Ben Stiller and the Curse of the Sequel

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Okay, I'm starting to record something for you. Um, I just gotta say off the bat, I'm so bad with anything technological. I've spent the last ten minutes fucking this up and, uh, oh man, it's so frustrating to me.

All right, all right, I think I got everything working. now. You're hearing my voice, right? We're making a podcast. It's called Fail Better, and I'm David Duchovny.

Why am I making a podcast? The best answer I can come up with is that I've felt like I've been failing my entire life, so on some level, I can speak from plenty of experience. I've had personal failures like we all have. I've had professional failures like we all have. I have things that I've been called as an actor.

I had a high-profile divorce. I had a magical mystery tour through rehab. We don't have to get into specifics now, but stay tuned. Maybe we will.

There's a sense in which failure looms over us, and I want to know what's good about that, and I want to know what's bad about that, what's inhibiting about that, what is pushing us forward to be better and what is holding us back in shame. That's what I want to get into. That would be a wonderful result of this, if even a little bit of shame in our lives could fall away.

One of my most painful professional failures is kind of what prompted the whole idea for this podcast. I was in Canada shooting a movie, and my movie, House of D, that I wrote and directed, the first movie that I directed, had just come out in the States, and what I read is in bold letters, David Duchovny's House of D gets an F. An F. An F. And the hairs on my neck started to do weird things.

I could feel sweat dropping from my armpit to my waist. I could feel my ears getting red. I had vertigo. I don't know what else to call it, but when you just feel shame or humiliation, and it's a real interior feeling, like you're sent kind of deeply inside yourself in some kind of childhood shame. And the first line of the review was,

Have David Duchovny's brains been abducted by aliens? Hoo, hoo, hoo. Good one. Yeah, it was a good one because it, I mean, that just went, you know, it hurt. I get to my trailer, and I'm still like in this kind of vibrating, you know, dizzying,

jittery state. Like I'd had ten cups of coffee, but it was like shame coffee. The best, strongest coffee of all.

But then I thought, you know, I have a job to do. These people have hired me to act on their movie.

My review from another movie is not their problem, not their interest. So I kind of tell myself I've got to suck it up. I've got to figure out a way to go out there and do decent work today, even do good work, you know, do work. And so I do that. I go out, and I have a day.

I can't remember, you know, if the work was good or bad or indifferent. I suppose it was good enough. And then I went home, went to bed, and I woke up, and I feel fantastic. Like I've never felt better. And I remember, oh, that paper.

Oh, that review. And I realized in that moment that I felt so light and free is because my whole life I'd been terrified of getting an F. From school on, you know, from childhood on, just like an F. I think at some point in my head I made the equation F equals death. And here I was on a Saturday morning in Montreal, and the sky was blue, and I was breathing air, and I was drinking coffee, and I was feeling good, and I had my F.

Because I realized that you don't die when you get an F. And I'm so happy now, all these years later, to have gotten that F and to have been somewhat freed from the tyranny of pass-fail, of A, B, C, D. Why did they leave out E? What happened to E? Why can't E be a grade?

Why did they go from D to F? I guess because of failure.

Fail. Better is a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are. This is my very first interview. It's my very first interview that I've ever done. I've been an interviewee.

I'd never been an interviewer. And it's a different seat. It's a different vibe. But luckily, my first time is with a man who I've been fortunate enough to fail alongside a few times over the years. He lasted only four episodes on Saturday Night Live.

His sketch comedy show won an Emmy after it had already been canceled. He is the man who directed The Cable Guy, and he's responsible for Zoolander 2.. That's right, it's Ben Stiller, my friend, and here's our conversation.

Hey, there you are.

What I wanted to say to you was, do you remember how we came to do Zoolander together? I say together. I had a small part in it, but, you know.

Well, can I read it? And then I read it, and I think I got in touch with your reps and said, I would love to do anything that you want me to do, and you offered me the brother role or the hand model. And I thought, I'll do the hand model. I think I can understand that. So we go and we're on set, and we're shooting, what was that island off the coast of New York City?

We did it like 3,, 4, 5 times, and the 4th or 5th time, I fucked up. I flubbed the line or whatever. And you and Christine both said, finally. And I was just so liberated by that, because I was trying to be perfect. I was trying to get it right, get it right, get it right.

And that was like a moment of gratitude I had for you, as a director, as a creative artist, and everything, to just recall that, to recall that moment.

A couple times. And we ended up leaving it in the movie. It seemed like Derek was just stupid. It was really just me being stupid.

But why male models?

