We Need to Talk About Zoolander
Specifically, the budget.
I don’t get it. I don’t get it! How did they do it?
Have you seen Zoolander recently? Because I have. I have seen Zoolander multiple times in the past eight months (more than any person should probably watch this movie), and every time I have completely forgotten everything about Zoolander. The plot, the effects, every time it’s like watching a new movie. So you can imagine my repeated shock as celebrity cameo after celebrity cameo casually appeared before me.
(In a real way though, has anyone actually watched Zoolander within the past year? I know it’s a classic, but do you remember that the entire plot is that Derek Zoolander gets hypnotized to murder the Malaysian Prime Minister, because the new prime minister wants to abolish child labor and the people in charge of the fashion industry know that their businesses would fail without it? That’s insane. I thought this movie was just about male models and boy, was I wrong. Continuing.)
Here’s a list of just some celebrities who make appearances in Zoolander just as themselves: Lenny Kravitz, Tommy Hilfiger, David Bowie (?????), Natalie Portman, Christian Slater, Paris Hilton, Heidi Klum, Donald Trump — I could go on, but we all have access to IMDB. Did you remember any of that? Because I will wholeheartedly say that every time David Bowie shows up to judge the underground walk-off between Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) and Hansel McDonald (Owen Wilson), I’m truly shocked.
Also, past the celebrity cameos, do you know how many miscellaneous photoshoots they must have had to do just for the minute-long clips that play behind Zoolander and Hansel at the Male Model of the Year award ceremony? There must have been upwards of 30 different looks, which yes, had an awesome payoff, but at what cost?
Zoolander had a budget of 28 million dollars. Many major features have budgets of hundreds of million dollars. I currently make $14.25 an hour. I don’t know how they did it, but somehow the creative masterminds behind Zoolander pulled off one of the most insane movies I have ever seen on a budget that is relatively close to nothing. So, how did they do it?
Cut the initial ending. Zoolander was supposed to die and go to heaven. This is true. They wanted to hit Ben Stiller with a train, kill him, and send him to heaven, but that would have been out of budget, so they cut it. This would have been a worthwhile expense, in my opinion, because then we wouldn’t have a Zoolander 2!
Celebrity cameos were filmed at the 2000 VH1/Vogue Fashion Awards. This is also true. This makes a lot of sense — You have a bunch of well-dressed celebrities and fashion icons in a room, it’s a room that you didn’t pay for, and all you have to do is corner them with a camera and a line of dialogue. All of the PAs, sets, costumes, hair, and makeup? That’s on VH1 & Vogue’s dollar, baby.
Ben Stiller is the character, and Zoolander is the real guy. The entire movie is actually a guerrilla-style documentary about Derek Zoolander, who sometimes moonlights as an actor named Ben Stiller. This is not true, but also… hasn’t been proven wrong. Like, yeah, we all know that Ben Stiller is a great actor, but I bet nobody has ever considered that maybe the great actor all along was Derek Zoolander.
If you have a free hour and a half anytime soon, I would recommend watching Zoolander. Not because it’s a great movie, but more so you can sit in awe and wonder: what the fuck?
