“When I die,” Rob Reiner once joked to an interviewer, “I want my tombstone to read, ‘Now I’m in this place!’”
That day came too soon. But over his five-decade career, Reiner — who was found dead Sunday at his Brentwood home along with his wife, Michele — never stayed put, roving from music spoofs (“This Is Spinal Tap”) to horror movies (“Misery”), political thrillers (“A Few Good Men”) to coming-of-age dramas (“Stand by Me”) and romantic comedies both glibly teenaged (“The Sure Thing”) and bracingly adult (“When Harry Met Sally…”). Reiner bobbed and weaved and, in the process of entertaining himself, directed at least one of everyone’s favorite movies.
If I was marooned on an island and could only bring one film from the entire history of Hollywood, I’d choose Reiner’s 1987 adventure “The Princess Bride.” That swashbuckler perfectly executes each of the above genres — and fantasy, too. It’s everything you’d want from the movies in one title, all in under 100 minutes.
And those films listed above are just Reiner’s first seven movies, a string of excellence that deserves a toast bigger than the 20 bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau he witnessed Andre the Giant drink in one day on the set of “The Princess Bride.”
More than Reiner’s success, however, I want to salute him as an artist who chose creative risks over easy money. He continually evaded expectations and the industry’s attempts to trap him in a box.
Many tried, of course. As an unknown theater actor, Reiner recoiled when strangers pegged him merely as “Carl Reiner’s son.” His father, the multitalented comedian and creator of “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” didn’t think his boy had much talent and pressed him to be a ballplayer or a doctor. Norman Lear, a friend of the family, disagreed. Watching young Reiner play jacks in the living room, he thought the kid was hilarious.
“I was still searching for an identity for myself,” Reiner told an “All in the Family” fan magazine in 1971, the year Lear offered him the role of Archie Bunker’s hippie son-in-law Michael “Meathead” Stivic. The part made him famous, but it wasn’t the identity he wanted.
Reiner, then 23, was already weary of being typecast as a mop-haired, love-bead-wearing revolutionary, a cliché he’d already played plenty, including in a cameo on “The Beverly Hillbillies.” He said yes to Meathead, assuming that the sitcom’s hot-button bigotry would be so incendiary that it couldn’t possibly last longer than 13 episodes. Instead, “All in the Family” became the No. 1 TV show in America and ran for eight seasons.
“They still call me Meathead,” Reiner lamented in 1985. “It doesn’t matter what I do — it’s always going to be there.” As a Reiner fan who wasn’t even born until after Meathead was off the air, I hope he knew how many of us wouldn’t rank it at the top, or even the top five, of his overall accomplishments.
But that’s only because of what Reiner did next. Despite winning two Emmys and having little else on his horizon, Reiner turned down what he told the Los Angeles Times was “$1 or $2 million a year” to star in “All in the Family” spin-offs. Just as Meathead left his wife to move into a commune, Reiner left security to forge his reputation on his own terms. He wanted to find out if he could direct.
He revealed his intentions in back-to-back comedies that couldn’t seem more different: 1984’s mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap” and the 1985 rom-com “The Sure Thing,” in which John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga play teens on a road trip. You’d never think those two movies had any connection to each other at at the video store, but they’re both Reiner’s nose-thumb to Hollywood tropes. “Spinal Tap” sent-up self-important band documentaries like “The Last Waltz”; “The Sure Thing” attempted to liberate the teen sex comedy from raunchy “Porky’s”-style copycats.
Obey a studio formula? Absolutely not. He didn’t even want to repeat himself.
Tilt Reiner’s filmography one way and it appears to be all about opposition, a restless yen to zag when others assumed he’d zig. Tilt it another and it looks more like an urge to prove himself to himself and maybe a bit to his dad. He called the night that Carl Reiner finally gave him a genuine compliment “the major turning point in my life.”
The poignancy of “Stand by Me,” the authenticity and gravitas he invested in this story of youth, makes it a personal triumph — his funny father couldn’t, and wouldn’t, have directed anything like it. It’s worth noting that the studios didn’t initially encourage Reiner’s eclecticism. Lear had to step in and finance Reiner’s first four films, rescuing “Stand by Me” when it got shut down two days before principal photography. Lear’s $8-million investment turned into a $52-million hit.
The punchline was that Reiner’s next one, “The Princess Bride,” wasn’t any easier to green-light. Executives always wanted him to make his most recent film again. His father had refused an invitation to adapt the William Goldman novel and instead handed the so-called unfilmable book over to him. Reiner tackled the challenge. Lear had to finance that, too.
“I knew I had other things inside me,” Reiner told the Los Angeles Times. “I just didn’t know if people would accept them.” He launched Castle Rock Entertainment in 1987 so he wouldn’t be dependent on anyone’s approval.
Arguably, Reiner’s most autobiographical film is the company’s second production, “When Harry Met Sally…” Single since his 1981 divorce from Penny Marshall, Reiner confessed his dating grievances to his pal Nora Ephron, the screenwriter who then molded his angst into Billy Crystal’s Harry. On set, Reiner acted out the orgasm scene for Meg Ryan in front of his mother, Estelle. (She’s the extra who quips, “I’ll have what she’s having.”) At an actual lunch break mid-shoot, cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld introduced Reiner to his photographer friend Michele Singer. Reiner and Singer married before the film was released, inspiring him to flip the ending from a break-up to a happily-ever-after.
In their honor, I’m inclined to rewatch that one first. It’s hands down the modern era’s sharpest and most honest romantic comedy, a perfectly aimed home run, and it’s no wonder he was advised to follow it up with another one just like it. “Not a day went by when someone didn’t say ‘Keep making those kinds of films,’” he admitted after it was a smash.
But to appreciate Reiner’s maverick streak, the movie of his I’d pop in is the one he directed instead: 1990’s “Misery,” a gruesome and darkly funny chiller about a novelist in captivity.
Based on the book by Stephen King, it’s seen as an insight into the horror author’s anxiety about his fanbase, which had rejected King’s attempt to stretch himself with 1987’s “The Eyes of the Dragon,” a YA novel about magical beasts. Best-selling scribe Paul Sheldon (James Caan) gets sledgehammered by the obsessive Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) for killing off her favorite heroine, until he agrees to write a new sequel bringing her back.
Naturally, Reiner saw his own hurdles in “Misery.”
“I really identified with a guy who needed a new challenge, who needs to push himself and grow,” he said. “That’s what attracted me to ‘Misery.’ That terrible fear you have when you go through a change.”
Reiner’s fears and frustrations, his curiosity and his ambition, all fed into his body of work. He delighted audiences while managing to avoid getting hemmed in as an auteur. He let his films’ individuality be the star.
“My theory about filmmaking has always been that you shouldn’t notice the acting, the script, the camera, the sets or the photography,” he told the journalist Robert J. Emery in the book “The Directors: Take Two.” He’d only cop to one consistency: He hoped each of his movies portrayed some part of the human struggle.
I’d add a second — nearly all of Reiner’s films were great and more than half were masterpieces. And when the end credits ran, you were already eager to see what he’d make next. I’m heartbroken there won’t be another.
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