‘Meet The Parents’ Turns 25: Secrets You Never Knew About the Classic Comedy

The making of the 2000 laugh riot “Meet the Parents” is a funny story in itself!

The Jay Roach-directed comedy flick stars Ben Stiller as the Chicago underachieving male nurse Greg Focker, who is introduced to the parents, Jack and Dina Byrnes (Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner), of his charming daycare teacher girlfriend Pam (Teri Polo) before he proposes to her. Owen Wilson plays Pam’s ex-fiancé.

The movie, a remake of a 1992 film of the same name, was originally set to star Jim Carrey with Steven Spielberg directing.

“I actually created the Fockers in a creative meeting,” reveals Carrey, who was unable to sort out conflicting schedules with Universal and left the project. “But it was perfect that Ben Stiller did it. When I saw it, I went: ‘That’s the way it’s supposed to be done.’”

Spielberg, meanwhile, parted ways with “Meet the Parents” on the sage advice of his wife, Kate Capshaw.

“I was preparing to direct ‘Meet the Parents’ when she read the script,” Spielberg says. “She said, ‘You’re not directing this movie — give it to a director who does comedy well.’”

The project was turned over to Roach, who had directed the “Austin Powers” series.

Roach wanted a character-driven comedy “in a kind of ’40s-farce way, the opportunity to create realistic characters but heighten the comedic situations and predicaments a bit so that they’re still very funny and there is still some very broad humor. But audiences would connect to the characters and completely identify with Ben Stiller’s anxiety about not only meeting Robert De Niro’s character, but the kind of characters from his past that come with him. For me, it became completely psychologically driven. That is a kind of nice mixture of the old-fashioned approach and the newer approach.”

It’s difficult to imagine anyone stealing scenes from De Niro, but one did — the four-legged feline Mr. Jinx, the toilet-using kitty played by two Himalayan cats, Bailey and Misha. The tough actor loved the cats and wanted “Mr. Jinx” to get more screen time. He won over the kitties by keeping cat snacks in his pockets.

One scene had Stiller claiming it would be possible to milk a cat like Jinx and demonstrating it with his hands. Danner showed him how, confiding, “I remember because my grandfather had a milk business. And I said, ‘Oh Ben, the only thing I’m going to speak up about. I said, you really have to milk it like that.” The scene was hilarious.

And De Niro, playing an ex-CIA agent, proposed the funny polygraph scene where he grills Ben’s character.

Ironically, Stiller proposed to his real-life girlfriend, Christine Taylor, during filming.

“Christine’s father is an intimidating guy who owns a security company,” Stiller says. “We’re good friends now, but at the time I was in the basement rec room saying, ‘I really would like to marry your daughter…’ He’s a man of few words but he was very welcoming.”

At first, the Motion Picture Association refused to allow producers to use the name Fockers unless they found a real person with the name. They actually found a whole list of real-life people who had the same name.

“Meet the Parents” had a budget of around $80 million, including promotion, and raked in a whopping $330 million at the box office. Randy Newman’s “A Fool in Love” was nominated for a Best Original Song Oscar, but lost out to Bob Dylan’s “Things Have Changed” from the film “Wonder Boys.”