Real-Life Fockers Saved ‘Meet the Parents’ From the MPAA

The hardest part of making Meet the Parents was meeting the Motion Picture Association of America.

In 2000, Universal Pictures released a relatable relationship comedy that would quickly become a veritable film franchise, a Ben Stiller-starred hit called Meet the Parents. The Jay Roach-directed story about a male nurse with an unusual name who spends a grueling weekend with his girlfriend’s family and her domineering, ex-CIA father struck a chord with everyone who has ever had to make up a lie about life on the farm just to get out of an uncomfortable misunderstanding, and Meet the Parents proved to be more than milkable for multiple less-delightful sequel projects.

A critical component to the success of Meet the Parents was the ever-important MPAA classification, as the difference in box office returns between PG-13 and R-rated movies will end franchise aspirations faster than you can say “Puff the Magic Dragon.” When Universal first submitted the Meet the Parents to the MPAA for review, the censorship organization threatened to give the movie an R-rating unless the studio could find real people in America bearing the same surname as Stiller’s character, Gaylord “Greg” Focker.

Stiller himself confirmed the legend of the real-life Fockers who un-Focked Meet the Parents during his recent appearance on Hot Ones: 

“I think that is true,” Stiller said when Sean Evans asked him to confirm that Universal had to provide the MPAA with a verifiable list of real-life Fockers to prove that the last name wasn’t just a loophole to sneak more than the one PG-13-allotted F-bomb into Meet the Parents. “They thought it was too close to fucker,” Stiller stated the obvious of the MPAA. “I don’t understand how it works legally, honestly, but something like that did happen.”

The origin of the Stiller-verified story behind Meet the Parents’ PG-13 bid comes from a 2004 USA Today story about the film’s sequel, Meet the Fockers, in which they spoke to members of the MPAA ratings board who had demanded Universal prove that Focker isn’t just a funny name for a guy whose parents named him “Gay.” Former MPAA president Jack Valenti said of the name’s acceptable status, “It is what is on the screen that you rate, not your imagination,” before giving a history lesson. “Suppose this was a story about World War I, and the (German) Fokker airplane (flown by the Red Baron) was used, and you have someone saying, ‘Watch out for the Fokkers.’ There is a point where it becomes amusing, and you don’t take yourself too seriously.”

On the other hand, if Gaylord Focker built fighter planes, maybe Robert De Niro would have taken him more seriously. Too bad he’s just a milk maid.