But it was maybe my second or third role in a movie, one scene or one or two scenes, and she was grilling some food on a barbecue outside of her apartment, and we were on the porch, and I was trying to be tough, and so I took a piece of meat off the barbecue and I ate it. It was so ridiculous. But God bless the director, his name is John Ehrman, and Bette for giving me this opportunity to play this guy, and I was so nervous, trying to be cool. And I remember the script supervisor who's in charge of keeping track of the continuity, that you do the same thing. every take, said, oh, no, no, no, you picked it up with your left hand, or you picked it up on this line, the last take, you should pick it up there.

And I was so nervous because I'd never been in that type of situation. And I remember the director just jumped in and said, no, no, no, don't worry, don't worry, he hasn't found it yet, let's just let him do his thing. And it was like a little moment like that, like you're talking about, that, I always remembered. That the director was there, kind of like going, no, no, no, it's okay. You know what I mean?

Like all of this machinery and these things, that you can get judged about, or that you don't know when you're walking in, it was a slightly different situation. But it's the same thing where somebody just gave me the freedom to say it's okay to just figure it out. But that does get to the essence, I think, of what it is to have to take these chances when you do anything creatively, for sure.

Let it be Lohenbrau. And so I get there and they tell me, okay, there's no dialogue, it's just like an image of me and an older guy at a bar, and they tell me he's an old professor of mine that I run into. That's the vibe they want to get from us.

And at one point, it's very much like your meat thing. I tossed a pretzel up into the air and caught it in my mouth, just, Mr. At Ease, at the bar. And the director was like, yeah, that's good. And then I just glommed onto it.

I couldn't stop tossing pretzels up in the air and catching them in my mouth. And finally, I just rung the director on, we got the pretzel, we got the pretzel. And then the shame just started. Like, you know, when somebody sees what you're trying to do, it's the worst.

And I pronounced it bris, B-R-I-S, bris, like brie cheese, the whole monologue. And at the end of that audition they said, thank you very much. And it's pronounced bris. Next.

Oh, yeah. I mean, and especially at that point when you're just starting out and you're lucky enough to get work, it's so exciting to get the work and it's so charged. It's, you know, at least I've always felt so nervous, you know. Yeah. I mean, you know, like all these things are like, I think, as time goes by, I don't know.

We just change as people, I think, you know. We change as people over the years. And I have a different perspective on, you know, like when I look at myself 20 years ago, I'll watch, like B-roll footage, which is like, you know, behind the scenes, footage of like on a film or movie, you know, of like me making jokes about something and I'm thinking I'm really funny. And like I look at this guy and like thinks like he's just knows what, and I'd look like such an asshole. Right.

Just like, oh, this guy really thinks like he's got it all figured out. But there's something about when you're young too, there's that aspect of like, okay, you have this. Right? Just this drive.

And I had it too. Like, when I first started acting, I was like, ah, I'm fantastic. I'm, you know, I'm, you know, fuck, you know, I'm just gonna like, I'm just gonna like get, you know, like I look at old X-Files and I'm like, oh man, that is just bad.

But there's an eagerness that is kind of winning, you know? Right. And then at some point, I feel like I lost that eagerness. And then, like, what do you replace that with? It?

just, you become a different kind of a maker.

or understanding of why I wanted to have that conversation with movies and TV, other than I loved them and I wanted to be a part of it. And I grew up around it, obviously, with my parents. Right. But I have to say, like, failure, you know, has contributed to that in a big way. Because I think the times where I've, like, experienced that, they were pretty, you know, there were a couple, I'd say there were two, like, professional ones.

that really, like, I feel like, really affected me.

And when the movie came out, it was not well-received and did not make a lot of money at the box office. And it was the first movie that Jim Carrey did that didn't do well. Right. And I remember picking up the New York Times review of that. I remember where I was, at the St.

Regis Hotel, and, like, opening up the New York Times review, which said the first disaster movie of the summer has arrived, and it's called The Cable Guy. Because at that time, you know, like, disaster movies were a big thing too. Yeah. And that was kind of shocking, because it was just like, oh, whoa. Like, I thought this was, I thought, like, we were so into this, and we were having so much fun doing it, and Jim was so into it.

And we spent so much time and energy making this thing. You know, that thing of, like, you're going, wait a minute, wait a minute. This, I thought this was, but, like, this is the thing we worked really hard on, and we all really think it's good. But I did feel the lull, in terms of, after that, of, like, kind of people not calling. You know what I mean?

You don't get a lot of calls. First of all, you don't get calls. It's that thing when, like, the movie, comes out and it doesn't do well. You always get, like, you get a lot of, like, you know, calls and, like, congratulations when things are going well. When something isn't good, like, it's just this silence.

