Rob Reiner, the son of a comedy big who went on to grow to be one, himself, as one of many preeminent filmmakers of his technology with films equivalent to “The Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally…” and “This Is Spinal Tap,” has died. He was 78.
Reiner and his spouse, Michele Singer, have been discovered useless Sunday at their house within the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. A regulation enforcement official briefed on the investigation confirmed that Reiner and Singer have been the victims. The official couldn’t publicly talk about particulars of the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on situation of anonymity.
Authorities have been investigating an “apparent homicide,” mentioned Capt. Mike Bland with the Los Angeles Police Department. The Los Angeles Fire Department mentioned it responded to a medical assist request shortly after 3:30 p.m.
Reiner grew up pondering his father, Carl Reiner, did not perceive him or discover him humorous. But the youthful Reiner would in some ways comply with in his father’s footsteps, working each in entrance and behind the digital camera, in comedies that stretched from broad sketch work to achieved dramedies.
“My father thought, ‘Oh, my God, this poor kid is worried about being in the shadow of a famous father,’” Reiner, recalling the temptation to vary his title to “60 Minutes” in October. “And he says, ‘What do you want to change your name to?’ And I said, ‘Carl.’ I just wanted to be like him.”
After beginning out as a author for “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” Reiner’s breakthrough came when he was, at age 23, cast in Norman Lear’s “All in the Family” as Archie Bunker’s liberal son-in-law, Michael “Meathead” Stivic. But by the Nineteen Eighties, Reiner started as a characteristic movie director, churning out a few of the most beloved movies of that, or any, period. His first movie, the largely improvised 1984 cult basic “This Is Spinal Tap,” stays the urtext mockumentary.
After the 1985 John Cusack summer time comedy, “The Sure Thing,” Reiner made “Stand By Me” (1986), “The Princess Bride” (1987) and “When Harry Met Sally…” (1989), a four-year stretch that resulted in a trio of American classics, all of them among the many most frequently quoted films of the twentieth century.
For the subsequent 4 many years, Reiner, a heat and gregarious presence on display screen and an outspoken liberal advocate off it, remained a relentless fixture in Hollywood. The manufacturing firm he co-founded, Castle Rock Entertainment, launched an enviable string of hits, together with “Seinfeld” and “The Shawshank Redemption.” By the flip of the century, its success charge had fallen significantly, however Reiner revived it earlier this decade. This fall, Reiner and Castle Rock launched the long-in-coming sequel “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.”
All the whereas, Reiner was one of many movie trade’s most passionate Democrat activists, usually internet hosting fundraisers and campaigning for liberal points. He was co-founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which challenged in court docket California’s ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8. He additionally chaired the marketing campaign for Prop 10, a California initiative to fund early childhood growth providers with a tax on tobacco merchandise. Reiner was additionally a critic of President Donald Trump.
That ran within the household, too. Reiner’s father opposed the Communist hunt of McCarthyism within the Nineteen Fifties and his mom, Estelle Reiner, a singer and actor, protested the Vietnam War.
“If you’re a nepo baby, doors will open,” Reiner advised the Guardian in 2024. “But you have to deliver. If you don’t deliver, the door will close just as fast as it opened.”
Robert Reiner was born within the Bronx on March 6, 1947. As a younger man, he shortly got down to comply with his father into leisure. He studied on the University of California, Los Angeles movie faculty and, within the Sixties, started showing in small elements in numerous tv reveals.
But when Lear noticed Reiner as a key forged member in “All in the Family,” it got here as a shock to the elder Reiner.
“Norman says to my dad, ‘You know, this kid is really funny.’ And I think my dad said, ‘What? That kid? That kid? He’s sullen. He sits quiet. He doesn’t, you know, he’s not funny.’ He didn’t think I was anyway,” Reiner advised “60 Minutes.”
On “All in the Family,” Reiner served as a pivotal foil to Carroll O’Connor’s bigoted, conservative Archie Bunker. Reiner was 5 occasions nominated for an Emmy for his efficiency on the present, successful in 1974 and 1978. In Lear, Reiner additionally discovered a mentor. He referred to as him “a second father.”
“It wasn’t just that he hired me for ‘All in the Family,’” Reiner advised “American Masters” in 2005. “It was that I noticed, in how he performed his life, that there was room to be an activist as effectively. That you may use your superstar, your luck, to assist make some change.”
Lear additionally helped launch Reiner as a filmmaker. He put $7.5 million of his personal cash to assist finance “Stand By Me,” Reiner’s adaptation of the Stephen King novella “The Body.” The film, about 4 boys who go on the lookout for the useless physique of a lacking boy, turned a coming-of-age basic, made breakthroughs of its younger forged (significantly River Phoenix) and even earned the reward of King.
With his stock rising, Reiner devoted himself to adapting William Goldman’s 1973’s “The Princess Bride,” a ebook Reiner had beloved since his father gave him a replica as a present. Everyone from Francois Truffaut to Robert Redford had thought-about adapting Goldman’s ebook, nevertheless it in the end fell to Reiner (from Goldman’s personal script) to seize the distinctive comedian tone of “The Princess Bride” — however solely as soon as he had Goldman’s blessing.
“At the door he greeted me and he said, ‘This is my baby. I want this on my tombstone. This is my favorite thing I’ve ever written in my life. What are you going to do with it?'” Reiner recalled in a Television Academy interview. “And we sat down with him and started going through what I thought should be done with the film.”
Though solely a modest success in theaters, the film — starring Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, André the Giant and Robin Wright — would develop in stature through the years, resulting in numerous impressions of Inigo Montoya’s vow of revenge and the dangerous nature of land wars in Asia.
Reiner was married to Penny Marshall, the actor and filmmaker, for 10 years starting in 1971. Like Reiner, Marshall skilled sitcom fame, with “Laverne & Shirley,” however discovered a extra lasting legacy behind the digital camera.
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