Remembering Rob Reiner
On December 14th, at about 3:40 PM on a Sunday afternoon, the authorities were called to a home in Brentwood, the tony, chic, upscale suburb on the west side of LA. There were two dead bodies found, both killed in a knife attack. These were actor/director Rob Reiner and his wife, photographer/producer Michele Singer Reiner. Rob Reiner was 78, his wife was 70. They had met on the set of one of Reiner’s films, When Harry Met Sally.
Rob Reiner was the son of Carl Reiner, a famous TV writer/actor/ producer. Carl Reiner first made his name with The Dick Van Dyke Show, a program which some--including me--have called the perfect TV sitcom. Carl then branched into directing movies like Where’s Poppa? Oh, God! and Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.
His son Rob had a small role in the first film. And he also was a writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, along with friend Steve Martin. In 1970, Rob Reiner became renowned when he started playing Michael Stivic, the son-in-law of Archie Bunker, in the smash hit comedy series All in the Family. During that show, the arch-conservative Archie dubbed the liberal Michael with the sobriquet ‘Meathead’. And this stuck with Reiner; to the point that he often said—and I heard him say it—“I could win the Nobel Prize and they’d write ‘Meathead wins the Nobel Prize’. But, through it all, Rob Reiner ended up winning two Emmys for his performance as Stivic.
After doing some TV producing, Reiner branched out into directing films. His first picture was the clever, amusing mockumentary This is Spinal Tap, a satire on the rock music business. His second film was The Sure Thing, a twist on the usual young man searching for the perfect girl fantasy/comedy. It starred John Cusack, Daphne Zuniga, and Nicolette Sheridan. That film made enough money and got enough attention that it established Reiner as a bankable director.
From here, Rob Reiner directed 20 films over a nearly 40-year career behind the camera: Ghosts of Mississippi, A Few Good Men, The Princess Bride, and When Harry Met Sally, among them. But he never stopped acting. In fact, he had dozens of acting credits through the eighties, nineties and into the new millennium, e.g., Throw Momma from the Train, Sleepless in Seattle, The Wolf of Wall Street and, in 2025, the TV show The Bear.
But still, this does not describe the pure reach and scope of Rob Reiner. Reiner defined the rubric of ‘liberal activist’. It is not possible in a eulogy of this length to enumerate and describe each and every initiative he championed or personally funded. We will name just a few. In 1998, he crusaded for a tax on tobacco products to fund early pre-school children’s services. He served as the chair for that successful lobby from 1999 to 2006. In a long, hard struggle, he fought to get California’s ban on same sex marriage overturned. In an environmental cause, he stopped a real estate development plan to build on the site of the Ahmanson Ranch in LA. He managed to keep it open as a state park and wildlife refuge. In 2024, he produced the documentary film God and Country, which explored the rise of Christian nationalism and its perceived violation of the doctrine of separation of church and state.
It was this last tendency of Rob’s which led to my meeting him. In the early part of this decade, Reiner had actually gotten studio approval for a mini-series on the John Kennedy assassination. He had optioned three books on the case: Gaeton Fonzi’s The Last Investigation, Dick Russell’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Jim Douglass’ JFK and the Unspeakable. Writer/actor Dave Hoffman had written an installment for the series. This focused on Russell’s reporting during the Schweiker/Hart inquiry under the Church Committee, and also Richard Case Nagell. This had interested Ted Gold, a producer who was then at Paramount, who, among other things, had done the mini-series Waco.
At first, Hoffman was going to be the principal writer. Later, since the series was projected at ten installments, Ken Nolan was brought in to share the burden. Russell was going to be a character in the film, so he was brought on as a consultant. But Rob also wanted a researcher. Russell brought up my name, and Rob phoned Oliver Stone. Oliver gave me a good recommendation. Consequently, Reiner’s secretary called and invited me to a meeting at a posh, upscale restaurant in Brentwood. There I met with Dick, Rob, Michele and co-producer Matt George. In a weird coincidence, Oliver Stone happened to be there. It was the kind of place that when you exited, the valet had your car ready for you. I asked the man how he knew I was leaving. He said they have the chairs numbered and named.
From this event, I went to a series of pre-production meetings with the quartet plus Hoffman. We would usually meet at around 11:00 AM at Rob’s home. Rob would have a menu list so one could order a catered lunch. I was very interested in how the project would be shaped, since I thought the three books formed a good nexus for telling the story. You had Fonzi’s book to feature a strong antagonist in David Phillips, a role which I told Dick every actor in town would be eager to play. Then, with his book, you had Nagell and James Angleton. I imagined depicting Angleton’s executive session hearing before the Church Committee as a dramatic high point of the series. Then, with Douglass, you had JFK making these foreign policy maneuvers that, unbeknownst to him, are anathema to Phillips and Angleton. Finally, you had Nagell trying to head off the plot at the request of the KGB, who did not want to be the fall guys. It all sounded like it was too good to be true.
It was. At one meeting, I asked Rob: who approved this project? He said Ted Gold. I replied, man that guy has chutzpah. Reiner then dropped the rock on the scale. He said Gold had titled the project, American Coup d’Etat. When I heard that, I had a premonition of doom around the bend. It was one thing to approve a controversial project that few people were going to read. But it was something else to place a title on the script that many people would read or hear about. To say that you were going to advertise that incendiary title to hundreds of thousands of people in advance? It was literally asking for trouble. Gold was terminated.
Rob tried to find European backers for the mini-series. That did not work. So he turned the materials he had into a successful podcast on the 60th anniversary of JFK’s murder. At last count, Who Killed JFK? had over 7 million listeners. It was this podcast, plus Paul Landis’ book The Final Witness, and Barbara Shearer’s documentary What the Doctors Saw, which made that anniversary so much more of a positive event than the 50th.
And now he is, rather shockingly, gone. There was no one quite like Rob on the Hollywood scene. He and his wife appear to have been the victims of a family tragedy. A terrible ending for a fine man. He will be sorely missed.
