The death of Rob Reiner’s death, alongside his wife Michele Singer, brings great sadness, all the more so due to the violent nature of his passing, which reports are saying involves a family member. It feels particularly unjust due to the nature of the Hollywood legend. If there was one quality which Rob Reiner brought to everything he did, it was warmth.
On screen this was always evident. Take his cameo as Jordan Belfort’s father in The Wolf of Wall Street. His often improvised scenes with Leonardo DiCaprio are the least showy part of the film, but also the most critical, with his dad Max being offering unheeded moral advice, the only one truly looking out for his son even as he’s clearly heading way out into extreme behaviour:
Max: “Jordy, one of these days the chickens are gonna come home to roost.”
Jordi: “You’re looking at me like I’m crazy.”
Max: “Crazy? This is obscene!”
On screen Reiner always had that kindly demeanour, a bearded bear with patience, particularly when surrounded by maniacs. Think of him as Marty DiBergi in This Is Spinal Tap (1984) (also his directorial debut), indulgently steering the delusional musicians in the British heavy metal band towards reality:
DiBergi: “Let’s talk about your reviews a little bit. Regarding Intravenus de Milo – ‘This tasteless cover is a good indication of the lack of musical invention within. The musical growth rate of this band cannot even be charted. They are treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry.’”
Nigel Tufnel. “That’s nitpicking, isn’t it?”
Even in this year’s The Bear, he appeared as Albert Schnur, a business consultant helping Ebraheim to expand the sandwich part of the restaurant, and still embodied an easy nurturing charm which always made him a comforting presence.
Reiner was born into a Jewish family in the Bronx in 1957, his dad Carl a comedian and writer who operated right in the golden age of post-war TV comedy and films, working with the likes of Sid Caesar, Dick Van Dyke, Mel Brooks, and Steve Martin. Rob was always going to enter the industry and he quickly became a household name in the 70s in sit-com All in the Family, which was based on our own Till Death Do Us Part. As Meathead, a well-meaning leftie rubbing up against the cantankerous patriarch Archie Bunker, his on-screen persona was established early on.
Behind the camera too, his humanity was always evident. He followed up Spinal Tap with The Sure Thing, before hitting a run of films as director that were as good as anyone’s ever - and allfilled with that same sense of empathy.
Stand by Me, starring River Phoenix in a much-loved coming-of-age story about four teen friends who head out on a day trip and discover a body. It was based on a Stephen King book but brought in a buoyant Huck Finn tone to it which has made it one of the most beloved teen films ever made.
One of the stars Will Wheaton, recalled, “I had a really good time with my castmates and I felt extremely protected, and loved and validated by Rob Reiner, every day on set… Even as an adult, I have worked on sets where the director gives you the feeling that you don’t deserve to be there… Rob never did that. Even though we were little kids, Rob pointed us in the right direction.”
Reiner followed that with a family feel-good classic, The Princess Bride, both a straight-up fairytale and a subversion of the genre. Somehow, it managed to lampoon romance while remaining genuinely romantic, something he took one step further with his next: When Harry Met Sally… the greatest rom-com of them all.
Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan star as an old couple who gradually come together after many years of friendship. Scripted by Nora Ephron, her and Reiner created an anti-love story that for this very reason, was the ultimate love story, being closest to the messy realities of most of our relationships.
Reiner’s next two were Misery – another Stephen King classic which won Kathy Bates the Oscar in 1990 – and A Few Good Men, which didn’t but should won an Oscar for Jack Nicholson. Both showed he could do more than bring the laughs, with respectively a tense horror and rollicking courtroom drama, but it seemed fitting that his final film as director/actor should be Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, ending where he began.
Beyond film and TV, he also seems to have been an uncommonly decent person who concerned with liberal values. He co-founded the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which successfully challenged the law banning same-sex marriage in California. He was also a passionate anti-smoking activist, an environmentalist and was part of a Social Responsibility Task Force which aimed to monitor violence and tobacco use in the Hollywood industry. An outspoken critic of Trump, in the summer he said in the aftermath of the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel from his late-night talk show, “This may be the last time you ever see me because… there’s only a couple of us that are speaking out this hard way… Trump has declared war on this democracy.”
Friends who have visited Reiner’s mansion in the aftermath of the double murder have included Billy Crystal and Larry David, as Hollywood begins to mourn one of its favourite creative forces.
Reiner’s son Nick is in police custody at the time of writing, which makes this a particular tragedy. Reiner directed the 2015 film Being Charlie, which Nick had co-written and was about a young man with heroin addiction who was struggling with homelessness. It was based on Nick’s real experiences and notably features a lead character who has a difficult relationship with his Hollywood father. The fact that Rob and Nick seemed to have healed their rift with this shared project seemed like a touching end point, and the elder said at the time, “This film really brought us closer together… going through that process made me understand him a lot more and I think it made me a better father – hopefully it did.”
Sadly, it seems this was not the end of the story.
But when the salacious feeding frenzy has ended, what will be left is a body of work that will last for generations to come.
