First and foremost, it’s a wonderful look back at his parents’ showbiz lives. Stiller and Meara were hugely successful in their day, their double act appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show 36 times. Among their most memorable sketches was “computer dating” – a phenomena that had just been invented – where two mismatched characters were put together. He played the Jewish man Hershey Horowitz and she played the Irish Catholic Mary Elizabeth Doyle – based on their own ethnic identities.
“The idea of playing ourselves from our ethnic backgrounds had never come up before,” says Jerry in the documentary. Indeed, it was the first time American television had featured an interfaith romance (and was something that appealed to the Irish-Catholic Sullivan, whose own wife Sylvia was Jewish). “This ended up being the iconic sketch for them,” says Stiller, and yet clearly their pairing was seen as groundbreaking on television. “They’re married in real life,” says one announcer, half-shocked. “He’s Jewish and she’s Irish – for real!”
Marrying Jerry in 1954, Meara, who was raised Irish-Catholic in Long Island, converted to Reform Judaism in 1961, because she “wanted my children to know who they were”, as she later told People magazine. The idea of generational identity was something uppermost in Ben Stiller’s mind too.
“Hopefully, if you don’t know anything about my parents or even me, this [film] is about a family that has been in a profession… but the way that the family generationally relates to each other, and how parents affect children, and then the children have kids, and how that affects those kids… those themes of what we pass on, both good and bad, and how you reconcile that, how you deal with losing a parent. All those things, I think, are the things I’d love people to get out of it.”
A young Stiller and his mother Anne. Credit: 'Stiller and Meara: Nothing is Lost' on Apple TV+.[Missing Credit]
For Stiller, 59, it was also the chance to deep dive through his parents’ own self-curated archive, everything from intimate love letters to Jerry’s audio cassettes. “First of all, I didn’t know my dad recorded all these conversations that they had. He would record things, and he had a tape recorder and he had a camera, and he was always taking pictures of the family and recording us as little kids. But the fact that he was willing to record their arguments…” He trails off, lost in thought. “He was always looking back at his life.”
Intriguingly, Stiller’s father existed in a time before the internet, back when things – even TV shows – were more ephemeral.
“I was grateful to have these physical tapes and film and video cassettes,” Stiller reflects, “because a lot of the clips in the movie don’t exist [in an official capacity]. Some of those interviews with my parents, they’re only in the movie, because my dad’s taped them off of the television when they were on. They’re not even saved. So I feel very connected to that.”
While Stiller once played a struggling documentary film-maker in Noah Baumbach’s 2014 comedy-drama While We Were Young, this was the first time he’d directed one. It was a shock to the system. “I have such respect for this art. There’s not a lot of money being spent on documentaries. You’re having to figure out how to get your shoots together over the course of years, and then how to tell a compelling story that people are going to connect with. It’s something that you feel passionate about, but how do you transfer that passion to the audience? Without a script!”
As the film unfolded, Stiller began to turn the camera on himself, questioning his time as a Hollywood star, and how it affected his own children, son Quin, 20 and daughter Ella, 23. At one point, he tells a story of how he told the young Quin that he was about to head off for months to shoot Night at the Museum 3. When the crestfallen boy looked at him, Stiller lamely replied: “But you love Night at the Museum”, as if the thought of another addition to the franchise would make up for his father’s absence.
Jerry and a young Ben Stiller in a photo from 'Stiller and Meara: Nothing is Lost'. Credit: Apple TV+[Missing Credit]
Likewise, he gives thought to how his own parents struggled to make a living in showbiz whilst trying to raise two children. “I think any parent will say ‘I’m going to do this, this and this differently,’” he reflects. “When you get into the reality of it, the reality is so much more complicated. You really start to see with the realities that your parents dealt with. I think everybody has different issues, but it’s very hard.”
Stiller even deep dives into his marital troubles in the film. Married to actress Christine Taylor since 2000, they split up 17 years later. There’s even footage of them on the set of Stiller’s 2001 cult fashion-centric comedy Zoolander, which Taylor co-starred in, with the actress lamenting the pressures of a showbiz life on their marriage. During the pandemic they moved back in together, primarily for the sake of the children, as they formed a family bubble. It was enough to kickstart a reconciliation.
While he documents all of this, as if it were a filmed family therapy session, the meat of Stiller & Meara is still his parents. “I was just very fortunate to have parents who were very well-documented,” he says. “My wife, her parents are not in show business. And they have very few home movies or home videos from their lives, and to have all of these interviews and these shows and these things and the raw footage I found so fascinating.”
He recalls finding footage of sketch shows, featuring his parents, and the downtime moments in between. “There’s one shot of my dad where he’s got a wig on. He’s getting ready to do a scene, and he’s just going over it in his head, what he’s going to say. And that stuff I found fascinating.” More than anything, it was a way of dealing with the immeasurable loss one feels after the death of one’s parents. “It’s a way of processing grief for me,” he says, quietly, “and to connect.”
Stiller & Meara: Nothing is Lost is on Apple TV from October 24
'Stiller and Meara: Nothing Is Lost.' Credit: Apple TV+[Missing Credit]