There's nobody calling.

Thank you. I wasn't aware.

You know, this feeling of shame. Yeah. And, you know, what you were just talking about at the beginning. to me, like, that's beautiful. I love that story that you kind of woke up just feeling free, because that's the reality of it, is that nothing has changed.

Okay, maybe somebody reads the review. who is a producer who might have, like, hired you, who now will go, like, oh, I don't want to hire him. Or somebody who doesn't like you will laugh at you or, like, talk to their friend about it. But in your reality, in the reality of the lives that we're, you know, living on this planet, like, nothing has changed.

. Like, your dog, didn't read the review and look at you like, yeah, that fucker.

That's for me. Like, when I would look at how somebody would react to something I did negatively,

it's usually because it's somehow.

. I'm somehow thinking, oh, yeah, you know, that's something that I agree with. that I don't, you know, liken myself.

. Like, what are you going to do? Quit the business? Are you going to stop doing it? Like, you?

have that moment where you go, okay, they're right. I suck. I'm awful.

And anytime that's happened with me, it's always allowed space for other things to happen in my life, you know? And, you know, eventually things change. Anytime you're, like, forced to have to just be with yourself, usually good things come out of that, because, you know, there's so many distractions in success.

That was, like, a really shocking one to me, because that was, like, later in life. And I was also, like, okay, well, I thought everybody wanted to see this movie. And I was, like, wow, I must have really fucked this up. that, like, everybody, didn't go to it and it's gotten, like, these horrible reviews. It was really...

It really freaked me out because I was, like.

. Yeah. I didn't know it was that bad. Like, that's what scared me the most on that. one was, like, wait a minute.

But it also.

. It was the same thing, only, you know, I wasn't as young, so it was, like, it's almost even, like, harder, too, because you're, like, well, wait a minute, you know. Like, what... Yeah. Right.

But for me, it was the same thing, by the way, as Cable Guy, too, where, like, then there was, like, kind of a quiet time. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And the wonderful thing that came out of that for me was... Again, was just, like, having space where, like, if that had been a hit, and they said, like, make Zoolander 3 right now, or, you know, offer some other movie, I would have just probably jumped in and done that. But I had this space to just kind of sit with myself and have to deal with it.

And other projects that I had been working on, not comedies, some of them, I had the time to actually just work on and develop. And it ended up giving me the space. And really, because I didn't really have a choice at that moment other than... Like, I wasn't, like... Even if somebody said, well, why don't you go do another comedy or do this?

Like, I probably could have figured out something to do, but I just didn't want to.

And I'd always.

. Why didn't you want to?

You're not going to get through later.

I always loved making movies. I always, in my mind, loved the idea of just directing movies since I was a kid. And not necessarily comedies. And so, over the course of, like, the next, like, nine or ten months, I was able to develop out this limited series, Escape at Dannemora, of these comics who escape, that I don't think would have happened if I had gotten distracted with something else. And for me, that was really transformative, because it was the first time I was ever directing something that I wasn't in, which had not been in my intention over all these years.

And I was so happy doing it. That kind of set me off on a different path that I don't think would have happened, you know, as a director, that I wouldn't have pursued or made the space to pursue if I'd had the success with Zooland.

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Well, I mean, there's lots that I'd love to talk to you about. Like growing up in New York, we were both, we're both half Jews, half, you know, your mom was Irish.

and do you think you wanted to make people laugh? Is that the first thing? Because your parents are professional, funny people, right? Is that like little Ben Stiller? Is he going, I'm going to make them laugh, I'm going to make them laugh?

They were doing television episodes. They were just like, kind of doing their thing. And they brought us along with them. But like, I think, as a kid, you know, you see that and there's something very, you know, exciting about it too.

I didn't really have the desire to be funny, funny. I think I remember very young, like being excited to be on a set and to see the cameras and to see like how they set stuff up and just like the aura of excitement when you're about to shoot something. I went on the set of Taking a Pelham 123 and my dad was like being around that and going, oh, this is the coolest thing ever. The making of movies, to me, was. that's what I remember as a little kid, thinking like, I want to be a part of making movies.

I mean, we'd do, we were just like, there was a lot of performing going on in the house. Like my parents, would go away to LA to like work, like do a love boat episode or do like Courtship of Eddie's Father, or, you know, they'd do a guest shot because they never moved to LA, and then my sister and I would be alone for, like, you know, a week or two weeks with our housekeeper, Hazel, who took care of us, and we would just like go crazy and then, you know, come back and we'd like act out like the first act of Jesus Christ Superstar for my parents or Pippin or something like that. So I guess we were trying to get their attention. But we definitely knew their act and they would, you know, like my mom, would have these jokes. like, you know, I'm Irish Catholic.

