Ben Stiller Directs

December 6 – 8

One of the biggest movie stars on the planet, Ben Stiller is also among our finest comic talents, a fearless performer with a gift for turning anxiety into comedy and back again. But what doesn’t get said often enough is that he is also an inventive, risk-taking filmmaker who has repeatedly demonstrated his versatility and ambition behind the camera. From the Generation X totem Reality Bites (1994) to the dark cult comedy The Cable Guy (1996) to the wild satires Zoolander (2001) and Tropic Thunder (2008), Stiller’s work as a director reveals a sharp and distinctive comic vision, not to mention an unparalleled eye for the giddy pleasures and dark absurdities of popular culture. Following the world premiere of his new film, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, at the 51st New York Film Festival, the Film Society of Lincoln Center celebrates Stiller’s body of work as a director—one that happens also to include several of his greatest performances.

Ben Stiller's mom, actress Anne Meara, dies

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Actress and comedian Anne Meara, whose comic work with husband Jerry Stiller helped launch a 60-year career in film and TV, has died. She was 85.

Jerry Stiller and son Ben Stiller say Meara died Saturday. No other details were provided.

The Stiller family released a statement to The Associated Press on Sunday describing Jerry Stiller as Meara's "husband and partner in life."

"The two were married for 61 years and worked together almost as long," the statement said.

The couple performed as Stiller & Meara on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and other programs in the 1960s and won awards for the radio and TV commercials they made together. Meara also appeared in dozens of films and TV shows, including a longtime role on "All My Children" and recurring appearances on "Rhoda," "Alf," "Sex and the City" and "The King of Queens." She shared the screen with her son in 2006's "Night at the Museum."

Meara was twice nominated for an Emmy Award for her supporting role on "Archie Bunker's Place," along with three other Emmy nods, most recently in 1997 for her guest-starring role on "Homicide." She won a Writers Guild Award for co-writing the 1983 TV movie "The Other Woman."

Besides her husband and son, Meara is survived by her daughter, Amy, and several grandchildren.

The family statement said: "Anne's memory lives on in the hearts of daughter Amy, son Ben, her grandchildren, her extended family and friends, and the millions she entertained as an actress, writer and comedienne."

Ben Stiller Mulls Giving Up Acting for Full-Time Directing After 'Walter Mitty'

The 47-year-old, best known for his work as an actor in blockbuster comedies, has directed five very different films over the past 20 years.

"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" Wilson Webb/Twentieth Century Fox

The 47-year-old, best known for his work as an actor in blockbuster comedies, has directed five very different films over the past 20 years.

"I'm not gonna be playing Lincoln in Lincoln 2," the actor-director Ben Stiller told me self-deprecatingly during a Q&A that followed a screening of his latest film, the $90 million dramedy The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, a few days ago at the inaugural AARP Movies for Grownups Film Festival in Los Angeles. "But as a director I feel much more freedom," he continued, adding, "There are just so many different kinds of movies that I can make that aren't limited by who I am as an actor."

After three years of work on Walter Mitty, which he describes as "an incredible experience" and "a gift," Stiller now contemplates a different future for himself in the film industry. "I definitely could see myself just directing, for sure," he said. "In fact, I feel like that's sort of what will end up happening as the roles dry up," he added with a laugh. "That's where I'd love to end up."

Stiller's directorial skills have evolved over the past 20 years through five very different films -- Reality Bites (1994), The Cable Guy (1996), Zoolander (2001), Tropic Thunder (2008) and now Walter Mitty -- all of which the Film Society of Lincoln Center will screen from Dec. 6-8 as part of "Ben Stiller Directs," a retrospective of his work as a director. That high honor follows the famously elitist group's decision to host the world premiere of Walter Mitty as the centerpiece film at October's New York Film Festival. It's quite a pair of compliments for a man whom most members of the general public know as an actor in comedy blockbusters like There's Something About Mary (1998) and Meet the Parents (2000).

In Walter Mitty, Stiller portrays a good-hearted but sad-sack loner who has known sadness, sacrificed for others and toiled all but invisibly for 16 years in the photo processing department at waning Life magazine. A perpetual daydreamer prone to awkwardness, he develops a crush on a co-worker (Kristen Wiig), but before he can muster the courage to do anything about it, he loses a photo from a famous photographer (Sean Penn), prompting his new boss (a heavily bearded Adam Scott) to announce that he will lose his job if he doesn't find it. In order to track it down, Walter Mitty must finally go out and experience the world.

