Director: Ben Stiller
Stars: Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, Ben Stiller, Amy Stiller
Synopsis: Ben Stiller tells the story of his parents—comedy icons Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara—exploring their impact on popular culture and at home, where the lines between creativity, family, life, and art often blurred.
There is a version – and there have been versions – of a documentary like Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost that is so painfully saccharine and twee to a point where the fact that it is a loving work of memoriam from a child to a parent doesn’t forgive its syrupy qualities. We’re told to never judge a book by its cover, but that was this critic’s unfortunate instinct regarding Ben Stiller’s documentary (now streaming on Apple TV+ in the aftermath of its world premiere at the New York Film Festival) about his parents, the comics Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. Its logline is a fine one: As described by its festival page, which are understandably and often glowing representations of its programmed films, “the most personal film of [Ben Stiller’s] career” is a “funny, moving documentary” in which “he tells the story of his parents… who were a beloved mainstay of 1960s and ’70s American culture.” All true enough, and perhaps a 27-year-old writer whose familiarity with Anne lacked entirely and knowledge of Jerry was limited to his work on sitcoms like Seinfeld and The King of Queens was never the “target” audience for a work like this one. Yet it quickly proves that loglines are frequently as useless and inconsistently revealing as trailers, for Stiller & Meara is not merely the depiction of parents by a son donning rose-colored glasses nor is it merely “funny” and moving” enough to get by on charm. It gets by on those qualities, to be sure, but Stiller’s direction and intimate involvement in the documentary’s schema itself provides significant depth, yes, to the relationship he had with both of his parents, but more importantly the partnership they shared for six decades and change.
And why shouldn’t it be both? It’s a film about family, and a film about a professional partnership between funny people that was regularly elevated by the romance between the duo and sometimes hindered because of the differing individual philosophies Anne and Jerry clashed on, and not always in private (or not always successfully behind closed doors). The film lays out the pair’s field-specific qualifications, achievements, and general history as it is supposed to, of course: Both had high aspirations as public figures, and though most of their success came from their years as the titular twosome, Jerry wanted that work to be his hallmark, while Anne had hopes of being a dramatic actress revered across multiple forms. Jerry wanted his work to be synonymous with Anne; she lobbied for independence that allowed her to be “Anne Meara,” not the name next to “Stiller.” This was the 1960s, mind you, so her calling to a different part of the cultural world was given less respect than the work she did alongside her husband.
Stiller details this conflict with generosity for both of his parents, acknowledging how their respective complexities as human beings – not just as celebrities – influenced their handlings of separate and shared anxieties about their future as a brace and as a couple. Jerry needed the public to love him; Anne drank. Both are reasonable, familiar responses to depressive states, and neither are particularly productive. Given the intimacy between filmmaker and subjects, it’s no surprise that Stiller paints both with a delicate brush, but what’s most refreshing is how he is sure to place an emphasis on his mother’s troubles, not deeming her a societal boil for her “behavior,” but as a woman who needed more than what was being offered to her. A lesser documentary – or this one, if directed by a director with some distance – might have used interviews with their son and daughter (Amy Stiller, a key presence throughout the film) to humanize the subjects. That Stiller never veers off his humanization-directed course as the core principle of this project is perhaps a given, but it’s how he does it that stands out beyond the junky portraits that are far more common in film today.
Not only does he give himself and his sister an opportunity to reminisce about their parents and consider their lives through the lenses of their careers both mutual and respective, but it includes testimony and discussion from/between the likes of Christine Taylor, Stiller’s partner since 2000, with whom he offers a sort of parallel example to the relationship between Jerry and Anne. Stiller and Taylor separated in 2017, but reunited in 2022 and talk openly about the difficulties of marriage and of parenting with prolific careers such as theirs. Their children, son Quinn and daughter Ella, are included here, too, and it’s fascinating to watch kids speak so transparently about how difficult it intermittently was to have Ben Stiller as their father. He was often away, acting or doing press or directing or writing or all of the above; the same goes for Taylor, which she and Stiller acknowledge, but there’s an understanding that it’s different when Dad is Zoolander and the Night at the Museum guy and Mom simply works less. Rarely before has a documentary managed to work in so many familial layers to the point where the whole experience feels more like peering in on family therapy than a documentary on streaming, but it works emotional wonders, all while staying rooted to the Jerry and Anne of it all.
Anne died in 2015 and Jerry in 2020, leading Ben and Amy to the Upper West Side apartment in which they grew up to uncover the trove of memories and narrative substance that became Stiller & Meara’s driving force; Jerry insisted on recording everything they did as a family, leading to a vast array of home videos that dance across the screen like mementos playing out in real time. He and Anne also regularly wrote each other letters, and the siblings read a few. (Bring your tissues, if only from one room to the living room couch.) The non-name portion of the title is a perfect encapsulation of not only these elements, but of the relationship that the names enjoyed from 1954 until their respective deaths, just five years apart. Nothing is Lost ensures that everything was at one point in time or another gathered and meticulously stored in order for the proper person to find it when the time came. There’s something almost too perfect about that, the sort of parental presence that feels ripped out of something closer to This Is Us than real life, but that’s only because it might not reflect our experience, and Stiller & Meara is specifically about one man’s experience, and that of his loved ones by relationships of their own, with Mom and Dad. It shouldn’t have ever been anyone else’s; it couldn’t have been.
Stiller & Meara celebrated its world premiere at the 63rd New York Film Festival. The film is now streaming on Apple TV+.
