Laura Enright (Provided photo)

The David versus Goliath story appeals to many people. The humble, little guy with a slingshot not only stands up to the arrogant, big guy with a sword, but also defeats him in decisive fashion.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out that way. Especially in Hollywood where who you know is often more important than what you know. Indie film producer and former Park Ridge resident Greg Glienna and co-writer Mary Ruth Clarke found this out the hard way.

Fortunately, Park Ridge resident and author Laura Enright has chronicled their story in a book published this year by BearManorMedia. “The Meet the Parents Story: The True and Terrible Tale of How a Little Independent Film Spawned a Billion-Dollar Franchise” reveals that Glienna’s original “Meet the Parents” film was produced 10 years prior to the release of the blockbuster movie starring Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro. The book also shows how Glienna’s and Clarke’s connection to the film was slowly erased from history.

“I tried to be as even-handed in the book as I could be,” Enright said. “But while Universal would say that Greg’s film was a different entity, there were definite similarities that went well beyond the movie’s title. In the remake, so much is inspired by the original movie.

“As examples, a bit in the original has the dad being obsessed with his deceased mom’s ashes, the vase of which is destroyed accidentally by the character named Greg, with ashes spilling out. This is such a particular bit. In the remake, the mom’s ashes are also in a place of honor, and the character of Greg also manages to accidentally destroy the vase.

Laura Enright’s book, “The Meet the Parents Story: The True and Terrible Tale of How a Little Independent Film Spawned a Billion-Dollar Franchise” reveals that the original “Meet the Parents” film was produced 10 years prior to the release of the blockbuster movie starring Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro. (Provided photo)

“In the original, the character of Greg causes a severe eye injury to his fiancé’s mom. In the remake, Ben Stiller’s Greg character spikes a volleyball and injures the eye of the fiancé’s sister. They used the same bits from the original; they just exaggerated them.”

Universal Studios’ “Meet the Parents,” released on Oct. 6, 2000, raked in more than $28.6 million on opening day and would become one of the most successful national and international franchises ever, producing two successful sequels, with a third in the works.

Millions of viewers had no idea the movie was a remake of Glienna’s low-budget, independent film of the same name, released in 1991. Glienna’s film was well received at the local Chicago theaters where it was shown, leading the young director to believe that with the right distribution, it could be a national hit.

Enright’s book chronicles Glienna’s and Clark’s decade-long journey of discovery and their attempt to navigate a Hollywood studio system seemingly designed to thwart outsiders trying to get in.

When filming, which was done around Park Ridge, was complete on the 1990 indie movie “Meet the Parents,” director and co-writer Glienna never imagined the journey his film would take from playing Chicago theaters to a tent pole remake produced by Universal.

Along the way there would be excitement, disappointment, success, and regret as the studio system he was unprepared to deal with gradually erased his fingerprints from the project. And with his movie locked up in a contractual vault with Universal, he’s rarely been able to show it to prove there was a movie before the blockbuster. Twenty-five years later, the 2000 remake is still celebrated, while his original remains relatively unknown.

“I knew Greg from high school,” Enright said. “When his film was released, my friends and I went to see it a few times and loved it. And I was happy for him when I found out Hollywood was remaking it since I figured he’d benefit from that.

“A few years after the remake was released, our paths crossed again and I learned more of the story. I think it was around 2019 that he approached me about getting the story out there. He’d always played it close to the vest when asked about the remake and his participation in that, so I never knew the ‘true and terrible tale’ of it all.

“I told him I’d research it, and I conducted interviews with people associated with both versions. The more I dug into the story, this circuitous journey became apparent. This guy makes an indie film, has some success with it, hunts for a distributor for his film, and it makes its way to Hollywood where a remake is planned.

“The remake is massively successful, spawning two sequels, and while Greg and co-writer Mary Ruth do get some money from the project, they find that their involvement with it slowly slips away from them. They’re even cheated out of Screenplay credit, despite so many of the gags in the remake being easily traceable to the original movie. The more I researched it, the more I wanted to tell the tale of this odd little journey.”

For a while, Glienna and Clarke did have a “friend” on the inside. Producer Nancy Tenenbaum fought for years to get Universal to take the project seriously. But every time a new studio head entered the scene, she had to start over to convince them that a remake of this small indie movie could be successful.

Enright, 61, who was born in Chicago, grew up in Harwood Heights, and has lived in Park Ridge since 1998, works at the Chicago Cat Clinic. She has published several other books in both the fiction and nonfiction categories, and does speaking engagements on the subjects of her books.

They are: “Chicago’s Most Wanted: The Top Ten Book of Murderous Mobsters,” “Midway Monsters, and Windy City Oddities” (Potomac Publishers, 2005); “Vampires’ Most Wanted: The Top Ten Book of Bloodthirsty Biters,” “Stake-wielding Slayers, and Other Undead Oddities” (Potomac, 2010); “To Touch the Sun” and “Ujaali,” the first two books in her Chicago Vampire Series (Dagda Publishers, 2014 and 2015, respectively; and “Court of the Five Tribes,” a dragon fantasy novel (Correllian Publishers, 2024).

She is also planning to return to a project she’s been working on for a few years with the son of a man falsely accused of being a loan shark for the mob in 1960s Chicago.

Regardless of which projects Enright takes on in the future, she will always have a heart for helping people who have been dealt a bad hand.

“Yeah, I think that’s true,” she said. “I always try to fight for the underdog. When I see an injustice being done, I want to try to make it right, even if the only thing I can do is get the story out there.”