Mining the origins of a showbiz family

BEN STILLER DIDN'T WANT TO INSERT HIMSELF INTO HIS documentary Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost.

- BY ESTHER ZUCKERMAN

The actor and director intended to make a movie about his parents, the revered comedic duo of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, and at first felt “self-conscious” about his own presence. But when he started to show friends the film—which premiered at the New York Film Festival in early October before it’s set to debut in theaters Oct. 17 and on Apple TV+ Oct. 24—he heard a similar refrain: “I’m not really seeing that much of you in it.”

He realized he had a role to play.

“The thing that was missing was probably my perspective on my parents, but also my perspective on my own relationships as affected by growing up with them,” he said in a phone call while on a break from shooting another family-themed project, the fourth Meet the Parents movie.

If he was exposing his parents, he also had to expose himself: “It became clear that it would feel weird or disingenuous to open up these private moments that my parents had and, as a filmmaker, not be looking at my own stuff, and including that in some way, because it felt like I would be judging them.”

As such, Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost is a complicated look at generations of Stillers. It functions, perhaps primarily, as a tribute to Jerry and Anne and their legacy. But through the inclusion of intimate recordings that Jerry made, it demonstrates how their comedic bickering onstage was mirrored by genuine tension in prior moments. Meanwhile, Stiller interviews his wife Christine Taylor, and their children, Ella and Quin, to understand what he inherited from his famous parents in terms of both his talent and personal shortcomings.