Remembering Rob Reiner

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Speaker 2 This is Fresh Air. I'm Tyria Gross.

Speaker 2 It was shocking and heartbreaking to hear about the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michelle Singer Reiner, especially since their son was arrested on suspicion of murder.

Speaker 2 Today we're going to listen back to the interview I recorded with Rob Reiner in September. But first our TV critic David Biancoule has an appreciation.

Speaker 5 Rob Reiner is a film director, worked in many different genres and excelled at all of them.

Speaker 5 And before contributing significantly to the vocabulary and history of movies, he did the same thing for television.

Speaker 5 Rob Reiner was the son of Carl Reiner, who as both writer and performer was a key contributor to NBC's Your Show of Shows.

Speaker 5 That Sid Caesar series was the best sketch variety show of the 1950s. Carl Reiner then created and eventually appeared in the best TV sitcom of the 60s, the Dick Van Dyke Show.

Speaker 5 His son, Rob Reiner, followed down a similar path. Rob Reiner's first job in TV was as a writer on the best sketch variety series of the 60s, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

Speaker 5 Then, as an actor, he co-starred in one of the best and most influential TV sitcoms of the 70s, Norman Lear's All in the Family.

Speaker 5 In that long-running hit sitcom, Carol O'Connor played a bigoted Queen's working-class homeowner named Archie Bunker.

Speaker 5 Rob Reiner played Michael Meathhead Stivick, the live-in son-in-law who was married to Archie's daughter, Gloria, played by Sally Struthers.

Speaker 5 Before the series premiered, two previous versions had been filmed with other actors playing Michael and Gloria.

Speaker 5 The series only was bought by CBS, though, after Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers had been cast in those roles.

Speaker 5 Reiner won two Emmys for his work on All in the Family, and his talent and chemistry with his fellow actors was obvious from the very first episode.

Speaker 8 I just want to learn a little bit about society so I can help people. People? Your mother-in-law and me is people.
Help us with you. Go to work.

Speaker 9 I know what's bothering you. You're upset because I was nailing you on that law and order thing.

Speaker 8 You? Nailing me? Yeah, that's right. Now I'm going to tell you something.

Speaker 9 No, no, wait a second.

Speaker 9 I'm sorry, Goria. I know I promised, but I feel I got to say this.
You know why we got to break down in law and order in this country, Archie?

Speaker 9 Because we got poverty, real poverty.

Speaker 8 And you know why we got that?

Speaker 9 Because guys like you are unwilling to give the black man, the Mexican-American, and all the other minorities their just and rightful hard-earned share of the American dream.

Speaker 10 Who said he wasn't smart?

Speaker 10 That's beautiful, Michael. Beautiful.

Speaker 5 Rob Reiner continued to act throughout his career, playing himself in the Larry Sanders show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and the movie The Muse.

Speaker 5 And he also played different characters in such movies as The First Wives Club, Primary Colors, and The Wolf of Wall Street.

Speaker 5 But after leaving All in the Family, Rob Reiner made his biggest mark as a film director, dabbling and succeeding in several different genres.

Speaker 5 His mockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap, proved so durable and lovable, earlier this year it spawned a sequel.

Speaker 5 His adaptations of two Stephen King stories, Stand By Me and Misery, are outstanding examples of, respectively, the coming-of-age tale and the horror movie.

Speaker 5 And The Princess Bride, written by William Goldman and directed perfectly by Reiner, is quite simply the best family fantasy film since The Wizard of Oz.

Speaker 5 Some of Reiner's visuals in his movies are indelible.

Speaker 5 The leeches in Standby Me, the amplifier knob that goes to 11 in This Is Spinal Tap, the sledgehammer swing in misery, the grandfather reading to his grandson in The Princess Bride.

Speaker 5 Even more memorable, though, are certain lines of dialogue and the way he presented them on screen.

Speaker 5 Reiner framed instantly recognizable catchphrases for Jack Nicholson on the witness stand in A Few Good Men.

Speaker 12 You can't handle the truth.

Speaker 5 Farmboy in The Princess Bride.

Speaker 13 As he wished.

Speaker 5 Also from The Princess Bride, Mandy Patinkin as the revenge-obsessed sword fighter.

Speaker 5 And Rob Reiner even gave a killer of a punchline to his own mother in a scene from when Harry Met Sally set at Katz's Deli, in which she watches another patron played by Meg Ryan faking an orgasm.

Speaker 15 I'll have what she's having.

Speaker 5 Over his career, Rob Reiner sought out and worked with some of the best actors and writers in the business.

Speaker 5 He also was very active in political and humanitarian causes, making an impact there as well as on cinema and television.

Speaker 2 David Biancoule is fresh air TV critic. I interviewed Rob Reiner in September about his life and career.

Speaker 2 The occasion for the interview was the release of his sequel to his groundbreaking 1984 mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap. The sequel, Spinal Tap 2, The End Continues, is now streaming on HBO Max.

Speaker 2 This is Spinal Tap was the most influential mockumentary and helped pave the way to movie and TV mockumentaries, including The Office and Parks and Recreation.

