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I like Ben Stiller. I like "Zoolander." I like "Meet The Parents." I like "Night at the Museum." I like "Tropic Thunder." I like "Meet The Fockers." I like "Reality Bites." I like "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." I like "Night at the Museum 2." I like "Along Came Polly." I like "Starsky and Hutch." I like "Greenberg." I like "While We're Young." I even like "Night at the Museum: Secret Of The Tomb." I’m telling you all this so that you don’t think I’m being unfair when I say that it’s difficult for me to divorce my enjoyment of Mr. Stiller’s work from his bloody assassination of my Reaganite father in 1996.
The fact of the matter is that, two decades ago, Ben Stiller snuck up behind my father as he sat doing his crossword and slit his throat. That's what happened. The acclaimed comedy actor/director ran a slim blade across my reclining father's corotid artery, and the blood came spilling out. And that's something I still haven’t figured out how to reconcile with the fact that I laugh every time I see him hucking playground balls at Justin Long in "Dodgeball." Can art transcend personality? Forgive transgression? I don’t know. I do know that Mr. Stiller’s “Blue Steel" look reminds me too closely of the look of quiet determination that he wore as he killed my father in front of me. I was only 12 years old. This was "Flirting With Disaster"-era Ben Stiller, mind you. I didn’t know then he was an actor or an anarchist, or an assassin. I didn’t cry out. I didn’t make a sound.
Will future generations think "Madagascar" is as much of a masterpiece as we do now? Will they read Mr. Stiller’s starring turn as Alex the Lion within the context of his spate of politically-motivated killings in the mid-'90s, or will that be left behind so the work can live on its own considerable merit? I hope you can understand why it's harder for me to just leave all that behind. You see, my father was a good man. Yes, he was involved heavily in the orchestration of the Iran Contra affair and bringing down the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, but he cared for us. He didn’t deserve to be killed by Mr. Stiller.
I’m in a strange position here. My friends are all chipping in to buy a set-worn white top hat from "Zoolander 2," and I would love to join them. But Mr. Stiller wore a white top hat when he placed a gloved hand over my father’s mouth to keep him from screaming and raised a single finger to his lips so I would stay quiet. It’s these dual-associations, these guilty-smiles and jokes I can’t bear to laugh at, that drive a wedge between Ben Stiller the performer, Ben Stiller the assassin, and Ben Stiller the person. You can’t have one without the others. I wish the world could work like that.
We will never be able to separate flawed creators from work that we respect or even admire. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, and yet we admire the Declaration of Independence. Ben Stiller dragged my father’s lifeless body up a flight of stairs and tossed him off the roof, shouting angrily about NAFTA all the while, and yet we watch his “Tony Wonder” compare magic tricks with G.O.B. Bluth and can’t help but chuckle. Where do we draw the line? What can we abide from our performers before we say that enough is enough?
It’s taken nearly 20 years, but I think I’m finally ready to say that enough is enough. I can no longer in good conscience support Mr. Stiller, and I will be pirating "Zoolander 2."
