→ You can now listen to all Ankler stories in the Substack app. Just hit the “play” arrow at the top right of the screen. Rob Reiner and a Terrible WeekendThe shocking deaths of the director and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, cap two days that reveal a world stripped of humanity
So, how was your weekend? Even before the events of Sunday afternoon in Brentwood, every part of our lives has gone beyond gothic, beyond operatic. At times, it has felt like we’re living in a Dominick Dunne novel about the last week of Hollywood, or perhaps a Dario Argento film about garish demons rising from the depths. Even just going back to Saturday, the horrors seemed so awful that they were unbelievable. Until the worst, most terrible thing any over-the-top hack novelist could have dreamed up plays itself out right on our doorstep? Why are the deaths of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, so uniquely grotesque? Because Rob, a figure in our world who was the personification of kindness and decency, met an end beyond the stuff of nightmares — killed alongside his wife in an apparent homicide, with their son now in police custody. It’s the killing of the unicorn. It feels like the last spark of humanity in this whole damn place has been snuffed out, which is why it’s not just one family’s horror, but a deep wrong against the entire community, against anyone who knew him and was touched by him. Forgive me — writing this in the dead of night, a few hours after the news came through — if this sounds hysterical. It’s hard to be your sober, level-headed columnist right now. Every ounce of me wants to scream, This can not be! This is where the horrors of our time may not go! And more than that, to say, after everything of these past years, this year — hell, of just this weekend — no, not this. Even before the killing of the Reiners, the horrors of the past couple days at Brown University here in the U.S. (where two people have been killed and nine injured in a shooting where the suspect is still at-large at this time) and Bondi Beach in Austrailia (where a father and son carried out an antisemitic attack during a Hanukkah celebration, killing at least 15 people) did everything to make so many of us feel unsafe. The visitation of endless episodes of gun-terror and nothing will be done to stop it; that worldwide antisemitism — prodded and winked at in so many corners at both ends of the political horseshoe — is now out of the bag in a way that will mean nothing but more horror. Not to make it all about us, but the sense in recent months (days) that we were in the baby carriage hurtling down the Potemkin Stairs, was — in a line it occurs to me is from a Rob Reiner film — cranked up to 11. With those horrors and the news about the Reiners, it really feels the wheels are coming off not just business and politics, but civilization itself; that some dark force has been conjured and its day will not soon be done. In the words of Andrew Lloyd Webber, could we start again? Please?
Remembering a Giant
So, again, why is it so awful about the Reiners in particular, beyond the fact that an elderly couple met a horrific end? Beyond that they were actual pillars of the community, in the public eye for all to see, for most of the lives of everyone here, with so much distinguished work to their name? Rob Reiner, from his first appearance on stage through his entire career, just exuded warmth and humanity in everything he did. That humanity was the entire premise of his character, Mike “Meathead” Stivic, on the classic 1970s sitcom All in the Family, where every week the know-it-all academic and his crotchety cab-driver father-in-law, Archie Bunker (played by Carroll O’Connor), managed to overcome themselves and learn from each other and grow. It was a simple formula that made the show the first in TV history to take first place in the ratings for five consecutive years, from 1971 to 1976, with about 30 million people tuning in each week (about 15 percent of the U.S. population at that time). And as much as it was Archie Bunker’s show, it was Reiner’s strength and humanity as a worthy sparring partner and eventual friend that made All in the Family work.  To go from a sitcom star to director in those days was a journey of a million miles, but Reiner not only made the leap but did it with one of the most incredible stretches of any director in history. Starting in 1984 with This Is Spinal Tap, Reiner’s 12-year run was ridiculously packed with classics across genres, making it almost impossible to believe that one man directed all these films (plus the notorious flop North in 1994) in such a short period. 