That means I'm paralyzed from the waist down. Like, you know, it was like, sort of like a joke that would never fly today, you know. And I was like, what does that even mean? Oh, she doesn't understand.

But we didn't even think, like it didn't even, we didn't question it. It was just sort of like, that's the act. You know, there's jokes. Right, right. So it was just part of, it, was just part of that.

There was like a, you know, it was a melding of the act and life, and all of it was intertwined. By the way, those 70 shows, because I have been looking at a lot of them for my parents thing, what people talked about on talk shows in the 70s was so real. Was it? Well, they just talk about real stuff. There's not funny anecdotes, you know, that you see now on The Tonight Show, where they ask you what you're going to talk about and you tell something funny.

People just talk about, like I have my parents talking about, like Barbara Walters asking my parents like, so, like when Jerry goes on the road, do you worry that he's going to cheat on you, Ann? Like things like that. But like for real. For real? Yeah, and everybody's like smoking cigarettes, and it's just amazing.

Everything was just so much more, like less polished, you know? Honestly, later on, like looking and exploring that stuff and seeing the reality of what it was like to be a kid in the 70s when your parents weren't around a lot and we were kind of left to our own devices a lot to take care of ourselves.

You know, parents were doing the best they could, but that was the reality, and watching your parents on TV was kind of like, wow, you know, that reality seemed more, in a way, more interesting to me than the reality of our lives.

But I wonder also, you know, because they were successful, but they were not like uber, successful and they were constantly, you know, they were gigging actors, right? They never could stop hustling. They never could stop hustling, right?

Like. I didn't, I wasn't comparing it. I didn't.

I wasn't aware of that. All I experienced would be maybe the residual feelings or tension between them. sometimes when they were having, my dad was trying to figure out how to get, you know, my mom to write with him, or when she was less interested in being, doing that, because my dad was more interested in doing the act and my mom wasn't.

Right. Things like that, but it wasn't ever conscious. It was just sort of like, okay, they're doing their thing and then, and you know, as a kid, you don't think that way. I think you don't, like, you're not even thinking about like your parents' issues. At least for me, I wasn't.

You know what I mean? No. I'm just thinking about myself.

Right. When we, when we become fathers, and we're thinking, oh, you know, my, I bet my son wishes that movie did, did more box office.

Oh, my God. My dad, you know, who I didn't think of as a failure or a success, he once said to me, I'm giving you one of the greatest things a father can ever give a child. I'm not very successful. That's what he said to me. And I, I had no idea what he, I didn't really know.

Yes, you're right. There's no such thing as half Jewish. Exactly. I just proved it.

And sometimes I, I was always like, maybe you're too comfortable with not giving up, but just like going, you know, like you don't always win them, you know, you're not always a winner. and it's funny how we, we kind of, we, reparent ourselves when we parent our kids, you know,

He's like, yeah, but I don't like when you're away and I, and I, and I feel like that, like, you know, we talk about failures, like definitely, as a parent, you always think about the things you could have done better, like to be around more, you know? Yeah. Um, but I also think like, but it's kind of like, Oh, that was a little bit of a cats in the cradle moment too for me,

well, I knew they had, they had a loving mom at home. I knew that.

So I wasn't leaving them alone, nor were you. So, but what I told myself was like, oh, I'm modeling an engaged person. You know, I'm modeling a person who's not just defining themselves as a father of this child. You know, I'm modeling an adult out in the world doing his or her thing, you know, and is that bad? You know, like, what's the balance?

You know, is the balance like, I'm just gonna be your father, you know, and I'm on you, I'm on you 24-7, you know? It's just me and you, buddy. Or is it, you know, I'm on you when I'm on you, 24-7, when I'm here, but I'm also, I'm into my life and I'm into my work, and I'm into the world, you know? Like, I don't know. I don't know the answer.

I don't even know what that would have been. That would have been worse.

Dressing them all in the same sweatshirt. Exactly, right.

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One other thing I wanted to ask you about, because it's weird when you get research about a friend that you're going to have a conversation with. I felt a little dirty. I don't want to...

. But that you did EST.

. Okay? 15 or 16.. So it's been a while. Okay.

It was a guy. I want to say. his name was Jose Silva. I'm not sure. Right.

Adam told me about.

