My first encounter with Rob Reiner was when he was a man named “Meathead.” Let me explain. For years in my youth, All in the Family was a can’t-miss television program in the Worner household. The often-wrong-never-in-doubt Archie Bunker, the screeching family matron Edith, their indulged turn-on-the-waterworks daughter Gloria, and, of course, the bleeding-hearted, righteously indignant son-in-law, Michael (whom Archie caustically dubbed “Meathead”) rounded out a comic ensemble that was hard (if ever) to match.
The show shined brightest whenever Archie, the perpetually exasperated family patriarch, and Meathead, the crusading but head-in-the-clouds do-gooder, engaged in verbal jousting matches that aspired to intellectual discernment but devolved to hilarious emotional slap-fest riddled with malapropisms (Archie declaring, “It’s immatesticle to me!”) and paradoxical buffoonery (Meathead retorting, “I just thank God I am an atheist!”). And yet, in the thick of the roaring humor and inevitable fireworks, we unconsciously warmed to the deeper truths in the performance: Just like Archie and Meathead, we too hunger for ideals, we too are frustrated by neglected common sense, and we too get fiery about things we believe with people we love. The show wasn’t about Archie Bunker; it was about a forever fight between Archie Bunker and the world, most notably, Meathead. To be sure (although very, very well-hidden), the two loved each other, but their fight started in the first episode and continued until the very last. And we all loved it. “People can be ignorant,” Reiner once observed, “and still have loving, human qualities.” It is no wonder that All in the Family is considered one of the greatest sitcoms of all time.
As an actor, Reiner was at his very best when he played a warm mate who unconditionally loved you but brutally leveled with you.
Meathead wasn’t the last of Rob Reiner’s acting roles. A grimy agent in Throw Momma from the Train, the grounded father in The Wolf of Wall Street, and the loyal friend in Sleepless in Seattle rounded out his career. As an actor, Reiner was at his very best when he played a warm mate who unconditionally loved you but brutally leveled with you. You know that friend in your life, don’t you?
But then Rob Reiner transitioned to directing, where the entire show was his show. Interviewed years ago by 60 Minutes, Reiner confessed that to properly tell the story, he needed complete control. “You got to let me do everything, then I can give you something good. . . . If you don’t let me do that, then I don’t know how to function.”
And when he was in control, he created moments. Do you remember the moments?
The moment, in Stand By Me, when the boys crawl giddily out of the swamp water, discover the leeches on their neck and back and chest and—to their horror—elsewhere?
Or the moment, in When Harry Met Sally, the sardonic Harry (played by Billy Crystal), assuring Sally (played by Meg Ryan) of his masculine prowess and sense of women, sits back in wry awe as Sally, in turn, demonstrates loudly and unashamedly that, yes, even the brilliant and talented Harry could be fooled. The scene, taking place in a crowded diner, was ingeniously capped with a late-middle-aged woman leaning to her waitress and whispering, “I’ll have what she’s having.” Of note, that matronly woman was Rob Reiner’s own mother.
How about the moment, in The Princess Bride, when the orphaned and scarred Spanish swordsman finally confronts his father’s six-fingered assassin and utters his oft-rehearsed line, “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
And, of course, the moment, in A Few Good Men, when the tired but tenacious Lt. Daniel Kaffee (played by Tom Cruise) confronts the smug, sneering, sociopathic Col. Nathan Jessup (played by Jack Nicholson) on the witness stand. Kaffee thunders, “I want the truth!” to which Jessup erupts, “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”
Likewise, President Andrew Shepherd (played by Michael Douglas) dancing with Sydney Ellen Wade (played by Annette Bening) in The American President, the hitchhiking scene in The Sure Thing, and, of course, the hobbling swing of the club in Misery momentarily—and forever—took our breath away. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a Rob Reiner film scene is worth ten thousand.
And let’s not forget the “spontaneous human combustion” that consumed the short life of another of Spinal Tap’s drummers, nor the screeching priest’s “MAWW—WAAGGGE! Mawaage, is what bwings us togeder today” at the nuptials of Prince Humperdinck and Buttercup. Even these moments remind us that life is filled with characters rich in affectations and idiosyncrasies.
Rob Reiner was an actor and director of moments—profoundly human moments. From Meathead to maestro, Reiner explored the minefield of middle-aged dating to the unbreakable bonds of childhood friends, from the depths of loyalty to a father to the soldierly call to conscience. Reiner trades in nothing less than human nature—sad in our brokenness, hopeful in our ideals. “I don’t think anyone is all good,” Reiner acknowledged, “or all bad.”
To be sure, the Tom Cruises and Billy Crystals, Meg Ryans and Jack Nicholsons, River Phoenixes and Kathy Bateses colored Reiner’s films. But the direction was all his. The players played their parts, but the maestro conducted the symphony. The stories Rob Reiner brought vibrantly to life reached out and shook us from our daily torpor because these stories are us. He unfolded us to ourselves. “If you have tapped into something that is real for you,” Reiner insisted, “chances are you are going to tap into something that is real for someone else.” Much like a John Hughes film, a Rob Reiner story finds us smiling inwardly and confessing, “This is true. Not always the way things ought to be, but the way things are.” In a way, Reiner’s human sense is akin to the immortalized story of the weeping man who stood rail-side as the train carrying President Roosevelt’s casket churned by. “Did you know him?” a curious journalist asked, “No,” the mournful answer came, “but he knew me.”
Rob Reiner, Meathead and maestro, thanks for the memories and thanks for knowing me.
Rob and Michele Singer Reiner, requiescant in pace.