1984: This Is Spinal Tap He was never a showy auteur — his personality was too jovial and warm to allow such pomposity either in his public face, or in his directing style. But the films are almost classic Hollywood exemplars of storytelling done with humor and grace, and, I’ll repeat it, humanity, throughout. It was smack in the middle of this period that he met his wife, a photographer, while shooting When Harry Met Sally. (As Reiner said at the time, they were set up by Barry Sonnenfeld, the film’s cinematographer.) “Originally, Harry and Sally didn’t get together,” Reiner recalled years later. “But then I met Michele, and I thought: OK, I see how this works.”  As an activist, I can’t say more than he was what everyone dabbling in politics should strive to be — one whose convictions and opinions were never in doubt but who expressed his views and aspirations without tearing down or belittling anyone who disagreed with him. And, as a result, he accomplished more than perhaps any other Hollywood activist I can think of: He played a crucial role in getting Proposition 8, California’s ban against same-sex marriage, first overturned in 2010. But he was active in politics even before that monumental work of equality, personally overseeing and serving as the public face of the successful 1998 ballot initiative to raise the California cigarette taxes and use the money to fund early education. As a young smoker, I recall grumbling intensely over Meathead’s intrusion into the lives of the little people as the price of a pack soared above the two-dollar mark. Sometime after that, when I was still young-ish, I quit smoking, with the expense being the leading factor that drove me to jump off that cliff. I did the math one day and realized what a massive slice of the trickle of income I was subsisting on at that point went to cigarettes, and I realized this was unsustainable. Looking up the dates now, I see that I made that decision and gave up smoking forever about six months after Proposition 10 became law. So, Mr. Reiner, it appears I owe you an apology and my thanks.
The thing was, seeing him on the screen, in parts big and small, or spotting him at events around town, Reiner was a presence of such warmth — he injected so much heart into anything he was a part of, any room he walked through. I don’t know that I ever spoke to him, but I know I smiled many times at the sight of him from afar. In what are now sadly known as his final years, Reiner shifted back to acting as well: He memorably played Leonardo DiCaprio’s father in The Wolf of Wall Street and Zooey Deschanel’s father on New Girl. His most recent screen appearance, other than as reprising his role in this year’s sequel to This Is Spinal Tap, was a supporting part on season 4 of The Bear as a business consultant. It could have been a small, perfunctory, almost Basil Exposition-y role, but there, too, he was such a real force of humanity. You just wanted to watch him talk to Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) about product-market fit forever. He bestowed grace on the show even amidst a chaotic season.  That a figure who projected such generosity of spirit could meet his end in such a horrific way is unthinkable. It comes at a moment when what Hollywood was during Reiner’s heyday is under such assault that it’s almost impossible not to view this through very gothic symbolizing — the old order being destroyed in the most brutal ways. (To boost the operatic side further: Joan Didion, Hollywood’s Forever Reigning Goddess of Doom, lived on the street where the Reiners met their ends.) Put this together with the senseless violence and death at Brown and Bondi Beach — and one wants to start screaming and never stop; to run to hide in the forest and live with the squirrels and the lichen; to join the Foreign Legion or an Amazonian Ayahuasca cult. This can not be. The reason all this is so painful is that we can’t lose our heads — the fight for humanity, for the generosity of spirit, for the lively, free interchange of people and ideas, has to continue because we see what horrors await if we lose that battle. And know that losing is an option. But this week, given that we’re lurching towards the holidays as it is, it seems a good moment to put away so many grown-up things and really reflect on what matters in this world, and what it will take to fight for that. To really ask ourselves what side we’re on in this battle, and what we are willing to do for it. I permit all the employees of Hollywood to phone it in this week; to put aside the dealmaking, contract signing, plotting, scheming, backstabbing and everything else that fills the days, and during this Hanukkah week, reflect on just what the hell we’re doing here and what those things are worth. Look at Ahmed al Ahmed, the unarmed hero of Bondi Beach, and know that evil can still be confronted and stopped. We don’t have to be okay with our world being like this. In the spirit of Michele and Rob Reiner, let’s all think about how we can be present for each other today. And may all the victims of this horrible weekend — a weekend that there will be books written about — rest in peace.
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