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Ben Stiller wants you to meet his parents
A few years back, when nepo baby discourse was at its most heated, actor-director Ben Stiller emerged as an elder voice of reason.
“Untalented people don’t really last if they get a break because of who they are or know or are related to,” Stiller tweeted to The Black List founder Franklin Leonard, who was opining on “Let Me Go (The Right Way),” a short film whose creative team included the progeny of Steven Spielberg, Stephen King and Sean Penn. Access is access, Stiller conceded, but the children of celebrities face their own challenges.
If one needed further proof, they might look to an early pan of The Ben Stiller Show knocking him for his pedigree, among the many pieces of ephemera kept by Stiller’s father, Jerry. Or to the cassette tapes in which Jerry confronted his wife and comedy partner, Anne Meara, about her drinking, All of it was stored in a kind of archive at the Stillers’ apartment on Riverside Drive. Ben digs through those bankers boxes and scrapbooks in a new documentary, Stiller & Meara: Nothing is Lost.
The subtitle is a nod to a line from one of Meara’s plays, After-Play and an audio recording where Jerry tells his father, Willie, that a tape recorder would preserve his voice forever. Taken with Jerry’s packratting — he kept everything — it’s named for a theme of L’dor V’dor. Nothing is lost from generation to generation. Talent may pass down, but so too do the mistakes our parents make.
It was, Ben admits, an inherited impulse that drove him to bring a camera to the family apartment after Jerry’s death in 2020, at the age of 92. Jerry was an inveterate home moviemaker with his Super-8, paving the way for his son’s ambition to direct. Shooting the home as he and his sister, actor Amy Stiller, prepared it for sale, Ben tells his parents’ love story while meditating on his own family life.
Letters to Anne from Jerry show an early marriage divided by the itinerant gigs of theater folk, a reality that was only resolved when Jerry decided they should form a comedy duo. Anne, wanting to be a serious actor, at first resisted, but the routines — which they’d improvise into a tape recorder — helped to launch their careers.
Their repeat appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show made them famous, and they solidified their act by drawing from their backgrounds, debuting the alter egos, the couple Hershey Horowitz and Mary Elizabeth Doyle. They did the Irish-Jewish thing years before Bridget Loves Bernie — and with an actual Jew, unlike the Irish Catholic irl David Birney. In their sketches they swap admiration over their respective culture — reduced to planting trees in Israel and Notre Dame football — though in reality Meara had converted to Judaism. (Sullivan, married to a Jewish gal, is said to have teared up.)
Ben follows in their footsteps at the Ed Sullivan Theatre, when he’s there as a guest on Colbert for directing Severance. Sullivan’s show was high stakes, he reflects, and his mother would handle the stress by drinking.
While Anne had an ease in her performance and flair for comedy, we learn that Jerry drilled his lines — he was both a perfectionist and perhaps a little less than a natural. While Anne got fulfillment from life outside of acting, Jerry needed to perform and to be loved, but was most devoted to Anne. When their careers became solo acts, their marriage grew stronger.
Ben considers his parents’ upbringing as a way to understand his own. Anne’s alcoholism is linked to unresolved trauma from her mother’s suicide; on a piece of writing Ben finds in the apartment, Anne describes how her mother “turned on the gas and inhaled eternity.”
Jerry’s working-class parents loved Jack Benny and George Burns, but didn’t support his ambition to become an actor. Anne thought it may have come from an urge to shield him from rejection. Willie’s thwarted desire to act is attested to in an interview Jerry taped with him, showing the project of this film isn’t exactly new for the family.
When it came to Ben and Amy, Jerry wanted them to find another path, for the same reason. (Jerry, as has been noted elsewhere, couldn’t have been more different as a father than Seinfeld’s Frank Costanza — he was the type to nurse Ben through a bad LSD trip or drive to his camp when he was homesick.)
The siblings recall their latchkey childhood, when their parents were on tour, and speaking to his own children Ben realizes he repeated this absence while making efforts not to. When he began working with his wife, actor Christine Taylor, he feared some of the same frictions his parents suffered would emerge, and when they were separated, he felt like a failure given their resilience.
In the process of making the film, during COVID, the couple reconciled.
Nothing is Lost is a tender tribute that finds its poetry in between generations. A match cut of a home movie of young Ben (Benjy) to one of his sons, Quin, shows symmetry right down to the same missing baby teeth. It’s graceful when tackling the tough question of the advantages Ben may have gained.