Speaker 2 The film satirized heavy metal bands and rock documentaries.

Speaker 2 The band is known for its excesses, its loud volume, a bass player who stuffs his pants, incredibly sexist lyrics, as well as on and off-stage mishaps. Let's start with a song from Spinal Tap 2.

Speaker 6 In ancient times,

Speaker 14 hundreds of years before the dawn of history,

Speaker 14 lived a strange race of people.

Speaker 14 It's Druids.

Speaker 14 No one knows who they were

Speaker 16 or

Speaker 16 what they were doing.

Speaker 1 But their legacy remains hewn

Speaker 14 into the living rock

Speaker 14 of Stone Age.

Speaker 17 Stonehenge, where the demons dwell, where the bands live and the do live well.

Speaker 16 Stonehenge, where a man can ban, and the children who dance to the pipes fan.

Speaker 2 Rob Reiner, welcome to Fresh Air. Congratulations on the sequel.
I'm very glad that you made it, and I know everyone else will be too.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 2 One of the things that's very interesting about the film, the first, and maybe particularly the sequel, is that you have a band that started off as, you know, kind of like young and rebellious and, you know, all that.

Speaker 2 And now, like Spinal Tap, they're in their 70s. And it just makes no sense for them to be singing some of the lyrics that they're singing.

Speaker 2 And that happens to a lot of bands who end up performing their old material about teenage love, you know, when they're, when they're in their 70s. But these are songs about like their sexual prowess.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they're incredibly, some of them are just like incredibly like. sexist.
So it sounds so inappropriate in so many ways.

Speaker 14 Yeah. The beauty of these guys, the members of Spinal Tap, is that in all those years, from their 20s, 30s, up now until their 70s, they have grown

Speaker 14 neither emotionally or musically. There's no growth.

Speaker 14 They basically are in a state of arrested development for like 50 years. And the only growth that there is is maybe skin tabs from getting older.

Speaker 2 They have to be biopsied.

Speaker 14 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 Did you want the second movie to reflect how music documentaries have changed?

Speaker 2 Because if I did my math right, like Spinal Tap, like this is Spinal Tap, precedes the MTV and VH1 music documentaries that became so famous and so parodied.

Speaker 14 There were a lot of music documentaries before we made the first film. I mean, you know,

Speaker 14 Led Zeppelin had the song remains the same.

Speaker 14 The Who had The Kids Are All Right. And of course, you know, The Last Walt.

Speaker 14 Yeah, The Last Waltz was Scorsese. And the first one was the Bob Dylan documentary by Penny Baker.
You know, don't look back. You know, yeah.

Speaker 14 So there were these documentaries, but so what we were doing was not only satirizing heavy metal, but we were satirizing the documentary form and the way in which documentaries were presented.

Speaker 14 And I, you know, basically.

Speaker 14 The reason my character, Marty DeBerge, who's supposedly the documentarian of the film, is in the film is because in The Last Waltz, I saw, yeah, there's Marty Scorsese, he's in the film.

Speaker 14 He's documenting this last concert by the band, but he's also in the film. The first film I shot with a 16 millimeter camera, you know, it's a film camera.

Speaker 14 Now we have digital cameras and I shot with two cameras.

Speaker 14 And I try to, you know, Marty, let's say the character Marty who's making the film, I have to always filter it through how he would make it, not necessarily how I would make it.

Speaker 14 And I try tried to say, will he be affected by the new modern type of techniques that they use in reality shows and

Speaker 14 what you see up on social media and all that? And I think he's,

Speaker 14 you know, he may try a little bit, but basically he's stuck in his own inabilities to make it any hipper or cooler than he was. So he hasn't grown all that much either.

Speaker 2 Aaron Powell, I want to play one of the most famous moments from the first Spinal Tap film.

Speaker 2 and it's the scene where Christopher Guest, as Nigel Tufnell, is showing you, the director of this documentary, his guitar equipment.

Speaker 2 And he's showing you his amp, which goes up so loud, because this band prides itself on how loud it is. It goes up so high, it goes past 10 to 11.
So here's an excerpt of that scene.

Speaker 10 What we do is if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Put it up to 11. 11, exactly.
One louder.

Speaker 10 Why don't you just make 10 louder and make 10 be the top number and make that a little louder?

Speaker 10 These go to 11.

Speaker 2 And he looks like totally baffled by what he says.

Speaker 14 What makes that funny is the long pause he gives. And the reason he gives that pause is because he doesn't know I'm going to say, why don't you make 10 a little louder?

Speaker 14 I just came up with that then. And so

Speaker 14 it stops him for a second, and then he says, well, these go to 11.

Speaker 14 And what's interesting is that that phrase goes to 11, is now in the Oxford English Dictionary as something that is commonly used for not just loud music, but anything that's done in excess,

Speaker 14 something that goes beyond what it normally does. So it's weird that something that we just threw off like that all of a sudden becomes part of the lexicon of our lives.

Speaker 14 It's very strange how these things have taken root.

