The world lost Rob Reiner on Sunday, along with his wife, Michele. An actor, writer, producer and director, Reiner leaves behind an incredible body of work. Consider Reiner’s run as a director from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s: During that span, Reiner made an extraordinary mockumentary, an iconic coming-of-age movie, an Oscar-winning Stephen King adaptation, a pitch-perfect legal drama and, for good measure, the single greatest romantic comedy of all time.
What makes this run even more remarkable is that he was not, on the surface, an obvious pick to go on such a tear. Before he started making movies, Reiner was already an established figure, the son of a famous comedy icon and a television star with some Emmys. If he had made a couple of decent comedies, that would have counted as a success. Instead, Reiner arrived at directing with a magic touch for making highly successful, mass-appeal movies. His work during this period hopscotched easily among genres, earned a string of Oscar nominations, made a bunch of money and wound up on a lot of people’s lists of their favorite movies. Here, Washington Post staffers list their own favorite Reiner projects. — Mark Berman
‘All in the Family’ (1971-1979)
Reiner rose to fame playing Michael Stivic a.k.a. “Meathead,” Archie Bunker’s liberal son-in-law on this popular 1970s sitcom. Reiner’s Meathead was both lovable and insufferable; his strong comedic chops made him a worthy foil to Bunker’s closed-mindedness and earned him two Emmys. Decades later, Reiner told an interviewer that he still couldn’t escape the character’s shadow: “I could win the Nobel Prize and they’d write ‘Meathead wins the Nobel Prize.’” — Elahe Izadi
The senseless killing of Reiner and his wife Michele — on the first night of Hanukkah, no less — has me thinking about a conversation his character had with Jean Stapleton’s Edith in the tragic “Edith’s Crisis of Faith” episodes of “All in the Family,” the second of which aired on Christmas Day in 1977. Edith is mute, inconsolable, utterly alienated from her faith after her friend Beverly LaSalle (Lori Shannon) — a drag queen whom Archie saved via CPR two seasons earlier — is beaten to death while saving Meathead from some thugs. It’s Christmas, but Edith can’t bring herself to attend church and leaves Christmas dinner midway through Archie’s clumsy attempt at grace. No one can pull her out of it. Reiner’s Mike is the last to try. “I’m mad at God,” Edith says. “All I know is, Beverly was killed because of what he was, and we’re all supposed to be God’s children. It don’t make sense. I don’t understand nothing no more.” Mike asks if she ever had trouble understanding something in school. She says she dropped out of algebra. “But, you didn’t drop out of school, did ya?” Mike says. “Ma, what I’m trying to say is that, maybe we’re not supposed to understand everything all at once. Maybe we’re just supposed to understand things a little bit at a time.”
It doesn’t seem to take, but then Edith comes back in and starts to pray. Her voice quavers even more than usual, and the first thing she thanks God for, slowly, is Mike. As she warms to her theme and starts chirpily naming others, it’s clear she’s coming back to herself — so Meathead (clearly tuning her out) starts helping himself to the food. He doesn’t celebrate her return or take pleasure in reaching her when others couldn’t; he’s hungry. Reiner excelled at performing that particular brand of warm inattention. Without seeming intrusive or even especially insightful, Meathead saw people. And ribbed them and enjoyed them — lightly, without much intensity or focus — just as they were. — Lili Loofbourow
‘This Is Spinal Tap’ (1984)
It’s pretty funny that in his filmmaking debut, Reiner plays a gasbag director — in this case, a riff on Martin Scorsese’s self-insertions into his own rockumentary work. The deliciousness goes to 11. So does the influence of this faux documentary of an ambitious/pretentious rock band, which is quotable to this day (“You can’t really dust for vomit”), poignant in its bottling of desperation and delusion, and as monumentally hilarious as a Stonehenge stage prop. — Jonathan Fischer
‘The Sure Thing’ (1985)
Scruffily charming, “The Sure Thing” is underrated Reiner: a road trip rom-com, riffing on Frank Capra’s “It Happened One Night.” It was the screenwriters’ debut, and only Reiner’s second feature. John Cusack was so young he had to be legally emancipated to work on it! It’s a movie about, for and by young people; maybe that’s why it still feels so fresh. As of this writing, it’s unavailable to stream, but physical discs are on sale — and worth it. — Sophia Nguyen
‘Stand by Me’ (1986)
What an eye for talent. Reiner’s dazzling first five films launched the stars who would shape the multiplex experience of the 1980s and 1990s: John Cusack, Meg Ryan, Billy Crystal and most poignantly, River Phoenix, not yet 15 when this coming-of-age story was filmed. It would have been so easy for this movie to surrender either to nostalgia for a 1950s free-range childhood or the jump scares of its darker layers, but Reiner and Phoenix — a golden boy comfortable with darkness — deftly handled both. Phoenix would die of a drug overdose just seven years later, lending an emotional wallop to later viewings of a movie that hasn’t aged a bit. — Amy Argetsinger
