Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston Talk About " Along Came Polly " : : page 3 "
Jennifer, can you pinpoint one key comic element in Ben's work that you find particularly striking and Ben can you do the same thing for Jennifer?
JENNIFER ANISTON: I can tell you one thing off the top of my head: You know when you are listening to Jazz and they are just all over the place and it is unexpected? That is sort of like Ben.
Ben does things that you sort of. [You] expect a line or you hear it or you read it on the page and if you're reading your lines and you know the scene, you can sort of anticipate what will be happening. That just never happens. It's always an interesting, which is why I think I laughed all the time while we are filming. He just surprises me and it is just unexpected all the time. That is why he is unique and real. It's always real. There is never a moment when you feel he is playing comedy. That's what I hate about a lot of comedies. When you're hitting a line or making it funny, he just pulls it right out from the truth.
BEN STILLER: I'd say that Jennifer's just, there's so few… How do I say it? I don't want to say that there are so few women who are good at comedy. That sounds like a really sexist thing to say, but she really is one of the few actresses that I know where she has such impeccable timing as a comedienne/actress, and I don't mean that in a bad way. She really listens and she has timing in terms of knowing. I don't think that it comes out of a premeditated thing. It's just in her bones. She knows when to say it and when to not say anything. She just takes things in and she listens in a way that's very real too, I think. [She has] just incredible timing, which I think is a real gift.
Can you talk about the challenge of working with a naked Hank Azaria?
BEN STILLER: Hank, of course, transformed himself into this frightening creature. I couldn't stop staring at his pecs, which is great because when he turned around, I didn't have to look at his butt because I was thinking about his pecs so much. Boy, I don't know. It was really fun. Talking about people cracking you up. Hank just cracked me up constantly. He's just so ridiculous. There was one scene in particular where he takes Debra [Messing] off to go on the boat and he comes over and I tell him, “Just take care of her because she's like the most important thing in my life,” and we just could not get through it. I couldn't get through it. What am I saying? He just kept on. He's really one of the funniest people on earth. It was fun to watch him come in with his bronzed physique and the ridiculous wig and do his thing.
Did you have a butt double?
BEN STILLER: I wish I had. I wish I had.
Ben, have you finished “Starsky & Hutch?”
BEN STILLER: Yes, we finished it. It's coming out in March and it's a comedy. It was really fun. I had a great time doing it. I think that Todd Phillips did a great job of writing it and directing it and Snoop Dogg is in it playing Huggy Bear. For me, it was a chance to do something a little bit different, which I really enjoyed.
How was it different?
BEN STILLER: I guess, well, in not playing the neurotic, accident-prone guy. It was just fun. I loved that show. I loved the tone that Todd set up for the movie, which is sort of hard to describe.[It’s] not a spoof in any way, but it does take place in the '70s and is in the time that the show was done. But it's not making fun of that era. The way that Todd describes it, which I think is kind of apt, is that it's as if this was the first pilot that they did for “Starsky and Hutch,” and then they recast. That's kind of what the tone of it is. It was really fun. I had a great time.
Jennifer, what was the highlight of working on "Friends?"
JENNIFER ANISTON: I think it is going to be one of the hardest things. It already is one of the hardest things. We have three shows left and we are all just like raw nerves over there and emotional. Nobody really knows what to do. We are just a little bit out of our bodies. It's hard. 10 years of this incredible group of people and it is weird that it is ending because it doesn't seem like it really needs to, but it does. And so yeah, six months from now, the highlight was the whole damn thing. It is the greatest experience I have ever had. I probably will never have an experience anything close to this ever again.
Matthew Perry got to meet Mary Tyler Moore recently. She is doing a play in New York and she said to him, "I know that your show is coming to an end..." And he said to her, "Yeah, how did you do it? How did you survive?" And she still hasn't gotten over it. So yeah, my future looks good, but it's hard.
