When Ben Stiller embarrassed himself in front of Steven Spielberg: “I screwed it up”
As the son of two comedians and actors, Ben Stiller was pre-ordained to follow in their footsteps and get into the family business. Sure enough, he initially made his name as a comedian and actor, but he always fancied himself as a filmmaker.
He made his feature-length directorial debut less than a decade into his career when he helmed the Gen X cult favourite Reality Bites, but his instincts had been in place since long before then. Since the very beginning of his career Stiller wanted to take on multiple roles in the creative process, but he got more than he bargained for when he stepped out of line on a Steven Spielberg movie.
In just the second film he’d ever appeared in, the second-generation star played the role of Dainty in Spielberg’s war drama Empire of the Sun. It wasn’t a major part, but the chance to work with one of the industry’s foremost auteurs when he was still wet behind the ears was one he seized with both hands, even if his aspirations ended up getting the better of him.
With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to see that Stiller was destined to be more than just an actor for hire. He’s helmed half a dozen films of his own and written the majority of them himself. He’s been active as a producer for more than two decades, and he won a Primetime Emmy in 1993 for his work on The Ben Stiller Show, which he co-created alongside Judd Apatow and produced, as well as serving as an on-camera performer and a member of the writing team.
However, he left his director’s cap on when collaborating with Spielberg, which drew an incredulous response from the industry-shaking filmmaker, who couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Actors mess up takes all the time, but Stiller made a serious faux pas when he overstepped his boundaries and took the words right out of the icon’s mouth.
“After like three or four minutes of this shot, I say my line,” Stiller explained to Seth Meyers. “I’m supposed to say, ‘Hey, kid, would you like a Hershey bar?’ And I screwed it up, and I said, ‘Hey, kid, would you like a chocolate bar?’ And then I went, ‘Oh, damn. I’m sorry. Cut’. And then silence.”
He hadn’t even realised he was doing it, but Spielberg quickly let it be known that there’s only one person on the set who gets to make that call. “I just hear, from out where the monitors are, ‘What?'” Stiller continued. “I said, ‘I’m sorry, I screwed up my line’. And then I hear Steven Spielberg say, ‘You never yell cut!'”
In the presence of his hero, Stiller had just committed what he called “the most embarrassing thing ever” by instructing the camera crew to stop rolling, completely forgetting that he was a bit-part supporting player who ended up being billed 12th in the credits. Only one person on Empire of the Sun got to say “Cut,” and it wasn’t him.
