Rob Reiner 1947-2025
The actor-director was a great mensch, and the virtues that flow from that informed the films he made and the life he lived.
It's the Monday after a weekend of carnage and many of us feel simply, terribly unmoored. Two dead and nine injured in Providence, and a murderer still at large, motivated by who knows what and who the hell cares. Fifteen people dead at Bondi Beach in Australia, killed by a father and son who hated them for finding joy in their history and their people. And then, late last night, the news of actor-director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele stabbed to death in their home; this morning it was reported that their 32-year-old son Nick had been taken into custody. Nick Reiner has been public about his years of struggle with addiction and homelessness, and beyond that we know nothing, other than that we've lost a man who loved to tell stories, who loved people and who loved to fight for their right to live in freedom and with dignity.
The Reiners' murder is one of those sad paroxysms of violence that break through the veneer of Hollywood opulence and let us glimpse the demons beneath. I'm thinking of the deaths of Gig Young, of Phil Hartman, of Sharon Tate and Bob Crane and Gene Hackman. I'm thinking of David Cronenberg's brutal 2015 film "Maps to the Stars." We think success and luxury protect the famous when they serve more as a bubble than a wall – an illusion too easily popped.
I don't think of Rob Reiner as a great artist. I think of him as a great mensch, and the virtues that flow from that informed the films he made and the life he lived. He worked in nearly every genre and made some films that practically define their genres. What is "When Harry Met Sally..." (1989) if not the Platonic Ideal of the romcom? What is "This is Spinal Tap" (1984) if not the foundational mockumentary? "A Few Good Men" (1992) gave Jack Nicholson a moment that was and remains an indestructible meme. Because I'm among the lucky crowd who read William Goldman's "The Princess Bride" well before the movie version came out, I've always thought that Reiner's "Princess Bride" (1987) was more beloved than good. (It will never, ever match the movie in my head.) But to argue with its place in the culture is like arguing with the ocean. Inconceivable.
Reiner also produced what a lot of people consider one of the greatest movies of all time: 1994's "The Shawshank Redemption." Movie critic Drew McWeeny posted a lovely anecdote on Bluesky this morning, and here it is.
There were flops, of course, and, as noted above, some of them were legendary. (Roger Ebert on "North": "I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it.") But it was impossible to hate Rob Reiner, even if "South Park" gave it a good go. He was too public a figure, too much the noodgy, friendly, decent guy behind you in the deli. He was Meathead on "All in the Family" and Marty Di Bergi in "Spinal Tap," and, holy hell, there he was in "The Bear" pushing restaurant franchises. Onscreen he was avuncular, always happy; he saved his anger and activism for real life. Without Reiner's efforts, California's same-sex marriage ban would likely not have been overturned in 2010, a crucial domino that led to the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell vs. Hodges in 2015. His advocacy efforts resulted in California's Proposition 10, which taxed cigarettes to provide early childhood development services. Reiner was active in environmental issues and was one of the strongest and most unapologetic critics of the Trump adminstrations. Basically, he was your aging pothead liberal uncle who never shut up about what was wrong with the world but who could shame you into getting off your ass and doing something about it. He was what Meathead would have become once he finally got out of Archie's house, and he was, as I have said, a mensch – maybe the signal Hollywood mensch of his generation.
I hate that he outlived his dad by only five years. And I hate that the circumstances of his death will now always come to mind when we think of Rob Reiner. Better that we wash the ugly taste of his passing from our mouths by watching "When Harry Met Sally..." again and feel a born optimist's joy in happy endings flow right through the screen.
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