Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 4, 1994 TAG: 9403040058
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GENE SEYMOUR NEWSDAY
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
Right. The guy who played that goofy barfly, Crazy Guggenheim, on the old Jackie Gleason show. Slovenly as he was, poor old "Craze" would stand out like a wart among the motley assortment of scruffy hipsters assembled this day at the Notel bar. Many of them probably weren't even born when Gleason's last Saturday night show aired in 1970.
This may sound like a lot of arcane TV-nerd info. But the dark, intense, good-looking guy behind the bar would appreciate the reference, if anyone in this place would. By his own admission, he watched too much TV as a kid. So did a lot of us. But not many of us got to see our parents on the tube as often as Ben Stiller did.
Stiller, the 28-year-old son of comic actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, is something of a cult hero to tube trivialists, having proven himself an exacting, dead-on parodist of TV conventions on the short-lived comedy series bearing his name on both MTV and the Fox network.
But the New York City-born Stiller is poised to move beyond the fringe into a new realm of artistic recognition. "Reality Bites," his first feature film as a director, will be released Friday, carrying advance praise of Stiller's sensitive touch with romance and character-driven comedy.
On this January day, Stiller, who did comparably funny send-up rock videos on MTV's "Ben Stiller Show," is directing an honest-to-goodness rock video of Juliana Hatfield's "Spin the Bottle," which is part of the "Reality Bites" sound track. As in the movie, he's directing himself as well, pretending to serve drinks to the crowd at the bar, which includes Hatfield and "Bites" co-star Ethan Hawke.
On one take, Stiller tries an approach in which he leans in between Hatfield and Hawke with a couple of drinks. Which is sort of what Stiller, playing a well-meaning, but compromising cable network executive, does in "Reality Bites" when he stumbles between the fiery, platonic relationship of Hawke, as a "slacker" philosopher and Winona Ryder as a recent college grad and aspiring filmmaker.
Stiller tends to wave off any attempts to make "Reality Bites" sound like a generational testament. "It's basically about two people (Ryder and Hawke) who belong together but don't know it," he says. Nevertheless, the film's laid-back irreverence, its grunge-laden sound track and, most important, the difficulties its characters have finding love and meaning in the AIDS-haunted hangover of the '80s will doubtless strike a rueful, if romantic chord among 20-somethings in the audience.
If the easygoing atmosphere on this day's shoot is any indication of Stiller's approach to filmmaking, then making "Reality Bites" must have been a lark. The one who looks as if he's having the least fun is Stiller himself, keeping close, intense watch over the camera positions and sound equipment. And even he seems relatively calm for someone whose home and fiancee were violently shaken hours before by a huge earthquake.
In an interview a couple days later, Stiller says the rented West Hollywood home he shares with actress Jeanne Tripplehorn ("Basic Instinct," "The Firm") wasn't severely damaged by the quake. Nor was Tripplehorn hurt, but, says Stiller, "she's a little freaked out. The whole thing makes me want to get out of L.A. and move back east."
Stiller has been working, seemingly without a break, since 1985, when he made his professional debut in the Lincoln Center revival of "The House of Blue Leaves." That job, which he says came his way with a little help from his famous folks after two years struggling for parts, led to gradually expanding roles in such films as "Empire of the Sun" and "Stella."
What he really wanted to do - from the beginning, in fact - was direct. He studied film at the University of California, Los Angeles, for nine months in 1983. "Hated it," Stiller says. "I figured I was wasting time out there. So I decided to come back home and do the acting first."
While collecting movie credits, he directed short films, some of which came to the attention of the producers of "Saturday Night Live." The show hired him as a writer-performer for what he remembers as a grueling six-week stint in 1989. That gig led to MTV's "Ben Stiller Show" the following year.
The script for "Reality Bites" by 24-year-old Houston writer Helen Childress first came to Stiller while he was working on the pilot for Fox's "Ben Stiller Show."
He wasn't familiar with the Houston-based post-baby-boomer phenomenon of "slacking," which could be defined, for want of a better phrase, as a serious pursuit of enlightened aimlessness. Stiller had seen - and liked - Richard Linklater's 1991 film, "Slacker," also set in Houston. But for "Reality Bites" he wanted to take this world and add a less anecdotal narrative.
So now what? Well, Stiller, who admires fellow comic actor and film director Albert Brooks for his artistic "bravery," is "sort of at the point where I don't know what I want to direct next. It's wide open now. Do I want comedy or drama? I guess I'd just like to work with something more plot driven, because I like strong stories. Funny or not. It doesn't matter. I'm not one of those people who say, `Oh, I never want to be funny; I only want to be serious.' I want to do both."
by CNB