Ben Stiller Visits howard

BEN STILLER WANTS AN OSCAR

Ben Stiller stopped by to promote his new movie, 'Greenberg,' and Howard immediately asked why he was making a 'small' film. Ben explained: "It's not about the money at all. It's about trying to make a good movie...this kind of movie is never gonna be--it's not gonna get released on that many screens." Robin asked if it was his bid for an Oscar, so Ben joked: "That's what the 'Night at the Museum' movies were."

Howard commended Ben for being a successful comedic actor who didn't try and go 'serious' all the time. Ben said he loved to be funny, but now he just had more freedom: "It just becomes a choice you make in the moment...you get to a point where you want to do what's interesting to you. You don't wanna keep doing the same thing."

SASHA KILLED THE 'AVATAR' BIT

Robin asked what happened to the 'Avatar'-spoofing bit he and 'Borat' star Sasha Baron Cohen had planned for the Oscars, so Ben explained: "Sasha didn't do it...you'd have to ask him [why]. I honestly don't know what the process was with him...I know that the producers didn't kill it."

BEN ON HIS DIVA REP...AND AFRICA

Howard read Ben a tabloid story claiming that he was a "terror" and exhibited "vain, obsessive behavior" on the set of 'Meet the Parents,' so Ben joked: "Is it weird to have a full-length mirror by the camera when you shoot?" Ben added that movie sets were a weird workspace where you're doing very private work in a public sphere: "It's sort of a vulnerable place."

Ben told the crew he’d recently visited Uganda on a humanitarian aid mission, leading Howard to joke about Robin's 'fact-finding' mission to Guatemala. Ben laughed: "We found some real good facts there, yeah. I saw a cow being slaughtered." Howard wondered why a man who's generated billions in box office dollars would go to Africa, so Ben explained: "I don't equate the gross of a movie in any way with--first of all, my personal sense of self. Ok? Because it doesn't relate to that."