Rob Reiner: A Story of Me.
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All About Me: Rob Reiner's Life on the Screen
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By Rita Kempley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 15, 1999; Page C1
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Most artists try to reinvent themselves throughout their careers. They have
their Blue Periods, their Cranky Periods, their Maalox Moments of the Soul.
They've been blocked, bested by the demons that dwell in their innermost
psychic sanctums. They've looked at the face of God and said "Huh?"
Then there's Rob Reiner, who went from Meathead to moviemaker, from sitcom
doofus to king of Castle Rock, his production company, but still returns
again
and again to his favorite subject: the story of himself.
"Except for 'This Is Spinal Tap' and 'The Princess Bride,' the movies I've
made
are extensions of something I've gone through or I'm experiencing. That's
the
only way I know how to tell stories," says the 52-year-old director, actor
and
political activist during a fly-by to promote his latest effort, "The Story
of
Us."
The seriocomic tale draws upon what he has learned in his 10-year-marriage
to
second wife Michele Singer, a photographer he wooed while filming "When
Harry
Met Sally ... " in 1989.
Though the Reiners are happily married, he says, they've remained that way
because they've carved out some time for themselves. And that is the
message he
delivers in "The Story of Us," a portrait of a marriage on the brink.
Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer star as a couple who have grown apart
over
15 years of marriage and attempt a trial separation while their kids are
away
at camp. During restless nights and empty days, each thinks back to happier
times: their first meeting, the births of their children, the night they
did it
on the kitchen table.
"Nothing cataclysmic happens. There are no car wrecks; there's nobody
getting
cancer," says Reiner of the love story, co-written with Alan Zweibel and
Jessie
Nelson, who also drew inspiration from their marriages. "It's what happens
on a
day-to-day basis, and that's what we wanted to examine.
"You see so many movies about people meeting and falling in love and people
going through the pain of a divorce, but few deal with the day to day, the
wear
and tear, the ins and outs of marriage. With getting the kids to school,
play
dates, soccer games. ... You can drift apart even if you have a good
marriage,"
observes Reiner, the father of two sons and a charming 21-month-old
daughter.
She must have inherited her mother's temperament, because Reiner says he
was a
moody and shy child who showed no inclination toward comedy while growing
up in
the Bronx and New Rochelle, N.Y. He was born in 1947 in the proverbial
trunk
"It was stuffy in there," he says, "so they poked some holes in the top."
Ba-dum-PUM.
In the world outside, he was overwhelmed and overshadowed by his famous
father,
Carl Reiner. By the early '50s, the elder Reiner was all wrapped up in
"Your
Show of Shows" and apparently he wasn't exactly Superdad.
Of course, Rob resented the guy. But that's long over, he insists, having
spent
"millions of hours in therapy" exorcising his anguish. Besides, he later
tapped
into those experiences in "Stand by Me" (1986), an adaptation of a Stephen
King
novel that brought Reiner his first best-director nomination from the
Directors
Guild of America.
"It was the first time I made a film my father never would have made," he
says.
"A film that was a real extension of my personality. It was serious but had
some humor in it. It was about a boy who felt his father didn't love him,
and
was insecure about his abilities, and was encouraged by his friends to
pursue
what he was good at, and that was being a storyteller. I was well aware
that I
was taking steps away from my father. And when the movie became successful,
it
validated me."
The unvalidated Reiner had spent seven years in the '70s as Michael Stivic,
the
whipping boy of Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker on CBS's "All in the
Family."
He enjoyed the experience but dreamed of making the transition to the
sexier
silver screen.
Surely there's something he misses from the sitcom days.
"Hair! I miss my hair!" he exclaims. The joke is perfectly timed, and why
not?
"I was exposed to the funniest people in the world. Those rhythms are
embedded
in my psyche." Mel Brooks, Sid Caesar, Howard Morris and Imogene Coca were
frequent guests of the Reiners while he was a youngster. When the family
moved
to Beverly Hills, Rob spent his vacations on the set of "The Dick Van Dyke
Show" and first began to learn what audiences found funny.
In "The Story of Us," Reiner puts all these influences to work in the role
of
Willis's best friend, Stan, a loud fellow who believes women are from Venus
and
men are from hunger. To that end, he urges the hero, a childishly
self-absorbed
novelist, to examine the part he played in the gradual decline of his
marriage.
But Pfeiffer's character has become an uptight nag, as she discovers during
her
sabbatical from Willis and the children. Over time, she's become the
"designated driver" of the marriage, the one who keeps the refrigerator
filled
and gets the kids to school on time. Willis is fun-loving and spontaneous,
the
one who wrestles with the kids and plays the clown at birthday parties.
What initially attracted them to each other has gradually driven them
apart.
They may live together, but they've failed to grow together and no longer
know
how to reconnect.
"I think of women as the protectors of relationships and the family, and of
men
as more childish, quite frankly," Reiner says. "It's a general statement,
but
that's the way I view men and women because that's the way I think I am.
Women
are always more organized, and the men are kind of flopping around like me.
"My wife, Michele, is definitely more organized. She's ru