Director Rob Reiner’s oeuvre more than mere movies

Rob Reiner made the kind of movies that became people’s favourite movies.

For all of high school, his 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap was mine. As a kid who grew up loving rock music and wanted nothing more than to be a music journalist, his comedy about an aging English heavy metal band — played by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, all in top form — going out on an American tour with a documentary crew in tow, checked a lot of boxes for me.

This Is Spinal Tap came out a year before I was born, so I discovered it via my dad, who caught it on TV while channel surfing and summoned me with a “You gotta see this, it’s a classic” even though it was late and I had school the next day.

But education comes in many forms, and This Is Spinal Tap is a masterclass in comedy.

It was Reiner’s feature directorial debut, kicking off an improbable run of films in the ’80s and early ’90s. Between 1985 and 1992, he directed The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery and A Few Good Men. Each one is not only a classic but a high-water mark of their respective genres, since Reiner was not just a comedy guy. He made thrillers and fantasies and coming-of-age tales and rom-coms.

He was a filmmaker, but he was also a storyteller.

Reiner and his wife, the photographer Michele Singer Reiner, were killed in their home last weekend. Their son, Nick, has been charged with murder.

It’s an unthinkable tragedy, a violent end. Tributes have been pouring in, about his genius as a director and writer, about his generosity and kindness as a person. About his activism work offscreen, fighting for marriage equality and childhood development programs in his home state of California.

He was a romantic, too. In 2024, he told CNN that Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) didn’t originally wind up together at the end of When Harry Met Sally. “I met my wife Michele, who I’ve been married to now for 35 years,” he said. “I met her while we were making the film, and I changed the ending.”

Reiner gave us the gift of enduring art, movies that are watched over and over again and passed along to others with that same endorsement my dad gave me: “You gotta see this, it’s a classic.”

In that way, he also gave us community. You could find your people by reciting lines from any one of his eminently quotable films; being a broad-appeal director who refused to hemmed in by genre and style means he gave us that many more sites of connection.

Rob Reiner made movies to bond over.

One of my favourite things on this earth is watching my dad laugh. He laughs like I do when he really gets going — just a soundless wheeze, maybe tears like the laugh-cry emoji come to life. It’s a laugh that makes other people laugh.

I watched him laugh through This Is Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride, and those memories are as formative as seeing those classics for the first time. Memories I’ll have long after he’s gone, along with the movies.

What a gift that is, too.

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