Q&A with Laura Enright, author of The Meet the Parents Story
What made you want to write this book?
I knew Greg Glienna, the director and co-writer (with Mary Ruth Clarke) of the original Meet the Parents, from high school. When it was released, my friends and I went to see it a few times and loved it. And I was happy for him when I found out Hollywood was remaking it since I figured he’d benefit from that. A few years after the remake was released, our paths crossed again. I think it was around 2019 that he approached me about getting the story out there. He’d always played it close to the vest when asked about the remake and his participation in that, so I never knew the “true and terrible tale” of it all. I told him I’d research it, and I conducted interviews with people associated with both versions. The more I dug into the story, this circuitous journey became apparent. This guy makes an indie film, has some success with it, hunts for a distributor for his film, it makes its way to Hollywood where a remake is planned. The remake is massively successful, spawning two sequels, and while Greg and co-writer Mary Ruth do get some money from the project, they find that their involvement with it slowly slips away from them. They’re even cheated out of Screenplay credit, despite so many of the gags in the remake being easily traceable to the original movie. Even worse, the original film winds up in a contractual vault, Greg is only allowed to show it with Universal’s permission, which they rarely give. Eventually, it got to a point where people didn’t even realize there had been an original movie, something I think eats at Greg and Mary Ruth. The more I researched it, the more I wanted to tell the tale of this odd little journey.
You’ve written both fiction and nonfiction. Which do you prefer?
I don’t think I prefer one over the other. I like both and have a lot of ideas for future projects. I’d always wanted to be a novelist. But fiction can be hard to break into. Years ago, my friend Stu Shea suggested that I try writing a nonfiction book for the publisher he was working with. The publisher had a signature series called The Most Wanted series, so I offered the idea of Chicago’s Most Wanted and they liked it. That became my first published book. I’d never written anything like that before. There was a huge amount of research involved. After finishing that first draft, though, I was completely jazzed. I really enjoyed working on it, as I did researching and writing my second book in the series Vampires’ Most Wanted. I had that same response to The Meet the Parents Story. When you’re researching, it can be fun to hunt down the information for the narrative you want to tell. It’s like weaving a tapestry. I suppose the same could be said for fiction writing. You get an idea for characters and a plot and it's all about weaving these ideas spinning around your head into a story. Then it becomes about how to tell the story.
What was your greatest challenge writing The Meet the Parents Story?
I think it might be people’s memories or lack thereof. We’re talking three decades here. Sometimes if something doesn’t strike you as important at the time, it doesn’t necessarily stick with you. And in the early part of the story, no one kept a journal or diary. So often the answer to one of my questions would be, “Hmmm I don’t remember really.”
Another challenge was reading through the contracts with Universal. So much legalese. And every time they renewed the option to make the movie, they issued another contract with a new detail or clause. I remember one contract offered Greg the chance, while the project was on the shelf, to make another version of the film, but the budget couldn’t be more than $200,000, and he couldn’t use the title Meet the Parents. I thought this was a curious allowance, and was even more curious that Greg didn’t take advantage of it. I suppose trying to raise that much money might have had something to do with it. But when the remake was officially greenlighted and finishing up, Greg was offered a new contract and the clause granting him the right to make his own version had been taken out. I guess Universal wasn’t going to take chances once their remake was going to see the light of day.
What impressed you about the story?
One thing that impressed me was the audacity of the people making the original. The 90s would see a lot of success for indie filmmakers but this movie was kind of at the forefront of that movement. Now, advances in technology have spoiled us. People are making mini-movies for social media, and editing them on their phones. They can have a studio on their desktops. In 1990 when the original was made, you had to use a huge camera, mess around with cans of film stock, and rent machines to edit and put music on it. All that before you could even hunt for theaters willing to show the film, which was the other half of the battle. The creation of any work can be impressive but to produce a movie like that, on the budget and skeletal crew they had to work with was pretty amazing.
Do you have a favorite story in the book?
I love the story about comedian Emo Philips’ friend Clay Heery trying to find a movie studio interested in distributing the original movie. Again, it isn’t like today where you could email people the film for review. Heery had to contact these studios via fax (after 11 p.m. when the rates were cheaper), and then when invited to show the film, bring the canisters of film stock (and sometimes a projector) from studio to studio to show the film to executives.
It was an example of what Greg Mentions in the book: Something about the film attracted angels who championed it. Emo Philips put up the money to make it. The owner of the Musicbox Theatre in Chicago agreed to show it even though since it was a comedy, other small theaters weren't interested in showing it. Clay Heery took up the cause and made the effort to find a studio for it. It got to producer Nancy Tenenbaum’s hands who got it to director Steven Soderbergh who got it to Universal. That’s why I kept thinking in terms of a journey when writing the book, cause a lot was going on before that 2000 remake was released.
What was the oddest thing you uncovered in your research?
There was a guy who popped up shortly after the film was released named Joseph Ardito. From what I could tell he was or is a writer. In June 2005 he filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Universal and others, including Greg, claiming that they’d stolen scenes, characters, and situations from a novel and a screenplay he'd written to use for Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers, and Wedding Crashers. He had his works copyrighted in 1998, but never published as far as I could tell.
