadway with actor John Mahoney (best known for playing father Martin Crane of the television show Frasier). In 1986 Ben Stiller created a short film parody of The Color of Money, called The Hustler of Money, in which Mahoney would costar. As best I can tell, it was just a personal project, comedy for comedy’s sake, which eventually found its way to Saturday Night Live. SNL would air the parody, and hire Ben Stiller as a writer and sometime performer. The film parody, The Hustler of Money, is very similar to the style of what Ben Stiller would end up doing on The Ben Stiller Show. In fact, later on in his career once he was a more well-known commodity, Ben Stiller would host the MTV Movie Awards and create many more film parodies.
SNL hired Stiller based on his skills at creating pre-taped parody and comedy, but then neglected to use him for those express purposes. Strange, since that is a significant part of what SNL does these days. In fact, the very early years of SNL contained more comedy variety as well. It seems as if Ben Stiller’s supreme talent unfortunately coincided with a time frame in the history of SNL in which the only kind of comedy which was allowed was the live sketch.
Stiller left SNL, and landed at MTV and then at Fox, where I took notice of him. Even though his show was short-lived and low-rated, I guess I was not the only person who noticed him. The show would take home the Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a Variety Show, despite its cancellation after 13 episodes (only 12 of which actually aired on Fox).
Ben Stiller would later go on to a successful movie career. As the seemingly lone fanatic of his show, I would try to seek out many of his films just because he was in them. Reality Bites would be his first big post-TV film. Roles in If Lucy Fell and The Cable Guy would follow. Then, in 1998, the film that would rocket him into the pop stratosphere, leaving the niche status behind, There’s Something About Mary. A rated-R comic powerhouse, from the creators of Dumb and Dumber. I think I missed jokes the first time I saw it, because I was still laughing so hard at the previous joke.
That led into a nice stretch of films in the 2000s in which Ben Stiller regularly appeared at the box office. Maybe his films were not making money like a Marvel Comics superhero film, but they were mostly successful and well-received by audiences. Stiller would star in the Meet The Parents/Fockers films. Sillier films like Zoolander, Along Came Polly, The Royal Tennenbaums. Frat Pack movies with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. Starsky and Hutch, Dodge Ball. Plus family films like the Night at the Museum series. He also starred in, along with Robert Downey Jr and Jack Black, an almost uncategorizable film like Tropic Thunder. Stiller was rather prolific in the early 2000s.
In the 2010s, his career seems to have waned somewhat, but he made two films that I have really enjoyed. Tower Heist, which also featured Eddie Murphy, Casey Affleck, Alan Alda, Judd Hirsch, Tea Leoni, and Matthew Broderick among others. Stiller plays the Building Manager of a luxury apartment building in New York City. As a borderline obsessive fan of New York City, I really enjoyed this film as it takes place during the iconic Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Alan Alda portrays a Bernie Madoff like person, and the employees of the building set out to take financial revenge against him.
Stiller then starred in, along with Kristen Wiig and Adam Scott, and directed The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I absolutely love this film. I think it is my favorite movie of his. Unfortunately, much like The Ben Stiller Show, I cannot find many other people that have seen it, and certainly not many that seem to love it as much as me. However, just read the comments on YouTube about the film. Those of us that do love the film absolutely adore it.
The film is quite literally about life, and I think it is beautifully shot and written. Please, as a favor to me, go watch this movie.
A few years ago, I rewatched The Ben Stiller Show via Netflix, wanting to see if it remained deserving of the high esteem in which I held it. I am happy to report that it still cracked me up. The sketches may be a little dated since it was 25 years old (now nearing 30 years old). Parodies of A Few Good Men, Die Hard or a grunge music version of The Monkees TV show might not be terribly pop culturally relevant today. But for those that understand the references, the comedy holds up very well.
Don’t let this be the best show you have never seen, go out and see it. See The Secret Life of Walter Mitty too while you are at it. Ben Stiller has been entertaining me for 30 years now, you have some catching up to do! You’re probably quarantined inside right now anyways, might as well binge view all things Ben Stiller. And then we can all look forward to another 30 years of being entertained by Ben Stiller.
-MTR