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Crave Online: It seems like the movies you direct have a much wilder sense of humor than the films you star in. Why do you think that is?

Ben Stiller: Probably just because I’m one of the writers and directors. It’s probably more of my own sense of humor. For me, the movies that I work on as my own as writer, director, co-writer or whatever all that kind of for me a different process and it’s my own thing I feel. For me, it’s been a long time I think since I’ve made that kind of movie where I’m the core audience for myself.

Crave Online: But you are still involved in the writing on a lot of your projects, right?

Ben Stiller: Any movie that I’m acting in, I’ll usually have a lot of input into, but that’s the thing about directing a movie. Directing is a really subjective thing. Any movie is going to have the imprint of whoever is directing it. I’m not trying to put my stamp on other people’s movies. As an actor, I’m going to be whatever I’m supposed to be in that film and I enjoy that process too, but to me directing has always been what I’ve enjoyed the most and feel most connected to.

Crave Online: Are you a hardass dictator director?

Ben Stiller: Have you talked to Downey yet? You’re directing a movie and you need to get the movie shot. Every day you have the responsibility of getting your day done and people are looking to you to know what you what because otherwise you’re floundering so there’s definitely that element and Downey will tell you there’s definitely the issue of control issues because you want it to look the way you want it to look. It’s fun and I like working with a director who knows what he wants and you also want to have freedom as an actor. It was important to me to have the actors have the freedom to do their thing and also get what I wanted it to be too so it was a balance and it was hard. 

Crave Online: How difficult was it to write Downey’s character?

Ben Stiller: It was fun to write it. It also went through a lot of changes. Originally he was written as an Irish man. He was Irish up until we started shooting. Then Downey came to me one day and said, “Can I do him Australian?” We’d already been shooting, but he hadn’t done any of his out of character stuff and he said, “Can I be Australian because I think I can improvise better in Australian.” He’d done Natural Born Killers and he’d done an Australian accent so that changed while we were shooting. Then also, for a long time he’d drop character in the middle of the movie like when we were at that river and I split off and go off on my own. In that scene he originally used to drop character and was Irish for the rest of the movie. As we started to get closer to shooting, it just seemed funnier that he just stay in character. Then the idea developed of the guy being lost in his character and not really being afraid to drop character. Sometimes there were ideas that were funny ideas that we had to figure out a way to get to. It’s funny for him to be in character so we had to justify that. Why would he stay in character?

Crave Online: When did you make him black then?

Ben Stiller: He was always black, but he dropped his black character and became an Irish man half way through the movie and then we decided to keep it.

Crave Online: What special perspective do you have on Hollywood to make fun of it?

Ben Stiller: I’ve always enjoyed that kind of humor going back to SCTV where it’s sort of making fun of behind the scenes stuff. Obviously it can be a little insular sometimes because if you’re in the business you can find that stuff funny. For me I always knew this stuff was funny to me. I just wanted to figure out a way to hopefully justify making it on the scale we were making it and it could reach out to a broad audience. I love that kind of humor and I think actors like to make fun of themselves and the business because it’s so ridiculous. There’s so many people who take themselves so seriously, myself included. We all have moments where you read a quote or an interview or you’ll se yourself saying something in a interview where you’re on TV 10 years ago and you’re like, “What was I thinking?” because it’s just a trial and error process and I think some people get caught up in it. Sometimes you sound silly, sometimes you take yourself too seriously. It’s hard to navigate through this world, the bullsh*t of it all.

Crave Online: Was it important to make it R rated?

Ben Stiller: The R rating came very early on. We knew we were satirizing these war movies and the opening scene was like, “Get your motherf*cking ass in this f*cking chopper now”, and I knew I didn’t want to lose those jokes right off the bat because of PG-13. It felt like we’d be short changing the satire of the war movies. Those movies have all that language in them. So we were strapped with that R rating right from the beginning because if you have two f*cks in a movie that’s it. You might as well just have fun with it and be able to go as far as you want to go.

Crave Online: Do you feel this will be more successful than all those Iraq war movies that no one went to see?