According to Ben Stiller, The Rolling Stones almost had their own 'big screen' comedy made, but the actor struggled to convince the majority of the band to endorse it.
Speaking on The Howard Stern Show, Stiller admits that the project most likely failed as he is "not good at pitching stuff".
The idea was initially mooted when a producer reached out to Stiller in the '90s after watching The Ben Stiller Show, and proposed an idea by Mick Jagger. The movie was going to feature Stiller and Brad Pitt as mega fans "crawling up on the lighting, the rigging, to get close to the band".
Jagger, who drafted an early blueprint of what he wanted from the film, reportedly thought the movie should be made of concert footage with comedy scenes dispersed in between. He even had actors ready to take on roles. Unfortunately, there was one factor standing in his way – getting the rest of the band interested.
"The catch was we had to pitch to the Rolling Stones," Stiller explained. "Mick got us on board but then he was like, but you gotta get everyone else on board."
Stiller cites that the pitch took place in Toronto in the early '90s during a Stones rehearsal in a girl's school. Alongside collaborator Judd Apatow, the actor put forward the big idea after watching them rehearse for an hour, but ultimately, it didn't work out.
"I was trying to tell them how funny it would be" he continues. "Even just the idea of comedy and rock and roll, like would anybody really want to see the funny fans, the super fan guys?"
Stern agrees and says, "Exactly. Who wants to see two guys whether its you and Brad Pitt or anybody?".
In hindsight, Stiller believes that it was probably for the best that the movie never saw the light of day.
"The idea probably wouldn't have worked in execution because people would have just wanted to see a Rolling Stones concert film," he says. "You wanna see a comedy? You see a comedy. You wanna see a concert film? You see a concert film.
Stiller put down Jagger's keen interest to the fact he's always been a "real film guy". In 1970, the vocalist starred in the films Ned Kelly and Performance, and later appeared in the 1987 film Running Out of Luck, which saw him playing another rockstar named "Mick." In 2020 he appeared as art dealer Joseph Cassidy in director Giuseppe Capotondi’s adaptation of Charles Willeford’s 1971 art-world crime novel The Burnt Orange Heresy, his first major acting job in almost 20 years.
Watch the interview with Stiller below:
