How Hol­ly­wood buried the orig­i­nal ver­sion of Meet the Parents

There are a select few per­fect comedic premis­es. The 2000-Year-Old Man is one; Going for an Eng­lish is anoth­er. There’s Dame Edna’s love of the spot­light com­bined with a clear con­tempt for the gen­er­al pub­lic, and Lau­rel and Hardy attempt­ing to push a piano up a flight of stairs. In each case, the orig­i­nal idea is so per­fect­ly formed that every joke that fol­lows in its wake is bound to land. One night, while tak­ing part in a Sec­ond City impro­vi­sa­tion class in the 1980s, Greg Gli­en­na had an idea wor­thy of a place in the pantheon.

Gli­en­na, at the time a stand-up come­di­an and aspir­ing film­mak­er, impro­vised a scene with his friend in which he played a man meet­ing his girlfriend’s father for the first time. Speak­ing to me from his home in Los Ange­les decades after the fact, the com­ic remem­bers no details about the con­tent of the sketch they per­formed that day in Chica­go but there was some­thing about the idea he couldn’t shake. Years lat­er it would form the basis for a short film, The Vase, in which Glienna’s char­ac­ter went over to meet his partner’s par­ents and broke their prize vase. The premise, how­ev­er, had not come close to reach­ing its final form.

The film­mak­er had the ide­al prepa­ra­tion for play­ing an every­man with what he describes as an ​“ordi­nary, Mid­west­ern upbring­ing” that pri­mar­i­ly involved bor­row­ing silent movies from the pub­lic library. He firm­ly believed The Vase could be expand­ed into an oxy­moron­ic silent com­e­dy with words since he felt, ​“In most cas­es, you could put reg­u­lar dia­logue over those films, not jokes, and it would still be fun­ny because the sit­u­a­tions were fun­ny.” His friend, leg­endary Amer­i­can stand-up Emo Philips, dis­agreed and said he would help fund the thing if he liked the script enough. The screen­play was writ­ten in a month and Phillips was clear­ly impressed since the final film includes a theme tune writ­ten by him as well as a cameo and exec­u­tive pro­duc­er credit.

The fin­ished prod­uct was inspired in equal parts by Glienna’s silent heroes, Peter Sell­ers in The Par­ty and the hid­den cam­era real­i­ty series Can­did Cam­era since the film­mak­er noticed real peo­ple rarely react­ed in extreme ways how­ev­er much mad­ness sur­round­ed them. Indeed, Glienna’s per­for­mance in the orig­i­nal 1992 Meet the Par­ents, shot on 16mm, owes much to the Great Stone Face him­self, Buster Keaton, as his char­ac­ter suf­fers humil­i­a­tion after humil­i­a­tion with lit­tle more than a blink of the eyes and a look that sug­gests he would expect noth­ing more from the uni­verse. And as was so often the case in those silent come­dies of yore, Gli­en­na plays a char­ac­ter who shares his first name.

It would be tempt­ing to sug­gest the orig­i­nal Meet the Par­ents is a lost clas­sic that is far supe­ri­or to the 2000 remake, but the films are bet­ter viewed as com­pan­ion pieces than rivals. In Glienna’s words, ​“The remake is like mine but dif­fer­ent. I was hap­py with it.” The 1992 ver­sion is dark­er and stranger, like an episode of Curb Your Enthu­si­asm direct­ed by Lars von Tri­er. The film opens with a man stop­ping off at a gas sta­tion en route to meet his fiancée’s par­ents and men­tion­ing his plans to the own­er, who warns him off the trip by recount­ing the tale of Greg. 

This sto­ry with­in a sto­ry struc­ture allows the film to push the enve­lope, most notably with the deaths of a dog and, at the dénoue­ment, most of the prin­ci­pal char­ac­ters. The tale being told may be apoc­ryphal but, more cru­cial­ly, the fram­ing device allows Gli­en­na to cut away from the dark­est mate­r­i­al and back to the increduli­ty of the man being told the sto­ry. Film­ing took just two weeks and many scenes were shot in one take. By way of com­par­i­son, the most vio­lent act inflict­ed on an ani­mal in the 2000 ver­sion involves a cat hav­ing its tail spray-paint­ed. Com­par­ing the orig­i­nal with the remake is the equiv­a­lent of pit­ting The Vel­vet Under­ground against The Strokes; one wouldn’t exist with­out the oth­er but there is plen­ty of room for both.

