Meet The Parents (2000)—"Pharmacy Clerk"
JF: There was a phase there where I had a fair amount of roles in Ben Stiller movies. I did a dramatic guest-star role years ago on a short-lived TV show called The Beat. It was a cop show directed and produced by Barry Levinson. And the casting director for that was casting Meet The Parents. Anyway, Meet The Parents was the first movie I ever did, basically. They had a big cattle call for that part, and I went in there—I was in there for only about half a day. We shot my scene in a real drug store, which was actually open while we were filming the scene. So I play a guy who works at the cash register, and as Ben Stiller and I are acting, right next to me, shoved into the corner, were about four cashiers who worked at the store. The director would say "Action!" and they would smoosh against the wall in the corner. Me and Ben would do our scene, the director would yell "Cut," me and Ben would step to the side. The cashiers would go to the registers and ring up customers who were waiting. And then they'd be like, "Okay, action," and the clerks would run to the side again. It was pretty hilarious. Usually on these big-budget movies, they'd just rent out a place for the whole day, but in this case, they actually kept the store open the entire day.
AVC: What was the thinking behind that?
JF: People need to get their medicine, so I think they had—maybe it was a legal thing where they had to keep the pharmacy open.
AVC: You didn't want Grandma to not get her diabetes medication because Ben Stiller was making a movie.
JF: It was the last scene of the day, and we're trying to get things done, and the store's still open, and they're still ringing people up. It made it pretty chaotic. But that scene was a lot of fun, because it was mostly improvised, and that's my favorite thing to do, is making stuff up on the spot. As far as acting goes. I remember we ran through it once, it was real short, and then Ben Stiller goes to the director and says, "Hey, could we maybe just run with it?" Director's like, "Yeah, cool." Goes to me, "Is that okay with you?" I'm like, "Great." 'Cause I'd just met him for the first time, like, 10 seconds earlier. Then we did it a bunch of times, and that line I say, "You can get a whole bunch of mums," that's a line I completely made up, that was not in the script. So anyway, I did Meet The Parents. Then Zoolander came about.
Zoolander (2001)—Scrappy Zoolander
That was weird, kind of a long, long fucking story. Basically, I didn't even know about that movie. I'm hanging at the Comedy Cellar one night, I did a show, and a buddy of mine, Godfrey, had just done a spot, and I see him reading a script called Zoolander. And I said, "What's that?" And he said, "This new Ben Stiller movie, I got my callback tomorrow. He's writing and directing it, too." I'm like, "Really?" I'd known him from Meet The Parents, and I was like, "I should try to get in on that, I've never even heard about it."
I kinda knew Ben's sensibility from working with him, so I told my friend Godfrey what to do at the audition. Well, Godfrey goes to the audition, does great, and then when he's done, he's like, "Yo, man, you should get Judah in this movie." And Ben's like "Oh yeah, Judah, oh wow, yeah, he would be good in this." And I made some phone calls and basically got myself a meeting with Ben, and the casting director was the same casting director from Meet The Parents. I said "Look, I'd love to do anything in the movie," and the part of Scrappy Zoolander opened up, and I got the part. And then my friend Godfrey got a part too—he's a black guy, and there's a scene where Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller go into disguise, so they put on some makeup and come out, and Owen Wilson looks like a man from India, and Ben Stiller looks like a black guy. My friend Godfrey is the black guy doing Ben Stiller.
So one day, I'm hanging out on the set, because I had to do a fitting. You know, I wore a wig in Zoolander, we all had that same Zoolander-hair wig. And my friend Godfrey was in that day, so we're hanging out. Ben gets a break, so he comes over and says "Hi. So what are you guys, roommates or something?" And we're like, "No, we're just friends, we work at the comedy clubs in New York all the time, we're always hanging out." He walks off, goes back to directing, he's got a million things on his mind, starring in a movie and directing it. But cut to a year later, I'm at home watching the DVD, listening to the commentary track—Godfrey's scene comes on and they talk about him, and they say, "Who's this guy?" And Ben Stiller goes, "Oh, this is Godfrey. He's Judah Friedlander's roommate. They're comedy partners." So it's like, he asked if we're roommates, we both said no, and then it just never stuck in his head. Anyway, that's just a weird side story.
Along Came Polly (2004)—"Dustin"
JF: Along Came Polly came about because of John Hamburg. He was a writer on Meet The Parents and Zoolander. So he knew me from both those movies, and he wrote and directed Along Came Polly, so he basically offered me that part.
