Meet the Parents

''Meet the Parents'' is a 2000 American comedy film written by Jim Herzfeld and directed by Jay Roach. It chronicles a series of unfortunate events that befall a good-hearted but hapless nurse (Ben Stiller as Greg Focker) while visiting his girlfriend's parents (Robert De Niro as Jack Byrnes and Blythe Danner as Dina Byrnes). Teri Polo as Pam Byrnes and Owen Wilson as Kevin Rawley also star.

The film is a remake of a 1992 film of the same name directed by Greg Glienna and produced by Jim Vincent. Glienna – who also played the original film's protagonist – and Mary Ruth Clarke cowrote the screenplay. Universal Pictures purchased the rights to Glienna's film with the intent of creating a new version. Jim Herzfeld expanded the original script but development was halted for some time. Jay Roach read the expanded script and expressed his desire to direct it but Universal declined him. At that time, Steven Spielberg was interested in doing so while Jim Carrey was interested in playing the lead role. The studio only offered the film to Roach once Spielberg and Carrey left the project.

Released in the United States and Canada on October 6, 2000 and distributed by Universal Pictures, the film earned back its initial budget of $55 million in only 11 days. It went on to become one of the highest-grossing films of 2000, earning over $165 million in North America and over $330 million worldwide. It was well received by film critics and viewers alike, winning several awards and earning additional nominations. Ben Stiller won two comedy awards for his performance and the film was chosen as the Favorite Comedy Motion Picture at the 2001 People's Choice Awards. The success of the film inspired two sequels, namely ''Meet the Fockers'' and ''Little Fockers'' released in 2004 and 2010, respectively. It also inspired a reality television show titled ''Meet My Folks'' and a sitcom titled ''In-Laws'', both of which debuted on NBC in 2002.

Plot

Greg Focker, a nurse living in Chicago, intends to propose to his girlfriend, Pam Byrnes, but his plan is disrupted when they are invited to the wedding of Pam's sister, Debbie, at their parents' house on Long Island. Greg decides to impress Pam's parents first, and propose to her in front of her family, but this plan is put on hold when the airline company loses his luggage which contains the engagement ring.

At the Byrnes's house, Greg meets Pam's father Jack, her mother Dina, and their beloved cat Jinx. Jack is immediately suspicious of Greg and openly criticizes him for his choice of career as a male nurse and anything else he sees as a difference between Greg and the Byrnes family. Greg attempts to impress Jack, but his efforts fail. He becomes even more uncomfortable after he receives an impromptu lie detector test from Jack and later learns from Pam that Jack is a retired CIA operative who interrogated double agents.

Meeting the rest of Pam's family and friends, Greg still feels like an outsider. Despite efforts to impress her family, his inadvertent actions make him an easy target for ridicule. Greg unintentionally gives Debbie a broken nose and a black eye during a pool volleyball game, uses a malfunctioning toilet which floods the Byrnes' backyard with sewage, and sets the wedding altar on fire. Several misunderstandings also cause Jack to believe Greg is a marijuana user after Pam's weed-using brother, Denny, unintentionally frames him.

Later, Greg loses Jinx and replaces him with a stray, whose tail he spray-paints and who makes a mess of the house, including destroying Debbie's wedding dress (though the real Jinx is later found). By now, the entire Byrnes family, including Pam, agrees that Greg should leave Long Island. Desperate to save himself, Greg reveals he has seen Jack engaging in some secret activity with some shady characters, and that Jack is planning a covert mission after the wedding. Jack angrily counters that the mission was a surprise honeymoon for Debbie and her fiancé Bob, then accuses Greg of lying about being a nurse and taking the Medical College Admission Test because his CIA contacts could not find any record of a "Gregory" Focker.

Greg's missing luggage arrives, revealing his real first name as Gaylord, much to the amusement of the Byrnes family. Greg drives sadly to the airport preparing to return to Chicago but is detained by airport security for insisting that his luggage stays with him rather than be checked. Back at the Byrnes's house, Jack learns from a disappointed Pam that he could find no record of Greg from the CIA because his real name is Gaylord, and is presented with copies of Greg's transcripts his parents faxed her, proving that Greg passed the Medical College Admission Test. Despite this, Jack still states his belief that Greg is an unsuitable husband for Pam because of his mistakes and lies, but is told off by Dina over his consistent picking apart of any man Pam brings home (and that he didn't even like Pam's previous fiancé, Kevin, until after they broke up).

After hearing Pam make a heartfelt phone call to Greg to apologize for not sticking up for him earlier, Jack realizes that Pam truly loves Greg. He rushes to the airport, convinces airport security to release Greg, and brings him back to the Byrnes's house. Jack performs a lie detector test on Greg to tell the truth about the weekend and loving Pam, leading Jack to propose to Greg to be his son-in-law.

As Greg proposes to Pam, Jack and Dina listen in on their conversation from another room, agreeing that they should now meet Greg's parents despite their worries about doing so. After Debbie's wedding, Jack views footage of Greg recorded by hidden cameras that he had placed strategically around the house in which Greg calls Jack a "psycho" and mocks him but also exposes Denny as the true marijuana user.

