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Brian Robbins wanted his film about an inner-city Little League team to be as realistic as possible.

So he shot "Hardball," which opened at No. 1 this weekend with $9.3 million, at a Chicago housing project.

Robbins told Associated Press Television News that it was "extremely rough and scary at times," but worth it.

"I wanted to get the sense of the buildings so we actually built our baseball field right in like the quad of these buildings," he said.

The movie was inspired by Daniel Coyle's book about his time coaching a baseball team in Chicago's housing projects. Keanu Reeves plays Conor O'Neill, who scalps tickets to finance his real occupation: losing heaps of money on sports bets.

Stiller marriage strong after busy yearIn their first year as a couple, Christine Taylor and Ben Stiller got married, bought a house and acted in a movie together.

"And," jokes Stiller, "our marriage survived."

Stiller tells Mademoiselle magazine in its October issue that his favorite thing about married life is making up after an argument.

"You have to make up because you're stuck with each other. It's either that or get divorced," the 35-year-old actor-director said.

Taylor and Stiller were married in May 2000.

- APThey're co-starring in the upcoming film "Zoolander," the modeling-world spoof that Stiller co-wrote and directed. He plays model Derek Zoolander, a character he created for the VH1 Fashion Awards in 1996.

Stiller's other films include "There's Something About Mary" and "Meet the Parents." Taylor, 30, has starred in "The Brady Bunch" movies and "The Wedding Singer."