Speaker 2 You started making Spinal Tap 2, The End Continues, in 2024 on your 77th birthday. And everyone in the movie is the same or approximately the same age as the characters they play.
Right, right.

Speaker 2 Did making the film make you think more about how you've aged since the first one and all that's happened to you in between?

Speaker 14 Oh, sure. You can't ignore it.
I mean, you, you know,

Speaker 14 hopefully our minds are still sharp and we're still able to, you know, as Chris Guest calls it, schnadle. We can schnadle with each other back and forth.
But yeah, he.

Speaker 18 Schnadle is his word for improv.

Speaker 14 Yeah, yeah. He says, you know, we schnadle with each other, which is true.

Speaker 14 I mean, and what's interesting is that after 15 years of not, you know, working together, we came back and started looking at this and seeing if we could come up with an idea.

Speaker 14 And we started schnadling right away. It was like falling right back in with friends that you hadn't talked to in a long time.
It's like jazz musicians, you know, you just fall in and do what you do.

Speaker 2 You are part of so many comedy-related things, and so are your friends. So I'm going to start with like your father was Karl Reiner.
Yes.

Speaker 2 And he created the Dick Van Dyke show, and before that, wrote for and acted in Sid Caesar shows back in the 1950s.

Speaker 2 Albert Brooks, your good friend from high school, you made a movie about him. You did an act with Joey Bishop's son before you made movies.
You co-founded an improv group and did a lot of improv.

Speaker 2 In the 70s, you were on one of the most popular and groundbreaking sitcoms, All on the Family. You wrote with Steve Martin for the Smothers Brothers Summer Replacement Show early in your career.

Speaker 2 You were the third host of Saturday Night Live. I mean, I could go on.
You have three movies in the National Film Registry, when Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, and This is Spinal Tap.

Speaker 2 Yikes, that's like so much comedy history.

Speaker 14 I'm tired, Terry. I'm tired when you read that.

Speaker 2 When you make a friend or meet somebody, is being funny one of the first traits you look for in someone?

Speaker 14 Well, you know, it's interesting.

Speaker 14 Yes, of course, you want to connect with somebody that you can connect with on the same level. When I was young,

Speaker 14 you know, you mentioned my dad and Sid Caesar. You know, he also did, to me, the greatest comedy albums ever done with Mel Brooks called, you know, the 2,000-year-old man.

Speaker 14 And to me, they're the hippest, funniest comedy albums ever. And when I was a kid and teenager and I come home from school, I would put on one of the albums.
I did it almost every day for a long time.

Speaker 14 And I listened to it because I thought, God, this is so brilliant. And that was improvised, too.

Speaker 14 I thought, you know, when I met somebody, if they dug the 2,000-year-old man and they could quote lines from it, I knew it was somebody I could connect with because they were on the same wavelength as I.

Speaker 14 It was like a good test to see if this is somebody I could connect with.

Speaker 2 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Was the 2,000-year-old man album and subsequent versions of it one of the reasons why you wanted to do improv?

Speaker 14 Well, no, not really. I mean, that's something I always, you know, I was drawn to.
I mean,

Speaker 14 I loved loved Second City. I loved the committee.
I used to go visit the committee

Speaker 14 when they were up in San Francisco. And we got the idea when I was at UCLA.
I guess I was about 18 or 19 at the time.

Speaker 14 to start our own improvisation group. And I wanted to do what my dad did.

Speaker 14 You know, when I was a little boy,

Speaker 14 my parents said, I came up to them and I said, you know, I want to change my name. I was about eight years old, I guess.
I said, I want to change my name.

Speaker 14 And they said, they were, oh my God, this poor kid, he's worried about being in the shadow of a famous guy and living up to and all this. And they said, well, what do you want to change your name to?

Speaker 14 And I said, Carl.

Speaker 14 And they said,

Speaker 14 I said, I loved him so much. I just wanted to be like him, you know, and I wanted to do what he did.
And I just looked up to him so much. So,

Speaker 14 yeah, I was surrounded by all of this. And I at,

Speaker 14 there's a picture in my office of all the writers who wrote for Sid Caesar and the show of shows over the nine years, I guess, that they were on.

Speaker 14 And when you look at that picture, you're basically looking at everything you ever laughed at in the first half of the 20th century.

Speaker 14 I mean, there's Mel Brooks, there's my dad, there's Neil Simon, there's Woody Allen, there's Larry Gelbart, I mean, Joe Stein, who wrote Fiddler on the Roof.

Speaker 14 Aaron Rubin, who created the Andy Griffith Show. Everybody, anything you ever laughed at is represented by those people.
So these are the people

Speaker 14 I look up to, and these are the people that were around me as a kid growing up.

Speaker 2 Did you ever want to be in a band? Because so many people in the entertainment world at some point wanted to be in a band.

Speaker 14 Of course I did.

Speaker 2 Did you ever play?

Speaker 14 I can sing. I can sing and I can sing on pitch, but that's about it.
And I, you know, I would have killed to be able to, I love blues. I'm a big fan of the blues.

Speaker 14 I mean, I can, I listen to any blues guitarist. I, you know, you got me hooked.

