Growing Up Laughing: My Story and the Story of Funny (7 page)

Chapter 12
He Said/He Said—Ben and Jerry Stiller

Ben Stiller grew up a lot like I did—only harder. Both of his parents were performers—the popular comedy team of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara—and like all comics, they frequently went on the road. Ben likes to tell stories of how, when his parents were home, he and his sister Amy would perform for them. Maybe all showbiz kids do this. Terre and I were always putting on shows—from our closet. It had a sliding door, which one of us would pull back so that the other could pop out and do her bit. We even had theme songs. Children everywhere imitate the grown-ups in their lives—showbiz kids just have more material to work with. In the 1970s, Stiller and Meara were regular guests on a popular game show called
Tattletales,
in which celebrity couples had to answer questions about each other—separately. So that’s how I decided to talk to Ben and Jerry—first Ben, then Jerry.

—M.T.

Rehearsing at Home

Ben:
When my parents weren’t on the road, they were always writing their act together at home, and my sister Amy and I could hear them. There was this one routine they did called “The Hate Sketch,” about a married couple and how much they hated each other. They would just go off: “I hate you,” “I hate you so much,” “I have such a big hate for you.” We’d hear them yelling and we weren’t sure if they were rehearsing or fighting. To my sister and me, this was what we were living with, and we didn’t realize till later how funny that was.

Jerry:
Our apartment wasn’t very big—maybe five rooms—so Anne and I would rehearse in the living room. We’d turn on a tape recorder and write our act. So one day we’re practicing “The Hate Sketch”—screaming at each other—and Amy walks in. She couldn’t have been more than three years old and she was crying. She said, “Mommy and Daddy fight?” I said, “No, no, honey, Mommy and Daddy rehearse!” Two weeks later, Anne and I were having an argument, and Amy comes in and gives this big smile and says, “Mommy and Daddy rehearse!” I said, “No, no, honey, Mommy and Daddy fight.”

Getting the
shpilkes

Ben:
My parents did everything from nightclubs and summer stock to TV shows and game shows. I remember the game shows the best. There was this one show called
Tattletales
that was like a celebrity
Newlywed Game,
and Amy and I would watch it from backstage. There was definitely a stress level watching my parents perform. I wanted people to laugh and enjoy them.

Jerry:
Amy and Ben would be in the green room when we were doing
Tattletales
. The idea of the show was that one spouse would tell a story about themselves and the other spouse would try to match it. But any time Anne and I screwed up, the kids would scream at us. “Don’t you guys remember what you did? Why didn’t you get that right?!” We tried to tell them, “Look, it doesn’t matter—people came, they laughed, they had a good time.” But the kids were still mad at us. They took the show very, very seriously.

Ben’s Little Secret

Ben:
When I was little, I wanted to be a spy. So I’d sneak a tape recorder into my parents’ room and tape them. I think they knew what was going on, but they would play along. They were very encouraging of our playfulness.

Jerry:
He put a tape recorder in our bedroom? That’s what Ben said? I had no idea—I can’t believe it. Oh, my God.

Parties at the House

Ben:
My parents would throw parties—Thanksgiving, New Year’s, even Passover Seders—and all these comedians would come over. Rodney Dangerfield, Andy Kaufman, Henny Youngman. My sister and I grew up around comedians and actors hanging out on late nights at our house. I really loved being around them. They were fun and funny and over-the-top.

Jerry:
Everybody showed up. Henny, Jimmy Coco, Bill Hurt, Kevin Spacey. Actors love to come to a party, you know.

And we had a few Seders with Rodney. But he’d always have to leave early to keep an eye on his comedy club on First Avenue. He was the boss. He’d joke, “I don’t even know why I’m here tonight. I don’t play on Passover.” Henny was funny, too. He’d sit in a chair and tell one joke after another, and everyone would be convulsing. He loved any kind of audience. But he always had the same line whenever I’d invite him to a party: “Over six people, and they pay.”

Going to Work with Mom and Dad

Ben:
I remember when they opened in the Persian Room at the Plaza. They were performing with Lola Falana. I was six or seven and I got to hang backstage in Lola’s dressing room, which was really exotic. I also remember going to Vegas and Reno with them when they played the hotels out there. That was the best thing ever.

Jerry:
Anne and I would schlep out to Vegas or Tahoe, and in summer we’d take the kids with us. We had a nanny who looked after them while we worked. One time, Gladys Knight and the Pips were staying at our hotel, so while Anne and I rehearsed, the kids would play in the pool with the Pips. We also put the kids into a day school. Later we found out they weren’t going to the school. They were going to Circus Circus and playing the slots.

