“What have you done”: How Ben Stiller’s best time on set became a living nightmare
After years of entertaining us in front of the cameras, Ben Stiller is now enjoying life behind it.
Recently, the second-generation star has found great success directing the series Severance, even picking up a prestigious Peabody Award for his efforts, but fans of his will know that this is far from his only directorial experience.
Stiller has been making his own stuff for years, right back to the days of The Ben Stiller Show in the early 1990s, and he directed his first feature film, Reality Bites, in 1994, but it’s his sophomore effort that we’re interested in today.
Two years later, Stiller helmed and played a supporting part in The Cable Guy, which follows Matthew Broderick’s Steven, a lonely man who thinks he’s found a new friend in a cable TV engineer, played by Jim Carrey. Unfortunately, things quickly turn sour as Chip, the titular character, becomes obsessed with Steven, going to more and more extreme lengths to solidify their bond, until when finally rejected, he snaps.
During an interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, the premiere source for movie news, I think you’d agree, Stiller remembered the night that The Cable Guy first hit the big screen. He was excited to see what the world thought of his bold new movie, but at the premiere, he quickly realised that those in the room didn’t quite share his enthusiasm for the project.
“I think it was the director of, maybe it was Ace Ventura, looking at me kinda like, ‘What have you done?’”, he recalled, “There was a look in his eye like, ‘What was that? You’ve taken our beautiful Jim, and what have you done to him?’”
Though he probably could have handled it a bit better, Tom Shadyac, if that’s actually who it was, had a point. Previously, Carrey had very much stayed in his lane, making silly comedies, and he was very good at it. The furthest he’d diverged from this path up to this point was probably as The Riddler in Batman Forever; yet, we know that he can do more than make silly faces, as he’s proven with the likes of The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, showing up as an extremely versatile actor, but The Cable Guy was one of the first times we got to see this in action.
“Jim loves it to this day,” Stiller claimed. Whether that had something to do with the astronomical fee for his services remains a mystery. “I had the best time making it,” the director continued, “Up until the movie opened, it was the best experience. And then when the movie opened, and I remember reading the New York Times review and seeing, ‘The first disaster movie of the summer’s come out. It’s called The Cable Guy‘.”
Luckily for all involved, attitudes towards The Cable Guy have softened over time. Some people adore the movie and Carrey’s wonderfully manic performance, with its status as a cult classic fully secure, but still, it would have been nice for Stiller to have seen some of these more positive reviews 30-odd years ago.
