Interview with Ben Stiller about Escape At Dannemora and more

Listen to Ben Stiller conversation on this week’s Little Gold Men, below or read a transcript of the interview below that. 

Director of Escape At Dannemora, Ben Stiller. By Christopher Saunders/Showtime/Everett Collection

Vanity Fair: Well, I’m thrilled to be here in the studio with Ben Stiller, the director of Escape at Dannemora, which has 12 Emmy nominations. Am I right about this? Did we count?

Ben Stiller: I believe so, yes.

I love the show. Patricia Arquette has already won the SAG Award, the Golden Globe for her role. You have already won the DGA Award for your directing, so congratulations.

Thank you, thank you. Yeah, it’s been a really great experience doing it and having people enjoy watching it. And, you know, that’s always nice.

And you’ve done TV over the years. You won an Emmy in 1993, I believe, for writing The Ben Stiller Show.

It’s been a long time between Emmys.

It’s so interesting looking at your IMDb page, which is incredibly impressive in many things.

In length, especially, I’m sure.

But there’s also some amazing shows on there. You were on Kate & Allie; you were on Miami Vice. It’s a return to a very different kind of TV, is that fair to say, from those days?

Yeah, definitely. I mean those were all great experiences when I was starting out and, uh, I was—I mean really, actually, I do have great memories of those jobs because it was so exciting to get a job and to, you know, have a chance to be in Miami Vice. I had one scene in it, but it was like the biggest show on TV.

What was your character?

I was Fast Eddie Felcher. I was an informant. I sold religious goods, and it was an episode starring Brian Dennehy, and Crockett and Tubbs came in and interrogated me, tried to get some information.

Push you down a little bit.

Yeah. And I got my ear pierced for the role because I was such a dedicated actor.

That’s amazing. That’s great. No clip-ons here. You have an incredible directing career, you know, especially in film, everything from, you know, Reality Bites to Zoolander or Tropic Thunder, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. But you’ve acted in pretty much everything you’ve directed. Is this the first time you haven’t acted as you directed?

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I directed The Cable Guy with Jim Carrey 20-something years ago, and I had one scene, a couple scenes.

Like a Hitchcock cameo.

Yeah. But this is really the first time I had done that. It’s something I've always intended to do, but it finally happened. And so now that it’s finally happened, it’s kind of almost strange to me that this is the first time I’m actually doing it, because in my head I feel like, Well, this is something I wanted to do. And it feels very natural in terms of what I enjoy doing. I really do enjoy directing and acting. But this one, for me, the experience was kind of a revelation for me, personally, how much I enjoyed not doing both at the same time.

I think there is this sort of ongoing interesting question about film and TV and how different are they now. Are they different at all? Obviously there’s a structural difference if you’re making a limited series versus one 90-minute to two-and-a-half-hour arc. But in terms of the production, is it basically a show like this, basically at film levels, in terms of the budgets and the, you know, everything that you can call on, or are you doing different TV things that are different from when you’re making a movie?

I mean, the reality is the budget is not as big as it would be for maybe for a movie that might do all this just as a feature. But also the reality is that these days, movies aren’t being made about this kind of subject matter at this level. So, actually, the budget is probably bigger than what you would get. It’s probably, you know, maybe 30 years ago you could have a decent budget for a story like this, right? But these days it would be much harder. So it’s really—it is the place where you can do it on the level that, um, that it—that it deserves. I love movies. My desire is always to see something up on a big screen. When we had our premiere, we were able to show the first episode at Lincoln Center, and it was so exciting to see it up there. But then there’s something else you get with television, which is the intimacy that the viewer has with it, and the accessibility, and, uh, the, uh—connection that grows from week to week with it that I experienced, that I had never really experienced before. I’m not a huge fan of social media, but that’s one of the things I think that’s really good about it, is that you can feel this connection with the audience on something that’s coming out on a weekly basis.

