The Meet the Parents Story

When the movie Meet the Parents, starring Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro was released on Oct. 6, 2000, it pulled in $28,623,300 opening day and would become one of the most successful comedies ever, producing two successful sequels. What very few people know, however, is that the movie was a remake of a low-budget independent feature of the same name released 10 years before. Greg Glienna released his original Meet the Parents in 1991, and it was well received at the local Chicago theaters where it was shown, leading the young director to believe that with the right distribution, it could be a national hit. What followed was a decade-long journey of discovery as Greg tried to navigate the Hollywood studio system that seemed set up purposely to confound any outsider trying to get in. Meet the Parents would eventually become both a national, and an international hit, but through the process, gradually, Greg saw his connection to the film slowly erased from history.

Laura Enright is from Chicago and has written about the city in her book Chicago’s Most Wanted: The Top Ten Book of Murderous Mobsters, Midway Monsters, and Windy City Oddities. She’s also used the city as a backdrop for books in her Chicago Vampire Series. With its roots in Chicago, the story of the film Meet the Parents is a fitting tale for her to tell.