Speaker 14 And when I saw Michael Bloomfield, who played with the Paul Butterfield blues band and then played with a band called Electric Flag,

Speaker 14 I said, wow, God. And he's Jewish, you know?

Speaker 14 He's a white Jewish guy. And he's playing the blues and

Speaker 14 he's unbelievable. And I thought, boy, I would just kill to be like Michael Boomfund.
Just the playing of the music, not the other parts, which weren't so good for him.

Speaker 2 We're listening to the interview I recorded with Rob Reiner in September. We'll hear more of the interview after a break.
I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.

Speaker 9 Do you remember the first song that you guys ever wrote together?

Speaker 17 All the way home, probably.

Speaker 10 All the way home? Yeah. Can you remember a little bit of it?

Speaker 10 I'd love to hear Christ.

Speaker 10 Some black coffee, maybe.

Speaker 17 As it goes.

Speaker 11 Beside the railroad track.

Speaker 17 And I'm waiting for that train to bring you back.

Speaker 11 If she's not on the 519, then I'm gonna know what sorrow means.

Speaker 17 And I'm gonna cry, cry, cry. All the way home, ding, don't,

Speaker 16 all the way home, all the way home, all the way home, all the way home.

Speaker 17 Cry, cry, all the way. Cry, cry, cry, all the way home, yeah.

Speaker 19 Fairly simple, it's about six words in the whole song.

Speaker 18 Well, I'm sitting here beside the railroad track,

Speaker 18 and I'm awaiting for that train to bring her back.

Speaker 4 If she's not on the five 519.

Speaker 18 Then I'm gonna know what sorrow means.

Speaker 18 And I'm gonna cry, cry, cry all the way home.

Speaker 18 All the way home. All the way home.
All the way home.

Speaker 18 Yes, I'm gonna cry, cry, cry all the way home.

Speaker 18 Now her daddy never liked me, this is it.

Speaker 18 And he could not get it through his old red head

Speaker 18 that I loved his daughter so did not mean to see her go

Speaker 18 now. I'm gonna cry, cry, cry all the way home

Speaker 18 All the way home

Speaker 18 All the way home

Speaker 18 Yes, I'm gonna cry, cry, cry all the way home

Speaker 18 Here it come, here it comes

Speaker 18 All the way home, all the way home, all the way home, all the way home. Yes, no cry, cry, cry, all the way home.

Speaker 18 One more time, all the way home, all the way home, all the way home, all the way home. You're not gonna cry.

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Speaker 2 So I want to play a scene from a few good men, and this scene has that very famous line, you can't handle the truth. But it's so like he and

Speaker 2 Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise is prosecuting the colonel played by Nicholson, who's being court-martialed.
So this is like

Speaker 2 the dramatic climax to that whole part of the story.

Speaker 2 And so I want to play that scene, and I have a very specific question for you, which is in directing Jack Nicholson, how do you draw the line between giving

Speaker 2 a lot and giving too much?

Speaker 2 You know, like, where is the line between like chewing the scenery and a great dramatic performance? So let's listen to the scene.

Speaker 12 You want answers?

Speaker 1 I think I'm entitled. You want answers!

Speaker 6 I want the truth!

Speaker 12 You can't handle the truth!

Speaker 12 Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg?

Speaker 12 I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines.

Speaker 20 You have that luxury.

Speaker 12 You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death while tragic probably saved lives.
And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.

Speaker 12 You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties.

Speaker 20 You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.

Speaker 12 We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something.
You use them as a punchline.

Speaker 12 I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.

Speaker 12 I would rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post.
Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

Speaker 2 So, Rob Reiner, you directed A Few Good Men, which that scene is from. So, with Nicholson, he's a great actor.

Speaker 2 But, you know, some great actors can just give a little too much sometimes, and that's such a heightened scene.

Speaker 2 Did you have to figure out, like, is that enough? Is that too much?

Speaker 14 I tell you, with Jack Nicholson, who's one of the greatest actors of all time, he's in the pantheon of all-time great movie stars and actors, and his instincts are impeccable.

Speaker 14 You don't have to tell Jack Nicholson to hold back or

Speaker 14 give more or whatever. He knows what he needs to do.
Interestingly enough,

Speaker 14 like any really, to my opinion, really great actor, he doesn't mind if there's a humorous thing or something that needs a line reading.

Speaker 14 He doesn't mind if you give, he'll say, how do you want me to say that?

Speaker 14 Because he likes, it's like a great musician. He wants to hear the notes.
How do you say it? And since I'm, you know, that's one of the things I do,

Speaker 14 he'll say, how do you want me to say that? And he's happy to take a line reading.

Speaker 3 Can you give us an example?

Speaker 14 The first day of rehearsal, you do a table read. You know, you sit around and you read the script.
The performance that you see on film is the same performance he gave in the read around the table.

Speaker 14 And normally actors will just kind of mark it just to hear, but he gave a full-out performance and it sent a message to all the other actors, Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Kiefer Sutherland, you know, Kevin Bacon and Kevin Pollard, all the actors that were there that we came to play here.

