Like most people I’d care to know, I was shocked and saddened to learn of the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle this past weekend in Los Angeles.
It’s the sort of crime that makes one leap to a lot of wrong conclusions based on who he was, how outspoken he was and how insensate, venal and violent those who openly professed hatred for him in recent years have proven to be.
But it’s the holidays. The police are questioning an estranged family member. It’s a stressful time of the year amped up by the sorry state of the nation and the sleepless, alarmed national pysche. Who knows what happened?
Reiner was an early adaptor nepo baby, the son of famed wit and funnyman Carl Reiner, and he followed Dad into writing, acting and directing — surpassing many of the old man’s achievements by making a string of great to near great films in the ’80s and ’90s.
“Spinal Tap” to “The Sure Thing,” “A Few Good Men” to “Misery,” “When Harry Met Sally” to “Flipped.”
I interviewed a few times over the decades, first with “Misery,” where he seemed proudest of his “discovery” of the Great Great Kathy Bates, and the last time when he had the utterly magical “Flipped” that he brought to an AARP convention in Orlando and we spoke. Nobody saw it, and that’s a crying shame.
I often think of his directing career when I see evidence of another filmmaker of similar stature unable to make the deals, get the jobs, that they used to. Or in the obvious and most recent case, of 88 year old James L. Brooks’ films of the past 25 years, reaching a nadir with “Ella McCay,” underlining the ways even great filmmakers’ instincts fail and the ways the filmmaking/film audience times pass you by and you’re late figuring that out.
“Old guys (and gals) can’t direct comedy” is an old maxim of criticism whose lone exception is the ancient Brit Charles Crichton, whom John Cleese got to steer “A Fish Called Wanda” to glory. A couple of Reiner’s later films reached their (retiree, mostly) audience, but most just didn’t work.
But Reiner, in his long, storied prime, was a grand talent, a guy with instincts that paid off time and again — launching John Cusack’s career with “The Sure Thing,” joining forces with Stephen King for “Stand By Me,” squaring Cruise off against Nicholson in “A Few Good Men,” matching glorious and still funny geezers Morgan Freeman with Jack for “The Bucket List,” hunting for truth and bringing murderous racists to justice in “Ghosts of Mississippi,” casting Peter Falk, Robin Wright, Cary Elwes, Wallace Shawn, Andre the Giant, Mandy Patinkin, his pal Christopher Guest and wee Fred Savage and making “The Princess Bride” an all time children’s classic that their parents could enjoy.
No doubt those who hated the guy who came to fame as their least favorite liberal “meathead” will relish the way this murder is covered on their favorite oligarchical news operations. But those who followed Reiner’s work and his politics know that he never gave up on changing their minds. And almost nobody deserves this.
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