. He. somehow... Maybe his dad knew about it or whatever. It was like the 70s.

You know, late 70s. And we went down to this... Like the 12th floor of a building on like 33rd Street, between like 7th and 8th Avenue, and did a seminar for like a weekend, where they taught you how to meditate and kind of visualize. The thing I remember from it was a thing called the three-finger technique. And they said you could use this if you're trying to find a parking spot.

If you.

. Yeah. And my researchers say, yes, it is Jose Silva. Okay. You are correct.

It is Jose Silva. And Est...

it was the idea that you have to, kind of like, accept that you are responsible for everything. So that was kind of the idea of what getting it was. In other words, not blaming, you know, just kind of taking responsibility.

. That one I did when I was 12, and it was children in a room for two weekends and they had... I just remember that they had pictures of emotions like anger, sadness, happiness. They had like different pictures of these cartoon characters representing emotions and they talked to us about like which emotions we connected with the most, and it was a little less intense than the adult training. Right.

But it's definitely weird. Well,

You know, it could be the mariachi guys, or, you know, De Niro and the Fockers, or whatever, you know, but there's always that moment where you've had enough and your anger is funny, and I don't know. That's the genius part. to me. It's like the people that can be, that can make the anger universally funny to all of us. and I'm going to try to relate it back to failure, because I think, you know, there's something in there that you're just tired of being shit on and being seen as an ineffectual failure in these movies.

and I'm just wondering, you know, like when you said Est, when I read Est, I was like, that's kind of like, he's like an Est counselor. There's always a moment where Ben is going to go fucking Est on you in a movie and I'm just, I don't know. I'm sure you never made the connection,

. I didn't, but I, I could, look, when you said that...

and where he had his, you know, most success, you know, on Seinfeld and King of Queens and people, the way that he would glow up and get angry, I always felt was, that was him releasing so much real, real rage and anger that he had, and you know, but he was the sweetest human being in the world who would suppress it, and he found this way to channel it in a way that was so incredibly funny, but it was coming from such a real place.

He loved being able to, and I think he was aware of that too, and, like he, kind of, it was for him, that's why he had so much joy in doing the work.

All right, I just wanted to get down some thoughts about doing the first podcast yesterday with Ben Stiller, and,

you know, I feel like a failure. It's funny, you know, you have this idea of what things are going to be, who knows, you know, maybe I'll figure it out for next time, but,

like, specifically, what I didn't like was, yeah, we can get to that point where we talk about failure, as, um, you know, a sign that we should try a different road, but what we don't get is, what's the process? How long does it take? Um, what is the mental process? What is the spiritual process? What is the emotional process?

And fuck me, I didn't ask any of those questions. Fucking jackass. And, um, I think Ben, uh, with the generosity of spirit, kind of touched on those things without me asking, so he probably saved my bacon, as they say. I don't know why they say that. Why do they say he saved my bacon?

He saved my ass. Uh, because he was super generous with his time and his, his thoughts and his feelings, and just generous to be the, the first guy to come on, uh, with me, you know, doing this thing that I don't know how to do, and that, uh, you know, the day after, I'm like, you, suck at that. It's the first time I did this thing. I've been an interviewee a lot in my life. I've never been an interviewer.

And I'd always thought that I'd be a terrific interviewer, so I was, I was dealing with, like, ooh, reality, smacking me in the face as I saw it. So, you can't just play Major League Baseball right away, can you? Yeah, but that's what we expect sometimes of ourselves, isn't it? So I think, you know, failure and expectation are, are twins.

Never quite what you imagine. Never quite the expected, and that's what life is, isn't it? So,

blah-de-blah-blah, baby.

There's more? Fail Better. with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content. like more of my behind-the-scenes thoughts on this episode.

Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts. Fail Better is a production of Lemonada Media in coordination with King Baby. It is produced by Keegan Zemma, Arya Bracci, and Donny Matias. Our engineer is Brian Castillo. Our SVP of Weekly is Steve Nelson.

Our VP of New Content is Rachel Neal. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Kropinski, and Kate D. Lewis. The show is executive produced by Stephanie Whittles-Wax, Jessica Cordova-Kramer, and me, David Duchovny. I mean, Duchovny.

Damn it. The music is also by me and my band, the lovely Colin Lee, Pat McCusker, Mitch Stewart, Davis, Rowan, and Sebastian Modak. Special thanks to Brad Davidson. You can find us online at Lemonada Media, and you can find me at David Duchovny.

How do I get away now?

There it is. I got it. I didn't leave this. Okay, there it is. Bye, David.

Bye, Keegan. I'll see you.

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