Few movies take possession of you like “This Is Spinal Tap,” the delightful shaggy-haired 1984 rock-n-roll parody that turned Rob Reiner into a filmmaker. The movie, about a ridiculous group of heavy-metal rockers, didn’t set the world or entertainment industry on fire on its release. Yet it kick-started an unlikely career that rapidly picked up momentum with crowd pleasers that won love and sometimes awards, and often cleaned up at the box office.
Reiner’s gifts as a filmmaker were performance-based and steeped in comedy; he wasn’t an auteurist icon like Martin Scorsese, one of the inspirations for the filmmaker character whom Reiner played in “This Is Spinal Tap.” Rather, Reiner made his mark in the stories he told. In their variety, generosity and in their open, unembarrassed appeal to the audience, his movies recalled an earlier era when studio directors raced from set to set, from one story to the next, making some of the solid and, at times, soaring films that defined Old Hollywood.
In an astonishingly short, fertile period of time starting in the mid-1980s, Reiner directed films as different as the coming-of-age drama “Stand By Me” and the charming fairy tale “The Princess Bride”; persuaded his mother, Estelle, to deliver one of the most famous lines in movies — “I’ll have what she’s having” — in “When Harry Met Sally …”; and unleashed Kathy Bates on James Caan in “Misery.” With down-to-earth humor, flights of fancy and a born entertainer’s desire to keep you engaged, Reiner honed his craft, turned comics and theater actors into stars, and gave millions of people pleasure and reasons to go to the movies. Yet despite his success, he always seemed like his best films: decent, principled, humane.
Comedy was in Rob Reiner’s DNA. When he was a kid, the adults mingling at parties in his childhood home weren’t just friends of the family, they were also the cream of comedy, funnymen like his father, Carl Reiner, as well as Mel Brooks, Norman Lear and Neil Simon. Years later, Lear hired Rob Reiner to play Michael Stivic a.k.a. Meathead on “All in the Family,” the schlubby hippie counterpart to Archie Bunker’s volcanic conservative. I grew up watching that show, so Reiner is in my cultural DNA. I think that’s one reason that his death has hit so hard: We cherish the people who make us laugh and help transport us out of the difficulties and the darkness of life, especially those who make you feel you’re in on the joke.
Given Reiner’s background, it seems perfect that “This Is Spinal Tap” was his directorial film debut. He plays Marty DiBergi, a documentarian who’s tracking a very silly, very self-serious band (played by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer). “Tap” grew out of a 1979 comedy special, “The TV Show,” created by Reiner and his writing partner, Phil Mishkin, in which you watch what a guy (Reiner) with a remote watches. One bit was a music show that was introduced by a Wolfman Jack-like DJ played by Reiner with a growl, a bushy beard and a plunging neckline. “You’re gonna love ’em … Spinal Tap,” he howled.
“Every single studio turned us down,” Reiner shares in the book “A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal Tap,” echoing a line in the film that sums up its genius. Backed by an independent company, “This Is Spinal Tap” received great notices. In her review in The New York Times, Janet Maslin — a former rock critic — noted that “it stays so wickedly close to the subject that it is very nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.” With its spandex and songs like “Stonehenge” and “Big Bottom,” the film could be fall-over hilarious, but its humor was affectionate, never cynical or contemptuous. “The most appealing thing about” it, aside from its enthusiasm, Maslin continued, “is the accompanying lack of condescension.”
There isn’t an iota of cruelty in “This Is Spinal Tap” or in its genial sequel, “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues,” which opened in September. Even when the band members are at their absolute silliest and most absurdly dense, you can feel Reiner et al’s love for them radiating off the screen. You laugh at them, of course, but with a commensurate fondness that deepens with repeat viewings. And while it may not have raked up big box-office numbers, it found its audience when it hit home video. It remains an ideal film to watch with friends (lit and not) or when some company and good laughs are needed because while it is (still) very funny, it also has a comforting warmth, a welcoming gentleness that became a signature in Reiner’s work.
