DePaul senior Sarah Musur did not need to rush to Grant Park to catch a glimpse of Ben Stiller working on “Little Fockers,” the newest movie in the “Meet the Parents” series, as it filmed in various Chicago locations earlier this month. Instead, she came home to her apartment on Tuesday, Oct. 5 to find Stiller sitting on her couch.
“I came straight from nannying and I did not expect to meet him,” said Musur. “I had on sweat pants and a sweat shirt and I looked a mess and I met Ben Stiller!”
Though Stiller’s presence in her living room at that moment was a surprise to Musur, she had known since the summer that her apartment building would be one of the filming locations for “Little Fockers.”
During July, the location manager for the movie drove all around Chicago, reading the script and trying to find a place that matched the description of Stiller’s apartment. He loved how Musur’s apartment looked from the outside and one day a crowd of people with cameras gathered outside her place. Musur and her 2 roommates asked why they were there, and they simply said they were scouting locations for the movie “Little Fockers.” After contacting the condo association and getting the greenlight from her landlord, the crew secured Musur’s home as a filming location for the movie.
Although she lives on the first floor and in the movie Stiller is supposed to live on the third floor, her apartment became “the hangout space” on set, according to Musur.
Stiller decided he did not want to go all the way to his trailer for make-up touch ups, so they did that in her living room instead. Then, “The director started using our bathroom,” Musur said. All day long, as the cast and crew worked from 7:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m., people filtered in and out of Musur’s apartment, hard at work.
“We had to leave [the apartment] every time they started to work,” she said.
Though this seems like quite the inconvenience considering the fact that filming took place during midterms week, “Little Fockers” compensated Musur and her roommates $500 each.
In addition to the cash compensation, Musur can now brag that she got to meet Stiller and Robert De Niro.
“[Stiller] was nice, he was quiet,” Musur said. “He loved my dog!”
“De Niro didn’t interact with anyone in the crowd, he’s paranoid,” she said. “It’s understandable because he’s such a big deal.”
Musur has seen the first “Meet the Parents” movie but still has yet to see “Meet the Fockers.” She did go out to buy one of Stiller’s first-ever movies, Heavy Weights, a comedy in which Stiller is not even credited because he was not yet famous.
“I had to go out and buy the movie right away because I was like, I just hung out with him,” Musur said.
Now, Musur and her roommates must patiently wait for “Little Fockers” to premiere in July. “I really just can’t wait to see the movie and be like, ‘I live there!'” said Musur. “It’s going to be a story that I can tell forever.”
Celebrity brushes and bragging rights aside, the experience is not one that Musur is itching to relive in the future. “I had a lot of fun, but we would never do it again!” she said.