‘The Princess Bride’ (1987)
When my brothers and I first experienced video on a computer, our most-played clip was Vizzini (Wallace Shawn): “No more rhymes now, I mean it.” Fezzik (Andre the Giant): “Anybody want a peanut?” While the book and script came from legendary writer William Goldman, Reiner perfectly balanced the comedy and the stakes, while assembling an anomalous collection of watchable actors and disparate elements — “fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles,” as the grandfather reading the story explains, plus, of course “marriage,” a word that we will never hear the same way again. — Zachary Pincus-Roth
‘When Harry Met Sally…’ (1989)
In lesser hands, the Katz’s Deli scene would have been a disaster. Would any woman really fake an orgasm in a bustling restaurant just to prove to her male companion that she could? Probably not. But Reiner knew subtle direction would make Nora Ephron’s wacky screenplay sing. He films Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal’s neurotic New Yorkers in a warm, nostalgic light that makes you want to hop in a time machine to this cozier era. I’ll have what they’re having. — Sonia Rao
‘Misery’ (1990)
Coming off a late-’80s run that few could match, Reiner made a sharp left turn into horror with “Misery,” a taut, tense adaptation of Stephen King’s novel. Reiner’s genius was his casting: He went against Hollywood orthodoxy and landed on stage actress Kathy Bates to play the role of Annie Wilkes, a tightly wound superfan obsessed with romance author Paul Sheldon (James Caan). Under Reiner’s direction, Bates was chilling in the part, channeling equal amounts of repression, rage and resentment. She rightfully took home the Oscar for her portrayal, beating out Meryl Streep, Joanne Woodward and then-newcomer Julia Roberts. Together, Bates and Reiner taught most of the non-criminal world about “hobbling,” a form of torture that made countless moviegoers twist and turn their own ankles in vicarious pain. — Tim Carman
‘A Few Good Men’ (1992)
Has anyone ever come upon “A Few Good Men” while perusing cable and not stopped to watch? The stacked cast, taut storytelling and spellbinding climactic court scene (which permanently entered Jack Nicholson’s “you can’t handle the truth” line into common parlance) made for a perfect piece of entertainment. One amazing piece of trivia that attests to Reiner’s inventiveness as a director: Unable to satisfactorily cast the part of Lance Corporal Dawson, Reiner plucked the right man directly from the set: Wolfgang Bodison, a nonactor who was working as the film’s location scout and went on to turn in a memorable performance. — Jenny Rogers
‘Sleepless in Seattle’ (1993)
Reiner has two short scenes in “Sleepless in Seattle,” but he still managed to deliver the film’s most memorable line, and with only one word: “tiramisu.” Sitting at a bar over lunch, Reiner’s job is to matter-of-factly coach a mystified widower (Tom Hanks) on reentering a much-changed dating world. And who better? We need no backstory to trust Reiner as the best friend who will always give it to you straight. “First you have to be friends,” he says. “You have to like each other. Then you neck. This could go on for years. Then you have tests and then you get to do it with a condom.” Reiner stops, beer in hand, and introduces the concept of tiramisu with a sidelong glance, as if it were a secret code. “What is it?” Hanks asks. “You’ll see,” Reiner responds. “Some woman is going to want me to do it to her and I’m not going to know what it is,” Hanks protests. “You’ll love it,” Reiner insists. And we did, of course. But mostly we just loved him. — Ellen McCarthy
‘The American President’ (1995)
Should a lobbyist really be dating the president while also soliciting votes for a piece of legislation? “The American President” doesn’t concern itself too much with this dull ethical question, and thank goodness, because then there would be less room for the wondrously snappy dialogue that fills the Oval Office in this liberal fantasy of a rom-com. The film launched both “The West Wing” and “Spin City”; it’s also a lasting, superb depiction of two intelligent middle-aged adults falling in love through words. — Jenny Rogers
‘New Girl’ (2011-2018)
Reiner was a savvy choice to play the father of Zooey Deschanel’s oddball protagonist Jess Day in “New Girl.” His zany sense of humor fit seamlessly into this carefully constructed world — and helped explain how a wackadoodle like Jess could come to be. May every sandwich consist of “lettuce, tomato, lettuce, meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat-meat, cheese, lettuce,” as his character memorably instructs Jess’s future husband. — Sonia Rao
‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (2013)
Reiner’s small but unforgettable role as “Mad Max” Belfort, father of Leonardo DiCaprio’s titular Jordan Belfort, is a testament to the warmth Reiner could bring to a screen. In a film densely populated by coarse, crass characters out for all they can steal, Reiner and DiCaprio created a surprising note of tenderness as a coarse, crass father and son who actually look out for each other. — Ashley Fetters Maloy
The post Our favorite Rob Reiner projects, from ‘The Princess Bride’ to ‘When Harry Met Sally…’ appeared first on Washington Post.
