On his team -- and on his case

Put actor Ben Stiller on stage with his pal, the hilarious but dark Hollywood writer Jerry Stahl, and the comedy ensues, the way it does in a buddy picture where the biting humor undercuts the most piercing -- and revealing -- moments.

Take away the quips, though, and during a Sunday-afternoon presentation by the nonprofit group Writers Bloc, Stiller got right down to the tough questions: How hard was it for Stahl to write his critically acclaimed madcap memoir “Permanent Midnight” (Warner, 1995), about his days in the ‘80s as an ex-speedball-shooting junkie who ruined a career as a TV writer for hit shows such as “Moonlighting” and “thirtysomething”? (Stahl’s drug habit also meant that, at 38, he couldn’t hold onto a subsequent job -- as a McDonald’s cook.)

At one low point, Stahl told the audience of about 200 at the ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood, he was living at Cahuenga Boulevard and Yucca Street “in the basement of a crack house ... with no power.”

“The basement of a crack house,” Stiller repeated dryly, raising a hand at eye level to indicate higher ground. “Not even ... ?” The audience laughed; the tension dissipated.

Stahl’s memoir unfolds in much the same way, with moments of self-loathing interspersed with irony and black humor. He writes, for instance, of injecting heroin at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center while his daughter was being born, and, in the same breath, recalls a double amputee who still managed to get high with a girlfriend’s help: “Another triumph of the human spirit. But slap me if I get sentimental.”

At the Writers Bloc presentation, Stahl radiated intensity from the moment he walked in, unsmiling and chewing gum, wearing his trademark all black -- this time, though, in the sort of short-sleeve T-shirt that he couldn’t wear when he had track marks on his arms. He dropped his leather jacket on the ground and took a seat in a director’s chair next to Stiller, sometimes clutching his microphone with both hands, looking muscular and healthy.

After stints in drug-rehab clinics, Stahl, 49, who said he has been clean for eight years, now is a writer for CBS’ “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and writing a biography of Fatty Arbuckle, the scandal-tainted silent-film star. His more recent book “Plainclothes Naked” (William Morrow), a novel, was released last year. Stiller, 37, the star of “Zoolander” and “There’s Something About Mary,” had played Stahl in the 1998 film version of “Permanent Midnight.”

The two friends, who both live in Los Angeles, also have collaborated on other movie projects, including a screenplay adaptation of the classic Hollywood novel “What Makes Sammy Run?” (“We’re trying to figure it out right now,” Stiller said vaguely, in response to a question on the screenplay’s status.)

Stiller and Stahl, who hung out together before the filming of “Permanent Midnight,” each have such a sharp, quick sense of humor that sometimes it’s hard to tell whether they’re joking. Stahl repeated a story he has told journalists about how, about five minutes after they first met and decided to work on the “What Makes Sammy Run?” screenplay, he was sent on a private jet to St. Bart’s and remembers “eating Sly Stallone’s leftover sandwich.”

“No, there was no private jet,” Stiller insisted.

“It didn’t happen like that?” Stahl said. “No?”

In a serious moment, Stahl talked about his writing philosophy, based on advice he once heard: “If you write a sentence that makes you squirm, keep going.” Stahl said that he blurted out his memoir “in a way that, being a discreet older fellow now, I might not have written. It didn’t feel like writing. It was sort of a slow-motion literary boil lancing.” Beat. “Not to be too flowery.”

An audience member wanted to know how Stahl dealt with the reaction to his memoir. “When you’ve written something as intimate and personal ... and something that’s sexually graphic ... how do you deal with it? And your kid and everything?” Stahl said he has a good relationship with his 13-year-old daughter. “We’ve established she will not read the book until she’s 40, so that’s taken care of,” he said. But if she happens to catch “Permanent Midnight” on cable, “I could tell her I made it all up and instead of thinking I was a junkie, she would think I was a liar. So I went with junkie.”

His full circle from Hollywood writer to junkie and back has been surreal, Stahl acknowledged, starting with the fact that he managed to get an agent and book deal for “Permanent Midnight.” He had never written about himself before. “It is kind of ironic,” he said. “I’m among the few people who can actually say being a junkie, destroying my life [and] health and betraying those I love and everyone I ever met was a great career move. I don’t advise it, but it worked for me.” The audience tittered nervously.

Long pause. “In-teresting,” Stiller deadpanned.

Everyone laughed.