Who Are We Saving Everything For?

Plus the Latest Pop Culture Update from a Chronically Online Mom

Oct 28, 2025

A few weeks ago, I went to see the premiere of Stiller and Meara: Nothing is Lost at the New York Film Festival. It’s a beautifully crafted documentary from Ben Stiller (their son) which uses layers and layers of archived footage that includes public interviews and performances, personal audio recordings, family photos and videos. None of it would have been possible if it wasn’t for Jerry Stiller’s obsession with documenting every moment of his life, both personally and professionally. Sound familiar? As I was watching the documentary, I kept thinking— am I… Jerry Stiller???

Of course, Jerry Stiller was documenting his life way before anything was digitized, so his lifetime of memories exist in physical copies of letters, photos, tapes, etc. stored in drawers, closets and boxes piled high around their family apartment. After Jerry and Meara both passed away, Ben and Amy (his older sister) were tasked with cleaning out the apartment so that they could sell it. Instead of tossing everything or putting it into storage, Ben Stiller decided to go through it all and see if he could put it together to tell his parents’ story. Otherwise, what was his dad saving everything for?

It’s not easy to go through a lifetime of memories, especially when half of those memories are on audio cassettes. Not only does it take a lot of time, I imagine it can be quite painful. I remember a friend telling me that after her and her siblings went off to college, her mother started watching all their old family movies and they made her so sad, she had to stop. It’s interesting to me that when we take photos and videos, we don’t imagine they will bring us anything but joy, but I’ve definitely felt twinges of heartbreak while looking through Mazzy and Harlow’s old baby photos. I love my kids now, but I also miss those innocent little babies with all my heart.

In the Q&A after the movie, Ben Stiller admitted that he couldn’t go through the archives himself. Both because it was too time consuming and because it took too much of an emotional toll, as I suspected. He said every memory would dislodge something from his brain and send him down a rabbit hole of research, and it was just too slow and painful a process. But lucky for him, he is Ben Stiller, with a world class production company, the best editors on speed dial, and so many resources at his disposal. He actually hired the same guys who edit Severance to go through all the archives, listen to all the audio tapes, and watch all the video without him, so that they could help him piece together his parents’ story. They would only show him clips they thought furthered the storytelling and would work in the documentary, essentially removing the emotional burden of going through his dad’s memories, trying to decide what was important and what was not, and potentially uncovering something that was better left in a box.

For instance, one memorable clip in the documentary was a talk show interview with Jerry and Meara, where part of their act was having a young Ben and Amy play the violin for a live audience. Ben and Amy remember feeling incredibly nervous and really wanting to do a good job, and then feeling proud when the audience responded with applause. But as adults, watching the footage now, they can see that part of why they were met with such a big response was because their parents were laughing at them. It wasn’t cruel; we all smile through the pain and say “good job” when our kids learn to play a new instrument, but most of us don’t go through this ritual on television. It was obvious that Jerry and Meara knew what their kids would sound like and set them up as a joke. You could see that Ben and Amy had mixed feelings about being used like that. And more interestingly, it probably would have remained a happy memory in their minds (the time they simultaneously made their parents proud and wowed a live audience) if Jerry Stiller hadn’t recorded the show and saved the tape.

Sometimes, I go back through my old photo and video libraries, and start to look through the ones that never made it to the blog or Instagram. There is so much I have forgotten. Like how many photos we would take before I got what I deemed was “the perfect shot.” Or I’ll play back the uncut video of Harlow telling a story and hear me feeding her a line or encouraging her to repeat something she said before I turned on the camera. Or maybe I’ll hear Mazzy in the background trying to get my attention while I am focusing the camera on her little sister. Or someone getting frustrated with me in the millisecond before I stop filming. We all know that everybody just posts their highlights on social media, but I think the highlights actually become your family memories, even though your real life might be buried in the footage that didn’t make the cut. Maybe it should stay there.

