The big joke of Meet the Fockers — that Ben Stiller‘s character had a last name that sounded a lot like an expletive — almost netted it an instant R rating, Stiller recalled Thursday on an episode of Hot Ones.
When asked, he told host Sean Evans it was true the film’s higher-ups had to prove that a, um, Focker existed in order to persuade the MPAA (now the MPA) to give them a more family-friendly rating that would give the film a larger potential audience.
Universal/ Everett
Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller, Barbra Streisand, Teri Polo, and Blythe Danner in ‘Meet the Fockers’
“Oh, I think that is true,” the comedian said. “Yes … ’cause it was a PG-13, I think. And they thought it was too close to ‘f—er.’ They have to, they have to clear names sometimes.… I don’t understand how it works legally, honestly, but something like that did happen.”
Watch the exchange about 8 minutes into the video below:
Stiller starred in the 2004 film, which was a sequel to the 2000 movie Meet the Parents. In both, as well as in a third installment, 2010’s Little Fockers, Stiller portrayed nurse Greg Focker. The first was about him meeting the parents of his girlfriend, Pam (Teri Polo), before he proposed. Her parents were played by Blythe Danner and Robert DeNiro. Hilarity ensued as DeNiro’s Jack, a former CIA agent, acted ridiculously overprotective of his baby girl. The second movie was about the Byrnes encountering the Fockers, who were played by Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand.
The name led to funny moments such as the one where Hoffman’s Bernie Focker argues with Jack about the best way to put a child to bed. While Jack says his family used the Ferber Method, Bernie notes that his most certainly didn’t.
“We used the Focker method,” he says. “We hugged and kissed our little prince like there was no tomorrow. We Fockerized him.”
Related: Ben Stiller says people ‘always’ mistake him for Adam Sandler and want to talk to him about Click
Stiller told Hot Ones that the ratings board was also an obstacle in his 2001 movie Zoolander, which he directed, cowrote, produced, and starred.
“I also remember having to go to speak to the arbitration board when they wanted to give Zoolander an R rating. The goat orgy thing was something they didn’t care for…or they didn’t think it was wholesome enough. And it was just so ridiculous. The whole thing was so ridiculous, and I wrote a little speech, and I had to go through it all.”
For that one, Stiller recalled having to “talk about other movies that had come out that had worse things in them.”
He desperately wanted the filmmakers to win the case, and they did.
“It was like it was nerve-racking because it was so important,” Stiller said. “When you have a comedy and you have jokes that work, the last thing you want to do is have to cut them for a rating.”
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