You can't say Jerry Stiller didn't have a long, amazing career. Well, I guess you could say it but you'd be spectacularly wrong. Very few comic actors are still in demand at the age of 92 and the one time I met him, which was October of 2017, the main thing we talked about was that he was being offered good roles in movies and TV shows but his body just wasn't up to the demands for his time.
It was at a party thrown by my friends Jim Brochu and Steve Schalchlin, and Mr. Stiller was helped in by other folks because he just wasn't walking so good. This, of course, was when he was a much younger man of 90. Out of respect, someone vacated a big, comfy easy chair in the living room and Jerry was parked in it. If you wanted to talk to him — and I, of course, did — you had to kneel down next to him…and of course, I did.
When I meet someone like that who is so familiar from film or television, I often find myself thinking, "Hey! He looks and sounds just like himself!" Jerry Stiller looked and sounded just like Jerry Stiller and he was very funny and very gracious…and self-deprecating. I would have been disappointed if he hadn't been. He talked about his physical problems and I remember saying, "God, I'm so sick of hearing actors complain they have more work than they can possibly handle."
He laughed at that and I'm very proud that I made Jerry Stiller laugh. If I could have done it about another 999 times, we might have been close to even.