So let’s talk about this incredible cast, and really not surprising that you guys got nominated for an Emmy for casting with this group. You and Patricia Arquette—you guys go back a ways, right?

Yeah, yeah. We worked on Flirting with Disaster with David O. Russell.

Amazing film. One of my faves.

Yeah. It was a really fun movie. Crazy movie to do together. And that was a long time ago. So I had worked with Patricia and, you know, we’d stayed in touch over the years, but, you know, not—we hadn’t really seen each other that much. Um, and, uh—we both have the same manager, Molly Madden, starting out, and she’s just a great person. So I've always stayed in touch with her. And when we were thinking about who would play Tilly, Patricia was really the first person we thought of because she’s such a unique and wonderful actress.

Yeah. Well, and something that’s so interesting about the story and about the character is it’s a story about something you don’t see. You know, often. And certainly in this context, it’s the destructive, in some ways, power of a middle-aged woman’s sexuality, and a woman who’s not really vain in a lot of the kind of ways that, when you see a sexualized woman onscreen, that’s not what she looks like. But she has desires, and they have real consequences. So what was that? Was that a conversation that you guys had? I mean, you know, how did you guys work together to kind of construct this, this role and the performance?

That is definitely something we talked about. When you look at the character, you don’t think of her as being this person whose sexuality is what she leads with. But the reality was in that environment of her being the civilian supervisor in this tailor shop. So there’s 40 inmates, 40 male inmates, that she’s overseeing at sewing machines with just one corrections officer in the room, and a back room that they can go into. She was definitely using that. And a lot of what the story is, is about manipulation, both how the prisoners were manipulating her, and also, I think, how she felt she was manipulating them, in terms of what she wanted. And her sexuality was part of that. And yet it’s definitely something you don’t [see] a lot in movies or television: a woman of that age who’s not necessarily, um, you know, has this like quote, unquote sexy figure. She looks like a real person. And that was important for Patricia to really embrace that, which, I think, you know, that’s what’s one of the amazing things about her as both a person and an actor, is that she’s willing to just do what it takes to portray the character in the most realistic way.

And then I’m fascinated by the relationship between the characters portrayed by Paul Dano and Benicio. I’m wondering what was their relationship like on set? Because they’re sort of partners in crime, uh, literally, but, also, you know, Paul Dano was very, his character, very wary of Benicio’s character, has real concerns about how he’s operating, but he’s kind of in charge. I mean, it’s—it’s a fascinating dynamic. And I’m curious like what was—what was their working relationship like? Obviously they’re both pros, but I’m curious how it manifested.

Yeah, it was very interesting because they’re very, very different actors. And I think the way they approach the work is very different, and they didn’t really know each other before. The relationship between these two guys in real life, the characters in the story, was that they met in the cell block. They didn’t know each other beforehand. And really the way that they came together was, I think, they both had this mutual desire to escape. So that was really the one thing that connected them. So they didn’t have a lot else in common. And David Sweat, who was Paul’s character, had killed a policeman sort of impulsively. Richard Matt had killed a couple people, and it was more of a what you would call a cold-blooded killer. Inside the prison he was very well connected and very comfortable in that prison environment. David Sweat was not; he felt he always was a target because he had killed a police officer, both from corrections officer and also other inmates. He was kind of skinny, so he was always trying to build up his muscle and trying to be tougher than he was. I think both Paul and Benicio got into the background of their characters and came at it with their own personal ideas. And then you just kind of put people together, and they’re both obviously professionals. But they kind of had to figure their way around each other, and I think that contributed to the relationship onscreen. Because they were both trying to figure each other out, and they also had to spend about seven months together, and in tight quarters.

