Actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara attend the Calhoun School Dedication and Gala Benefit for the school's new performing arts center in honr of Broadway producers Mary Lea Johnson and Bernard B. Jacobs October 18, 2004 in New York City. The late duo are the subject of their son Ben Stiller's new documentary, which will debut on AppleTV+ Fernando Leon/Getty Images Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment 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 younger generation, 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 lovable but deeply complicated 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 its debut in theaters and on Apple TV+ later this month. What starts (and indeed what started out) as an affectionate but membrane-thick portrait of American comedy royalty turns into something unimaginably layered, investigating numerous spousal and parental relationships - and asking tough questions about the price of perfectionism, the pitfalls of parenthood and, really, the ultimate value of an earthly life. Related Stories TV 'Mr. Scorsese' Review: Apple TV+ Docuseries Offers an Entertaining, if Standard, Overview of a Legendary Filmmaker Movies George Clooney Says 'Jay Kelly' Made Him "Thrilled That in Real Life I Hadn't Lived a Life of Regret" "Yeah, it's a little personal," Stiller said before the screening as he described what his family thought of him embarking on this quest. "But it's 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 background will surprise - he, an army veteran from an unloving Brooklyn home who urgently sought validation from audiences; she, a nimble comic talent weighted down by her mother's suicide when she was still a girl. Ben Stiller, who does not skimp on his parents' best moments in front of a camera, is also not afraid to expose the dark side they showed to him and his older sister Amy; subjects like Anne's alcoholism and Jerry's work obsession at the expense of his family each get rich treatment. And the elder Stiller's relentless devotion to Meara - he is seen on-screen just once from the recent past, and it's to tout the greatness of his late wife - could blind him to her flaws and the ways her behavior at times might have been hurting the family. But it is when Stiller turns the camera on himself - or more specifically on his wife and two kids - that the film clicks into gear, asking how much we repeat the mistakes of our parents and the limits of what we can learn from the past. Ben Stiller sought to avoid the trap of putting his work above his family, but over the course of making the movie touchingly realizes, with his kids nearly grown, he has in fact replicated it. 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 he did with Jerry. 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. "But personally it's 'oh that sucks.'" (Stiller called out to his kids who were at the screening to ask what they thought of the film and Quin yelled back "Terrible," to laughter, before clarifying that he thought it was great.) Apart from the whole famous thing, the title couple also lived exceedingly shared lives, and the film is interested in the impossible tangle of a 24-hour life and work partnership, where, as Anne says, it can be hard to know where the comedy team ends and the marriage begins. Ben Stiller and his wife Christine Taylor also frequently worked together, though with slightly fewer pitfalls; Taylor's voice, it should be said, brings high levels of consideration and insight in a film not lacking for either quality. Stiller sets the film at the sprawling Upper West Side apartment where Anne and Jerry raised their family and to which Ben and Amy have returned after Jerry's death to go through, pack up and throw out all their parents' stuff to prepare for the sale of the longtime home. And there is so much stuff. Jerry Stiller had a compulsive need to record and save everything, and as we watch Ben Stiller take it all in after his father's death, there is something both humanizing and surreal at the sight of a famous actor undergo the same heartwrenching ritual as everyon