Nothing is typically romantic about a corporate logo, but when I think of Rob Reiner, I think of Castle Rock. Reiner, who was killed on the weekend alongside his wife Michele, co-created the production company in 1987, and I find that little more encapsulates the grand, wistful magic of moviemaking than the animation that opens the films it made, or closes out the TV it produced. In it, the lamp from a lighthouse twirls around the night sky, illuminating the sea and the land, while a glorious orange sun rises behind it. For its later incarnations, a musical flutter – stardust, it sounds like – serenades its eventual fade to black. The Castle Rock Entertainment logo introduces films including the seminal romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally..., which Reiner directed, as well as The Shawshank Redemption, Before Sunrise, Miss Congeniality and Christopher Guest’s canine mockumentary Best in Show. It shows up at the end of every episode of Seinfeld.
These animated logos – or “bumpers”, as they’re officially known – are designed to say lots with little. If the bouncing table lamp of Pixar promised slapstick ingenuity, or the majestic wallop of 20th Century Fox’s floodlights and trumpets teased pure grandeur, the appearance of Castle Rock meant you were in store for a hug. The works this stamp preceded were enveloping and character-driven, usually shot in autumnal or wintry climates, and dealt in very human conundrums even if their contexts were fantastical: love, grief, betrayal, obsession. And those films took after Reiner himself, whose work as a director was broad in scope and tone, more often than not kind and tender, and slightly astonishing in its cultural significance.
