Ben Stiller: No laughing martyr

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

What's a chap like Ben Stiller doing in a movie like this? The man who gave Cameron Diaz' hair that extra lift in the most memorable gag of There's Something About Mary is playing a rabbi in dreadfully tasteful romantic comedy Keeping the Faith.

Well he is New York Jewish, though he hasn't spent much time in the synagogue.

"Well I was barmitzvah-ed when I was 13 and a few years later I got involved in this movie ... in between there I wasn't a very religious person," he deadpans on the line from Sydney where he's on the promotional trail.

What is possibly more surprising is that the writer-director-actor funny guy is in a film that has the name of not his but yet another hip Hollywood talent stamped all over it.

Keeping the Faith is the directorial debut of Edward Norton Jr. It's a tone change for him too — the actor who has played a priest-killer (Primal Fear), pornographer-defending lawyer (The People Vs Larry Flynt), card-shark (Rounders) and Nazi skinhead (American History X) is in front of Keeping the Faith's cameras as Father Brian Finn, Catholic priest.

Rabbi Jake Schram and Father Finn are old buddies whose progressive attitude towards their services has packed the pulpits in their respective New York places of worship.

But when the third part of their childhood gang — Jenna Elfman as a leggy corporate wonderwoman — arrives back on the scene, the two become rivals for her affections. Which, of course, is a problem when one is constantly being introduced to nice Jewish girls as marriage prospects, and the other is meant to be celibate.

The idea of Norton directing a comedy was what attracted Stiller to the role, even if he wasn't initially let in on the joke about the occupations of the two male leads.

"The fact that he wanted to direct and act in a comedy was interesting to me and especially since I tend to get typecast in certain types of roles. So I thought that was cool that he wanted to try and stretch himself and it would be fun to work with him in that way."

It's a decidedly old-fashioned kind of fun. Save perhaps for Elfman's corporate thruster, Keeping the Faith feels like it could have been made in the 50s.

"Yeah sure, even the 30s or the 40s. Edward was trying to go back to a movie that was a little less cynical and ironic and characters who really had specific points of view and it's a traditional romantic comedy and I thought it was challenging to be able to do something like that yet have it still relevant to today."

Not that Stiller himself isn't averse to a little cynicism and irony in his own work. Predisposed to an entertainment career with parents who are showbiz veterans (father Jerry is best known for his role as George's father in Seinfeld), he went from acting in Broadway, to making his own short movies then to work as a writer and performer on Saturday Night Live. That in turn led to comedy specials for MTV and his own series, The Ben Stiller Show, on the channel. His debut as a feature director — in which he starred — was the Gen-X comedy Reality Bites, which he followed by helming a rare Jim Carrey flop The Cable Guy.

Lately though, it seems Stiller has been concentrating on being in front of the camera and it seems he will forever be known as that guy from Something About Mary in which he suffered all manner of indignities — braces, bad haircuts, a nasty accident with a zipper, a spot of onanism — in the name of comedy.

Having that big a hit didn't do his career any harm though.

"It makes people want to work with you more, you get offered a little bit more money and there are more opportunities. It's basically what happens with any movie that does well — it allows you the opportunity to keep on working which is great."

Even if he could do without those people who — in a repeat of that famous scene — come up and tweak his ear lobe asking, "what's that?"'

"Yes, yes, there are people who have seen that movie," he sighs, "but the thing is people do really love the film and for all the ridiculous comments that you get, mainly people want to express just how much they love the movie which is cool. A nice feeling."

* Keeping the Faith has public previews today and opens at cinemas next Thursday.