Meet the Parents (1992 film)

Meet the Parents is a 1992 American independent comedy film written by Greg Glienna and Mary Ruth Clarke. Glienna also directed the film; wrote the original songs "Keep Smiling" (performed by Walter Tabayoyong) and "When Philip's There" (performed by Clarke); and starred as protagonist Greg: a young man meeting his fiancée's parents for the first time who sets off a series of accidents and causes the family to fall apart. Emo Philips served as an associate producer, wrote the film's title theme song (performed by Mary Louise Herrold), and made a cameo as a video store employee.

Filmed on an approximately $30,000-$35,000 budget and shot in and around Chicago in 1991, Meet the Parents was not widely distributed and did not earn a large box office profit upon its limited release. It did, however, garner some critical acclaim and film industry attention towards remaking the film on a bigger budget.

Several years after its release, Universal Pictures purchased the rights to the independent film and hired screenwriter Jim Herzfeld to expand the script. A new version of Meet the Parents was filmed and released in October 2000. The 2000 version in turn inspired two movie sequels and two television series.

Plot
A man and his fiancée driving out to meet her parents stop to get gas at a gas station. The man mentions his plans to the owner, who advises him against it, then begins the tale of Greg: an advertising agent from Chicago who met his fiancée Pam's parents, Irv and Kay Burns, in a small town in Indiana for a weekend that ended disastrously.

Despite his efforts to impress the Burnses, Greg sets off a number of mishaps. He breaks Irv's Victrola, overflows the toilet, ruins Kay's roast, rents a film starring Andy Griffith as a rapist and chainsaw killer, nearly stabs Kay’s eye with a fishing pole, gets framed for marijuana planted in his suitcase and a $50 bill missing from Kay's purse, collides with a hit-and-run driver while in the family's car, drowns their dog Bingo after throwing a stick into a lake, and earns the wrath of Pam's ex-boyfriend Lee when he declines Lee's offer to dance with her.

Throughout the visit, Pam's sister Fay, an aspiring singer and the true marijuana user, insists Greg hear her Star Search audition since she mistakenly thinks he has ties with Ed McMahon, who appeared in a commercial Greg wrote. On the second night, Greg, who has been told to sleep on the living room couch, searches for Pam's bedroom and enters Fay's.

Near the end of the visit, Greg's car breaks down. After causing more accidents, he plans to flee the house with Pam, who urges him to stay one more night. He then unintentionally causes a portrait of Irv's late mother Penny to fall on an urn containing her ashes.

With no reputation left to lose, Greg listens to Fay sing a ballad entitled "When Philip's There". She begs him for suggestions, and he reluctantly gives slight criticism, leaving her furious. Fay then tells her family Greg entered her room the previous night but claims he wanted to cheat on Pam with her. Pam locks herself in her room, and Greg, failing to convince her to come out, starts to leave, not noticing that Fay has hanged herself with a sign reading "Greg killed me" around her neck. As he opens the front door, he and Pam's parents hear her scream from upstairs. Irv discovers Fay's body, rushes downstairs, and fires his gun as Kay attempts to intervene.

When asked if Irv killed Greg, the gas station owner explains that Irv accidentally killed Kay and Pam, then died of a heart attack, while Greg is still alive and well. The customer leaves, now uneasy about meeting his fiancée's parents. Another customer arrives on his way to take his children to a circus, and the owner advises him against it, beginning a new story.

Cast

 * John Da Cosse as First Customer
 * Karen Ann Gronowski as Fiancée
 * James Vincent as Gas Station Owner
 * Greg Glienna as Greg
 * Jacqueline Cahill as Pamela "Pam" Burns
 * Dick Galloway as Irv Burns
 * Carol Whelan as Kay Burns
 * Mary Ruth Clarke as Fay Burns
 * Emo Philips as Video Store Employee
 * Domenic Sfreddo as Hit & Run Driver
 * Harry Hickstein as Lee
 * Mike Toomey as Priest
 * Marc Vann as Second Customer

Production
Glienna conceived of the core idea for Meet the Parents while studying improvisational comedy at The Second City in the 1980s. He improvised a scene with a friend in which he portrayed a man meeting his girlfriend's father. This evolved into a short film entitled The Vase, in which Glienna played a man meeting his date's parents who ultimately soils his reputation when he breaks their prized vase (an accident similar to Greg breaking the late Penny's urn and spilling her ashes in the final film). Glienna then planned to make an expanded version of the story with humor inspired by silent films, particularly those of Buster Keaton, as he found the situations presented in them could be humorous with or without dialogue. He wrote the 80-page screenplay for Meet the Parents in one month, to the approval of Emo Philips, who signed on as a producer. Filming was completed in two weeks, and many scenes were shot in one take. A house owned by a friend of Glienna's mother was used as the Burns family home.

Release
Meet the Parents was shown in scattered independent film theaters across the United States as well as a few film festivals in London and Edinburgh. Some of the most positive reactions came from British audiences, who favorably compared its humor to darker comedy styles established in British television series such as Steptoe and Son or Fawlty Towers.

Reception and Legacy
Film critic Suzan Ayscough reviewed the film for Variety magazine in 1992. In her review, she called the film a "wonderfully twisted black comedy" even though she believed it to be "excessive and occasionally overdone". Ayscough predicted that the film "could garner a cult following among anti-establishment urbanites" due to its "blatant attack on marriage, suburban indifference, Christian hypocrisy and the nuclear family" and unsuitability for mainstream audiences. Opining that the "script desperately needed an objective eye", she concluded by calling the film an "amusing vehicle which aptly displays the multiple talents of Greg Glienna".

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. In the article, he called it "much funnier and tighter than the Hollywood version".

Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum liked the film and was tempted to call it, "the ultimate worst-case-scenario comedy". He said it "may not always make you laugh but will impress you with the singularity of Glienna’s dark approach". He also added that the audience was "still likely to be taken by the purity and relentlessness of this picture's vision".

Glienna attempted to strike a deal with National Lampoon to release the film on home video, but this fell through. Following the 2000 remake of Meet the Parents, Universal Pictures has not allowed him to release the original film in any form of home media. In a 2024 interview with Darren Richman of the British film magazine Little White Lies, Glienna commented that his lawyer did not distinguish between the script and the film in the contract he made with Universal at the time, thus causing the studio to buy the rights to the entire film. Consequently, he has uploaded the original Meet the Parents to his official YouTube channel, although it is difficult to access using conventional means of Internet searching.

Remake
Producer Nancy Tenenbaum acquired the rights to the original film and sent a copy to several people of interest, hoping to have a new version of the film made. 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 dropped it to focus on directing Out of Sight.

In 1995, Universal Studios purchased the rights to the film. The screenplay was expanded by screenwriter Jim Herzfeld, and film director Jay Roach was hired to direct the 2000 version of Meet the Parents. Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro were cast in the leading roles. Distributed by Universal Studios domestically and by United International Pictures internationally, the remade film was a big financial success earning $166.2 million in the United States and a total of $330.4 million worldwide.

The 2000 version in turn inspired two movie sequels, Meet the Fockers (2004) and Little Fockers (2010).