Ben Stiller Reveals That a Comedy Legend Fired His Parents
Now that he has a reprieve from filming a TV show in the bowels of Lumon Industries, Ben Stiller has been making a number of guest appearances on various internet talk shows, such as Chicken Shop Date, the YouTube series that involves deep fried chicken but doesn’t end with celebrity guests passing out and/or getting explosive diarrhea.
Stiller also popped by the Konboni Video Club, where actors and filmmakers peruse the aisles of a Parisian video store and discuss some of their favorite movies and TV shows. Stiller chatted about acclaimed works of cinema like Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and also some of his own movies like There’s Something About Mary. Of course, only one of those begins with a scene in which a guy gets his balls stuck in a zipper.
Stiller also paused to shout-out The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the 1947 comedy in which Danny Kaye plays a hopeless daydreamer who gets dragged into a wacky plot involving hidden jewels.
That’s because Stiller directed and starred in a 2013 remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which was famously stuck in “development hell” for over a decade, with various stars and directors attached to the project before Stiller finally came on board.
But Stiller was quick to note that he wasn’t actually a huge fan of the original film growing up, specifically because his folks had a personal beef with Kaye. His parents were, of course, Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller who, together, formed the comedy team of Stiller and Meara.
“There’s a funny story I’ve never told before,” Stiller told the Video Club crew. “My parents were actors, a comedy team (who) acted in some movies and TV shows. And they were on a special of Danny Kaye’s — I think it was probably in the ‘60s, a television special. And apparently he fired them from the special. They got fired.”
“And so we never really were Danny Kaye fans in my house growing up,” Stiller added, “because he was the guy who fired my parents.”
It’s unclear which special led to Stiller and Meara being sacked by the White Christmas star, although they appeared on The Danny Kaye Show in the early ‘60s seemingly without incident. The Meet the Parents star did note that he doesn’t “know what really happened” and clarified that he still believes that Kaye was “incredibly talented.”
Stiller did point out that his version of Walter Mitty was “nothing” like the Kaye film, and was really just a new adaption of the original short story by humorist James Thurber, which was first published in The New Yorker.
And since Stiller’s version of Walter Mitty comes up first when you search the title online, it’s also possible that his movie was a very low-key revenge plot.
