Ben Stiller's Bruce Springsteen Impression Captured The Boss's Storytelling on SNL
It wasn't the first time the actor, Severance director, and former cast member has flexed his Springsteen.
Bruce Springsteen is duly celebrated for his 60-year music career, but that's just one of the things his fans know best about him — in addition to his deep, abiding love for New Jersey, and his penchant for spinning long, detailed stories and speeches between songs when performing live. During Ben Stiller's October 8, 2011 Saturday Night Live episode, he parodied The Boss's onstage storytelling in his "Bruce Springsteen DVD Set" sketch.
"You've loved his music for years. You've bought the reissues and you've bought the live bootlegs — but if you're a true Bruce fan, there's one thing you're missing to make your collection complete," an announcer (SNL writer and producer Steve Higgins) says at the top of the sketch. Enter Stiller's Springsteen backed by drummer Max Weinberg (then-writer Mike O'Brien) and Steven "Lil Stevie" Van Zandt (Fred Armisen), wrapping up one of his famous yarns.
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"...And then my daddy said to me, he said 'son, you better be going to get a haircut. And I said 'sorry Pops, but tonight I'm goin' drag racing...by the old abandoned Ferris wheel," Springsteen says, before grunting out a song countdown.
Ben Stiller's Bruce Springsteen SNL sketch poked fun at the singer's between-song stories
Bruce Springsteen: Just the Stories is "a complete collection of the stories Bruce tells between songs," the announcer explains, as Stiller poses on the cover in a classic Springsteen bandanna and sleeveless flannel.
The examples that follow are like catnip to the real fans, who know stories like this from so many collected bootlegs: "Motorcycle Crash," "Vietnam Draft Board," "Lil Stevie (First Meeting)," and "This One Time We All Got Bandannas." Important lore!
"My friends and I worked at a drive-in movie theater with no speakers," Stiller's Springsteen tells an audience, after describing another summer job stacking rust at a dirt factory. "We got paid 20 cents an hour to lean in peoples' windows and tell 'em what was happening," he added before kicking into another count-off.
Watch "Bruce Springsteen DVD Set" from Season 37, Episode 3 above, and stream every episode of Saturday Night Live on Peacock anytime.
Ben Stiller has a long history of impersonating Bruce Springsteen in sketches
Stiller was actually dusting off his (very solid) impression in "Bruce Springsteen DVD Set," as he first performed it on TV in 1990 and revived it over the years.
During his iconic one-season sketch comedy series, The Ben Stiller Show — co-created with Judd Apatow, and co-starring former SNL writer Bob Odenkirk and fellow SNL alum Janeane Garofalo — Stiller starred in a recurring sketch "Legends of Springsteen" in which fans told their own tall tales. Clearly obsessed with Springsteen's muttered count-offs, he also starred in another sketch, "Counting with Bruce Springsteen." And Stiller brought his Bruce back again during the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards.
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Was Ben Stiller ever an SNL cast member?
Yes.
The son of comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Ben Stiller had a very short tenure as an SNL Featured Player during Season 14 in 1989. He appeared in only four episodes.
The Meet the Parents star touched on why he left SNL after just five weeks during a January 2025 episode of The New York Times' podcast The Interview.
“It wasn’t great, but I knew that I couldn't do well there because I wasn't great at live performing,” Stiller said on the podcast. “I got too nervous. I didn't enjoy it, and I wanted to be making short films. So, like, in the moment, there were reasons why, and I had this opportunity to do this MTV show.” One could definitely say that it all worked out — and The Bear star Jeremy Allen White is the one channeling Springsteen in the 2025 biopic Deliver Me from Nowhere.
