“There is no other director who has his range,” said Larry David, Bill Crystal and Martin Short, among others, in the joint statement after the death of their friends and collaborator Rob Reiner. “From comedy to drama to ‘mockumentary’ to documentary he was always at the top of his game. He charmed audiences. They trusted him.”
Reiner, along with his wife Michele Singer Reiner, was found dead in their Brentwood home on Sunday. Their son Nick Reiner has been arrested and charged with their murder.
In the immediate aftermath of Reiner’s shocking death, many took to social media to share their favorite movies from the director. As lists of Reiner’s films were compiled, the breadth of his work came into focus, as did the reality that we are likely to never have another filmmaker with that type of output due to the realities of contemporary Hollywood.
In the vein of great directors like Billy Wilder, Reiner was less synonymous with a single genre than just generally good movies. The Reiner canon is an array of rom-coms (When Harry Met Sally), political thrillers (A Few Good Men), straight thrillers (Misery), coming-of-age stories (Stand By Me), and comedies (This Is Spinal Tap) — and variations of genres therein like The Princess Bride, The American President and The Sure Thing.
The filmography is sprawling, but there is one connective tissue between these: None of these types of films are being made by the major studios.
Reiner’s specialized in mid-budget movies aimed at an adult audience. It’s those mid-budget movies that filled theaters in the ’80s and ’90s that contemporary Hollywood mourns the loss of today.
Gone are the days of the sub-$20 million theatrical thriller. A coming-of-age story usually necessitates a Sundance debut before it can cross the studio transom. Rom-coms are largely relegated to streaming, and even more disproportionately consigned to holiday fare. While most anything with a political lean is having a difficult time finding any distribution at all.
His movies also had long post-theatrical lives with home entertainment and on cable television. They filled Blockbuster shelves and movie channel line-ups. The Princess Bride VHS was near ubiquitous at sleepovers, while When Harry Met Sally was a mainstay of TNT. It’s these multiple touch points, small moments where the audience comes into contact with a film that breed loyalty to a film and a filmmaker. Those moments don’t really exist anymore, with film libraries siloed into hard-to-navigate streaming services, where discovery is difficult. How many people are just happening upon undiscovered gems while scrolling through Netflix?
In decades prior, directors working in the same system as Reiner (think: Ron Howard) could move between genres and budget-levels. But in the current studio system, where risk is mitigated at every level of a production, directors are more often held captive to the genres where they have already found success.
Reiner himself was not immune to recent industry headwinds. In the late ’90s, the director got involved in politics with a particular focus on California and early childhood health and education. During this work, he took a step back from filmmaking. When his attention turned back towards Hollywood almost ten year later, as he told THR in 2016, “The world changed quite a bit. Studios were no longer making the kinds of movies I wanted to make. So, now I am in the position where I have to look for independent financing for everything.”
The majority of his recent films, including political dramas LBJ and Shock and Awe and sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, have been released via smaller indie distributors.
Last month, Reiner was on the Warner Bros. lot for a series hosted by film heads Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, where directors are invited to screen a favorite movie. According to an attendee of the screening, Reiner chose to play his 1995 movie, The American President and during the post-screening Q&A, talked about how he navigated the industry.
While he was co-running his independent outfit, Castle Rock Entertainment, where he directed Misery and A Few Good Men, among other films, Reiner said that he did not have an agent. Instead, he would call CAA co-founder Michael Ovitz, who did not rep him, and simply ask what an appropriate director’s fee would be to pay himself. It’s the kind of lax setup that’s hard to imagine working today.
To build a filmmaker with a career like Reiner’s requires an alchemy that exists outside of ability. It requires an executive, a studio or an industry to facilitate an environment where a talent like Reiner’s could thrive. He was the right filmmaker in the right time and the right place. The product is two decades’ worth of work that persists with audiences.
Given the current priorities, it is the kind of filmography that will never be replicated in Hollywood.
Borys Kit contributed to this report.
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