“This Is Spinal Tap” marked the start of a remarkable run that turned Reiner into a major industry figure. He brought expected comedy timing to his films, but he was also good with actors, and showed an eye for young and untested talent. He shifted to romantic comedy for his second feature, “The Sure Thing” (1985), giving the teenage John Cusack his first starring role. Reiner expanded his genre horizons with “Stand by Me” (1986), a drama with the teenage River Phoenix in an early important role. Reiner also gave Meg Ryan her first leading part in “When Harry Met Sally …”; Robin Wright her breakout role in “The Princess Bride” (1987); and guided Kathy Bates toward her Oscar for best actress for “Misery” (1990). He then herded three of the biggest cats in Hollywood — Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Jack Nicholson — in the military courtroom drama, “A Few Good Men” (1992).
It’s almost shocking to read that list of commercial, accessible, original and grown-up film entertainments. If the movies that Reiner made later didn’t hit as hard or as big, it scarcely matters. For a time, his was as impressive streak in any era; it’s also the kind of run, and the kind of directing career, that’s inconceivable to imagine today. Reiner started making movies before the big studios began shifting focus to either hugely expensive blockbusters or cheap genre fare; as important, he also helped found the production company Castle Rock Entertainment, borrowing the name from the town in “Stand by Me.” Like the old studio system, Castle Rock released a diversity of stories across genres with a catalog that includes Reiner’s movies as well as those of pals like Guest and independents like Richard Linklater.
It seems noteworthy that two of Reiner’s finest films share storytelling as a theme. At first blush, “The Princess Bride” and “Misery” couldn’t be more dissimilar. Adapted by William Goldman from his novel, “The Princess Bride” is a story-within-a-story that opens with a boy (Fred Savage) who, while home sick in bed, is read a fairy-tale book by his grandfather (Peter Falk). At first, the boy isn’t eager to hang with his grandfather or hear the story (“A book?” he asks), but the grandfather is a sly fox, and he quickly draws the kid in with a rollicking adventure that features, as he truthfully puts it: “Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles” — plus kissing.
The fairy tale that the grandfather narrates is a delight, a cinematic pastiche that’s filled with word play, slapstick shenanigans and wonderful performances. Reiner was still figuring out how to stage and shoot his material, but he mixes the movie’s diverse performance styles and the story’s assorted tones with estimable fluidity. Wright’s Buttercup, the tale’s resident and sometimes distressed damsel, pulls you in with tender feeling while the other, equally valuable players — Cary Elwes, Wallace Shawn, Andre the Giant a.k.a Andre Rene Roussimoff and a peerless Mandy Patinkin — reel you in with broader comedy, physical and otherwise. At one point, Billy Crystal and Carol Kane show up under two tons of facial prosthetics cracking wise as wizened forest dwellers right out of a medieval borscht belt.
By the end of “The Princess Bride,” true love has triumphed, and so has the grandfather and, by extension, so had Reiner. The grandson, much like the viewer, expresses eagerness to hear the tale again, which is exactly what any storyteller wants to hear. Although Reiner didn’t repeat “The Princess Bride,” he directed a film a few years later that serves as its delectably nasty twin: “Misery,” a sleek, at times joltingly funny horror film based on Stephen King’s 1987 novel. Adapted by Goldman, it centers on a romance novelist, Paul Sheldon (Caan), who, after an accident, is taken hostage by an admirer Annie Wilkes (Bates), a nut case with a chilling past. “I’m your number one fan,” she says, her crazy eyes soon flashing.
Like the grandson in “The Princess Bride,” Annie proves to be a very demanding audience. “Misery” touches on some rich, resonant themes, including the agonies of hackwork, the power of storytelling and the perils of fandom, which presumably Reiner, as a popular filmmaker who spoke to many, had experience with. The movie is also very much about the pact that storytellers make with their audiences, and what is at stake when you read a book, listen to music or watch a movie that touches you and makes you feel deeply, that carries you away from the mundane and somehow lightens your burden, however fleetingly. There is a kind of mystical quality to that relationship, a communion. There is also love, which is one other reason I think that so many of us wept when we heard that Reiner had died.
Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic for The Times.
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