And when you’re figuring out a scene, each actor is going to come with their own point of view. And both of them are very specific and thoughtful actors. We’ll break down a scene, so there can be a lot of discussion about it. For me, I’m there trying to just sort of figure out, Okay, I know what I see at the scene as, um, Benicio has his idea of what he thinks the scene is. Paul has this idea. Usually actors, being an actor myself, I know you come from the point of view of, like, you see the scene from your character’s point of view. Which is your job, you know—that’s what you should do. And so it’s sometimes—it was sort of like going, Okay, well you see it that way, and he sees it this way. I kind of see it this way, and let’s, you know, let’s see what happens. So, uh, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s part of the process. And, and you know, every scene is different that way. So sometimes we would kind of all be on the same page, and other times, you know, Benicio would have an idea, and Paul was trying to reconcile it, um, or vice versa. And I think that tension, which is creative tension, not personal tension, that feeds everything.

There’s like an electricity on the screen there. Do you end up shooting multiple takes? Do you kind of say like, Well we’ll try it your way, and then we’ll try it his way, and then we’ll try it my way?

It depends, you know, from scene to scene, you know. If there’s an idea that, you know, an actor says, “Hey, can we try another one?” Again, I’m an actor, so I’ve always wanted to be sensitive to that. The only thing that can ever stop you from that—sometimes there’s a schedule, you know, taking too much time. But really you want an actor to walk away from a scene feeling like they explored everything that they want to explore. There were a couple of times when Benicio or Paul would have an idea and say, “This is how I see it.” And then I said, “Well, maybe let’s try this way.” And they’d go, “I dunno, I’m pretty married to that.” And then—and then it’s like, Well, do you want to consider a separation? Maybe a divorce? But again, that’s part of the process.

That kind of brings me naturally to the thing I’m dying to ask you about, which is the “don’t tell anybody” moment.

That’s—that’s one of those for sure.

Which is one of the greatest things, but it’s—it’s an insane line reading. I mean, it’s fantastic. He just says, “Don’t tell anybody,” and holds it to Patricia for like rather a long time, and you do an incredible cutaway to her face. Can you tell us about that, and how it came about?

Yeah. Most of these scenes came about from real events that happened that we would either piece together from interviews that Tilly or David Sweat did with the police or eyewitness accounts of what happened. But a lot of that stuff that happened in the back room, you know, nobody knows what really happened. So we just have to go off of like as much of this circumstantial evidence of what went on, but we really don’t know what was said back there unless Tilly said, “This is what he said to me,” or David Sweat says, “I said this.” And a lot of times, you don’t know if they’re telling the truth. But we felt it was important to establish the idea that he was telling her that they were going to escape. In that scene he basically says it’s going to be years until they get out, because that’s what they thought it was going to be. Because they were just chopping—they were hammering away at this wall. So we came up with the idea of this line of him saying just don’t tell anybody, because he’s a little bit concerned that she’s not taking it seriously, and all of a sudden, they were vulnerable and I think he felt it was important to scare her. And he came in with that line reading, and it definitely was scary. Yeah, that was one where Benicio was married to it, and yeah, as a director I was like, How much of a stand do I want to take here? And have the option of doing it a different way. And that one, you know, Benicio stayed married to it. Sometimes, to be honest, it can be like an ego thing as the director to go, Well, I have to be able to show him that, you know, I want it this way. If that comes up once or twice during a seven-month shoot, if you have a mutual respect with each other, then it’s not a big deal. I also appreciated his instinct on it. Originally that was not the last scene of the episode. There was a scene where they’re down in the tunnel, and the episode was supposed to end with them down in the tunnel after that. But when I saw it, it was such a huge moment. And for me, I immediately went to Patricia’s reaction because it was so weird. And I was like, Okay, well, to me, this—as crazy as that line reading is—this moment is really about Patricia’s reaction to it. Because that’s what he’s trying to do, is scare the hell out of her. And for the first time, she realizes that she’s in much deeper than she had ever imagined. So I ended up putting the scene when I saw it at the end of the episode, and, you know, and ending on Patricia and that, to me, it actually ended up, for me it was one of the more important scenes in the show because of that.