Glienna’s film screened at a few inde­pen­dent cin­e­mas in Amer­i­ca and a hand­ful of fes­ti­vals such as Lon­don and Edin­burgh. The best reviews came cour­tesy of the British press – it’s not hard to see why since the bleak tone feels more of a piece with sit­coms like Step­toe and Son and Fawl­ty Tow­ers than Amer­i­can net­work tele­vi­sion of the era. The lat­ter was a for­ma­tive influ­ence on Gli­en­na, along with Eng­lish­men Char­lie Chap­lin and Stan Lau­rel, so those reviews from across the pond felt espe­cial­ly satisfying.

A deal was made with Nation­al Lam­poon for a VHS release since the pres­i­dent at the time was hop­ing to change their image after a string of gross-out come­dies. They even went as far as con­coct­ing a tagline of Bib­li­cal pro­por­tions, fit­ting giv­en the pro­tag­o­nist calls to mind Old Tes­ta­ment fig­ures like Job and Noah: ​“Into each life some rain must fall… Greg bet­ter build an ark.” Yet, in a turn of events that would become frus­trat­ing­ly famil­iar, the deal fell through.

In a case of life imi­tat­ing art, Gli­en­na found him­self suf­fer­ing fur­ther indig­ni­ties. After the dis­ap­point­ment with Nation­al Lam­poon, up-and-com­ing film­mak­er Steven Soder­bergh saw the film and was keen to direct a remake, telling Gli­en­na in a phone call, ​“This is such a uni­ver­sal premise that every­one in the world can relate to.” He took the idea to Uni­ver­sal and the orig­i­nal film’s writ­ers (Gli­en­na and col­lab­o­ra­tor Mary Ruth Clarke) met with Soder­bergh and were tasked with rewrit­ing the script for a more main­stream audi­ence. As is so often the way in Hol­ly­wood, the pair wrote a cou­ple of drafts ear­ly in the process (includ­ing mate­r­i­al which would end up in the remake) before being let go. The star­ry 2000 ver­sion, direct­ed by Jay Roach and star­ring Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro, affords the pair no more than a sto­ry credit.

The remake, ulti­mate­ly writ­ten by Jim Herzfeld and John Ham­burg, under­lines its major stu­dio cre­den­tials from the off with a Randy New­man song in place of the Emo Philips one. The most inspired mod­i­fi­ca­tion to the source mate­r­i­al came once cast­ing had tak­en place. Hav­ing secured Stiller and De Niro as the leads, the char­ac­ter of Greg (the name unchanged) became Jew­ish. This adds a cul­ture clash ele­ment to pro­ceed­ings, not least in Stiller’s jux­ta­po­si­tion with Owen Wil­son, his fiancée’s blonde, WASPy and seem­ing­ly flaw­less ex. In a sense, this reli­gious ele­ment is one aspect of a larg­er tonal shift.

In 1992’s Meet the Par­ents, the pri­ma­ry antag­o­nist is fate. Gli­en­na and Clarke delight­ed in start­ing work by com­ing up with a series of unfor­tu­nate events (every worst-case sce­nario they could throw at Greg) and list­ing them in ascend­ing order of hor­ror. In one ear­ly scene, Greg tries to find some­thing to watch on TV with his prospec­tive in-laws but every chan­nel he flicks onto is air­ing some kind of sex scene. It’s relat­able and fun­ny but it also per­fect­ly encap­su­lates the fine line between com­e­dy and hor­ror. The week­end is some­how fat­ed to go wrong and, like a char­ac­ter from a Greek tragedy, Greg is entire­ly help­less to pre­vent it. The Coen broth­ers might have been accused of cru­el­ty to their char­ac­ters over the years but even they have nev­er been this unkind. 

Roach’s box office smash still delights in plac­ing banana skins in Greg’s path, but the chief antag­o­nist is De Niro’s Jack, a war vet­er­an and retired CIA agent. The orig­i­nal is a true sit­u­a­tion com­e­dy in that the com­e­dy is derived almost entire­ly from the sit­u­a­tion. In con­trast, the remake con­tains lines that have echoed through the decades, most notably, ​“I have nip­ples, Greg. Could you milk me?” Stiller’s Greg is eager to impress and tries too hard while Glienna’s film is less inter­est­ed in the character’s inner life. He is in a lin­eage with some­one like Harold Lloyd in Safe­ty Last as opposed to a tra­di­tion­al rom-com type. 

