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It feels recently as if this newsletter has been a space to lament the deaths of various people who were important to me; I guess I’m getting to that age.
But it’s impossible to let the death of Rob Reiner pass without comment.
The members of the arts department put together a list of our favourite Reiner movies earlier this week and although I chose A Few Good Men and The Sure Thing, it honestly could have been any one of the incredible run of films he made from 1984 to 1992, all of which I have seen multiple times, all of which have wormed their way into the common vernacular.
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Other than This Is Spinal Tap, Reiner didn’t write the movies he directed, so why do all of them contain a line — from Inigo Montoya’s “You killed my father. Prepare to die” in The Princess Bride to Col. Jessup’s “You can’t handle the truth” in A Few Good Men — that has been quoted ad nauseam?
I rewatched The Sure Thing this week and while it certainly hasn’t reached the level of pop culture saturation of his other movies, I found myself reciting lines aloud, though I haven’t seen it in a decade or more — “I’m talking to ya cordless,” “Driving with the load not properly tied down?” “Spontaneity has its time and place.”
There’s something special about a director who can, with the right actor, turn mere words into something that has the ring of a slogan or a motto. These quotes, overused though they may be, act as a lingua franca of sorts — a code that alerts you to the similar mindset of a friend.
Why do all of director Rob Reiner’s films have lines that are infinitely quotable? (Fred Larson / The Associated Press Files)
Reiner himself was capable of this kind of elevation as an actor. He single-handedly made tiramisu a sensation (seriously) after mentioning the then-little-known Italian dessert in a scene in Sleepless in Seattle.
And in 2010, he played a bit part as a congressman on the sitcom 30 Rock; I can’t see the word “rhubarb” without hearing his voice in my head (while all the other politicians are murmuring concernedly, he’s relying on the trick used by film extras to create background chatter.)
Reiner’s murder, and that of his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, is senseless and sad. But there is comfort to be found in his many fine films.
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