“When I die,” Rob Reiner once joked to an interviewer, “I want my tombstone to say, 'I'm in this place now!'”
That day came too soon. But throughout his five-decade career, Reiner, who was found dead Sunday in his Brentwood home along with his wife, Michele, never sat still, veering from musical parodies (“This Is Spinal Tap”) to horror films (“Misery”), political thrillers (“A Few Good Men”), coming-of-age dramas (“Stand by Me”) and romantic comedies both simplistic for teens (“The Sure Thing”) and bracing adults (“When Harry Met”). Sally…”). Reiner swung and weaved and, in the process of being entertained, directed at least one of everyone's favorite movies.
If I were stranded on an island and could bring only one movie from the entire history of Hollywood, I would choose Reiner's 1987 adventure, “The Princess Bride.” That swordsman executes each of the previous genres to perfection, and also fantasy. It's everything you want from movies in one title, all in under 100 minutes.
And the films listed above are just Reiner's first seven films, a series of excellence that deserves a bigger toast than the 20 bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau he watched André the Giant drink in one day on the set of “The Princess Bride.”
More than Reiner's success, however, I want to congratulate him as an artist who preferred creative risks over easy money. He continually evaded expectations and the industry's attempts to put him in a box.
Many tried, of course. As an unknown stage actor, Reiner recoiled when strangers labeled him simply “Carl Reiner's son.” His father, the talented comedian and creator of “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” didn't think his son had much talent and pressured him to be a baseball player or a doctor. Norman Lear, a family friend, disagreed. Watching young Reiner play jacks in the living room, he thought the boy was very funny.
“I was still looking 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 role made him famous, but it was not the identity he wanted.
Reiner, then 23, was already tired of being typecast as a revolutionary with mop hair and love necklaces, a cliché he had played many times before, including in a cameo in “The Beverly Hillbillies.” He said yes to Meathead, assuming the sitcom's white-hot bigotry would be so incendiary that it couldn't last more than 13 episodes. Instead, “All in the Family” became the number one television show in the United States and aired for eight seasons.
“They still call me Meathead,” Reiner lamented in 1985. “No matter what I do, it'll always be there.” As a Reiner fan who wasn't even born until Meathead went off the air, I hope he knew how many of us wouldn't rank him in the top, or even top five, of his overall accomplishments.
But that's only because of what Reiner did next. Despite winning two Emmy Awards and having little else on his horizon, Reiner turned down what he told the Los Angeles Times was “1 or 2 million dollars a year” to star in the “All in the Family” spinoffs. Just as Meathead left his wife to move to a commune, Reiner left security to build his reputation on his own terms. I wanted to know if I could direct.
He revealed his intentions in back-to-back comedies that couldn't seem more different: the 1984 mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap” and the 1985 romantic comedy “The Sure Thing,” in which John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga play teenagers on a road trip. You'd never think those two movies would have any connection to each other in the video store, but they're both Reiner's thumb at Hollywood tropes. “Spinal Tap” sent up cocky band documentaries like “The Last Waltz”; “The Sure Thing” attempted to free the teen sex comedy from raunchy “Porky”-style imitators.
Obey a study formula? At all. I didn't even want to repeat it.
Tilt Reiner's filmography in one direction and it seems like it's all about opposition, a yen uneasy about zagging when others assumed he would. Tilt it the other way and it seems more like a need to prove himself to himself and maybe a little to his father. He called the night Carl Reiner finally paid him a genuine compliment “the biggest turning point in my life.”
The intensity of “Stand by Me,” the authenticity and seriousness he invested in this story of youth, make it a personal triumph: his funny father couldn't have directed something like that, and he wouldn't have. It is worth noting that the studios did not initially encourage Reiner's eclecticism. Lear had to step in and finance Reiner's first four films, rescuing “Stand by Me” when it was closed two days before principal photography. Lear's $8 million investment turned into a $52 million success.
The punch line was that Reiner's next film, “The Princess Bride,” was no easier to approve. The executives always wanted him to redo his most recent film. His father turned down an invitation to adapt William Goldman's novel and gave him the so-called non-filmable book. Reiner rose to the challenge. Lear had to finance that too.
“I knew I had other things in 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 as not to depend on anyone's approval.
Arguably Reiner's most autobiographical film is the company's second production, “When Harry Met Sally…” Single since his divorce from Penny Marshall in 1981, Reiner confessed his romantic complaints to his friend Nora Ephron, the screenwriter who later molded his heartbreak into Billy Crystal's Harry. On set, Reiner acted out Meg Ryan's orgasm scene in front of her mother, Estelle. (She's the extra who jokes, “I'll have what she is have”).
In his honor, I'm inclined to rewatch that first one. It is without a doubt the sharpest and most honest romantic comedy of the modern era, a perfectly directed home run, and it is not surprising that they advised him to continue with another one like it. “There wasn't a day that went by that someone didn't say, 'Keep making those kinds of movies,'” he admitted after it was a hit.
But to appreciate Reiner's maverick streak, the movie I'd prefer is the one he directed: 1990's “Misery,” a chilling, darkly funny film about a novelist in captivity.
Based on the book by Stephen King, it is seen as a glimpse into the horror author's anxiety about his fan base, which had rejected King's attempt to make a push with 1987's “The Eyes of the Dragon,” a YA novel about magical beasts. Best-selling writer Paul Sheldon (James Caan) is beaten by the obsessive Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) for killing her favorite heroine, until he agrees to write a new sequel that will bring her back.
Naturally, Reiner saw his own obstacles in “Misery.”
“I really identified with a guy who needed a new challenge, who needed to push himself and grow,” he said. “That's what attracted me to 'Misery'. That terrible fear you have when you go through change.”
Reiner's fears and frustrations, his curiosity and his ambition, were fueled by his work. He delighted audiences while managing to avoid being trapped as an author. He let the individuality of his films be the star.
“My theory about film has always been that you shouldn't focus on the acting, the script, the camera, the sets or the photography,” he told journalist Robert J. Emery in the book “The Directors: Take Two.” He only stuck to one thing: he hoped that each of his films would portray some part of the human struggle.
I would add a second: almost all of Reiner's films were great and more than half were masterpieces. And by the time the end credits rolled, you were already eager to see what he would do next. I am heartbroken that there will not be another.
