ZALAZNICK: Ben was-and is-a fan darling and everyone loved the character right away. If it doesn’t get a great reaction, only a couple thousand people will see it. Let me put it on the big screens tonight and let’s see what kind of reaction we get. I told him, “Look, this is not going out for another few days. He was concerned maybe it wasn’t funny enough. But I remember getting on the phone with Ben a few days before the show, and he was having second thoughts. He took to it really well, and said he would do it. GALLEN: Ben Stiller was still sort of a rising comedic star. GABÉ DOPPELT (FASHION STILLS PRODUCER): Joel would come to me to say, “Who’s a famous male model?” And I said, “ Mark Vanderloo is probably the most famous male model right now.” And they thought that was funny and named him Derek Zoolander based on Mark Vanderloo’s name. But in the following years, the film became a cult classic, inspiring countless people to bust out their best Blue Steel in their bathroom mirrors.
Likely because of the horrific events of 9/11, it didn’t get the attention (or box office success) it deserved.
The film was set for a September 28 release in the year 2001. They went on to corral an all-star cast that included Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Christine Taylor, Milla Jovovich, Jerry Stiller, David Duchovny, and Jon Voight, as well as a bevy of cameos from everyone from Vince Vaughn to Fabio to David Bowie to-yes-even Donald Trump. It was as if it had a giant “Kick Me” sign on its back, waiting for someone to do the honors.Īfter the success of the short-as well as a four-minute follow-up in 1997-Sather and Stiller began tossing around ideas about what a Derek Zoolander movie might look like. But nobody was really pointing out the industry’s more absurdist qualities. Supermodels were household names, and kids longing to be models were as commonplace as children aspiring to be doctors and lawyers.
At the time, our obsession with the fashion world was reaching new heights. The character made his first appearance in a short film written by a surrealist comedian named Drake Sather, starring Ben Stiller. Derek Zoolander was born into the very world that he’d so deliciously send up: the 1996 VH1 Fashion Awards.
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