Comedy is hard. Marriage is harder. Jerry and Anne somehow juggled both.

Director Ben Stiller’s documentary Stiller and Meara: Nothing is Lost, tells the story of his parents, comedy icons Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, exploring their impact both on popular culture and at home, where the lines between creativity, family, life and art were often blurred.

On November 7, after the Eastern Region Special Projects Committee Documentary Series screening in New York, Stiller discussed the making of the film during a Q&A moderated by Director Ethan Hawke (Wildcat).

During the conversation, Stiller revealed the genesis of the film.

“My dad died. [I had a] knee jerk reaction to start filming in the apartment because I knew we were going to sell it. In my head, I can’t do a memorial for him because it’s COVID. I felt very stressed about that – about how do you honor your parents, especially when my dad died because he was such an important person in my life, but to a lot of people. I was like, how do I pay tribute to them, even in just a memorial, like we did for my mom. Then, I thought there should be a movie about them, so that’s how I started.”

Stiller’s other directorial credits include the features Zoolander, Zoolander 2, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Tropic Thunder, The Cable Guy and Reality Bites; the pilot of the series Severance; and episodes of Stiller & Meara and The Ben Stiller Show. He was nominated for the 2022 DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Series for his Severance episode, “The We We Are.” He won the 2018 DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television and Limited Series for Escape at Dannemora.

Stiller has been a DGA member since 2006.