Meet The Parents | 2000
The opening locale of Jay Roach’s hugely successful comedy of embarrassment is established with a couple of shots of Chicago, but the film was made in New York State, mainly on the swanky north shore of Long Island.
The ‘Harmony School’ outside which nurse Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) ducks out of a proposal to teacher Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo) was nothing more than an empty storefront in Manhattan, and many Interiors were filmed on sets in that dependable standby, a Brooklyn armory.
Both Chicago’s ‘O’Hare’, from which Greg and Pam depart, and New York’s ‘La Guardia’, where they arrive, are Westchester County Airport, 240 Airport Road, in White Plains.
The home of the Byrnes, Pam’s parents, in ‘Oyster Bay’ is actually a couple miles west toward Glen Cove. It’s 93 Pound Hollow Road in Old Brookville.
On the north coast of Long Island, a couple of miles further west, many of the locations can be found in Port Washington.
‘Oyster Bay Drugs’, where Greg sees potential father-in-law Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro) furtively meeting up with a stranger in the car park while trying to buy a decent bottle of Champagne, was Trunz Food Center, 364 Port Washington Boulevard, in Port Washington. The store closed in 2005 after 100 years of business, and it’s now Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace.
When the men take off to get wedding outfits, the tuxedo shop in which Jack becomes convinced that Greg is a drug fiend, is Victor Talbots, Greenvale Plaza, 47 Glen Cove Road, Greenvale, just south of Glen Cove.
The uncomfortable get-together doesn’t improve with a visit to the impressive home of Pam’s impossibly perfect ex, Kevin (Owen Wilson) – tastefully graced with wood salvaged from an old seamen’s chapel in Nantucket – which is in the leafy enclave of Harrison, north of Mamaronek across Long Island Sound.
After Jack’s beloved toilet-trained cat, Mr Jinx, goes missing, Greg unwisely picks up a near-lookalike from the Oyster Bay Animal Shelter, 150 Miller Place, in Syosset.
At the pre-wedding dinner that evening, Jack finds out from a neighbour that the missing Mr Jinx has already turned up. The ‘Surf and Turf’ waterfront restaurant is Louie’s Oyster Bar & Grille, 395 Main Street, Port Washington, on Manhasset Bay.
On the way back home, Greg and Jack race each other between red lights along Main Street, downtown Port Washington, between Herbert Avenue and Port Washington Boulevard.