The same general story, under the same exact title, has previously been told in several incarnations. It first popped up in 1939 as a James Thurber short story in The New Yorker, which was then adapted into a 1947 musical-comedy film starring Danny Kaye. Stiller was already familiar with both when he first read the script of a proposed non-singing film version that was penned by Steve Conrad, a friend with whom he had once tried to get another project off the ground. "It moved me," Stiller told me of Conrad's take on the story -- especially the way he ended it. "I felt something," Stiller said.

STORY: Roundtable: 6 Top Directors on Fighting With Studios, Firing Actors and Quitting Film School 

After nine months of finessing the script with Conrad and trying to convince 20th Century Fox to finance the project -- which would not be inexpensive, thanks to several big CGI sequences and location shooting in Iceland and other far-flung locations -- Stiller finally got his greenlight and began assembling his dream cast. Wiig, Penn, Scott and Shirley MacLaine, who cameos as Mitty's mother, were all his first choices for their respective parts. Patton Oswalt, whose voice plays a key part in the film, has been a pal for 20 years. Others who were cast from as far as Iceland became dear friends, as well.

The key to Walter Mitty, Stiller realized, was to keep a film that required big, fantastical moments of action-adventure in order to illustrate Mitty's vivid imagination grounded in a character study. The extent to which he accomplished that goal will be judged by critics and viewers. But the experience that Stiller had while trying to make that happen, both as a director and actor, is his alone, and is one that he says he will always treasure.

Going forward, though, he is categorically less interested in remaining a multi-hyphenate. "On Mitty, there weren't a lot of days when I wasn't acting and directing," he says. "But on Tropic Thunder the days when I wasn't acting were my favorite days, because I got to just be there and stand behind the monitor and work with the actors." If audiences turn out for Walter Mitty, as he hopes they will, he will get many more opportunities to do so in the future.

Ben Stiller's Mom Anne Meara Dies at Age 85; Ben Stiller Remembers Actress and Comedian Mother on Twitter

Ben Stiller and his mom Ann Meara.

Anne Meara passed away on April 23, 2015

Comedienne and actress Anne Meara passed away on May 23, 2015, the same day as the great mathematician John Nash.  Anne Meara is remembered as the part of the husband and wife comedy duo "Stiller and Meara", her extensive acting career, as well as being the mother of Ben Stiller, the actor/comedian.  Her son has recently tweeted about his late mother and her passing while in Rome filming Zoolander 2.

Meara began her career as one of the Compass Players, an improvisational theater troupe that eventually evolved into Second City.  It was here that she met her future husband Jerry Stiller and they married in 1953.  It would take a while before they formed a comic duo known as "Stiller and Meara". 

"Stiller and Meara" were regulars on The Ed Sullivan Show, and they also appeared on other variety shows at the time like Johnny Carson or Mike Douglas.  Meara was an Irish redhead that performed with her Jewish husband in many numbers, including one where she played Elizabeth Doyle and Jerry played Hershey Horowitz.  Elizabeth was Catholic and Hershey was Jewish, and the only thing that they seemed to have in common was their affection for each other. 

In addition to the comedy duo, Anne did many projects such as plays, and she even played a witch in Macbeth in 1957.   She appeared in the third season of Rhoda as Sally Gallagher, a wisecracking cook on Archie Bunker's Place, several episodes of ALF, as well as Sex and the City.  Though she was more cast for her comedic talents, she could do drama just as well.  The NY Times states that she said in an interview for the Archive of American Television that "Comedy, drama, it's the same deal.  You don't really act differently; you just make adjustments."  She is also well remembered for a part in the filmFame in 1980, as remarked by Judy Gold, an actress inspired by Meara that spoke of Anne highly on CNN.    

Anne's husband Jerry Stiller, now 87, is a comedian and actor who has been on many films and regular appareances on television, from playing George Costanza's father on Seinfeld to Arthur Spooner onKing of Queens. 

Meara and Stiller are also the parents of Ben Stiller, and actor who has had a lot of comedy hit movies like Meet The Parents, There's Something About Mary, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and Night at the Museum.   According to E Online, the 49-year-old actor was seen walking the streets of Rome with his wife, Christine Taylor, a day after his mother's death.  According to Time.com, he has tweeted about her, saying:  "Thank you so much for all the kind words about Anne" and "All of us in our family feel so lucky to have had her in our lives". 

Stiller is in Rome to film Zoolander 2.  The original Zoolander movie featured both Jerry Stiller and Ann Meara in an uncredited role as a Protester.    

Anne Meara is also survived by a daughter Amy, as well as several grandchildren.  Her comedy, drama, and unique personality that inspired many actors and actresses after her will be missed. 