So let me ask you about comedy and drama. Obviously you are one of the comedy greats of our time, of your generation. There’s a cliché that it’s easier for comedy people to go to drama than the other way around because comedy is so technical; it’s so hard to get people to laugh. And that drama is something that’s a little less technical. Do you think that that’s true? Do you see yourself doing more drama in the future?

I think you either have a sense of humor, or you don’t. It doesn’t mean you’re necessarily funny or you’re not. But like in terms of being an actor, you can sense where something could be funny. I’ve had the experience with dramatic actors who have been really, really good at comedy, and also dramatic actors who are not great at comedy. And I find it’s because sometimes they think, Oh, well to be funny, I have to do it a certain way, or I have to do a certain thing. And I think my feeling of comedy is you’re never trying to be funny. You’re just trying to be real in a funny situation. And if the situation is funny, then the humor will come out of it, and you can’t try to make it funny. I do enjoy doing drama, uh, because there’s less of an expectation for the audience to laugh. It’s wonderful to make an audience laugh and to be in a theater and have that experience, to be part of it. If you’re doing something onscreen that’s making people laugh, there’s like no better feeling.

But I think Steve Coogan told me that, you know, he’ll screen a comedy film, and like you’ll stand in the back during the screening, and if you’re not getting whatever it is, 2.3 laughs per minute, like you’ve got to go back and recut it, right?

Yes. I mean, I—every movie that I ever directed has gone through the test-screening process. This, Escape at Dannemora, is the first thing I ever directed that didn’t go through any test screenings. The test-screening process can be painful, especially with studio movies, because they have a certain criteria of literally a number score that they feel the movie has to get, and that that’s what they base their marketing, and the amount of money they’re going to spend on it, and the number of screens they’re going to put out. So there’s a lot of pressure on that. But movies should never be graded like a test. What it is helpful for is to put in from an audience and see where they’re laughing and where they’re not laughing. And if you’re making a comedy, you want people to be laughing. And I mean, Coogan, um, you know, he did Stan & Ollie, that movie, and he was so good in that. And I think Stan Laurel was known for going in the back of a theater and re-editing his comedies based on the timing of the laughs. But Coogan is brilliant. I mean, he’s one of the funniest people ever, and he is a technician in that way, and that’s your responsibility when you’re making a comedy, is to do that, because that’s how you want it to work. You want it, the audience, to have that rhythm and to feel it—feel things build, and to have the laughs be as big as they can be.

And that’s your family, right? Your parents were legendary comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. By the way, your dad, I interviewed him for a comedy issue of Vanity Fair maybe 15 years ago, and he’s the only person in my entire career who sent me a written thank-you note afterward. And I felt that I needed to tell you that.

That’s—yes. One of the kindest people ever. And one of the funniest people ever. I mean, you know, that that was part of growing up: watching my parents work at that. That was the goal, though there’s always a grounded human element that you want to be a part of that. I think that actually makes things funnier: when people can relate to it and feel like it’s something that’s real. But the great thing about drama is it’s very subjective. You can say, “I think this is working,” and that’s it. You know? Nobody’s gonna dispute that. They could say, “Oh, well I don’t,” or, “I thought that was indulgent.” But really it’s a freedom where you go, “This is what feels right to me.” And, uh, I—I’ve I experienced that on, on this and in the editing of this, and it was kind of a strange experience at first, I have to say, because I realized I had never done this before. Not directed a drama, which I hadn’t really, but I guess I hadn’t done that. But the experience of not having to put it through that process. So it really be more about sitting with it alone or sitting with the editors and going, Okay, this, you know, that feels right. I don’t know. Is that too long? Is that not too long? I don’t know. But it really feels right to me, and maybe showing it to a few friends or showing it to some people in the office, and, you know, getting some feedback, but then that’s it.

You’ve gotta trust yourself.

Yeah. 

By
VANITY FAIR