Ben Stiller appeared on “Hot Ones” and confirmed that the team behind “Meet the Fockers” had to find a real person with the Focker surname in order to prevent the MPA (then called the MPAA) from giving the comedy an R rating. The 2004 film was the sequel to “Meet the Parents” and became a blockbuster hit with $522 million worldwide, which made it the seventh highest-grossing movie of the year.
“I think that is true. Yeah,” Stiller said. “It was a PG-13 and they thought it was too close to ‘fucker.’ Yes. They have to clear names. … Something like that did happen.”
“I also remember having to go to the MPAA when they wanted to give ‘Zoolander’ an R rating because the goat orgy is something they didn’t care for or think was wholesome enough,” Stiller continued about his ratings battles over the years. “I wrote a little speech and talked about other movies that had worse things in them. It was nerve-wracking. It was so important. When you have a comedy and have jokes you know work, the last thing you want to do is cut them for a rating.”
Related Stories
“Meet the Fockers” was the second installment in the Stiller and Robert De Niro-led franchise and memorably featured Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand as the parents of Stiller’s character. A third movie, “Little Fockers,” was released in 2010.
Popular on Variety
Later during his “Hot Ones” interview, Stiller was asked to name which of his movies was most misunderstood at the time of release and unfairly reviewed by critics. His answer was “Zoolander 2,” which isn’t surprising considering Stiller once said he was “blindsided” by the film flopping.
“It’s very hard to analyze why critics like something or don’t because it’s so subjective,” Stiller said. “I mean, ‘Zoolander 2.’ … It’s hard to think it was that bad that people didn’t like it that much. But maybe I am wrong.”
During an interview earlier this year on David Duchovny’s “Fail Better” podcast, Stiller said he did not see the disastrous results for “Zoolander 2” coming because “I thought everybody wanted this. And then it’s like, ‘Wow, I must have really fucked this up. Everybody didn’t go to it. And it’s gotten these horrible reviews.’”
“It really freaked me out because I was like, ‘I didn’t know was that bad?’” Stiller continued. “What scared me the most on that one was l’m losing what I think what’s funny, the questioning yourself. … On ‘Zoolander 2,’ it was definitely blindsiding to me. And it definitely affected me for a long time.”
Watch Stiller’s full appearance on “Hot Ones” in the video below.
