LEVINSON: We ended up shooting during three commercial breaks of the first four commercial breaks. Each break was about three-and-a-half minutes. And we had to change the podium onstage, put our own prop up there. And we had to film Ben walking down the aisle and up onto the stage. So we had three shots at it in those two-minute breaks. It was a pretty exciting event.

Almost immediately following the sequence in the cemetery, Derek and Matilda hide out in Hansel’s loft, where the three—and many others—engage in a hilariously over-the-top orgy scene. We knew we had to shoot the sequence that happened at the Fashion Awards [at the beginning of the film] at the real Fashion Awards. We didn’t have a choice. We couldn’t recreate it.STANDEFER: I thought it was this super cool but weird, off-color movie that we did with Ben. It felt almost private somehow, like an inside joke. And then, I was at a dinner, and someone made a Blue Steel face.

JON VOIGHT (“LARRY ZOOLANDER”): I’m a fan of Ben’s. I think he was a very talented guy. When he called me for this thing, I said, “Well, I’d be interested, sure. Let me take a look at it.” I did, and I thought it was a very good script. And I thought the character was an interesting character for me to play. I thought I could make it work. For each scene, Stiller had to serve not just as the star and the director, but as a writer and a producer. The herculean juggling of tasks did not go unnoticed, especially by his wife.TAYLOR: I can say it because I’m not Ben, but I sometimes think that he can be a little bit ahead of his time when it comes to comedically putting something out there. The first thing he said to me was he didn’t want it to be an out-and-out ‘comedy.’ He wanted people for a moment to believe that they’re watching The Manchurian Candidate. And then within it was the comedy—within it was the simplicity of these models. THEROUX: Most people didn’t know I had anything to do with it. And I would just hear people quote it over and over again. It just sort of seeped into pop culture.

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. Are you pretty sure there's a lot more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good looking? Do you plan on finding out what that is?

About Derek Zoolander

DAVID C. ROBINSON (COSTUME DESIGNER): I started five weeks out because I was the second designer. They had fired the first designer, and so I had five weeks, and that included getting a crew and finding a space, because there was no space. So that was a little scary. (Laughs) If so, we think we may just have the costume for you this year. Relax! You don’t have to build the Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good (and who wanna learn to do other stuff good too) to be a hero this Halloween; you just have to save the day, or at least the fashion show, by wearing this Derek Zoolander Costume, straight off the runway from the box office hit film Zoolander.