Ben Stiller Donates Stiller & Meara Archive to National Comedy Center
Before Ben Stiller made his mark on film, television and comedy, his parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, were an unstoppably uproarious duo. Over a joint career that spanned five decades, Stiller and Meara collaborated on several television shows, TV specials and recordings, making America laugh up until their respective deaths in 2020 and 2015. Now, Ben Stiller is further cementing their legacy by donating their career archive to the National Comedy Center ahead of the release of his documentary film “Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost” on Apple TV.
Stiller and Meara curated the archive themselves, preserving public and personal artifacts from their long careers and private lives. It contains artifacts from early improv sessions at Chicago’s Compass Players, love letters that they exchanged while dating, and handwritten drafts of iconic sketches that made it onto world famous stages, among them “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” and “The Carol Burnett Show.”
“Knowing my parents’ body of work is preserved at the National Comedy Center means a great deal, because the material they left behind was not just a gift for my family, but for anyone who wants to understand comedy as a creative process,” Stiller said of the donation. “They would have been very proud to know that the National Comedy Center is bringing their archive to life in a way that can inspire and educate future generations.”
Head of the National Comedy Center’s archive Dr. Laura LaPlaca adds, “Stiller and Meara’s archive contains tens of thousands of pages spanning a remarkable body of work. Their comedy was crafted to feel organic, but they were serial editors – sometimes carrying a single sketch across decades of iteration and refinement.”
The donation comes in tandem with the release of “Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost.” Directed and produced by Ben Stiller, the doc chronicles his parent’s personal, professional and creative partnership and the lasting impact they had on American comedy. The film premiered at the New York Film Festival on Oct. 5 and releases on Apple TV on Oct. 26.
Select pieces of the Stiller & Meara archive will be on display at the National Comedy Center’s facility in Jamestown, N.Y.
