Though he isn’t the shortest tenured SNL cast member, given how big a comedy star he’d eventually become, it may surprise some that Ben Stiller lasted only four episodes as an SNL featured player.
His stint on the legendary sketch show began exactly 36 years ago today, on March 25, 1989.
The cast at the time included Dana Carvey, Jon Lovitz, Jan Hooks, and Phil Hartman. Mike Myers was another freshman. Opportunity was there for the taking, and Stiller already had a track record of success getting screen time on the show. Two years earlier, he’d self-produced and starred in a parody of the Tom Cruise/Paul Newman pool-shark movie The Color of Money; Lorne Michaels liked it and put it on the show. Some people grasp for airtime like that their whole careers and never make it.
Looking back, a number of the things that would ultimately make Stiller famous were present during his short time on the show.
Admittedly, most of Stiller’s appearances at the time were small parts, and so the few sketches Stiller appeared in are difficult to find unless you have a subscription to Peacock, where all four episodes from March 25 to April 22 1989 are available for streaming. One sketch, called “Celebrity Restaurant” lives on (in part) on Youtube because, for a brief second, you can see Stiller, Conan O’Brien, Dana Carvey, and Bob Odenkirk in the same frame, a kind of tasteful stoner’s Mount Rushmore of ’90s comedy. Stiller’s character appears to be arrogant and dismissive, a real jackass in a suit—a role he’d reprise five years later, in Reality Bites.
Stiller also briefly shared the screen with another comedy legend, Mary Tyler Moore. In a sketch called “Customs,” she plays an a customs agent whose disarming demeanor makes everyone she meets admit what they’re smuggling into the country. Phil Hartman didn’t want to pay the duty on a bracelet for his wife, Kevin Nealon is a spy, and Dana Carvey admits to smuggling a ton of cocaine. Stiller’s crime is minor by comparison—he cut the line—and doesn’t require any real banter with Moore. They would end up reuniting a seven years later, in David O’Russell’s Flirting With Disaster, in which Moore played Stiller’s mom.
Stiller also appeared in the very first “Sprockets” sketch, which would become a huge recurring hit for Mike Myers. Both men ended up certified movie stars eventually, and were, beyond the show, effectively A-list comedy peers. But only Myers was backed by Broadway Video. Stiller debuted his Eddie Munster impression in this sketch, then took it with him to The Ben Stiller Show, where it became a recurring bit. It’s like a Comedy Extended Universe crossover sketch, but at the time, neither guy nor character were famous.
Stiller’s most lasting contribution to SNL was probably what initially got him on the show: his Tom Cruise impression. Once he joined the cast, it only took two episodes before he broke it out again, this time playing Cruise’s character from Rain Man in the cold open for Mel Gibson’s April 1st, 1989 episode. It’s a little strange to see a younger Stiller playing someone this intense and unlikeable. His Cruise impression is closer to White Goodman, the villain from Dodgeball, than it is to Greg Focker or Ted from There’s Something About Mary. Of course, Stiller would take that impression with him, too — all the way to a famous sketch with Cruise himself for the 2000 MTV Movie Awards.
It was Stiller’s desire to direct that led to his brief SNL gig. When he joined, he wanted to make short films like Albert Brooks did at the very beginning of Saturday Night Live. It’s what got him on the show in the first place, after all. Once he realized he’d just be a sketch performer, he split.
It’s fun to think about what might have been if Stiller stayed—Sandler, Rock, Farley, Meadows, Schneider, and Spade joined the show only a few years later. Would he have thrived and become famous alongside them, or fall into the background? Would we lose his friendship with Owen Wilson? What if Ben Stiller played opposite Farley in Tommy Boy instead of Spade? We’ll never know, but clearly it worked out well for everyone involved.
A version of this story first appeared on our sister site, Primetimer.com
