According to Hollywood legend Robert De Niro, one sidesplitting scene in Meet the Parents came from his comic mind.
The movie was released in 2000, starring Ben Stiller as Greg Focker who travels with his girlfriend to her childhood home where he meets her parents for the first time. De Niro plays the skeptical father, Jack Byrnes, who also happens to be a retired CIA agent.
In conversation with GQ, the Oscar-winning De Niro told the publication he pitched director Jay Roach and producer Jane Rosenthal the idea of his character giving Stiller’s a lie detector test. It was a conversation he had with an actual former CIA agent that gave him the inspiration.
Related: Robert De Niro Reflects on Life as Father to a Newborn at 80 Years Old
“One thing I remember, a CIA friend of mine telling me about the lie detector thing and what they had to go through, you know,” he said. “And I thought this is interesting, and I said it to Jay and Jane, ‘How bout, you know, this kind of scene that Jack puts Ben’s character through.’ So that’s how that sort of evolved into whatever that was.”
The scene occurs when Stiller’s Greg is made to sleep by himself downstairs when he stumbles upon De Niro as Jack’s off-limits room of CIA business. This leads to Greg being hooked up to a lie detector and going through a series of humiliating questions.
Released in 2000, Meet the Parents made $330 million at the worldwide box office. The movie’s popularity spawned two sequels: Meet the Fockers and Little Fockers.
A fourth Meet the Parents movie was announced as being in development in December of 2024. De Niro and Stiller are in talks to return.
Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers, and Little Fockers can all be streamed via Netflix.
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