On Losing Rob Reiner

I’m home from work the day after Rob Reiner and his wife Michele, who met on the set of their film When Harry Met Sally, and I’ve been in the dumps all day. I haven’t even been able to face the facts of his loss in these 18 short hours since. I can’t fathom the truth of it. I can’t stomach it. I turned on one of the first results I got when searching “rob reiner” in apple podcasts, a podcast hosted by Ted Danson which featured Rob during the promotional period of his 2025 movie Spinal Tap II. When Danson said the name of his guest, before the guest even spoke I word, I jammed the power button on my car’s audio system, and if I was geographically capable, I might have thrown my phone into an ocean.

They took 30 Rock off of Hulu several days ago, so when I get home from work, I now turn to Seinfeld to fill whatever hole in my ecosystem it is that needs constant filling, that will never be totally filled. Rob Reiner’s production studio Castle Rock produced Seinfeld, one of their many massive pop culture successes that effortlessly, and shamelessly, captures the exact time in culture that it was made. Billowy button-up shirts tucked into jeans, voluminous hair, unwieldy pairings of colors in apparel and decor, lingo and jargon. I can travel back to an exact time and place from the comfort of my couch, from the discomfort of my life. For reasons I’m not exactly sure of, writing that sentence makes me cry.

Writing about people when they die, I realized while driving home, is my most common form of writing because they the thoughts that I want to process in private more than any other. I can only imagine a world in which I’m sitting across from my partner, or a sibling, or a parent, or a friend, telling them how much of a loss I’m at, explaining what it is I will miss, what it is I have loved, and I imagine an obligation of response, I imagine making them just as sad as I am, and I imagine getting, somehow, even sadder. I wondered, while driving home, if I’ll ever get over that. I wondered if writing it for others to read would get me over that.

I’ve got to go to winter frisbee league now, where the worryingly warm Portland December has allowed me an outlet to raise my heart rate, to sweat, to play, to socialize. I’m going to come home, make a Negroni, and put my DVD of A Few Good Men into my player, and keep writing through it.

Ok, I’m back, and as I always have to admit to myself after playing sports: exercise works. So does physical therapy, and therapy, and everything else people recommend. If you do good, consistent work, it does pay off. Sorry to break the bad news.

I had exactly enough vermouth to make a Negroni. I didn’t have an orange, so things could be better, but the job will get done with what I have.

I’m going to start A Few Good Men now that I’m showered and sitting. I let my partner know that I’m having a hard time, and she’s going to happily fall asleep while I stay up late trying to give myself what I need. I love that for us.

I don’t really know what I’m doing here with this piece, with this format. I foresee myself doing little to no editing, and I’m just going to write through what I love about Reiner, what I love about learning more about him today, what I’m scared of, what is eating me alive from the inside out, and what is going on in the movie while it guides me through my night. I hope even one person gets anything of value from this.

Something I will always value about DVD’s and blurays are the menus, and the options. My old DVD copy of A Few Good Men has a very short loop of a piece of the original score of the movie, while basically showing the image from the poster, while an American flag waves in 50% opacity across the screen. The “Play Movie” and other options are labeled like pins on a generals jacket breast. It has repeated five times since I started writing this paragraph. I could write a book listening to this menu screen.

I’m a little scared to hit play. I’ve seen this movie a bunch, but now I have to face it in this new world, a world with more relevance to the film’s plot than ever, and a world without the filmmaker in it. This has to be the worst version of the world that I’ll have seen this movie in. But Reiner’s movies, and the writer Aaron Sorkin’s movies, all try to bend us towards justice, towards love, towards hard work, towards the light. We need them now, just as much as we ever have.

What I have loved the most today, in mourning the most comforting way I know how — reading posts on BlueSky from filmmakers, critics, writers, and just regular fans — is learning how obsessed and single minded Reiner and his production team could be when finding a project they believed in. I know Reiner fought hard to get this movie, and to create something with Sorkin, who had never written a feature film before. I loved learning how he found a different movie shortly after this that he tried to pay everything he had for so he could direct it. The writer, who was determined to direct his own script, wouldn’t budge from his position. Eventually, Rob relented to be a producer on it, because if he couldn’t make it himself, he wanted to guide it along with Castle Rock, to usher it towards success. The film was made, the director was terrified of failing, and in the first screening with Reiner, Rob called it the best thing his company had ever made, tears in his eyes. Shawshank Redemption was born, and lives as the #1 ranked movie on some of the most popular fan-voted databases. You can read more details about that little story here:

In similar fashion, I loved how Mark Harris described Reiner’s work, which excapes singular desciption of style, because he was a collaborator. His movies feel like movies in their writer’s ouvre rather than Reiner’s. That is such a rare and valuable skill, one we are so desparate for: a real, human voice, guided by real, human hands.

We’re two or three scenes into the movie, and what sticks out to me most so far, in a segment of the film that can really breeze past audiences without any sticking points: explaining the stakes and establishing the plot. Reiner, and Sorkin, bob and weave through description and exposition. with intentional bumps in the road: bumps and knocks of character, of flaws, of error, of happenstance, of humanity. Real people, with real relationships with each other, moving through their lives, together. It’s beautifully done, and feels like a dream as it moves along, subtly drawing you onto certain player’s sides. We are being guided by gentle, knowing, careful, caring hands.