Speaker 14 This is, you know, this is what we do. And it put everybody in a place.

Speaker 14 It's like being on a baseball team and watching Babe Ruth step into the batting cage before the game, and he's hitting one ball after the other out of the park.

Speaker 14 And so they said, oh, we got to step up our games too.

Speaker 14 And Jack is smart because he knows that the more he gives, the more he's going to get back, and it's going to make other people's performances better.

Speaker 14 And that ultimately is going to make his performance better.

Speaker 14 More to react to. Yeah.

Speaker 14 And when we did that scene, the famous, you know, you can't handle the truth scene, I asked him, I said, Jack, you know, you got this great speech, and, you know, I can either shoot the coverage, meaning the reaction shots, and have you off camera, or I can, if you're ready, I'll shoot you now and then, you know, I get the reaction shots later.

Speaker 14 He said, well, why don't you shoot the reaction shots? You know, and that way it'll give me a chance to work into it. I said, fine.

Speaker 14 So he's off camera and I'm shooting, you know, a shot for Tom Cruise and one of to me and one of the Kevin Bacon. And, you know, I've got different angles.

Speaker 14 And every time we go through the scene, he gives the exact same performance, the one you see on camera.

Speaker 14 And at one point, I go back to Jack, I said, Jack, you, you know, maybe you want to wait and hold some of this back.

Speaker 14 And I'm, you know, when I turn around the camera and you be on you, you'll have everything, you know, you don't want to waste it here. He says, no, Rob, you don't understand.
I love to act.

Speaker 14 He said, this is a great part, and I don't get a chance to play great parts that often. So that was him.

Speaker 14 What he did off camera, what he did at the reading, what you see on camera is what you get from Jack Nicholson.

Speaker 2 We're listening to the interview I recorded with Rob Reiner in September. We'll hear more of the interview after a break.
This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 You decided to give your mother what turned out to be the most famous, most quoted line from when Harry Met Sally.

Speaker 2 This takes place in the deli, a very famous deli in Manhattan, Katz's deli, when Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, their characters are having lunch together. They're friends.

Speaker 2 And Billy Crystal's kind of like going on about, you know, his dating life, how good it is, and how satisfied, you know, sexually satisfied the women he's dating

Speaker 2 are. And Meg Ryan is a little skeptical.

Speaker 2 And she says, like, how do you know that it's real? I mean,

Speaker 2 how can you judge if what they're expressing is real or not? And he goes, Oh, I know. And she goes, Oh, really? And then she starts faking the noises as if she's having an orgasm.

Speaker 2 And everyone in the deli stops eating. Everyone's staring at her.

Speaker 2 Billy Crystal's watching people stare at him and Meg Ryan. And she's going on and on.
And then your mother has this famous line that when Meg Ryan is done, that your mother says to the waiter.

Speaker 2 So let's play a short excerpt of that.

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 2 oh,

Speaker 14 oh, God.

Speaker 15 I'll have what she's having.

Speaker 2 I'll have what she's having. How did you decide? Oh, that's the line I'm giving my mother.

Speaker 14 Well, first of all, Billy Crystal came up with that line. We had the scene.
We knew we were going to do a scene where Meg was going to fake an orgasm in an incongruous place like a deli.

Speaker 14 And Billy came up with the line. I'll have what she's having.
And when he did, and he came up with it, you know, before we went to New York, he came up with it in rehearsal.

Speaker 14 I said, we need to find somebody, an older Jewish woman, who could deliver that line, which would seem incongruous. And I thought of my mother because my mother had done a couple of little things.

Speaker 14 She did a thing in a movie that Anne Bancroft directed called Fatso.

Speaker 14 And she did a couple of other little things. And so I thought, oh, well, she'd be perfect for it.
And so I asked her if she wanted to do it. And she said, sure.

Speaker 14 And I said, listen, mom, you know, we don't know.

Speaker 14 Hopefully, that'll be the topper of the scene. It'll get the big laugh.
And if it doesn't, you know, I may have to cut it out because I know the scene is funny with Meg doing that.

Speaker 14 And she said, that's fine. You know, I just want to spend the day with you.
I'll go to Katz's. I'll get a hot dog.
You know, whatever it is. She was fine with it.
You know, she was okay.

Speaker 14 And then when we did the scene,

Speaker 14 the first couple of times through, through, Meg was kind of tepid about it. She didn't, you know, give it her all.
She didn't go full out. And so I said, Let's try it again.
And she was nervous.

Speaker 14 She's in front of, you know, the crew and there's extras and people.

Speaker 14 She did it a few times. And then it was never exactly what eventually wound up in the film.
And at one point, I get in there and I said, Meg, let me show you what I'm on.

Speaker 14 And I sat opposite Billy and I'm acting it out. And I'm going pounding the table.
And I'm going, yes, yes, yes, I'm pounding the table.

Speaker 14 And then I turned to Billy and I said, Billy, it's embarrassing here. I see, what? He says, I just had an orgasm in front of my mother.

Speaker 14 But then Meg came in and she did it obviously way better than I could do it.

