This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, Ben Stiller, has made a very personal documentary about his

parents and what it was like to be their son. Ben's father, Jerry Stiller, co-starred on Seinfeld, playing

Frank Costanza, George's father. Ben's mother, Anne Mira, was an actress. Together, Ben's parents were

known as the comedy duo Stiller and Mara.

They were so popular in the 60s and 70s that were on the Ed Sullivan show more than 30 times.

Sometimes Ben went with them to their appearances on TV talk shows and in nightclubs.

In 2020, five years after Mira's death, Jerry Stiller died. While Ben was going

through his father's possessions, he was stunned to discover, stashed away, many cassette and reel-to-reel audio

recordings Jerry Stiller had made. They documented his life and his relationship with Anne, including

recordings of conversations with

Anne in which they had disagreements about their marriage and their act. Some of those conversations

are included in the documentary, along with video clips of their sketches from their TV appearances.

The documentary, Stiller and Mara, Nothing is Lost, is streaming on Apple TV. Ben Stiller has been

famous for years as an actor, starring in such films as Zoolander, Meet the Parents, Night at

the Museum, and their sequels, as well as Dodgeball, Tropic Thunder, and the Royal Tenenbaum.

In the last few years, he's been doing more and more

directing and producing. Now he's the executive producer and primary director of the popular

Emmy Award-winning Apple TV series Severance. Let's start with a clip from the new documentary,

Stiller and Mira, Nothing is Lost.

This is an excerpt of one of the audio recordings of Ben's parents,

rehearsing a sketch about how the couple they're portraying hate each other,

not realizing that Ben's sister, who is then a child,

...