While We're Young, film review: Ben Stiller fights middle age with wry humour

"What is the opposite of the world is your oyster?" Josh (Ben Stiller) asks plaintively at one stage in Noah Baumbach's acerbic and beautifully observed new comedy-drama. Josh is a middle-aged New York documentary-maker with an arthritic knee and deteriorating eyesight. His career hasn't panned out in the way he had once hoped. He is "happily" married to Cornelia (Naomi Watts), the daughter of legendary doc director Leslie Breitbart (Charles Grodin). Unlike their friends, Josh and Cornelia don't have kids, which is seemingly a source of great relief. They live the life of carefree New York artists. They can't help but notice, though, that time is slipping away from them.

Baumbach opens the film in portentous fashion with a quote from Henrik Ibsen's play The Master Builder about a terror of "younger people" knocking on the door. The irony here is that Josh and Cornelia are suspicious of younger people and yet still desperately want to see themselves as young. That is why they are so flattered by the attentions of a young couple, Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried.) Jamie is a would-be filmmaker who turns up at one of Josh's lectures and pretends to be interested in what he is saying, even as the PowerPoint malfunctions ("that should be an image from Nanook of the North") and Josh loses his thread.

One of the pleasures of an intermittently very funny film is its sly and subtle approach toward the attrition between generations. Their different attitudes toward technology are revealing. Josh and Cornelia own every digital device imaginable and are slaves to social media. By contrast, Jamie and Darby live in their own mini retro world. The younger couple listen to vinyl LPs on record players and watch films on VHS tapes on ancient, square TVs. ("It's like their apartment is full of everything we once threw out but it looks so good the way they have it," Cornelia enthuses of their artful clutter.) Jamie claims to prefer personal connections to the artificial companionship of Facebook. Josh can't resist checking the Huffington Post every few moments. Jamie is strapping and athletic, an expert basketball player, while Josh always appears to be on the verge of a pratfall.

Still got it: Naomi Watts in 'While We're Young' (Nicole Rivelli)
There has been a creeping sourness in some of Baumbach's recent films – a sense that his characters don't like themselves and that he doesn't much care for them either. That was the case in both Margot at the Wedding (2007), with its neurotic, self-loathing protagonists, and in Greenberg (2010), which also starred Stiller. Thankfully, in While We're Young the barbed observations and despairing existential musings about the misery of middle-aged life are combined with compassion and humour.

Stiller's Josh seems initially every bit as obnoxious as the failed musician he played in Greenberg. He is still absurdly conceited, an "old man" wandering around town in his dainty little hat and even racing to an important rendezvous on his rollerblades. The six-and-a-half-hour political documentary that he has been labouring in vain to finish for a decade looks incredibly dreary. (As his father-in-law tells him, it feels "seven hours too long".) He doesn't fit in comfortably with the young crowd but despises the company of other married couples and their kids. He's selfish. He doesn't like sharing credit or collaborating with those closest to him. Nevertheless, as the plot twists multiply, Josh emerges as both the most principled and the most naive character in the movie. It is not his age that is holding him back. It's his idealism – which is another way of saying his lack of ruthlessness and common sense.

Josh is one of Stiller's finest performances, combining the arrogance and woebegotten goofiness he brings to his more mainstream comedies – for example, Meet the Parents or Zoolander – with a soulful, little-boy-lost quality. There is some slapstick here – Josh's sleeve catching fire at a dinner, Josh and Cornelia taking hallucinogens and then trying to vomit their way to higher consciousness at a shaman's seance – but these are combined with intimate moments during which the characters' yearning and desperation becomes apparent. Josh really does believe in documentary as a means of capturing truth. If you cheat or use short cuts, he argues, the work will lose its integrity. That is true in principle but explains why his career is going nowhere.

Young crowd: Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried (Icon Film Distribution)
Naomi Watts also brings both humour and pathos to her role as the fortysomething woman so energised by her new young friends that she enrols in a hip-hop dance class. You can't help but notice a chauvinism in the storytelling. Both the women characters here, Watts and Seyfried, are secondary. Their menfolk have the ambition to be great artists and they are there to support them.

Josh yearns to be admired and is flattered by the idea that the younger man at his door is his protégé. The problem is that he wants to be the younger man's friend as well as his mentor – and is ill equipped to be either. Jamie, meanwhile, has more than a hint of the scheming young actress out to usurp the status of her idol, Bette Davis, in All About Eve about him.

Baumbach isn't judgemental toward either of the two main characters. They're both behaving according to their own natures. They're like members of similar but distinct tribes who simply don't understand each other. There are too many years between them. The film doesn't seem especially pessimistic about their differences. It is a natural state of affairs that the young will plot against the older generation, which will in its turn fret about its decreasing vitality and relevance. This is a story that has been told many times before – and here it turns out to apply as much to New York hipsters as it does to princes and kings.