DVDFILE: Congrats on the success of Meet The Parents. It had a pretty incredible theatrical run, and though I'm sure you can never predict how a film will ultimately do, did you have any feeling while making it that it was going to be something big?

Jay Roach: Well, you sort of fantasize and let yourself dream, but you're never sure. I was afraid, because I knew that people would be interested in Bob (DeNiro) and Ben (Stiller) together, but I did have an ongoing terror that I would be the guy who screws up a Robert DeNiro movie. (laughs) I never was really calm throughout the making of the film. I was sick a lot on the shoot, and we were rewriting the script constantly as we went. And I sincerely wanted to make a film that Bob himself liked. So I wish I had been able to predict that it would be so successful, because I could have saved my stomach lining. (laughs) But I really didn't know.

DF: I think the chemistry between Robert DeNiro and Ben Stiller was probably one of the key ingredients in the film's success...

JR: Yes, it was kind of everything, and it was a great script, too. And we had some other great cast members. I thought Blythe Danner did a great job, and Terry Pollock was really sweet, so we kind of lucked out.

DF: Ben Stiller is someone that most moviegoers already know as a comedian, but Robert DeNiro is probably more associated with being "the heavy" and for very dramatic roles. How did you attract him to become involved with the project?

JR: It really wasn't so hard. It was a little terrifying, as everything is that you do with Bob, just because he is that intimidating heavy guy, but I saw that as a big asset for this character, because I wanted him (Bob's character) to be a sort of character in a nightmare that Ben Stiller might have about who you would have to go to to win approval from to marry the woman you really care the most about.

I had to go and meet with him (DeNiro) in a room, with only one other person there, his producing partner. It was in a nice, swanky hotel in LA, and I still feel like a hick from the sticks. I grew up in New Mexico, and I'm going in to meet Robert DeNiro! I sort of felt like Ben Stiller going to meet him in the film, because I was nervous and feeling inadequate, and I had pre-visualized a disaster. And I just tend to kind of overcompensate.

So I kind of have realized that as the course of the film went on, how much I have in common with the character that Ben plays, so that pretty much can describe how it was. I didn't kill his cat or anything like that...

DF: Or boil his rabbit.

JR: .Yeah, right! No, luckily, I didn't cause disasters or light anything on fire when I went to meet him, but I talked about my own connection to it, and what we could do with the idea of having his character be a psychological profiler. Which wasn't quite written that way in the script. But the idea of his character actually being able to tell if you were lying or not just by looking at you or taking your pulse was hilarious to me.

DF: Since I'm sure you don't exactly screen test Robert DeNiro or Ben Stiller (laughs), when you get the script, do you do a lot a rehearsals or read throughs of the material to feel it out, or is there more improvisation on the set?

JR: We did a lot of both, not only during the rehearsals before the shooting begins but also on the day the scene is going to be shot. I always come in with a very elaborate plan, but then quickly to the actors "So, what do you guys got?" and they almost always have some kind of better idea, or can add some type of flavor to what I've got.

That is kind of a key to comedy in my opinion, to open them up and feel comfortable enough with the situation that they'll experiment and play, and try to make the crew laugh and themselves laugh. If there has been any key to my success, that would be it. Don't stick to everything that you've preconceived, there's going to be something way better sometimes that's gonna happen on the set, so just be ready to go with it.