Speaker 2 So I interviewed your father back in 1988.

Speaker 2 And I don't know if you ever heard that.

Speaker 14 I haven't, but I'm sure it was great. He's great to talk with.

Speaker 2 So there was an excerpt where I asked him about you, and I want to play that excerpt. Is that okay? Yeah, you want to hear that? Yeah, sure, sure.

Speaker 18 Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 So this is Carl Reiner, Rob Reiner's father, in 1988.

Speaker 2 Let me ask you about your son, Rob Reiner.

Speaker 2 He first became an acting star in All in the Family as Meathead, and then he became a director, directing movies like Princess Bride, Spinal Tap, Stand By Me.

Speaker 2 Did you ever expect him to go into show business?

Speaker 13 Not when he was very young, although he had a tremendous ability to remember everything he'd ever seen.

Speaker 13 I mean, he's one of these kids who absorbs, he was one of those kids who absorbed everything he saw on television and movies. But he never stated it loudly that he was going to do it.

Speaker 13 But in his heart, he wanted to be a director always. Isn't that amazing? And he only told us about it later.

Speaker 13 When he was about 19 years old, I saw him direct a Ricky Dreyfuss and he were friends when they were in high school, and he directed a version of

Speaker 13 No Exit by Sartre, and it was brilliant. He was only about 18 or 19 at the time.
At that point, his road was starting to be paved.

Speaker 13 He wanted to be a director and there's no question that he knew that and he wasn't telling it to everybody because you know when you're young and say I want to be a director, they say I get out of here.

Speaker 13 And he had it in his mind I'm sure all the time he was on All in the Family he was planning it.

Speaker 15 Do you show each other your work?

Speaker 13 Oh yes,

Speaker 13 you're asking something very, very current. You're the first one.
Fresh Air has got the first piece of information about this.

Speaker 13 Last night I saw a preview, not a preview, a rough cut of Rob's new movie, which he's not sure of the title yet. So far it's Harry, This Is Sally,

Speaker 13 or Sally, This is Harry, I'm not sure of the title, with Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher, and Bruno Kirby. Well, I'm going to go on record as saying it is the most beautiful, successful,

Speaker 13 glorious, romantic comedy that I have ever seen. I called Rob today and I said, gee, whether I'm your father or not has nothing to do with this.
I mean, that is a masterwork of movie making.

Speaker 2 Do you remember him telling you that, and was that an important affirmation for you?

Speaker 14 You know, some first of all, just hearing his voice

Speaker 14 it's got to me a little bit there.

Speaker 14 You know,

Speaker 14 I miss him, you know, and

Speaker 14 I still hear him, you know, all the time in my head. So to listen to that was

Speaker 14 pretty amazing.

Speaker 2 Do you want want to move it?

Speaker 14 No, it's all right. It's all right.
I mean, you know, he talked about the,

Speaker 14 you know, the time I directed

Speaker 14 No Exit, and that was the first time

Speaker 14 that he ever acknowledged

Speaker 14 that

Speaker 14 he thought

Speaker 14 I was good at what I was doing.

Speaker 14 He came back stage after the performance and he looked me in the eye and he said, that was good.

Speaker 14 No bullshit. And that's the first time he ever said anything like that to me.
And so I guess it wasn't until I was 19 that he validated that to me. And then I came to visit him at the house after

Speaker 14 he said that. I visited him.
You know, I was living away at the time. And I was sitting with him in the backyard.
And he said to me, I'm not worried about you.

Speaker 14 You're going to be great at whatever you do.

Speaker 14 You know, he lives in my head all the time. And, you know,

Speaker 14 I had two great guides in my life. I had my dad and then Norman Lear was like a second father.
So

Speaker 14 they're both gone, but they're both with me always.

Speaker 2 Your father said that he didn't find out until later that you wanted to direct. Did you not tell him that you wanted to direct?

Speaker 14 No, no. And it wasn't until I did Stand By Me that I really started to feel very separate and apart from my father.
Because the first film I did was, you know, This is Spinal Tap, which was a satire.

Speaker 14 And my father had trafficked in satire with Sid Caesar for many years. And then the second film I did was a film called The Sure Thing, which was a romantic comedy for young people.

Speaker 14 And my father had done romantic comedy. You know, The Van Dyke Show is a romantic comedy, a series.
But when I did Stand By Me, it was the one that was closest to me because

Speaker 14 I was one of four friends and I felt that my father didn't love me or understand me. And it was the character of Gordy that expressed those things.

Speaker 14 And the film was a combination of nostalgia, emotion, and a lot of humor. And it was a real reflection of my personality.
It was an extension, really, of my sensibility.

Speaker 14 And when it became successful, I said, oh, okay, I can go in the direction that I want to go in and not feel like I have to, you know, mirror everything my father has done up till then.

Speaker 2 You know, you just said you felt like your father didn't love or understand you when you were growing up, but you've also talked about how much you loved your father and wanted to be like him.

Speaker 2 You even wanted to take on his name at some point, call yourself Karl Reiner. Those two things seem contradictory.