Ben said he wanted, in his early career, to distance himself from them. But as Taylor notes, he used one or both of his parents in just about all of his work.
“Because I wasn’t stupid, they were funny,” Stiller reasons.
It runs in the family.
Ben Stiller’s Stiller and Meara: Nothing is Lost is playing in select theaters Oct. 17. It debuts on Apple TV+ Oct. 24.
The post Ben Stiller wants you to meet his parents appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump: Saudi Expressed Interest in Joining Abraham Accords
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-US President Donald Trump, and United Arab Emirates (UAE) Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed display their copies of signed agreements as they participate in the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and some of its Middle East neighbors, in a strategic realignment of Middle Eastern countries against Iran, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, US, Sept. 15, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Tom Brenner
i24 News – US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he expected an expansion of the Abraham Accords soon and hopes Saudi Arabia will join the pact that normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and some Arab states.
“I hope to see Saudi Arabia go in, and I hope to see others go in. I think when Saudi Arabia goes in, everybody goes in,” Trump told the Fox Business Network in an interview.
The leader spoke days after overseeing the Gaza ceasefire deal that ended the two-year-long war between Israel and Palestinian jihadists, launched on October 7, 2023 with a slaughter of some 1,200 Israelis in a Hamas-led massacre.
Meanwhile Trump has threatened Hamas following the horrific images from the Gaza Strip, where Hamas executed people suspected as collaborators with Israel, saying, “If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.”
Hours after the release of the final Israeli hostages under the US-brokered ceasefire, Hamas gunmen executed more than 30 Palestinians accused of treason and collaboration in what security sources and witnesses described as a brutal bid to reassert control over the war-torn Gaza Strip.
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Hamas Aims to Keep Grip on Gaza Security and Can’t Commit to Disarm, Senior Official Says
Hamas senior official Mohammed Nazzal speaks during an interview with Reuters, in Doha, Qatar, October 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Hamas intends to maintain security control in Gaza during an interim period, a senior Hamas official told Reuters, adding he could not commit to the group disarming – positions that reflect the difficulties facing US plans to secure an end to the war.
Hamas politburo member Mohammed Nazzal also said the group was ready for a ceasefire of up to five years to rebuild devastated Gaza, with guarantees for what happens afterwards depending on Palestinians being given “horizons and hope” for statehood.
Speaking to Reuters in an interview from Doha, where Hamas politicians have long resided, Nazzal defended the group’s crackdown in Gaza, where it carried out public executions on Monday. There were always “exceptional measures” during war and those executed were criminals guilty of killing, he said.
PRESSURE TO DISARM
While Hamas has broadly expressed these views before, the timing of Nazzal’s comments demonstrates the major obstacles obstructing efforts to cement a full end to the war in Gaza, days after the first phase of the ceasefire was agreed.
They point to big gaps between Hamas’ positions and US President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza, ahead of negotiations expected to address Hamas’ weapons and how Gaza is governed.
Asked for comment on Nazzal’s remarks, the Israeli prime minister’s office said Israel was committed to the ceasefire agreement and continued to uphold and fulfil its side of the plan.
“Hamas is supposed to release all hostages in stage 1. It has not. Hamas knows where the bodies of our hostages are. Hamas are to be disarmed under this agreement. No ifs, no buts. They have not. Hamas need to adhere to the 20-point plan. They are running out of time,” it said in a statement to Reuters.
Trump’s September 29 plan called for Hamas to immediately return all hostages before committing to disarmament and ceding governance of Gaza to a technocratic committee overseen by an international transitional body.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supported the plan, saying it would dismantle Hamas’ military capabilities, end its political rule, and ensure that Gaza would never again pose a threat to Israel.
Hamas-led terrorists killed 1,200 people and abducted another 251 during the October 7 attacks on Israel that triggered the war.
Pummeled by Israel in the war, the Palestinian Islamist group is under intense pressure to disarm and surrender control of Gaza or risk a resumption of the conflict.
Asked if Hamas would give up its arms, Nazzal, speaking on Wednesday, said: “I can’t answer with a yes or no. Frankly, it depends on the nature of the project. The disarmament project you’re talking about, what does it mean? To whom will the weapons be handed over?”
He added that issues to be discussed in the next phase of negotiations, including weapons, concerned not only Hamas but other armed Palestinian groups, and would require Palestinians more broadly to reach a position.
