Rob Reiner Appreciation: A Really Good Man And A Great Director

I found myself this morning typing the words “Rob Reiner Appreciation” and first, not believing I have to do this on such a sad occasion, but also due to the irony I felt because as a huge fan of this man and his work I have often felt he was never appreciated enough, at least not on the scale of the industry accolades that defines artistic excellence for so many, especially at this time of year.

As a filmmaker, Reiner was one of the greats. Consider the list over the past four decades beginning in 1984 with This Is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing (1985), Stand By Me (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), When Harry Met Sally (1989), Misery (1990), A Few Good Men (1992), The American President (1995) and Ghosts of Mississippi (1996) — all in one 12-year period, each one in a different genre, each a superior example of moviemaking on every level. What an incredible run. But he never stopped running, even as the industry and the world changed around him.

Yet, and this is amazing to me, Reiner never received a single directing nomination at the Oscars. Not one. In fact the only personal Academy Award nomination he ever got was as one of the producers of A Few Good Men, which was nominated for Best Picture. Reiner was one of those directors who could do it all. How many out there can say that?

Now I am noticing that since Reiner and his wife’s tragic deaths were announced last night there are tributes all over social media from the filmmaking community acknowledging he was truly one of the greats. Well he always was, and I hope he knew it. He inherited that talent from one of the great comedy filmmakers ever (also never Oscar nominated), his father Carl Reiner, who made a lot of memorable films himself — comedies generally including Oh, God and notably a classic quartet with Steve Martin in All of Me, The Man With Two Brains, The Jerk and Dead Man Don’t Wear Plaid. But his son outdid him in terms of trying different genres and succeeding in all of them. In that way I think you could compare Rob to legends like Howard Hawks who could do it allbut other than a single Oscar nomination for Sergeant York Hawks never got the recognition he deserved until the Academy finally gave him an honorary award in 1975, years after his final film.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Rob on several occasions, the first in an FYC Q&A for his film The Bucket List at the Television Academy Theatre in North Hollywood. It was one I have recalled often as it was with Rob and his elusive star Jack Nicholson, who famously did not do many interviews of any kind and had never done one of these FYC events for one of his films before, or for that matter since. Somehow, Warner Bros and Rob convinced him to do it and Rob joined him on stage — thank god. Jack, curious about the large building, just kinda took off on his own tour when he arrived. Rob assured me he’d have him on stage by the time end credits were rolling, and he did, but Nicholson was a little scattered, charmingly so in that Jack way when it came to talking about the movie and himself; Rob, ever the showman, would jump in and explain what Jack meant to say. It was my own Bucket List moment getting to interview Jack, and Rob saved the day.

Over the years, Reiner would also come to my own screening series in Santa Monica to do a Q&A following whatever his latest film was. There was LBJ (2016), an underrated biopic with Woody Harrelson as President Lyndon Johnson. There was And So It Goes (2014), the increasingly rare romantic drama focusing on a mature romance with Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton (so hard to believe both she and Rob are gone in the space of a couple of months), and there was Shock and Awe, a piercing political drama about journalists investigating Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Yes, Reiner famously was not afraid to jump into the void and use his artistry to make real-world movies too. I remember at that 2017 screening, held just months after Donald Trump took office the first time around, Reiner gave a spirited answer to a question about the state of then-current politics and didn’t hold back, but he was characteristically optimistic and ever-hopeful even that we could get through this moment by staying on course and staying involved, something he never stopped doing. The ad line on the poster, which I still have from the screening, says, “The Truth Matters,” and the truth always mattered to Rob Reiner who was never shy telling it to us, both in his life and in his work. Famously, that started with his role as Mike Stivic, the ever-arguing liberal counterpoint to Archie Bunker in All In the Family. Man could we use that show now more than ever. It turned out Mike really was Rob and Rob really was Mike. I will miss his voice.

Reiner, through his philanthropy and activism, was the example of a good man, and another small film he did between And So It Goes and LBJ called Being Charlie (2015) was an example as it was co-written by his son Nick Reiner and, though fictional, was inspired by Nick’s own traumatic struggles with drug addiction since the age 15, in and out of rehab. It was clearly a father using his own art and financial clout to help his son.

Nick was formally arrested earlier Monday in connection with the death of Rob and his wife Michele Singer Reiner, Nick’s mother.

It is ironic that the September release of his 40-years-in-coming sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, a bookend to his directing debut, will also turn out to be his last, along with a companion piece, the upcoming concert film Spinal Tap at Stonehenge: The Final Finale. It makes me sadder than sad in this surreal moment that this is also Rob Reiner’s “final finale.”

But really it isn’t. He’s immortal, as only cinema can do, thanks to a thrilling body of work with which he leaves us, especially behind the camera. A movie like Spinal Tap is forever smart and funny, and perhaps the most imitated in the mockumentary genre it started; a movie like Stand By Me remains the most memorable of coming-of-age movies, where the innocence of youth meets the reality of life; a movie like The Princess Bride will live happily ever after in our hearts forever; a movie like When Harry Met Sally remains a rom-com that defines the term in the best of ways; a movie like Misery got Kathy Bates an Oscar for good reason and still gives us chills; a movie like A Few Good Men lives on with the greatest of all courtroom dramas; a movie like my own personal favorite RR film ever, The American President, shows us a time when we could look to the White House and it occupants as examples of decency and humanity (now that seems almost as much a fairy tale as The Princess Bride). Thank you, Rob.

The last interview we did together I will always remember. He and his lifelong friend and Beverly Hills High School classmate Albert Brooks came to our PMC studio in June of last year to tape an episode of my Deadline video series Behind the Lens. It was for their HBO Emmy campaign for Reiner’s wonderful 2024 documentary on Brooks, Defending My Life. Here it is, just so we can also remember the wit, wisdom and fun of Rob Reiner in better times.