So obsessed was he with this that almost every page of his website is used to, what I call litigate this claim that his work was stolen. The script for Greg’s movie was written around 1990 and Ardito’s novels were copyrighted in '98, so theoretically, his works may have even been written a few years before that but well after Greg released his movie. One would think if anyone had the chance to steal it it would have been Ardito from the original movie. But he was certain that the plaintiffs were working in tandem with federal agencies, including the Library of Congress (which he referred to as the Organized Crime Syndicate) and that they devised a scheme to predate a fraudulent Meet the Parents videocassette in an attempt to evade criminal liability. It's stunning what people will come up with. He lost the case, which hopefully isn’t a surprise to anyone.
Was there anyone you met in the process that you found particularly inspiring?
Nancy Tenenbaum, the producer of the remake, was incredibly encouraging even beyond the interviews. I think at some point she found herself in the position that Greg and Mary Ruth did. She'd been fighting for years to get Universal to take the project seriously. Every time there was a new studio head, she sort of had to start over to convince the new guy that a remake of this small indie movie could be a tent pole movie.
When Robert De Niro and his Tribeca producing partner Jane Rosenthal came onto the project, even though Nancy was listed first as a producer, by the time they came along, Nancy was sort of relegated to the background. Having been in the business for decades, she's philosophical about it. She looks at it as she shepherded the project to a point then De Niro and Rosenthal shepherded it further. But you know, the remake project was her baby and she put a lot of passion into it. And I’m sure that’s how Greg and Mary Ruth feel about the original Meet the Parents.
Was there anything that made you angry about the story?
Well, I suppose I became even angrier about the Screenplay credit issue the more I researched it cause I knew Greg and became close with Mary Ruth as I wrote the book. So, considering them friends it bothered me how they kind of got screwed. But getting to the part in my research where they were denied Screenplay credit irritated me because it seemed so unfair, whether I knew them or not, and as I became acquainted with the credit rules, I believed they could have been included in the Screenplay credit. They were given Story credit, but that's nothing like the money that Screenplay credit would have garnered them. They appealed to the Writer's Guild of America, the union for screenwriters which actually has final say on credits, but I just don't think they were taken very seriously, possibly because they were new to the industry. When you see the original, and then watch the remake, you can see where the jokes from the 2000 movie came from. Even down to an obsessed son keeping his mother's ashes in a special place, and Greg putting those ashes at risk. A family pet doing something at the family dinner who later in the film is put in jeopardy. An eye injury to one of Pam's family members. A suburban car chase where Greg stops at every red light.
So many very specific things were either altered slightly or made larger. But the seeds for those bits were in the original movie or in the first draft Greg and Mary Ruth wrote for Universal. I compare it to an architect who designs a house and the interior decorator ends up getting credit for the structure. Including Greg and Mary Ruth in screenplay credit would have been much more equitable.
Do you think they were just unprepared for the industry?
Oh definitely. I remember Mary Ruth telling me at some point during one of the interviews, "We should have gotten a snake lawyer." I don't think the entertainment lawyer they used at the time was very good about protecting them. And to be fair, in the beginning, I think only Nancy Tenenbaum (and perhaps Jim Herzfeld one of the writers who got Screenplay credit) was really able to see how big that movie could be. Other people, including the people at Universal, just couldn't envision it. So maybe the lawyer didn't think about all the ways to safeguard their rights as creators. Universal has drafted many contracts in their century + existence, and they produced a contract that benefited the company nicely. Once the ink dried, the two co-creators of the concept had very little say in what was done with it. Greg also began becoming disillusioned when Steven Soderbergh, who was originally tagged to direct, left the project and it began to evolve into something he wasn't expecting.
But this isn't a chance that's easy to pass up. So often with new creators, when you get that chance of someone willing to back you, you don't want to blow it by asking too much. (Again, why you need a snake lawyer to do that). It's why the Beatles, for example, lost the rights to a good portion of their early catalog. They were new to the business and didn't have the power to say "no" when the chance came to them. Greg and Mary Ruth were getting a crash course in the film industry, both positive and negative. I guess we all have to start somewhere.
And what about that original movie? Where does that project stand now?
Technically it's still held hostage by Universal. Over the past several years, Greg has attempted to get Universal's permission to show it. A company contacted him to try to get a distribution deal going for the original but Universal refused. To one of the letters from Greg's lawyer regarding this sort of thing, the studio's response stated that they had paid him good money to renew the options during the 1990s so if he would like to return a portion of that money they would consider granting permission. Which just comes off as bullying.
A big question that has been going along with this project is why are they so worried about letting this low-budget comedy from the 90s be distributed. They made so much money from the remake and its sequels and I'm sure more will be made from them. There are plans being batted around for a fourth movie. Just give Greg back the rights to his movie. That's pretty much what he wants most of all. He's proud of that film and to not be able to show it, for the world not to know that an earlier version existed, I think it's eaten at him over the past 30 years in ways I don't think he even realized until this book project.