Ben Stiller Reveals Tom Cruise’s Two Requests For “Tropic Thunder” | Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend

hi my name is Ben Stiller and I feel about being Conan O'Brian's friend wow devastating I like that

devastating not even a word a noise I think the last time I was optimistic or something like that I I'm just pulling it out my it was something kind of positive and this time a noise I was

trying to be realistic about the last time where I had all these hopes that you know and now here we are yeah yeah here we are and it really hasn't blossomed the

friendship I mean it's sort of yeah it's sort of kind of like treaded water for a while yeah I mean I feel like it's always there and there's like a lot of love and there's a lot of you know like

appreciation of of our history but we haven't moved forward in time together no not for lack of my trying no I know I've contacted you

um many times through your people yeah and they I often get just will get back to you well that's why I have people yeah but what's what's weird but can I just say

something what's weird the people sound suspiciously like Ben it sounds like Ben picking up and he says let me get Ben's people and then the people sound a lot like you it's

like the guy from the that Donald Trump who called into the post oh yeah whatever that guy name David Baron or John Baron yeah yeah yeah yeah um well

I've known you a very long time and I was very excited uh you're coming in today because uh you're one of my all-time favorite comedy people uh your

body of work is crazy stunning and I was we're going to talk about Severance which was my favorite show that first season was Perfection and I

am delighted that Severance is coming back so much so that your people said I can watch a few episodes and they said you can watch a couple of episodes of this new season we'll make them

available to you and I'm like no no no I'm rewatching season 1 to watch season 2 and I don't want to watch it on a computer I don't want to watch it I want

to watch it because I think the direction which is you is I know some other people direct but you direct the majority of these episodes is absolutely

fantastic the art design the acting the whole thing is through the roof it's delightful thank you con I really appreciate that thank you that means a lot cuz you know how much I respect you

seriously well I no joke I'm well now people think it's a joke cuz you said no joke I know I said no joke too quickly or something I don't know seriously was the first place I went WR and then no

joke is trying to say we're gonna we're going to talk about it because anyone who's listening to this right now if you're not watching Severance if you didn't see season 1 go

and watch it it is uh it's it's just I think Flawless and there's so many images in it moments in it and it's got me thinking about so many things uh so I'm very psyched for

season 2 but along those lines I just wanted to go back to I'll just touch on it met you for the first time we mentioned this last time but I think it bear is repeating I met you when you came to

SNL and right away was doing one of the funniest things I'd seen when you played a grown-up Eddie monster with the whole outfit but you're jaded

now yeah you had done a uh you had done a Tom Cruz uh film which was a parody of Color of Money and I looked at that film and I remember thinking well why isn't

this this is what stut Liv should be which later on if you look at what please don't destroy and a lot of the shorts from Lonely Island it became

more shorts these short films which are just you know became more and more of the DNA of the show which remembered you were when you first came along I was

remembered the first thing I saw you do was that short that you had made I think yourself self-funded or something yeah I made it on my own and is it before Ben Stiller show yeah no this was before

anything I was I I was in a play uh called The House of Blue leaves off Broadway and the cast the play was doing really well and it moved to Broadway and John Mahoney was in it and uh stalker

Channing and Chris Walkin and this amazing cast and I made this short takeoff with these two guys Steve Clayman and um Ralph Howard and we put I

kind of put all my money into it that I was making from the show and we made this short and then we were like okay let's take it somewhere and this was I mean it's just a proof of how old I am

and we are is that I met you when I was four years old I I know I forgot I'm I'm 39 years old but there was nowhere to go it wasn't

wasn't you know anything to upload it to at that point so it was like a video cassette and litz had come to the show he'd seen the show and he uh and I reached out to him because he came

backstage afterwards and he knew my parents and was very nice and he you know and I I reached out I said hey I've got this short can you is there any way you could get them to take a look at it and he literally like met me in the

lobby at 30 Rock with and took the video cassette upstairs I remembered watching it all of us were blown away your Tom Cruz impression was fantastic I couldn't believe that they were putting it on the

air because there was nobody from the show in it yep and it was Jim dney y you know Jim Downey great who's been on this podcast uh amazing headwriter

and he just when he saw something that was great he knew this has to just be on I find it so interesting that people can go back and look at that Color of Money parody that you did and you should you

should look it up and and check it out but to me it was saying it occurred to me today oh this was the way to go you were you were ahead of your time in in

my opinion like it's I don't know I was just sort of like honestly I've probably talked to you about this before that you know it was for me trying to do what Albert Brooks who I think was ahead of

his time for sure very much so in terms of like what he did his first movie real life which was about reality television and making fun of it and um what he had done on the show and watching that when

I was younger and wanting to do that kind of thing yeah so well it's interesting to me that you you when I first saw you you were doing a spot on Tom Cruz impression and then you Flash

Forward all these years with Tropic Thunder yeah and Tom Cruz plays this executive in dropy

Thunder and it is one I mean I've talked to Tom Cruz about it uh uh it is one of the funniest cameos he comes out of nowhere and I

know that he came to you when you I don't know if you approached him about playing this this character and said what's the character's name is it Lou

Les Grossman Les Gman yeah he had like two yeah I mean it's never really stated but kind of implied it's occurred to me now

that's a Jewish name but he had requests right he had two requests uh which was correct me if I'm or you could say he wanted his

hands yeah he wanted to have big thick forearms that were hay and he wanted to be Jewish and he wanted to and and he wanted and he

wanted to dance and he wanted to dance and so again Jewish what's yeah what's crazy to me is that when he said those things to you you might have been

thinking oh what I don't know did you right away say no I was I mean it's a strange set of circumstances the way that this happened

we had done this little short for the MTV Movie Awards where I played as stunt man and that's where we and we had met a couple of times over the years before that but then we had real had a great

time doing that together and had stayed in touch since then and I had had this idea for the movie for a long time and I've been working on it with Justin

throw um and Eton Cohen came on later and we finally had this script and I had talked to Tom about it and originally I

wanted Tom to play my part oh really yeah yeah and but I was like a little bit I was like too really too nervous to ask him to do it cuz he's Tom Cruz sure

he has other stuff to do yeah and we were friendly in hanging out he was so nice and like just the greatest guy and but I didn't like want to bother him really with this and uh but I eventually

I sent him the script and he was like this is this is uh this is great uh I'd love to be a part of this and I was like well maybe you could play there's like

an agent role he's like well no I've played an agent before Jerry McGuire and he said but it was his idea this character he said you don't have a

studio exec in the movie perfect yeah so this was like three months or maybe like two and a half months before we started shooting and Justin and I were like well Tom is you know would like to be in the

movie and he had this idea of playing in studio exic and so we went back and came up with Grossman and it changed the whole plot of the movie but made it so much better