Following in Their Footsteps. Or Not.

Ben:
You know I resisted it for a long time. I didn’t think I wanted to be in show business, partly because my parents did it, and I wanted to do my own thing.

Jerry:
Anne and I were once guest-hosting
The Mike Douglas Show
, and the talent coordinator says, “You’ve got to bring your kids on the show.” Anne says to me, “No we are
not
going to bring the kids on”—she was vehement about this. But they kept pushing us.
“Come on, they’ll have a little fun.”
I finally said okay. The talent coordinator asks me, “So what do they do?” I say, “What do you mean what do they do? They’re kids. It’s not like they do impressions. They don’t do anything!” Finally I tell him, “Well, they
are
taking violin lessons.” “Great,” the talent coordinator says, “let’s have them play the violin.” I say, “But they’re
terrible
.”

So they bring Amy and Ben on anyway, and they play “Chopsticks” on the violin—and they’re really horrible. The audience was nice, but Amy and Ben were humiliated. Ben said to me, “You know, Dad, the kids in school are going to give it to us good for being so bad.” And we did get a couple of cards from people saying, “How could you bring such terribly untalented children on television?”

Learning the Craft

Ben:
Both of my parents were actors first, so I learned from them that you don’t approach comedy any differently than you approach drama. If the material is funny, you don’t need to play it up. You make your acting choice, and it just happens to be the more comedic one. That’s what I always saw my parents do.

Jerry:
I remember when Ben and Amy were about ten or eleven, they created this pretend acting class. Ben played the teacher, and I was the student coming in to take acting lessons. I started to do my first line, and Ben stopped me in the middle and tore me apart. He’d given me a name—“Bernard”—and he said, “Bernard, why don’t you start the scene again, and this time think a little more about where you were
before
you came on stage.” I tried again, but Ben wasn’t very encouraging. He said, “Bernard, do not go into this business. It will only bring you heartbreak. You will bring humiliation upon yourself.” It was a riot.

Using the Craft—and Embarrassing Your Parents

Ben:
The masturbation scene in
There’s Something About Mary
—yeah, I remember that day. That was a lonely scene. The directors, everybody, just sort of disappeared. Honestly, that was one of those things that, as an actor, I thought was very funny. I thought the movie was funny. And I was happy to have the job.

Jerry:
When we got into the theatre, Ben was sitting about three rows in front of us, and he turned around and he said, “Dad, Mom, I hope you don’t get embarrassed by what you’re going to see.” He was very serious. So the movie starts, and . . . I never laughed so hard in my life. Ben kept turning around and looking at us to be sure that we were not embarrassed, but all he saw was me laughing. As for that scene, what can I say? That’s Ben. He really throws himself into a part.

Stillers: The Next Generation

Ben:
I think what you learn when you have kids is that they come with their own personalities. My kids are so ridiculously funny to me. They love to do little characters. It’s like they channel it from somewhere, and it makes you realize that they’re born with it.

Jerry:
Well, like all grandchildren, there’s something special about them, and you never know what’s going to happen. But I hope to God—and I really mean this—that they don’t go into this business. They’d have to live up to two generations already! If they do, I hope they can navigate through it all, which is not easy.

My father was a bus driver, the funniest bus driver in New York. He would have gotten me a job—he had seniority and all of that—but I said no, and went off to be a comedian. He never really thought much of my work. He wanted to be a comedian himself.

But, God Almighty, was he funny . . .

THE DANGERFIELD ZONE
Remembering Rodney

“My wife only has sex with me for a purpose.
Last night she used me to time an egg.”

“I was making love to this girl and she started crying.
I said, ‘Are you going to hate yourself in the morning?’
She said, ‘No, I hate myself now.’ ”

“Last night my wife met me at the front door.
She was wearing a sexy negligee.
The only trouble was, she was coming home.”

“If it weren’t for pickpockets, I’d have no sex life at all.”

“My wife is such a bad cook, if we leave dental floss
in the kitchen the roaches hang themselves.”

“My wife likes to talk on the phone during sex—
she called me from Chicago last night.”

Chapter 13
aka Orson

W
here do you get your sense of humor from?

“I don’t think you can learn to be funny,” Larry Gelbart told me, “but you can grow up in an environment where you appreciate the surprise in a joke. You can develop a sense of humor.”

You know the old saying, there are two kinds of people—those who see the glass half-empty, and those who see it half-full? Well, there are
three
kinds of people when it comes to seeing the funny in something—those who don’t see it for years until they look back at it, those who will never see it, and those who see it as it’s happening.

