JERRY STILLER IS on the phone from his apartment on Manhattan’s West Side. He is gracious. He is congenial. He is calm. His voice, possessing a grandfatherly gruffness, barely rises above a polite whisper.
In short, Jerry Stiller is nothing like the abrasive loudmouth characters he’s bestknown for, especially the career-defining Frank Costanza,the TV Guide-obsessed, Mannsierre-wearing, long-suffering and insufferable father of Jason Alexander’s George Costanza on Seinfeld.
And while it doesn’t come as a shock — after all,Stiller is an actor with dozens of film and TV credits, from Hart To Hart and Simon & Simon to The Love Boat and Murder She Wrote to LA Law and Law & Order – it is a little disappointing that he’s not more… Costanza-esque.
“I hear that a lot,” says Stiller, with a chuckle. “Everybody wants to know if I’m like Frank Costanza. It’s tremendous to be associated with a character and a show that people have such an affection for, although I do find it a bit surprising sometimes.”
Hardly a day goes by that someone — a diner at Stiller’s favourite deli, a cab driver, a tourist near Times Square — doesn’t lob a Costanza catchphrase in his direction: “Serenity now!” “Festivus for the rest of us!” “Hoochey momma!”“Del Boca Vista!”
“It’s incredible. I love that,” he says, with genuine enthusiasm. In fact, Stiller fully expects to hear a few of his famous lines shouted from the audience when he brings his one-man show to the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts on November 23.
The show, derived from his memoir, Married To Laughter, will consist of Stiller getting on stage and telling stories about his life and career, from his New York childhood listening to Eddie Cantor on the radio and dreaming of a Jew in the White House, to appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show (36 times!) with his wife and comedy partner Anne Meara, to starring in his son’s blockbuster comedy Zoolander.
Maybe he’ll tell the story about the time Groucho Marx invited him over for dinner. “We watched A Night at the Opera but I couldn’t laugh,” says Stiller. “He kept stopping the projector to tell stories and explain things.”
You can also be sure there will be plenty of anecdotes from his days on Seinfeld and King of Queens, on which he played another cantankerous father.
“I’ve been in plays,movies and all that, but this is something that I’ve always wanted to do, to be up there as a standup comedian,” he says. Telling his own story is something Stiller began to think about when he would find himself alone at parties.“People want to be around the most famous people, the biggest stars or celebrities, and I would be off in the corner wondering, ‘Why isn’t anyone talking to me?’ If you want to be the centre of attention at a party and you’re not Tom Cruise or George Clooney, then you better have something interesting to say. So I started putting stories together and that’s the show.”
If you’re wondering where the yin to Stiller’s comedy yang will be while her husband’s getting all the laughs on stage, never fear. Stiller says not to be surprised if Meara’s the one heckling him from the front row.
“My wife always says, ‘You go on too long. You’ll bore the hell out of people with your stories,’” he says with obvious amusement. “And she always says, ‘It’s always about you.’ Well, of course it’s about me. It’s my show.” Stiller says he’s excited about the opportunity to perform in front of the Richmond Hill audience. The way he sees it,they’re people who probably aren’t much different from him. “They might not be actors or comedians or be on TV, but I think they’ll relate to the stories of my life,” he says.
He is also looking forward to being back in Toronto, where he made the movie Hairspray. “Toronto is one of the best cities in the world. It’s especially great for entertainment, for shows and concerts and plays,” he says. “And the mentality is better than in the U.S., in terms of how people think. What you call ‘health care,’we call ‘socialism’.” At age 83, Stiller is at the peak of his popularity. He credits Seinfeld and King of Queens with turning his career into a phoenix rising from Arizona (as Frank Costanza would say). “I’ve been on what you’d call a hot streak,” he says, matterof- factly.
But it hasn’t always been this way. In fact, there were a lot of lean years before he became a pop culture icon.
The oldest of three children, Stiller grew up in Manhattan’s Lower East Side during the Depression.He tells the story of being so poor that during Passover his family would show up at relatives’homes unannounced.“We were seder crashers,” he says.
His bus driver father would often take him to Vaudeville shows and he caught the acting bug early on — he recalls one of his earliest roles was playing Hitler in a comedy — and took acting classes with the likes of Steve McQueen and Charles Nelson Reilly.
When he told his father he wanted to be an actor, his father suggested he become a stagehand instead because at least it was a steady gig. Undaunted, Stiller made ends meet by selling ice cream, washing windows and mixing cement.
He studied drama at the University of Syracuse and made his professional acting debut in a theatrical production of The Silver Whistle opposite Burgess Meredith of Rocky fame. He joined the Compass Players, an improv troupe that would later become Second City, where he met Meara. The couple married and began touring the club circuit and Stiller eventually found himself on Broadway in shows like Hurlyburly, The Ritz, Two Gentlemen of Verona and Guys and Dolls.
A Stiller & Meara sitcom fizzled.
Seinfeld was in its fifth season when Stiller joined the cast, replacing another actor as George’s father. “I didn’t even know who Jerry Seinfeld was. I wasn’t the first choice for Frank Costanza; I wasn’t the first choice for King of Queens, either,” he says with mock indignation. “I’m never the first choice.”
Originally, Stiller was to play Costanza as a meek, henpecked husband who continually bore the brunt of his shrill wife’s outrage.
But Stiller quickly realized that playing the character that way would get him fired, “just like the last guy,”he says.
So he suggested playing the character his way. When Estelle Harris, who played his wife Estelle Costanza, began shrieking at him, he bellowed back. Frank Costanza was born.
Seinfeld and King of Queens may be behind him — although the reruns play endlessly — but Stiller says he’s just getting started. He’s re-teamed with his wife for a series of two-minute segments in which the couple discuss whatever’s on their minds and bicker.
The bits are viewable on the couple’s website, stillerandmeara.com.
“We’ve invaded cyberspace,” he says. “We get to talk about whatever we want — baseball, politics, Lady Gaga. The show is produced and directed by a young fella named Ben Stiller. He’s a smart guy and I think he’s got a bright future ahead of him.”