Cast

Themes

Greg Focker is a middle-class Jewish nurse whose social and cultural position is juxtaposed against the Byrnes family of upper-class White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. With respect to Greg as a Jew and a nurse when compared to the Byrnes and Banks families, a distinct cultural gap is created and subsequently widened. The cultural differences are often highlighted, and Greg repeatedly made aware of them. This serves to achieve comedic effect through character development and has also been commented upon as being indicative of thematic portrayal of Jewish characters' roles in modern film as well as being a prime example of how male nurses are portrayed in media. Speaking about character development in ''Meet the Parents'', director Jay Roach stated that he wanted an opportunity to "do character-driven comedy" and "to create realistic characters, but heighten the comedic situations and predicaments."

Vincent Brook observes mainstream Hollywood cinema's tendency since the 1990s of incorporating Jewish liminality and "popularizing the Jew." He explains the "manly Jewish triumph" of characters like Jeff Goldblum's David Levinson in ''Independence Day'' and labels it as a "certain answer to America's yearnings for a new Jewish hero." This stands in direct contrast to the schlemiel or "the Jewish fool" which was seen to have been revitalized in the mid-1990s after faltering since the 1960s. The schlemiel, Brook explains, is an anti-hero in whose humiliation the audience finds supreme pleasure. Within that context, Brook describes Greg Focker's character as "the quintessential example of the postmodern schlemiel." The repeated embarrassing encounters that Greg faces with his girlfriend's all-American family is compared to the example of Jason Biggs's character Jim Levenstein of the ''American Pie'' film series where Levenstein is often the comedic centerpiece due to his repeated sexual embarrassments.

Anne Bower writes about Jewish characters at mealtime as part of the broader movement she believes started in the 1960s where filmmakers started producing work that explored the "Jewish self-definition." She postulates that the dinner table becomes an arena where Jewish characters are often and most pointedly put into "conflicts with their ethnic and sexual selves." She describes the example of Greg sitting down for dinner with the Byrnes family and being asked to bless the food. In this scene, Greg attempts to recite a prayer by improvising and, in doing so, launches into a recital of the song "Day by Day" from Act I of ''Godspell''. Bower notes this scene as "particularly important for establishing the cultural distance" between the Jewish Greg and the Christian Byrnes. She noted that the social gap is further widened next morning when Greg is the last person to arrive at the breakfast table; he shows up wearing pajamas while everyone else is fully clothed. Here Greg is shown eating a bagel, which Bower argues as being a clear signifier of Jewishness.

Based on common misconceptions and stereotypes about men in nursing, Greg's profession is repeatedly brought up by Jack in a negative context and the character of Greg Focker has come to be one of the best known film portrayals of a male nurse. Even though men dominated the profession in earlier times, there has been a feminization of the nursing profession over the course of the last century which has caused men in nursing to often be portrayed as misfits by the media. A common stereotype is that of a man who accepts a career in nursing as an unfortunate secondary career choice, either failing to become a physician or still trying to become one. Such stereotyping is due to a presumption that a man would prefer to be a physician but is unable to become one due to lack of intelligence or non-masculine attributes. Jack is often seen openly criticizing Greg's career choice per his perception of nursing being an effeminate profession. In their book ''Men in Nursing: History, Challenges, and Opportunities'' authors Chad O'Lynn and Russell Tranbarger present this as an example of a negative portrayal. Commenting on the same issue but disagreeing, Barbara Cherry in her book ''Contemporary Nursing: Issues, Trends, & Management'' called the portrayal of Greg as a nurse "one of the most positive film portrayals of men who are nurses" and commented that Greg "humorously addresses and rises above the worst of all stereotypes that are endured by men in this profession." Sandy and Harry Summers in the book ''Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nurses Puts Us All at Risk'' postulate that Greg's character, although intelligent and firm in his defense of his profession, "might have done more to rebut the stereotypes" while also reporting that "some men in nursing" expressed their opinions that it would have been better to not present the stereotypes at all.

Production

Background

The film is a remake of a 1992 independent film of the same name.The Boys Who Met the Parents
, ''Stumped''. Accessed March 26, 2010.Shaffer, R.L
Meet the Parents: Bonus Edition (2000)
, dvdfuture.com. Accessed December 20, 2009.Adams, Sam
Meet the Parents
, ''Philadelphia City Paper''. Accessed August 20, 2009. Greg Glienna and Mary Ruth Clarke wrote the original story and screenplay. Glienna also directed and starred in the 76-minute film which was filmed on 16 mm film in 1991 and released the following year.Wooten, Amy
Greg Glienna: Meet the Comic
, ''Windy City Times'', May 31, 2008. Accessed May 28, 2008.Brown, R. Chris
Emo Philips Talks with R. Chris Brown
Comedy Newswire, March 23, 2009. Accessed August 20, 2009. Howe, Desson
A High Mirth Rate
, ''The Washington Post'', October 6, 2000. Accessed February 3, 2010. The 1992 film also marked one of only several film roles played by comedian Emo Philips which he also helped produce. Film producer Elliot Grove, founder of Raindance Film Festival and the British Independent Film Awards, listed the original ''Meet the Parents'' on his personal Top Ten list of favorite films where he called it "much funnier and tighter than the Hollywood version". The 1992 film was a featured entry in the 1995 Raindance Film Festival.

Producer Nancy Tenenbaum acquired the rights to the 1992 film. After she sent a copy of the original film to several people of interest, filmmaker Steven Soderbergh replied that he was interested and that he wanted to direct a remake. He brought it to the attention of Universal Studios who initially declined but subsequently optioned the rights to the film in 1995. Soderbergh took on the project but then dropped it when he got involved with ''Out of Sight''.

Writing

Universal approached screenwriter Jim Herzfeld

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