I remember one night my mother and father were bickering about something at the dinner table. The words flew back and forth, things escalated, and Dad angrily got up and left the table.

We all watched wide-eyed as my father stormed across the marble floor of our entry hall to the bottom of the long, winding staircase. Placing his hand on the carved oak banister, with the Viennese chandelier hanging overhead, he turned in fury to us and bellowed:

“Rose Marie, I cannot live like this!”

Then he doubled over in laughter. We all did. As angry as he was, he suddenly saw himself—a man standing in his opulent Beverly Hills stairwell announcing he couldn’t live like this anymore. It took about a second for him to recognize the absurdity of it.

Where did he get this ability to instantly see the funny? Certainly not from his stern father, my scary Lebanese grandpa. My grandparents were very poor. They had ten kids—nine boys and a girl—and little else. And as in all of the immigrant families in their neighborhood, my grandmother was cook, laundress and nanny for the entire family. But after giving birth to her fifth son, my father, she became too ill to care for him, so for a while he lived with Grandma’s brother, Tony, and his wife, Julia. They couldn’t have children of their own, so for them this was a true blessing.

Uncle Tony was what the family called “a real card.” He saw the humor in just about everything. My father once told me that he was so funny, he was barred from family funerals. (Years later, Uncle Tony would be personified as Uncle Tonoose on Dad’s TV show,
Make Room for Daddy
.)

Dad and Aunt Julia, his “second mom.”

Uncle Tony—the real Uncle Tonoose.

Uncle Tony and Aunt Julia not only gave my father a roof over his head and a lot of love and warmth, Uncle Tony also gave Dad the gift of laughter—a flair for the comedic in everything he did, including his parenting.

Dad’s sense of drama, he must have picked up on his own. When I was in high school, I was supposed to be home at midnight on date nights. And my father was strict. When he said midnight, that meant 12:00
A.M.
, not 12:05. When we were teenagers, most of our dates took us to the movies. Afterward, we’d all go to Webb’s, a drive-in restaurant on Linden and Wilshire, for a hamburger and fries. Everyone else was carefree, but I was constantly looking at the clock. The car radio was always tuned to our favorite show, which at midnight played “Goodnight, Sweetheart.” That was a song I really didn’t want to hear when I was still at Webb’s, because that would mean I was past my curfew.

One night, we were all munching burgers, laughing and having a grand old teenage time. My date was so cute—tall, blond, all-American. He’d been voted Best Looking Boy at Beverly Hills High, and his name was all-American, too—Johnnie Anderson.

Suddenly the first strains of “Goodnight, Sweetheart” began to play on the radio.

“Oh, my God!” I screeched. “I’ve gotta go!”

Johnnie and I raced up to my house on the corner of Elm and Elevado. It was now 12:15, and my father was standing out in our driveway, wearing a black coat and a black hat—with a big black cigar in his mouth and a shotgun in his hand. Oh, the drama. We used to call him “Orson” (as in Welles) because he reveled in the dramatic.

Johnnie Anderson was a real WASP. He wasn’t used to the histrionics of Middle Eastern fathers. We got out of the car. Orson just stood there, shotgun in hand.

“Young man, what time were you supposed to bring my daughter home?” Orson asked.

“Midnight, sir,” Johnnie said quietly, terrified.

“And what time is it, young man?”

“12:15, sir.”

“Well, then you’re late, aren’t you?” Orson said.

You could barely hear Johnnie’s “yes” as he ran back to his car and drove off.

I was furious. “God, Daddy, how embarrassing,” I said. “No one will ever ask me out if you keep acting like this.”

“Wow, I really scared him,” Dad said, then he burst out laughing. So did I. I could have killed him, but it
was
funny.

Orson’s drama also had a musical side to it. One night I was with my boyfriend and it was late. We were in the den on the comfy sofa, doing what teenagers do—lights low, music softly playing. Suddenly a John Philip Sousa march blasted through the speakers. Nothing kills the mood like Sousa. Orson’s message to my date was clear: “March!”

As if my father’s late-night deejaying wasn’t anecdotal enough for my date, my lunatic family had one more surprise. When we turned on the lights, there was Terre, crouched, hiding under the pool table with our cocker spaniel, Muggins, spying on us to see what the big kids do.

“Who’s she?” my date asked, as he frantically looked for his jacket.

“I’m her sister,” Terre snapped, “and you have no idea how hard it is to lie there keeping this dog quiet, with his awful dog breath in my face!”

Another boy who never called me again.