How Ben Stiller's Meet The Fockers Dodged An R-Rating By The MPAA

Universal Pictures

The premise of Jay Roach's 2000 hit comedy "Meet the Parents" (a remake of the 1992 indie film) is pure sitcom fodder. The movie follows the travails of Gaylord "Greg" Focker (Ben Stiller) as he is taken home to meet the family of his girlfriend, Pam (Teri Polo). Pam's parents, however, are rather intense. Her father is Jack (Robert De Niro), a former CIA spy who greets Greg with suspicion right away. Jack also seems to be sizing up Greg's masculinity, immediately put off by his name ("Gaylord" was embarrassing to Greg, hence the name change, and "Focker" sounded a lot like ... well, a certain inappropriate word). It's not long before Jack has Greg hooked up to a lie detector, analyzing his intentions with Pam.

"Meet the Parents" was an enormous success, making over $330 million on a $55 million budget. Naturally, a sequel was required. Roach returned to direct "Meet the Fockers" in 2004, and it flipped the script on Jack. This time, Pam and Greg were about to be married, and Jack had to come to Greg's home to meet his parents (as played by Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman). Unlike the tight-laced Jack, the Fockers are wild, free hippies. Comedy ensues. "Meet the Fockers" cost $80 million but raked in $522 million. It was one of the biggest hits of its year.

Of course, titling a movie "Meet the Fockers" was a risky proposition. If a tired film critic didn't have their coffee the morning of their live review, they might slip up and say a cuss word on the air. Indeed, the MPAA (which changed to the MPA in 2019) wanted to give "Meet the Fockers" an R-rating because of all the near-cusses in the film; the movie's characters say the word "Focker" a lot. In an episode of "Hot Ones," Stiller talked about making "Meet the Fockers," and how the film's creatives avoided the R-rating by actually finding a person with the real name of Focker.

Universal Pictures

When "Hot Ones" host Sean Evans asked Stiller about the title of "Meet the Fockers," the actor recalled as well as he could (through a haze of eating spicy chicken wings) what the MPAA had said regarding the word "Focker." "It was a PG-13," Stiller said, "and they thought it was too close to 'f***er.' Yes. They have to clear names." But Stiller did confirm the rumor that the MPAA wouldn't allow the filmmakers to use the name unless they could prove someone had it in real life. "I think that is true, yes," he noted. Stiller was unclear as to the process of proving the surname existed — if he had to bring in a photocopied driver's license or whatnot — but he affirmed that a process did indeed take place to prove that there are Fockers in the world. As far as anyone knows, though, no one with the surname Focker actually had to meet the MPAA ratings board in person.

As covered in Kirby Dick's 2006 documentary film "This Film is Not Yet Rated," the MPAA ratings process is strange and secretive. The names of the people who sit on the ratings board are not revealed to the public, and ratings appeals have a lot of Byzantine rules. It's said that if your film receives an R rating, and you would prefer the more commercially viable PG-13 rating, then you are permitted to make an appeal, but you're not allowed to bring up other films as precedent.

It's also unclear how the MPAA will react to certain kinds of sex, language, or violence, usually resting on abstract concepts like tone or relying on ancient standards for "acceptable" sex and violence. For many years, queer sex was an instant R-rating, and only one f-word could be used in a PG-13-rated film. And even then, it had to be in a nonsexual context. "Meet the Fockers," and its sequel "Little Fockers" were both rated PG-13, so the Focker appeal seemed to work.

But it sounds like it was Focking inconvenient.