Starsky & Hutch (2004)—"The Ice Cream Man"
JF: The L.A. casting directors were the casting directors from Zoolander. I get a call one day from the casting office for Starsky & Hutch and they go, "Hey, we've got this really small part and it shoots tomorrow, do you wanna do it?" And I'm like, "Sure." The casting directors knew me, and so did Todd Phillips, who did Old School and Road Trip—I auditioned for both those movies, and got real close on both, but did not get them. So I never asked, but I'm guessing it was a combination of that, maybe. I think Ben Stiller was kind of shocked when I showed up on set, thought maybe I was stalking him. He's like, "What are you doing here?" I said, "I got cast in it." But Ben was always a lot of fun to work with, I have a lot of respect for him, he's a super-hard-working guy, and really prolific. A lot of people think we're buddies, or we hang out together or something. But it was just a coincidence—you work with him once, and then they like working with you, and then you work with them a few other times.
"Everyday" Dave Matthews Band video (2001)—"Hugging Guy"
JF: I did this Dave Matthews video years ago where I walk around hugging people, and a lot of people think I'm buddies with the band. No, I just got an audition for it, and I got it. That was actually the same casting director, Kathleen Chopin, who cast me in Meet The Parents and Zoolander.
AVC: So in that video, you go around hugging people?
JF: Eighty percent of that's real, 20 percent is set up. Basically on the street, with hidden cameras, trying to get people to hug me for real. Two days in Virginia and about a day and a half in New York.
AVC: What are the auditions for that like? Do they test your hugging ability?
JF: It was very weird. They had two casting associates, basically—I would pretend to stand on a corner, and they would play different pedestrians walking by, and I would ask them for a hug. The director, I guess, liked how I was hugging people, and then after the audition, the director had me go out to the waiting room to ask the other actors waiting to go in if they would give me a hug. And he followed me. And when he did that, I had a pretty good idea that I was probably gonna get it, 'cause he wasn't asking that to everybody.
Feast (2005)—"Beer Guy"
JF: I had so much fun.
AVC: This is one of the Project Greenlight movies, right?
JF: That was the last Project Greenlight movie, and the only successful one. They're actually doing some sequels to it now. It's a horror comedy—I love horror movies, and obviously I love funny movies, so this was great. This was one of those roles where the style that we were going for, it was impossible to go too much over the top with it. Unlike some other movies, where you have to be very reserved and subtle, like American Splendor, this one, you just let it all hang out. So much fun. I'm covered in fake blood and monster puke the entire movie. I get my eye gouged out, my brains exploded. It was so much fun, man.
AVC: Was it strange doing a movie while this reality show was being filmed at the same time?
JF: Yes, that made it very difficult. The reality part. It made it much harder to make the movie.
AVC: How so?
JF: Well, you know how making a movie's hard? When you're trying to get everything done, you're working on a set, it's a cramped space, you got 30 crewmembers. Well, imagine another 20 crewmembers there with six cameras in your face, all the time. Just physically moving around, it was hard not to be constantly bumping into people. And then they would try to get different people to talk shit about each other, and nobody wanted to do that, we just wanted to do a good job. But more than that, it was just the physical part of having too many people on a set.
AVC: And it being a relatively low-budget production as well, it's not like—
JF: That's what I'm saying. The low-budget shoots are harder than the high-budget ones, because you have a third of the time to make a movie of the same length. But with an extra 10, 20 people with cameras in your face the whole time, it just slows up the process. But I had so much fun making that movie.
How High (2001)—"Student"
JF: Back in New York, I had done some TV commercials that Jesse Dylan, the director of How High, had directed, and I think he remembered me from that. I think I knew he was doing How High, and I think I just submitted myself and wound up getting the part.
AVC: Do you remember what the atmosphere was on that set?
JF: I remember Method Man riding around on a Big Wheel or some kind of bike. I think he thought I was the director. So he might have been a little high that day. It's just sort of funny filming a scene from Harvard at UCLA.
Wet Hot American Summer (2001)—"Ron"
JF: That movie has a big cult following. Wet, Hot was a lot of fun. Working with Molly Shannon was great—one of the sweetest, nicest people I have ever met. And not just a hilarious lady, but also a great actress. That was a hell of a lot of fun doing that. On Zoolander, the most fun on that was Jon Voight playing my dad. He's very Method, and we basically hung out for a week. He took me out. Since we were playing father and son, he wanted to get to know me some, and we really worked on our characters and our relationship. I was playing a mentally slow guy—Scrappy Zoolander—and I remember he took me to some fancy restaurant, one of those hotel restaurants on Central Park South, and he's playing the overbearing father, and I'm playing the mentally retarded son. So I remember him just yelling at me. He asked me to pass him the salt, I would pass him the pepper, he'd yell at me, I'd say "Sorry, sorry." We had so much fun hanging out all day, riffing around in character, and out of character, talking about our parts. Even though there were hardly any lines, we figured out the dynamics of it. That was awesome. I learned so much from him—he's one of the most generous people I ever met or worked with.
AVC: That sounds surreal.
JF: Yeah. Great guy.
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