2000’s Meet the Parents, like many other movies, went through some significant changes before making it to theaters. For starters, Jim Carrey was supposed to star in the film prior to Ben Stiller’s involvement, and Steven Spielberg was set to direct. Carrey even came up with the name Focker during a creative meeting. Once Stiller was on board, some of the more physical scenes described in earlier drafts of the script were altered to accommodate him.
Even earlier than that, it was decided that the wilder elements from the original 1992 film Meet the Parents would be taken out. In that version, Greg (as portrayed by Greg Glienna) accidentally pokes Pam’s mother in the eye with a fishing pole, drowns the family dog, and drives Pam’s sister to suicide. When Pam’s dad finds his daughter’s body, he tries to shoot Greg, but ends up killing Pam and her mother in the process, after which he drops dead from a heart attack.
Try and picture that movie with Stiller or Carrey in the lead.
The Disturbing ‘Meet the Parents’ Scene the CIA Reportedly Changed
Interestingly, because Jack Burns—Robert De Niro’s character in the remake—was an ex-CIA agent, the real CIA also had a say in what made it into the final film. According to Matthew Alford and Tom Secker’s 2017 book National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood, the CIA’s entertainment liaison officer at the time, Chase Brandon, was a script consultant on Meet the Parents. While on a conference call with Universal Studios executives discussing the movie, Brandon was asked what the CIA’s kidnapping and torture manuals looked like. They wanted to know because Greg was originally supposed to find them on Jack’s desk.
Brandon was uncomfortable with the idea, and provided them with an alternative way of approaching the subject. Instead of using the manuals, Brandon suggested that Jack’s secret be revealed by showing a “panoply of photographs” of Jack posing with different international figures. The folks at Universal reportedly liked what he came up with, and opted to go that route instead.
Brandon was said to have provided input and technical advice for a number of other films in addition to Meet the Parents, including Enemy of the State, The Bourne Identity, and even Meet the Fockers.
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