From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

It's the treatment.

My guest is actor, writer, director, and as a director, his work in TV alone over the last

couple of decades

has been kind of an astonishing leap from directing Heat Vision and Jack to escape at Danamo

to his newest directing endeavor, which is Severance, which is on Apple Plus TV. Ben Stiller is my

guest. Ben, I can't thank you enough for doing this. Thanks, Elvis. It's nice to be with you.

I just find myself thinking about so often, primarily as a director, you've worked on pieces that

have been about reality or people's idea of what reality is, kind of nits together,

Tropic Thunder and Zoolander, even to some extent, and, you know, the secret life of Walter

Middy. And I just wonder where that interest and that kind of thing comes from for you.

I mean, reality is kind of interesting to me because it's what everything is about, isn't it?

It's kind of like what our lives are about. I definitely think, you know, in Walter Middy and Severance, there are certain themes that

come through in terms of just being kind of disconnected, you know.

And as we go through life, I think we all have to sort of cope with all the things that

life throws at us.

And I know in my own experience, there are

coping mechanisms and ways of getting through challenging times that involve sort of, you know,

having to sort of put up some sort of a shield or, you know, sort of cutting off from maybe being

as sensitive or being in touch with emotions or memories and things

like that that you're not even aware of as you're going through life. This is just my own experience.

So I think that severance, you know, definitely deals with that in a very sort of specific way

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