Speaker 14 Well, they're not because loving your father and looking up to your father doesn't necessarily mean you're feeling that back, that you're feeling that from him.

Speaker 14 And the scene in Stand By Me where the boys finally find the dead body and they're sitting there and Gordy starts to cry.

Speaker 14 And, you know, he's sitting there with River Phoenix, who's plays Chris Chambers, and he says, my father didn't love me. And

Speaker 14 Chris says,

Speaker 14 no, he did love you. He just didn't know you.

Speaker 14 And that scene, I wrote that scene in a hotel room in Oregon, in Eugene, Oregon, when we were shooting up there. And as I was writing that scene, I start crying because that's the way I felt.

Speaker 2 We're listening to the interview I recorded with Rob Reiner in September.

Speaker 2 There was a part of our interview, which we didn't have time to include in our September broadcast, about his film Being Charlie, which he made with his son Nick.

Speaker 2 Listening to that segment now, it has an especially sad resonance.

Speaker 2 I want to ask you about a movie that you made in 2015, which is called Being Charlie. And your son co-wrote it, you directed it, and it seems like it's semi-autobiographical because your son had

Speaker 2 dealt with a drug addiction.

Speaker 14 Yeah, no, he did.

Speaker 2 And was in rehab. And the story is about a teenager who is going through that as well.

Speaker 2 And the father in the movie is running for governor and doesn't really have time for his son during the campaign. And you know, and

Speaker 2 is very active.

Speaker 14 I think he's wor it's worse than not having time. He thinks that that his son's problems are going to hurt him.

Speaker 18 Exactly, hurt the campaign.

Speaker 14 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, when it comes to the decision of, like, should we do tough love and you know, do an intervention and force him to go to rehab, uh the father is very in favor of that in part i think because of what you just said that he is afraid that his father that his son's addiction will interfere with the campaign and so that's part of the dynamic of of the movie with it being like semi autobiographical autobiographical did you feel like your son was

Speaker 2 sending you the message that you were sometimes too busy to pay attention to him or that

Speaker 14 you feared that you were worried it would interfere with your career if not no no i was i i was never ever too busy i mean i i mean if anything i was the other way you know i was more uh hands-on and trying to do whatever i thought i could do to help and uh you know i i i'm sure i made mistakes and you know i've talked about that with him since you know he's been great he's you know hasn't been doing drug for over six years i mean he's he's in a really good place i'm really glad to hear that much better place he's in a good place now.

Speaker 14 But at the time,

Speaker 14 I thought, well, this will be an opportunity to look at what happened, you know, to him and to me.

Speaker 14 And so it is very loosely based on, you know, I had political aspirations at certain points in my life. So I made that character that way.
And his character is not exactly how he was.

Speaker 14 And if you'd asked my son, Nick, he would say, it's not the film he would have made. You know, he would have made a completely different film.

Speaker 14 But for me, I had read this book called Beautiful Boy, and I think they made a movie about it. They did.

Speaker 2 The book is by David Scheff and his son.

Speaker 14 Right, right. And I think

Speaker 14 Steve Corell was in it or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 14 But, you know, Sheff wrote the book, and then his son wrote another book, which was his point of view. And I thought, ooh, that's interesting.

Speaker 14 Let's put both of our points of view and see if we can put that into a film. And,

Speaker 14 you know, I think it works. It's not, I can say it's not the film my son would have made, but

Speaker 14 I was directing, and it's the film I would make because it's what, you know, sort of what I went through.

Speaker 14 But my character, me personally, was much, way, way more hands-on than the character that Kari always plays in the movie.

Speaker 2 I like the movie a lot. Was it a good bonding experience to make it with your son?

Speaker 14 It was when we did it. I mean, certainly.

Speaker 14 And then we had fun because when we promoted it, we'd go on Howard Stern, and that was fun to be able to do things like that with him. But I think, you know,

Speaker 14 he probably feels like, oh, gee, I, you know, I would have done it differently. I think that's what he feels.
But

Speaker 14 it was a movie that was used as a teaching tool in a lot of,

Speaker 14 you know, rehab facilities and things like that.

Speaker 15 So, you know, I think we, we you know it served a good purpose at the time i think something that i think is and i love the film i love it i think it's a great film rob riner from our conversation which was recorded in september will hear the conclusion of the interview after a break this is fresh air this message comes from vital farms who works with small american farms to bring you pastor raised eggs farmer tanner pace describes what makes a pastor raised egg unique before we first started with vital farms i thought you you know, an egg's an egg, not a big deal, but it's hard for me to even eat an eggs that's not a vital farm egg.

Speaker 21 Now, vital farms eggs are usually brown to lighter brown in color. And when you crack a pasteur-raised egg,

Speaker 21 you have to hit it harder than what a person thinks just because the shell quality is so good.

Speaker 21 And basically when that egg cracks in the skillet or bowl, that yolk is almost kind of an orange shade. And that is part of what I love about a vital egg is just the shade of yolk.

Speaker 21 I love pasteurised eggs because you can see the work and the pride that the farmers have and have put into these eggs.

