This image was lost some time after publication.

How does Universal keeping wringing box office gold out of movies like Meet the Fockers and Along Came Polly? Hint: It isn't Ben Stiller. The secret ingredient is Uni head Stacey Snider's incredibly developed understanding of the craft of comedy:

There's a scene in Meet the Fockers, Snider said, in which the families are sitting around having drinks outside when Hoffman strays into an inappropriate conversation, and Stiller falls backward out of his chair. "You can't help but laugh when he flips over," Snider said.

Conversely, there's another scene where Hoffman becomes upset after learning that his son had gone duck hunting with father-in-law-to-be De Niro, who is looking on. "Ben doesn't say anything," Snider says. "He knows he [loses] either way. He makes this great perplexed face and decides it's best to exit. People [in the audience] howl at nothing."

Snider knows it's not all about flopping out of chairs, unexpected erections, or even cats flushing dogs down toilets. Any idiot can greenlight that kind of stuff. She knows you've got to make people laugh at nothing. That's why she's running a studio and you're rolling calls to the spa, making sure absolutely nothing will go wrong with her seaweed wrap.