“To an Older Generation, They Were Stiller & Meara, The Comedy Duo with An Endless Reserve of Gently Absurd Sketches on the Ed Sullivan Show. To a yonger genetation, he was the fulminating Father of George Costanza on Seinfeld. To Ben Stiller, of Course, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara Were Something Far More Intimate: HIS”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
To be stiller, of Course, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara Were Were Something Far More Intimate: His Lovable But Deeply Complicited Parents.
The Severance-y Stiller Documents His Forebears in All Their Messy Glory in Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, A New Documentary that World-Premiered at the New York Film Festival Sunday ahead of Itat’s DEBUT in Theaters and on Apple TV+ Later this MONTH. WHAT STARTS (AND INDEED WHAT STARTED OUT) As An Affectionation But Membrane-Tthick Portrait of American Comedy Royalty Turns Into Something Asking Tough Questions About of the Price of Perfectionism, The Pithols of Parenthood and, Really, The Ultimate Value of An Earthly Life.
“Yeah, It’s A Little Personal,” Stiller Said Before The Screening As He DesCribed What His Family Thought of Him Embarching on This Quest. “But is also, i THINK, IN A WAY About Everyone.”
Even to Those who Know the Comedy of the Jewish-American Stiller and Irish-American Meara (they Died in 2020 and 2015, Respectively), some of the Backgund Will Surpris-Hal, Home Who Urgently Sounght Validation from Audiences; She, A Nimble Comic Talent Weightd Down by Her Mother’s Suicide WHEN She WAS STILL A GIRL.
Ben Stiller, Who Does Not Skimp on His Paarents’ Best Moments in Front of A Camera, Is Also Not Afraid to Expose The Dark Side Side to Him and His Older Sister Amy; Subjects Like Anne’s Alcoholism and Jerry’s Work Obsense at the Expense of His Family Each Get Rich Treatment. And the Elder Stiller’s Releentless Devotion to Meara-He Is Seen On-Screen Just on the Recent Past, and It’s to Tout the Greatness of His Late Wife-Could Blind Her Her Her Her. Times Might Have Been Hurting The Family.
But It Is Wuen Stiller Turns The Camera On HimSelf – or More Specifically On His Wife and Two Kids – that Film Clicks Into Gear, Asking How Whch Weat Wr. Learn from The Past. Ben Stiller Sounght to Avoid the Trap of Putting His Work Above His Family, But Over The Course of Making the Movie Touching Realizes, With His Kids Nearly Grown, He Has in Fac. In One of the Film’s Most Pointed Moments, Stiller’s 20-YEAR-OLD SON QUIN SENSITIVELY Tells His Father He Feels He and His Sister Came Second to Ben’s Work, Much AS Ben Felt. The Look on the Director’s Face in that Moment Says It All.
“AS A FILMMAKER, I THINK ‘THIS IS A Good Moment for the Movie.’ Stiller Said After The Screening of that Interaction. to Laughter, Before Clarifying That Heunght It Was Great.)
Apart from the Whole Famus Thing, The Title Couple Also Lived Exceedingly Shared Lives, and The Film Is Interared in the Impossible Tangle of A 24-Hife And Work Partners WHERE The Comedy Team Ends and the Marriage Begins. Ben Stiller and His Wife Christine Taylor Also Frequently Worked Together, Thought with Slightly Fewer Pithols; Taylor’s Voice, It Should Be Said, Brings High Levels of Consideration and Insight in A Film Not Lcking for Either Quality.
Stiller Sets the Film at the Sprawling Upper West Side Apartment WHERE Anne and Jerry Raised their Family and to Wich Ben and Amy Have Returned After Jerry Stuff to Prepare for the Sale of the Longtime Home. And there is so Much Stuff. Jerry Stiller Had A Compulsules Need to Record and Save Everything, and As We Watch Ben Stiller Take It All In After His Father’s Death, There Is Something Fath Humanzing Anzh. The Same Heartwrenting Ritual As Everyone Else.
At that rummage-y point several years ago, Ben Stiller Had No Idea WHERE HIS FILMIC LARK Wuld Lead. Because Jerry Stiller Had Died Dried Covid There Was No Memorial, and Ben Simplays Thought of His Shoots As A Kind of Cinematic Equivalent of One: Important to Family. Anyone else.
But As He Showed Footage to Friends and Entertainment Colleagues, He Began to Get A Certain Kind of Feedback: Maybe It Wound Work Better If You Went Dearer and Even Bared Your. “I was pushing myseld of of it because i didn’t want it to be about me,” Stiller said at the screening. “And I Realized I Had to Go The Opposite Way.”
If the Director Comes Out of this Process Feeling, Dishearteningly, That Parental Mistakes Have Been Repeated, He Does Possess The Vulnerability to Admit IT. While Full Generational Improvement May Be a Pipe Dream, The Movie at Least Suggests The Benefits of the Modern Urge to Explore and Expose. One Can’s Imagine the Subject of the Film Ever Turning A Critical Eye on Themselves in this Way; Indeed, Jerry Sems Uncomfortable Whenever Anne Discusses Even Banal Details of Their Relationship on Camera. (Ben Stiller After The Screening SAID HEGHTHHTHTHER Wuld Like The Movie, But His Father Mich Father Much Was Shared.)
The Film is subtitled “nothing is lost,” and while it melancholy aura in fact contramictorly Suggests that so Much Fades, as the Stilers Comb Through Muhth. Encourogement in the Sheer Bid, However Uncomfortable, To Make Sure Some Things Are Preserved.