Documentary film “Stiller & Miller: Nothing Is Lost”, which was released on Apple TV+ a few days ago, presents an intimate personal perspective on the life and career of one famous American husband-and-wife comedy team. Although their life and career were often riddled with one issue after another, they stuck together to the end via a lot of love, respect, and understanding, and the documentary is often engaging as closely examining their life and career with considerable care and honesty.

They are Jerry Stiller and Anne Maera, who are incidentally the parents of director/co-producer Ben Stiller. When his father died several years after his mother passed away in 2015, Stiller and his older sister decided to sell their family apartment in New York City, and we see him looking into a bunch of archival records left by his parents. His father often recorded a lot of stuffs here and there throughout his and his wife’s life and career, and the documentary is mainly driven by the excerpts from those numerous recordings and home video clips made by his father.

The early part of the documentary focuses on how Stiller’s parents became quite famous not long after they came across each other in the 1950s. As they got closer to each other and then eventually married in 1954, they came to find the comic potential between their talent and presence. Although Anne wanted to be a serious actress, Jerry instantly saw her natural talent and how she could be a perfect comic counterpart for him, and they quickly distinguished themselves together as an excellent comic duo during next several years. 

When they came to have two kids in the 1960s, they became more determined to have more success for their career, and they eventually got a big break thanks to appearing in the Ed Sullivan Show. While they were certainly very, very, very nervous right before their very first appearance in this legendary American variety TV show, they deftly impressed and entertained millions of audiences out there in the end, and, what do you know, they were frequently invited to the show while enjoying more success to come into their career.

However, there were also a number of issues in their career as well as their private life, and the documentary does not pull any punch on that. As your average perfectionist, Jerry was frequently driven toward being quite fastidious, and that often exasperated Anne, who was more relaxed and natural compared to her husband. While this personality contrast between them was crucial in the success of many of their humorous skits, they could not help but clash a lot with each other, and Stiller and his older sister still remember well those frequent clashes between their parents during their childhood years.

And they also remember how usually their parents were absent in their childhood years due to their busy career. Although Jerry and Anne sometimes let their kids a bit more into their life and profession, they were mostly too occupied with their works, and Stiller, who has also been a busy and consummate entertainer for many years just like his parents, ironically sees a lot of his parents from himself as reflecting more on the considerable distance between him and his own family in the past. When he talks with his wife and two kids respectively, Stiller is touchingly frank about the flawed aspects of his private life, and his family members respond to his honesty with warm recognition and acceptance.

The documentary later delves a bit into how unhappy Jerry and Anne were during their respective early years. While Jerry’s father did not support much of his aspiration to become a good comedian, Anne was deeply traumatized by her mother’s suicide which happened during her childhood years. Nevertheless, both of them really tried hard for being good parents to their kids, and Stiller and his older sister are certainly thankful to their parents’ efforts, though they were sometimes burdened a lot by their parents’ fame and success.

Around the 1980s, Jerry and Anne eventually found how to balance their relationship between life and career as they respectively tried something different outside their comedy team. Anne actively pursued her longtime aspiration to be recognized as a serious actress and the following results were quite rewarding for her (She received a Tony nomination for her supporting performance in the 1993 Broadway production of “Anna Christie”, for instance). Jerry also ventured into a number of movies and TV series alone by himself, and some of you probably remember well his Emmy-nominated guest performance in TV comedy series “Seinfeld”.    

I must point out that “Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost” becomes rather repetitive especially during its second half, and its frequent change in the screen ratio feels a bit too distracting in my trivial opinion. Fortunately, this and several other weak aspects are mostly compensated by its undeniably sincere and respectful attitude. While clearly recognizing and accepting many human flaws of their parents, Stiller, who will incidentally become 60 in the next month, also shows a lot of affection and respect toward his parents, and that is why his documentary works as a wonderful personal tribute to his loving parents. They were indeed talented people besides being quite interesting to observe, and you may want to know more about their considerable achievements after watching this solid documentary.