A few years ago, before my mom moved to Florida, she began the slow, painful process of purging and decluttering her house; a house she had lived in since I was three years old. It seemed like every weekend, she would make a plan to see me, pretending that she just wanted to spend time with her grandchildren, when really, she had a hidden agenda— to unload boxes and boxes of my childhood memories from her home to mine. Photos, artwork, old report cards… mementos that had accumulated over the years and sat in her attic, collecting dust where no one ever looked at them. Not once. If she had just thrown them out, no one would have known the difference, but by bringing them to my home, she was saying— here are your memories that I kept for you. If you don’t want them, they are yours to toss. Did I want them? Not really. Could I toss them? Nope. In the boxes, the memories will remain, just in my closet instead of my mom’s.

I have similar boxes of items saved for both Mazzy and Harlow— artwork, certificates, birthday cards, school reports. Will my kids care about these things someday? They certainly have no interest in them now. Will they care about my mom’s boxes of my childhood stuff one day? Will they go through my hundreds of thousands of photos and delete what I could not? Or will the process be too overwhelming or shed too much light on a past they don’t feel it’s necessary to see?

Perhaps we are all just inheriting and passing down a burden. A burden we are privileged to have because it means there was no war or disaster that resulted in us having to leave everything behind. Hoping that somewhere in our lineage there is a future Ben Stiller, with the desire and talent to tell our story and the resources to do it unburdened.

Pop Culture Update from a Chronically Online Mom

Basically, I watch tiktok so you don’t have to, get updates from Harlow who follows all the pop culture stuff on YouTube and then put together a rundown so you can impress your tweens and teens with how “in the know” you are! I skipped last week’s pop culture update, so I’ve got a lot of catching up to do…

• A photo went viral of a very dapper Parisian detective at the site of the $120M jewelry heist at the Louvre, but unfortunately he was revealed to be just a passersby, and not responsible for the recent arrest of two suspects.

• Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau are officially a couple. Last week they were seen kissing on yacht and this week, they have made their first on-purpose public appearance together in Paris.

• Bradley Cooper debuted a new face and is looking a little more like Barry Manilow than the Bradley Cooper we used to know and love.

• A 25yo went to a Sombr concert, complained that it was full of 12yos, and then Sombr (who is 20) made a response video calling her old, not realizing that he will be 25 himself in approximately two seconds. Actual old people responded by saying, “WHO IS SOMBR???”

• Trump tore down the East Wing of the White House (that’s the wing that housed the Office of the First Lady and all the First Lady portraits) to make a ballroom, solidifying his position as the smallest man on earth.

• Skims came out with pube underwear, I guess for those who have been going Brazilian for one year too many and want to try on a wig before committing to a grow out? If this makes no sense to you, just google it. Or maybe don’t. I apologize either way.

• KJ Apa (that’s Archie from Riverdale) has a Tiktok alter ego named Mr. Fantasy that is gaining popularity. I’m not sure how to explain Mr. Fantasy except to say he’s British, he wears tight pants, he has a haircut that resembles Edna from the Incredibles, he’s obsessed with James Franco and he makes music videos, sometimes while wearing a Speedo.

• In other tiktok alter ego news, Matt Taylor, the 4th grade art teacher who is played by Kevin James, has been revealed to actually be an art teacher named Matt Taylor and has nothing to do with Kevin James.

• After trying and failing to get tickets to the Olivia Rodrigo American Express Platinum concert in NYC, and then making a tiktok that went semi-viral about it, Olivia’s team reached out to give us two tickets. The concert was awesome and Mazzy had the time of her life.

• Not to be outdone, Harlow went to the Sabrina Carpenter concert on Sunday.

Loose Ends

The time has come to put together our holiday gift guide. If you want to help us in our internet gift combing, tell me the gift guide category that you need the most in the comments below. For example, the kid who is obsessed with magic, the kid who lives at Sephora, the husband who has everything, the grandparents who have started their travel era, etc.

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