Billy Ray Remembers Rob Reiner And His Remarkable Movie Win Streak – Guest Column

As a lifetime baseball fan and Dodgers fanatic, Rob Reiner would appreciate the following statistic more than anyone:

He began his career by going seven-for-seven.

In his first seven at-bats, he had seven hits. No, not just hits, achievements. Consider the following list:

This Is Spinal Tap

The Sure Thing

Stand By Me

The Princess Bride (The f*cking Princess Bride!!!!!)

Misery

When Harry Met Sally

A Few Good Men

Seven-for-seven. Movies people loved. Movies people talked about. Not a frame of self-indulgence, just mass popcorn entertainment with intelligence, depth, style, and pathos. Seven-for-seven. An unprecedented record that no director in HISTORY can match. Not John Ford. Not Billy Wilder or William Wyler. Not Hitchcock. And no director working today either. NO ONE EVER hit home runs on their first seven movies. But Rob did. It was an astonishing run.

More, if you sit still for one second, you’ll find that you can quote lines from every single one of them. Rob’s movies weren’t just good, they were memorable. Indelible.

From “As you wish” to “You can’t handle the truth” to Meg Ryan orgasming in a deli or Kathy Bates hobbling James Caan, Rob made all of our jobs immeasurably easier by making people love movies more. I’m in his debt. We all are. He delivered for our audience, and they in turn trusted us by extension.

I had the privilege of working for him once, rewriting an idea that he had first begun when he was staffing on the The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1969(!). Rob did not give up on things easily.

Like democracy. Or defending the Constitution. Or improving public education. All tough fights. He never backed down from any of them, because Rob could handle the truth.

Now he is gone. I have no doubt that today he is in heaven, sitting on the third-base line at some beautiful ballpark with William Goldman and Norman Lear and all the other Hall of Famers, a pantheon in which he very much belongs. And they are likely talking about story and comedy and drama and America. But if the subject of baseball arises, all those greats will suddenly fall silent.

There’s not much you can say when you’re in the presence of a guy who went seven-for-seven.