Speaker 15 To learn more about how vital farms farmers care for their hens, visit vitalfarms.com. This message comes from Grammarly.

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Speaker 15 Just a few clicks can tailor your tone and writing so you come across exactly as you intend. Get time back to focus on your high-impact work.

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Speaker 2 So I have to ask you about All in the Family, which was such a popular show in the 1970s and kind of controversial for its depiction of the generation gap between the parents and the daughter who is married to you.

Speaker 2 You're the son-in-law in it. And you're very liberal and the father's really conservative and that's a constant battle between the two of you.
That's one of the main themes throughout the series.

Speaker 2 But, you know, Norman Lear was very liberal. He founded

Speaker 2 People for the American Way.

Speaker 2 What was that experience like for you? Like, how old were you when you first started performing in that? The series started in 71.

Speaker 14 Right. I was 23.

Speaker 14 And this is, to me, what's interesting about all this. And it was groundbreaking at the time.
Nobody had done a show like this.

Speaker 14 CBS, when they put it on, they had a big disclaimer at the beginning saying, you know, the views that are

Speaker 14 represented in the show don't represent the views of CBS. Basically, it was a disclaimer saying, I don't know how this show got on here, but if you want to watch it, you watch it at your own risk.

Speaker 14 You know, we don't.

Speaker 18 Don't say us.

Speaker 14 Yeah, don't, don't, don't. Yeah, I don't know.
Somebody put it on anyway.

Speaker 14 But here's what was interesting about this.

Speaker 14 We were a country at that time of about 200 million people. And we were number one in America for five years straight, every single week.
And every week, 40 to 45 million people watched that show.

Speaker 14 And they had to watch it when it was on because there was no TiVo, there was no D VR, no video cassettes, nothing. Now we're a country of

Speaker 14 upwards of 340 million people. And if you can get five to ten million people watching a show on a given night, that's a huge hit, and they're not all watching it at the same time.

Speaker 2 Well, there's there's politics itself that has become

Speaker 2 like everybody talks about that, but pop pop culture is no longer the glue that it once was because there are so many options that everybody is doing their own thing and not watching or listening at the same time so i know exactly what you're saying what was it like for you to be famous at that age you were already from a famous father and had that helped that helped you went to school with the children of very famous people and other people you went to school with were becoming famous too but what was it like personally to have people recognize you did that make you feel good was it feeling intrusive?

Speaker 14 I got to tell you, it was bizarre, you know, to be on a show of that power and that reach.

Speaker 14 It was like being in the Beatles. I mean, you'd go into a restaurant or you'd go into ⁇ I remember one time that Gene Stapleton and myself, Sally Strath walked into

Speaker 14 an airport restaurant and the entire restaurant stood up and cheered and started applauding. It was that kind of response that you don't see so much now, you know, with people in television.

Speaker 14 So it was,

Speaker 14 that was strange, but you have to take it with a grain of salt because you want to entertain them and you hope that you do, but it doesn't matter what they think.

Speaker 14 You have to do something you like to do and hopefully other people will like it too.

Speaker 2 Rob Reiner, thank you so much. It has really been a pleasure to talk with you and thank you for the Spinal Tap movies.

Speaker 14 Well, thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2 My interview with Rob Reiner was recorded in September. We send our condolences to everyone who knew and loved him and his wife, Michelle Singer Reiner.

Speaker 2 Fresh Air's co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
We'll end today's show with Harry Konnick from the soundtrack of When Harry Met Sally.

Speaker 3 It seems we stood and talked like this

Speaker 3 before.

Speaker 3 We looked at each other

Speaker 3 in the same way, then

Speaker 3 but I can't remember where

Speaker 3 or when

Speaker 3 the clothes you're wearing are the clothes

Speaker 3 you are

Speaker 3 the smile you are smiling

Speaker 3 You were smiling then.

Speaker 3 But I can't remember

Speaker 3 where or when

Speaker 3 some

Speaker 3 things

Speaker 3 that happened

Speaker 3 for the first time.

Speaker 15 This message comes from Vital Farms, who works with small American farms to bring you pasture-raised eggs. Farmer Tanner Pace shares a moment that brings him a sense of purpose.

Speaker 21 I think that when the barn doors open and the hens run to the paddocks, you can truly see what a happy hen really is.

Speaker 21 I love pasteur-raised eggs because you can see the work and the pride that the farmers have and have put into these eggs.

Speaker 15 To learn more about how Vital Farms farmers care for their hens, visit vitalfarms.com. This message comes from Vital Farms, who works with small American farms to bring you pastor-raised eggs.

Speaker 15 Farmer Tanner Pace shares why he chose to collaborate with Vital Farms when he brought pastor-raised hens to his small Missouri farm.

Speaker 21 Probably the best thing about being a vital farms farmer is working with a group that is not just motivated for one thing.

Speaker 21 They're motivated for the well-being of the animals, for the well-being of the earth. They care about it all, you know, and that means a lot to me.

Speaker 15 To learn more about how Vital Farms farmers care for their hens, visit vitalfarms.com.