Steven Spiel­berg and Jim Car­rey were attached at one stage dur­ing the ges­ta­tion peri­od of the Meet the Par­ents remake, so it is clear the idea was a prized com­mod­i­ty. Ulti­mate­ly the remake was a hit with crit­ics and audi­ences, becom­ing one of the high­est-gross­ing films of 2000, spawn­ing two sequels (Meet the Fock­ers and Lit­tle Fock­ers) as well as inspir­ing a sit­com and even a real­i­ty TV show. Appro­pri­ate­ly enough, they say suc­cess has many par­ents but, in this instance, the bio­log­i­cal father seems to have been almost entire­ly writ­ten out of history. 

This is despite sim­i­lar­i­ties includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to: a beloved fam­i­ly pet in dan­ger; dam­age inflict­ed on a beloved grandmother’s urn; drugs wrong­ly assumed to be Greg’s; and busi­ness involv­ing the poten­tial theft of a $50 bill. Gli­en­na had the orig­i­nal idea and co-wrote the first two drafts of the remake’s screen­play, and ought to have received more than a sto­ry cred­it, but he was let down by a lawyer. As he explains: ​“We got screwed by the Writer’s Guild because if you write the first draft it’s very hard to not get a script by cred­it. They said it was based on a pre­vi­ous source and put us in a cat­e­go­ry that’s usu­al­ly for adap­ta­tions of books.”

Decades after both films came out, Uni­ver­sal still will not allow Gli­en­na to release the orig­i­nal in any form. This feels par­tic­u­lar­ly frus­trat­ing since the films com­ple­ment each oth­er rather than com­pete. The 1992 Meet the Par­ents has been buried by a major stu­dio in a way that feels unprece­dent­ed and the film­mak­er is baf­fled, stat­ing: ​“I don’t know why but they just will not let me show it. I just wish I had a lawyer who knew what he was doing at the time and would have made that clear to me. My lawyer back then didn’t sep­a­rate the film and the script in the con­tract, so the word­ing of it means when they bought the script they bought the film.”

Even as recent­ly as a few months ago, the film­mak­er tried again to con­vince Uni­ver­sal, but the email reply was unchanged: ​“We do not wish to grant addi­tion­al pow­ers to Mr. Gli­en­na at this time.” Before that, he put the film on YouTube in its entire­ty but Uni­ver­sal asked that it be tak­en down. These days it is on the plat­form once more but hid­den in such a way that one has to know where to look. 

Despite the expe­ri­ence Gli­en­na had with Meet the Par­ents, it hasn’t dis­cour­aged him too much as a film­mak­er. He made Meet the Par­ents dur­ing a peri­od when he was work­ing nights as a stand-up and his lat­est effort, last year’s The Road Dog, returned him to that milieu, star­ring Doug Stan­hope as an alco­holic come­di­an. At points Meet the Par­ents plays like a par­o­dy of a hor­ror movie, but the man behind it is now hard at work on a gen­uine hor­ror screen­play since he realised the com­e­dy he likes most has plen­ty in com­mon with that genre. Both com­e­dy and hor­ror attempt to cause a vis­cer­al reac­tion in a view­er and Gli­en­na was caus­ing audi­ences to cringe in dis­com­fort years before Curb Your Enthu­si­asm and The Office hit our screens.

In a just world, the orig­i­nal Meet the Par­ents would be an eas­i­ly acces­si­ble cult favourite that was shown at rep cin­e­mas every cou­ple of years and elicit­ed rau­cous respons­es. But this is not a just world, as the film itself makes abun­dant­ly clear and bad things tend to hap­pen with no real expla­na­tion. One must be sto­ic and – like the char­ac­ter Greg – try not to become over­whelmed by despair. After all, there are also rea­sons to be cheer­ful, such as (in the case of the real Greg) com­ing up with a peren­ni­al­ly relat­able com­ic con­ceit in your teens that will remain rel­e­vant for as long as there are par­ents to meet.