Asked for its response to Nazzal’s remarks, the White House directed Reuters to comments by Trump on Thursday.
“We have a commitment from them and I assume they’re going to honor their commitment,” Trump said, noting that Hamas had returned more bodies but without elaborating on the issue of it disarming or its interim presence on the ground.
Nazzal also said the group had no interest in keeping the remaining bodies of deceased hostages seized in the October 7, 2023 attacks.
Hamas has handed over at least nine out of 28 bodies. It was encountering technical problems recovering more, he said, adding that international parties such as Turkey or the US would help search if needed.
A senior Turkish official said last week that Turkey would take part in a joint task force along with Israel, the US, Qatar and Egypt to locate the bodies.
Hamas agreed on October 4 to release the hostages and hand over governance to a technocratic committee, but said other matters needed to be addressed within a wider Palestinian framework. It released all living hostages on Monday.
Nazzal said the phase two negotiations would begin soon.
GOALS OF ELECTIONS, ‘HOPE’ FOR PALESTINIANS
On Tuesday, Trump said he had communicated to Hamas that it must disarm or it would be forced to. Trump has also suggested Hamas was given temporary approval for internal security operations in Gaza, and has endorsed Hamas killing members of gangs.
Noting Trump’s remarks, Nazzal said there was an understanding regarding Hamas’ presence on the ground, without specifying among whom, indicating it was necessary to protect aid trucks from thieves and armed gangs.
“This is a transitional phase. Civilly, there will be a technocratic administration as I said. On the ground, Hamas will be present,” he said. After the transitional phase, there should be elections, he said.
Nazzal said mediators had not discussed with the group an international stabilization force for Gaza, which was proposed in Trump’s ceasefire plan.
Hamas’ founding charter called for the destruction of Israel, although the group’s leaders have at times offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state on all Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.
Israel regards this position as a ruse.
Nazzal said Hamas had suggested a long-term truce in meetings with US officials, and wanted a truce of at least three to five years to rebuild the Gaza Strip. “The goal isn’t to prepare for a future war.”
Beyond that period, guarantees for the future would require states to “provide horizons and hope for the Palestinian people,” he said.
“The Palestinian people want an independent Palestinian state,” he added.
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Gaza-Egypt Border Crossing Will Remain Closed, Netanyahu Says
Trucks carrying humanitarian aid and fuel line up at the crossing into the Gaza Strip at the Rafah border on the Egypt side, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, in Rafah, Egypt, October 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will remain closed until further notice, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday, adding its reopening will depend on Hamas handing over bodies of deceased hostages.
Netanyahu’s statement came shortly after the Palestinian embassy in Egypt announced that the Rafah crossing, the main gateway for Gazans to leave and enter the enclave, would reopen on Monday for entry into Gaza.
Hamas said later on Saturday it will be handing over two more hostage bodies at 10 p.m. local time (1900 GMT), meaning 12 out of 28 bodies will have been handed over to Israel under a US-brokered ceasefire and hostage deal agreed between Israel and Hamas last week.
ISRAEL SAYS HAMAS TOO SLOW TO RETURN BODIES
The dispute over the return of bodies underlines the fragility of the ceasefire and still has the potential to upset the deal along with other major issues that are included in US president Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war.
As part of the deal, Hamas released all 20 living Israeli hostages it had been holding for two years, in return for almost 2,000 Palestinian detainees and convicted prisoners jailed in Israel.
But Israel says that Hamas has been too slow to hand over bodies of deceased hostages it still holds. The terrorist group has so far returned 10 of 28 bodies and says that locating some of the bodies amid the vast destruction in Gaza will take time.
The deal requires Israel to return 360 bodies of Palestinian militants for the deceased Israeli hostages and so far it has handed over 15 bodies in return for each Israeli body it has received.
Rafah has largely been shut since May 2024. The ceasefire deal also includes the ramping up of aid into the enclave, where hundreds of thousands of people were determined in August to be affected by famine, according to the IPC global hunger monitor.
After cutting off all supplies for 11 weeks in March, Israel increased aid into Gaza in July, scaling it up further since the ceasefire.
Around 560 metric tons of food had entered Gaza per day on average since the US-brokered truce, but this was still well below the scale of need, according to the U.N. World Food Program.
Formidable obstacles to Trump’s plan to end the war still remain. Key questions of Hamas disarming and how Gaza will be governed, the make-up of an international “stabilization force” and moves towards the creation of a Palestinian state have yet to be resolved.