How do you know you’re going to be reincarnated as a human?
?: Well, I myself am going to come back in the year ten thousand and I’m going to be singing “96 Tears.” And people will know it’s me in this other body.
How will they know?
?: Because I will say a unique phrase that no one in history has said before. And I’ve only told it to a few people. But for right now, I’m just going to rock and roll.
Can you tell me the phrase?
?: No.
It took a lot of work to get Ben Stiller to agree to an interview. He was worried that he’d be portrayed as neurotic, like the character he plays in the movie he was promoting at the time, Greenberg. And he was upset that Alec Baldwin was rumored to be on the cover of Rolling Stone instead of him. After several weeks of negotiations with Stiller’s publicist, I finally met him in the entranceway to the International Center of Photography in Manhattan. He was slumped in a black overcoat, with unkempt hair and a wiry gray goatee growing uncomfortably on his chin. A far cry from the outgoing, extroverted characters he usually plays on screen, in conversation he was guarded, as if imagining how every word was going to be used against him.
Your publicist called and said you were worried that all we’d talk about is whether you’re as neurotic as the character you play in Greenberg. Don’t you think that would actually make you seem that neurotic?
BEN STILLER: Yes, but I didn’t know that happened, though I take responsibility for it as a person who has a publicist. I honestly didn’t. A lot of times, publicists do things like that.
I looked at your top Google searches, and one of the top searches is “Ben Stiller bipolar.”
STILLER: I said it once to a writer in jest, and the irony in those things sometimes doesn’t come out. I learned my lesson, too, which is don’t joke about bipolars. It isn’t fair to people who have bipolar disorder.
So let’s put the rumor to rest once and for all: Are you bipolar?
STILLER: No.
And you’re not taking any medication?
STILLER: No.
You go to therapy, probably, but not for that?
STILLER: I have in my life, yes.
But you’re not in therapy now?
STILLER: I have in my life.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing.
STILLER: I don’t think it is, either. It can be really helpful. I think self-examination is a good thing, and it can take many forms. To be aware in some way is a good thing.
So the comment was totally out of context?
STILLER: Yes. Maybe you should talk to that dude, maybe he’ll pull out some freakin’—
That’s a good idea. What was his name?
STILLER: No, no. I think it was just said in jest.9
Part of comedy is exaggeration, so obviously that should have been understood.
STILLER: I think comedy is also context and inflection. A lot of times in an e-mail or letter, you can say something that has an ironic sort of underpinning that doesn’t come across, thus the birth of the emoticon—and there’s another level of irony about the ridiculousness of emoticons.
The other big search was “Ben Stiller height.”
STILLER: How interesting. That’s really weird. Wow. And I thought I was wasting my time on the Internet.
[Continued . . .]
You can tell a lot about musicians by how they arrive at an interview. Some come with a manager, a publicist, bodyguards, or a retinue of hangers-on. Bruce Springsteen came to this interview alone. He drove himself from his home in Rumson, New Jersey, to the Sony Music Studios in Manhattan in his black Explorer—and arrived early.
Sitting in solitude with his back to the door in a darkened conference room, a mass of flannel and denim with a glinting silver cross earring, he didn’t need much prodding to be talked into heading to a nearby bar, where he ordered a shot of tequila and a beer, and gave the waitress a two hundred percent tip.
I hadn’t planned to ask this, but have you ever been in therapy?
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Oh yeah, absolutely. And I found it to be one of the most healthy experiences of my life. I grew up in a working-class family where that was very frowned upon. So it was very, very difficult for me to ever get to a place where I said I needed some help. You know, I stumbled into some different very dark times where I simply had no other idea of what to do. It’s not necessarily for everybody maybe, but all I can say is, I’ve lived a much fuller life. I’ve accomplished things personally that felt simply impossible previously. It’s a sign of strength, you know, to put your hand out and ask for help, whether it’s a friend or a professional or whatever.
So do you still go regularly?
SPRINGSTEEN: Long periods of time will go by when I’m not [in therapy], but it’s a resource to call on if I need to. You know, it helps you center yourself emotionally and be the man you want to be. I mean, it’s funny because I simply never knew anyone who’d had that experience, so initially you go through a lot of different feelings about it. But all I can say is the leap of consciousness that it takes to go from playing in your garage to playing in front of five thousand, six thousand, seven thousand people—or when you experience any kind of success at all—can be very, very demanding.
Unlike most musicians I’ve interviewed, you’ve managed to avoid letting success cause you to lose your perspective and grounding.
SPRINGSTEEN: It’s interesting, because when I started out making music, I wasn’t fundamentally interested in having a big hit right away. I was into writing music that was going to thread its way into people’s lives. I was interested in becoming a part of people’s lives, and having some usefulness—that would be the best word. I would imagine that a lot of people that end up going into the arts or film or music were at some point told by somebody that they were useless. Everyone has felt that. So I know that one of the main motivations for me was to try to be useful, and then of course there were all those other pop dreams of the Cadillac or the girls. All the stuff that comes with it was there, but sort of
