It’s a sad day in Hollywood – an unthinkable, heartbreaking and shocking day – when filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle could have been stabbed to death in their own home, apparently by someone so close to them.
The details are fuzzy, the first reports almost impossible to understand. It’s clear that in the days to come, the scandal risks overshadowing the career of one of the industry’s most beloved directors, a man widely admired for his work, his activism and his infectious optimism. In the recently released list of “100 Best Comedy Movies of All Time” by VarietyReiner was responsible for no less than three of the entries.
I’m not exaggerating at all when I say that among American studio talent, I consider Rob Reiner to be the best director never to be nominated for the Best Director award. Just look at his credits. This guy was our generation’s Billy Wilder: a filmmaker with an instinct for comedy, able to operate across genres, making films with great, larger-than-life characters that you instantly recognized and felt like you’d known your whole life.
He wasn’t a stylist, like Martin Scorsese — the movie idol on whom “This Is Spinal Tap” “director” Marty DiBergi was based (and for whom he eventually got to star in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” as Leonardo DiCaprio’s father). He was not a visionary technological innovator like Robert Zemeckis – the performance capture pioneer who took “The Polar Express,” a project Reiner had initiated with Tom Hanks, and made cinematic history with it.
But he made at least six Hall of Fame films, virtually one after the other over the course of 11 years (a number that is still associated with him). Reiner began his directing career with the mock-up and endlessly quoted rock documentary “This Is Spinal Tap,” reaching new comedic heights right out of the gate in 1984 by poking fun at an absurd (but plausible) heavy metal band. Two years later, he made the greatest coming-of-age film, “Stand by Me” – a film about children who really act like children, confronting the concept of mortality for the first time.
Then came what I’ve long considered my desert island movie – as in the one movie I’d save if I were banished somewhere with a projector, a screen and a single print that I’m sure I’ll never tire of watching: “The Princess Bride.” We’ll talk about that in a minute. I was exactly the right age when this head-in-the-clouds, heart-on-sleeve postmodern fairy tale came out, but adults of the time went crazy for its down-to-earth sequel, “When Harry Met Sally…”, which almost single-handedly revived the romantic comedy genre.
Here you have four films that defined the ’80s, and we haven’t even gotten to its two most acclaimed credits: “A Few Good Men,” the most quoted (and surely also the most reviewed) legal drama of the decade, in which Jack Nicholson screams, “You can’t handle the truth!” at Tom Cruise’s right-thinking military lawyer. Reiner reunited with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin three years later on “The American President,” another irresistible Hollywood romance, this one with a backbone idealistic enough to inspire “The West Wing.”
I know I’m not the only one who adores these six films, although it’s telling that none of them are the kind that immediately springs to mind of the man who calls “action!” »Aaron Sorkin’s fingerprints are all over the last two. “This Is Spinal Tap” is commonly associated with Christopher Guest, who went on to make several other improv mockumentaries in the same mold. Nora Ephron is often credited for “When Harry Met Sally…”, although the storyline is influenced by where she and Reiner were in their respective romantic lives at the time.
If Reiner gets too little credit, it’s because he had the wisdom and grace to remove himself from the equation – by which I mean that when watching a Rob Reiner film, the audience was never thinking about the director: how brilliant that shot was or that editing was clever. He wanted our attention to be focused on the characters, taking great care to cast each role with the right actor, and then trusting those performers to bring more than the script dictates to their roles.
There must be a case somewhere in Reiner’s filmography where someone was wrong for the role, but I can’t think of an example (again, I’ve never seen “North”). Instead, my mind turns to a dozen oddly inspired choices in “The Princess Bride”: From Andre the Giant to Mandy Patinkin to Wallace Shawn, these actors fit their characters like a six-fingered glove (in Guest’s case, at least).
With “The Princess Bride,” Reiner accomplished the tricky task of blending several classic Hollywood genres — fairytale romance, fantasy adventure, gripping action and kid-friendly comedy — even if the studio wasn’t sure what to make of it at the time. Like “This Is Spinal Tap” before it, it took a while for audiences to buy into the film. Rest assured, these two cult favorites finally found their audience, so much so that Reiner broke one of his own rules and ultimately directed a sequel (“Spinal Tap II: The End Continues”) this year.
You can’t watch a Rob Reiner movie and reverse engineer the man’s genius like you can in a Spielberg or Kubrick movie (although I would argue that “Stand by Me” is a better Stephen King adaptation than “The Shining”). In my opinion, three subtle but vital qualities made Reiner’s films so appealing.
First there is the way he works with the actors, inviting them to improvise. This made “Spinal Tap” successful and proved to be an asset throughout his career.
Second, as the son of Carl Reiner – and star of the hit ’70s sitcom “All in the Family” – Rob had either inherited or absorbed the principles of comedy, incorporating humor into all of his films (I believe that all Hollywood films are comedies, at least to some extent, and that this sense of humor is what sets American cinema apart).
And third, he carefully worked on the scripts with his writers. Some projects he started with his Castle Rock shingles, and others he refined through rigorous brainstorming sessions. Sorkin has often credited Reiner’s process with making “A Few Good Men” the rock-solid film. These days, too few studio execs polish their scripts to the same degree, caring not just about dialogue, but also structure, stakes, and what makes a character feel real.
It makes sense that Reiner would be strong on these fronts. He met Mel Brooks when he was just four years old. Little Rob grew up at the feet of showbiz legends (his father, Carl, wrote for Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows”), and he paid his dues by studying theater at UCLA, watching and learning from Norman Lear, and directing TV movies before moving on to film.
Reiner’s career has stagnated somewhat in the 21st century, although two years ago he directed a very funny and disarmingly intimate portrait of his best friend Albert Brooks (no relation to Mel) for HBO, “Albert Brooks: Defending My Life.” And of course, there was this year’s “Spinal Tap” sequel, which features more than a few heartbreaking moments — and some epic cameos from Paul McCartney and Elton John.
Can a filmmaker be both loved and underestimated? Rob Reiner was. Thinking about what happened to Mensch, 78, and his wife this weekend, one word comes to mind: inconceivable.
