Ben Stiller says pitching Titanic sequel scarier than impersonating Tom Cruise

When it existed and before becoming a mere data point in a sea of Ridiculousness reruns, the MTV Movie Awards were a modest television event. With a mix of general basic cable weirdness and the gall to give viewers a say in the winners, the show was often unpredictable and quite funny, giving comedians even more leeway to be themselves, in addition to access to major stars. Having hosted the 1996 awards, which saw Seven win Best Picture and Wes Anderson win Best New Filmmaker for Bottle Rocket, Ben Stiller would regularly return for sketches designed to help loosen up the luminaries in the crowd, with two of his most memorable appearances coming at the expense of Hollywood’s most powerful.

Stiller’s award show characters generally have a longer cultural footprint than expected. He infamously created the character Derek Zoolander for the 1996 VH1 Fashion Awards. Reminiscing about bits of MTV Movie Awards past with Seth Rogen on a recent Happy Sad Confused podcast, Stiller discussed playing Tom Cruise’s stunt double for the 2000 MTV Movie Awards. Happy Sad host Josh Horowitz asked how scary it is to do a Tom Cruise laugh six inches from the man’s face. But Stiller didn’t recall any nervousness. “It was happening in the moment. He was laughing, and then I started laughing, then he started laughing more, then I started laughing more. He was open to it.” But while Stiller left his honeymoon early so he could say the immortal line, “This mission just got a hell of a lot more impossibler,” in front of John Woo and Tom Cruise, another movie award bit, he admits, was much more impossibler.