Reiner’s movies seem to frequently feature some of the best performances of actors’ careers. The phrase “actor’s director” seems like a known phrase, but feels like it falls flat of describing someone like Reiner, who helps create indelible characters that most of us have carried with us forever, characters that linger around the edges of every performance that actors give the rest of their lives. Billy Crystal will never not have a shadow of Harry following him when I see him. Robin Wright, even at her most dour of performance, can’t shake an aura of The Princess Bride’s Buttercup.

What Reiner’s legacy really did, I’ve come to think, is to shape the culture of Gen X and elder millennials; to create monuments of a generation of kids, and eventually adults, for them to love, to be represented by, to bond them together as all generations are. Having an older sister was certainly the impetus for me to develop what has been a lifelong adoration of a certain microgeneration: currently 40-somethings who were several grades ahead of me, establishing what was “in” and what was “cool” while I toiled away just behind them. They are currently my favorite podcasters, my favorite critics, my favorite culture writers, my favorite people to be around. Consciously, I didn’t plan my current life to shadow this (although subconsciously, who could say), but even my immediate peer group is typically 3-7 years older than me. I’ve spent my life looking up to people, and Reiner was a cultural guide to their young lives, which means he was a cultural guide to me.

Wil Wheaton, who starred in his first film under Reiner’s careful guidance in Stand By Me, wrote a tortured and loving and moving blog post today, after hours of pestering from media outlets for reactions to the news, that touches directly and sickeningly on these ideas. You can read that here:

Wil Wheaton: this is such a painful loss. my heart is broken.

We’re deeper into the movie, and Demi Moore is helping us see how much of a shit head Tom Cruise is. I could use character names, but performers seems more fun (and easier). Dipping into disgust and displeasure is a risky move for a writer and filmmaker, because rubber-banding us back onto their side is also a difficult task. Do one well, the other poorly, and you have characters no one believes in. I think Reiner and Sorkin dance this dance daftly.

Thinking of performance makes me think of another gorgeous gift that Reiner gave us: his own performances. I think he could have had a full career in front of the camera if he had wanted, rather than doing it all. It seems like the smartest and wisest people cast him in bit parts in their productions. His work with Nora Effron, both directing When Harry Met Sally and acting in a small but memorable part in Sleepless in Seattle looms largest, to me, but the performance that I will take with me to my grave is his short work in my biggest comfort: 30 Rock.

I hope that is the right clip. There is no way I can watch it right now. But the description makes me think it is what I’m lookjng for: Rob reciting background actor trick lines to make it look like he is speaking: naming random vegetables. I think about it whenever I see background actors talking to others, which is basically in every episode of television ever. That means I’ve been thinking about Rob’s performance consistently for over 15 years.

I’m getting wrapped up in the movie now, with the help of a finished drink, when Moore is asking that Cruise actually takes a stance and makes an argument, rather than taking the best out that he can wrangle from the oposition. It’s an effective turn of character from success for successes sake to actually believing something, believing someone, and actually opposing someone else.

What I knew the least about this morning when I woke was Rob Reiner’s political activism, successful political activism that moved things in a direction I, too, believe in. It was so effective that, on the day of his death, the president of the united states belittled his name out of spite and cowardice and small-mindedness, like a fucking child. I bet Rob would have loved to have gotten under that particularly loose, greying, sad old skin. Reiner, like Sorkin, puts his work where his heart is, and wanted to create something that moved people towards something: deeper relationships, deeper ideals, deeper caring, deeper meaning. Movies can have their fun and still try to mean something.

God, this movie is so earnest. It wants people to believe in something good, in the good in others. It wants us to have hope, and to work towards creating the world that hope holds in its hands. It’s hard to turn off a movie only to return to a mountain of evidence to the existence of a much colder, crueler world. Cruelty has many rewards, garnering many sad and helpless people into its worldview. But hope has its rewards too, and it needs flag carriers to remind us of its mission. I know that earnestness and hope can make us cringe, and frustrate us with their futility, but they are powerful and necessary tools. I think Reiner knew that. I think he carried the flag proudly. I think he knew how to cut sincerity with absurdity, with comedy, with parody. I think he knew how to move us, not just for movement’s sake, but for our betterment, and for the betterment of those around us.

The movie’s over. The bad guy is going to go to jail. The kids who were just following orders are not charged with murder, but are dishonerably discharged (sorry for the spoilers). The characters move on with our lives. So do we. Are we going to let ourselves be moved?

---

It’s late. I’m tired. I’m sad. I don’t have any answers. I do have some opportunities for levity that Reiner himself gave to us. I’ll be leaning on those, and many others, while working my way back towards stability and ability. I look forward to learning more about Michele Reiner, towards sharing their work with more people, towards having hope and earnestness.

To Rob, wherever you are:

peas and carrots