Rob Reiner, RIP
The 78 year old director/actor and his wife have been found stabbed to death in their Brentwood home.
Sounds like a domestic tragedy.
The son of comic great Carl Reiner, Rob Reiner became famous as Meathead, Archie Bunker’s liberal son-in-law on All In the Family, which was the #1 TV show in America for five straight years in the early 1970s. You don’t hear much about All In the Family anymore, but it was a very big deal at the time.
Putting on weight and losing hair, he switched from acting to directing, a new career he launched with one of the most consistent streaks ever by directing seven straight high quality popular movies.
In IMDB ratings by movie enthusiasts, 6.0 is Pretty Good, 7.0 is Quite Good, 8.0 is Excellent, 9.0 is All-Time Great. Reiner never made any All-Time Great movies, but his 1984-1992 hot streak of his first seven features ranged from 7.0 to 8.1. For a near-decade, you could say, “I see there is a new Rob Reiner movie. It’s probably worth watching” … and be right.
This Is Spinal Tap
7.9
Director
1984
The Sure Thing
7.0
Director
1985
Stand by Me
8.1
directed by
1986
The Princess Bride
8.0
Director
1987
When Harry Met Sally...
7.7
Director
1989
Misery
7.8
Director
1990
A Few Good Men
7.7
Director
1992
Also, these are quite a variety of different kinds of movies.
Reiner’s first seven features average 7.75 in IMBD ratings. That’s not as good as, say, Christopher Nolan’s first seven, which average 8.23 (IMDB raters love Nolan), or Stanley Kubrick’s 7.84. But it’s better than Steven Spielberg’s first seven theatrical features’ average of 7.43 and John Hughes’ 7.13.
After his first seven films, Reiner faded.
Still, those first seven are a memorable achievement.
Okay, I’m not going to paywall this quick post, but I’m going to try to set it up so that paying subscribers can post comments, which free subscribers can read but can’t post comments themselves.
I'm shocked and saddened to hear he died by violence. I had assumed he had succumbed to terminal TDS. He made some excellent films, so R.I.P. Rob Reiner.
Maybe it's just the writer in me, but the only one of these I think of as "Reiner" is Spinal Tap, maybe because he appeared in it.
Sure Thing, I had forgotten that was him. It's an above average '80s teen comedy, but otherwise not really that great.
Stand by Me is mawkishly sentimental, but quite good for what it is.
The Princess Bride I think is truly great and will be quoted forever, but I attribute that more to Goldman than to Reiner.
Ditto When Harry Met Sally: who was the real impetus behind that, Reiner or Ephron? I've always believed (or assumed) Ephron.
Misery (which I didn't like) = Stephen King.
A Few Good Men = Aaron Sorkin (don't like him either, but he sure can write). I actually saw this on stage at the Geary in SF before it was a movie. Believe it or not, it was better as a play. Wordier, but the dialogue was awesome. Some of the best lines got cut. And, this will be taken as blasphemy, Nicholson as a colonel never worked for me. Too old and nothing about him says "Marine."
The general assumption about screen entertainment is that writers rule TV while directors rule movies, but I am not so sure that is always true. However, I just saw for the first time a Kubrick movie I had never seen the other night and I was hooked without knowing why, despite the fact that the story was rather tawdry. I stayed with it until the end when the host said "And that was Stanley Kubrick's second film" and I immediately realized "Ah, so that's why didn't click it off and walk away." Kubrick was one of those directors who had a style that superseded whatever material he was working with. Reiner did not. You sort of said this when you said he made many different types of movies, but that just makes him competent in a Hollywood way, not an "auteur" (what a pretentious word).
As for his hypocritical limousine leftism and hectoring anti-normie hyper-moralism, well, that always got on my nerves, but what a horrible way to go.