On Sunday, when it was reported that filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle Singer Reiner had been stabbed to death in their Los Angeles home, the news seemed so senseless and confusing, so at odds with Reiner's lovable image, that it was impossible to properly compute. Who would want to kill Rob Reiner, that big comedic Teddy bear, the closest thing America has to a collective father? The subsequent revelation that the Reiners' son Nick was allegedly responsible for their deaths is as terribly sad as it is disgusting.
This news was especially distressing because Reiner's relationship with his own famous father always seemed so enviably affectionate. Reiner was born in 1947 in the Bronx, the eldest child of comedian Carl Reiner and actress and singer Estelle Reiner. (Estelle later achieved cinematic immortality in Reiner's classic When Harry Met Sally, playing the woman who deadpans, “I'll take what she's eating,” after Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm at Katz's Deli.) In public, Reiner's men made a charming pair. 1979 magazine issue People the cover featured the caption “Famous Fathers, Loving Sons” next to a photo of Carl pinching Rob's cheek. Especially in the last years of Karl's life, they liked to pose with their arms around each other, their bald heads pressed warmly against each other, like two large speckled eggs. For COVID-19 quarantine, in 2020 Karl took part in the star-studded online production of Rob's film “Princess Bride” In the final scene, Rob, tucked under the covers in bed, plays the role of the little grandson, and Carl plays his grandfather. “As you wish,” says Carl, holding the tip of his hat, when his large adult son, with a touching complaint, asks if he can come back and read to him the next day. Charles died shortly afterwards, at ninety-eight.
As a child, Rainer idolized Karl and his work. In a recent interview with Fresh Air, Reiner said that one day, as a little boy, he told his parents that he wanted to change his name. They asked him anxiously what it would be. “Carl,” Reiner told them. Even as a teenager, when most kids want nothing to do with their parents, he would come home from school and listen to 2000 Year Old Man, the era-defining comedy album Carl recorded with his friend. Mel Brooks. But Karl could be distant, cold and harsh. He made it clear that his son had to earn his respect. Interestingly, Reiner first won his father's admiration when he directed a production of the existentialist play No Exit while a student at UCLA. Carl “came backstage after the show, looked me in the eyes and said, 'That was good. No bull,'” Reiner recalls. It was Sartre, not Sid Caesarbut it did the trick.
In college, Reiner was drawn to improv, and at twenty-one he was hired to write with Steve Martin for “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” Two years later, fame came to him when Norman Lear— who was “like a second father,” Reiner said — cast him as Michael (Meathead) Stivic, Archie Bunker's liberal son-in-law on All in the Family. It was the early seventies, the peak of monoculture in the United States; At its peak, the show was watched by nearly a third of all Americans. I was not among them – I was too young. But I will never forget sitting in the cinema forty years later when Reiner had the chance to perform a long-winded play. stage theft father as (Mad) Max Belfort, the accountant father of Leonardo DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort, in Martin Scorsese's “The Wolf of Wall Street” In two minutes of ranting and raving about his degenerate son's twenty-six thousand dollar lunch bill, Reiner delivered an unforgettable comedy performance that was destined to be quoted for years to come. He took the casting calmly. “When you look [for] “If you look at old, fat and bald people, you'll see Leonardo DiCaprio,” he deadpanned to a then-interviewer.
After All in the Family ended, Reiner wanted to do his own work and not just star in someone else's. What followed was one of the greatest periods of popular filmmaking, beginning in 1984 with “This is a spinal tapThe films that Reiner made during this period are those that accompany people throughout their lives. This is a comfort watch in the best sense of the word: a classic that entertains, titillates and comforts, that can be watched a hundred times and still be enjoyable.
At the top of my Reiner canon are 1987's The Princess Bride and 1989's When Harry Met Sally. Reiner, an avid admirer of William Goldman, adapted the former from Goldman's novel. novel of the same name. For those who haven't had the pleasure yet, let me set the scene. Our heroine is Buttercup (Robin Wright), a beautiful girl from the mythical country of Florin. Our hero is her one true love, Westley (Cary Elwes), a farm boy who meekly fulfills all her demands and goes to sea to make his fortune, only to be captured by pirates. Our villain is Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon), who, in Westley's absence, chooses Buttercup as his bride. As the lovers struggle to reunite, we meet a gentle giant, a valiant Spaniard, a mean six-fingered man, and repeated use of the word “incomprehensible.” All of these elements are present in Goldman's book, but Reiner brings them to life with the kind of magical, theatrically inventive touch that reeks of the Old Hollywood that the CGI era has all but destroyed. The unusually sized rodents that attack Westley in the swamp work because they are played by little people in rodent costumes, rather than coldly pixelated creatures; their deliberate ploy is thrills, and Reiner voices their disgusting snorts.
