![]() THE FACT AND FICTION ON HIS ‘DISEASE’ - AND DISEASE STORY: Stiller’s Production Company Red Hour’s Upcoming Projects Soon after, he was given his own comedy series by MTV, then another by Fox - each killed after one season, though the second won him an Emmy for writing. It’s indicative of Stiller’s single-mindedness that, even at this early stage of his career, when he was struggling to make a living, he chose to leave SNL after five episodes because it wouldn’t allow him to make the short films he dreamed of. (Cruise found it hysterically funny.) That parody led to a job as a writer-performer on Saturday Night Live. He showed it to everyone who’d see it - even Cruise, years later, when he met him on the set of The Firm. While appearing onstage, Stiller used his own money to make a mock documentary spoofing Scorsese’s The Color of Money, with himself as Tom Cruise and Leaves co-star John Mahoney as Paul Newman. He stumbled through acting classes and auditions before getting his first big break in the acclaimed 1986 revival of Blue Leaves on Broadway. Stiller broke away to study at UCLA when he was 18, only to return nine months later without graduating. HOW COLLEGE AND CRUISE LED TO HIS ‘SNL’ JOB “You need someone who knows how to be a stand-up comic. But friend and Tower Heist co-star Eddie Murphy has the fellow comedian’s full support as the host of the 2011 Oscars telecast. Stiller noted that he’s turned down the offer to host the Academy Awards a few times. WHY EDDIE MURPHY WILL SHINE AS OSCAR HOST AND HE WOULDN’T STORY: ‘The Ben Stiller Show’: It’s Many Ripples and Reverberations “I thought, ‘Wow, this guy is really up there. “Going toe-to-toe with Eddie Murphy got my attention,” Ratner says. He loved the concept, read the script and immediately said, “I’m in!” But he had little control over Heist, which he didn’t produce indeed, Ratner says that when he showed Stiller the finished film, he didn’t even ask for any changes - one of several things about Stiller that surprised him. Ratner approached Stiller while he was shooting Little Fockers, when the screenplay had changed and the cast had become more diverse. The action-comedy tells the story of a group of apartment building employees who turn the tables on the multimillionaire who’s fleeced them, robbing him themselves. Ratner developed the project for two and a half years, initially running with co-star Eddie Murphy‘s idea, centered on a cast of all African-American comedians, before taking it in a different direction because the script was too much like Ocean’s Eleven. HOW DIRECTOR BRETT RATNER LANDED STILLER FOR ‘TOWER HEIST‘ He writes ( Tropic Thunder, Zoolander), directs ( Reality Bites, The Cable Guy), produces (through his Fox-based Red Hour Films) and, of course, acts - often receiving a salary in the $15 million to $20 million range - as he did in Universal’s Tower Heist, which opens Nov. Like Will Ferrell, Judd Apatow and Adam Sandler, he belongs to that rarefied clan whose name alone can get a project greenlighted. Sitting in his custom-built silver trailer at the end of the day, under a framed poster of Sweet Smell of Success, Stiller has all the trappings of any A-list comic mogul - but without his peers’ compulsion to make you laugh. But don’t look for another Fockers movie Stiller says there are no plans for a fourth.īEN’S BUCKS: $5.1 BILLION WORLDWIDE GROSS AND EARNS $15-20 MILLION A MOVIE In addition to the Zoolander sequel there is also a Night at the Museum threequel in the works, for which he says “an idea” is already in place. “We had about eight, nine years when the script was around,” he recalls, before DreamWorks greenlighted the movie, which made $110 million at the domestic box office. Then it came back around.” He went through the same development hell with Tropic Thunder, the 2008 comedy about a group of actors in a faux boot camp who are forced to become real soldiers. “There were maybe 20, 30 drafts,” Stiller remembers, “and at one time I walked away from it and they had somebody else rewrite it and they were going to do it without me, which was kind of ironic. The story will pick up 10 years after the first film left off and, Derek’s “School For Kids Who Can’t Read Good” has been destroyed, leaving him in charge of its pupil. Stiller opens up about the much-anticipated sequel to his 2001 hit, telling THR he’s “very proud” of the script, which was written last year (with his Tropic Thunder co-writer Justin Theroux). The actor has been relentless in sticking with the projects he believes in - like Zoolander. ‘ ZOOLANDER,’ ‘NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM’ AND THE FOCKERS: WHAT’S NEXT? ![]() PHOTOS: ‘Ben Stiller Show’ Alumni: Where Are They Now?
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