What links the following films: This Is Spinal Tap (1984), The Sure Thing (1985), Stand By Me (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), When Harry Met Sally (1989), Misery (1990) and A Few Good Men (1992)? Not subject, not style. Greatness? The list certainly contains Top Ten entries for comedy, romance and courtroom films.
The answer is that they were all directed by one man, Rob Reiner, who died at the weekend. The circumstances of his death are, at the time of writing, unclear. Let us instead remember the work he gave us. Because that list is one of the greatest and most versatile runs of films by a director in the history of cinema.
I saw only one of these, A Few Good Men, in the cinema. Did I recognise Reiner’s name? I was certainly familiar with his work. By 1992, I’d seen all the rest of the films, some of them several times. Reiner’s peak coincided with the great period of video rental: these were films you crowded round to someone’s house to watch. In my mind, there were ten teenage boys in a living room marking the end of GCSEs by watching When Harry Met Sally, our eyes like saucers and our minds racing with possibilities as Meg Ryan did her thing.
Reiner wasn’t a director of stylistic flashes, and perhaps that’s why his films are often remembered for the work of others: The Princess Bride is a William Goldman book and script, Stand by Me is a Stephen King short story, and gave us River Phoenix. A Few Good Men was Aaron Sorkin’s breakthrough, and Jack Nicolson’s triumph. When Harry Met Sally launched a decade of Nora Ephron and Meg Ryan.
No one should underestimate Reiner’s contribution
But no one should underestimate Reiner’s contribution. These were projects he picked and pushed for and nursed onto the screen. Golman was clear that it was Reiner who got Bride made. King had refused to let anyone film Misery because he didn’t like the films of his work. But he’d liked Stand By Me, so he agreed to let Reiner take it on. When Harry Met Sally is a film about Reiner’s friendship with Ephron. The ending was originally going to have the couple walking away from each other, because Reiner had lost hope in love. Then, on set, he met Michele Singer, who would become his wife – and who also died at the weekend – and he changed the ending, realising that perhaps men and women can be both friends and lovers.
Goldman is often credited with having given crucial advice to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck about Good Will Hunting. But the writer was clear that the credit belonged with Reiner. An early draft of the script had a spy subplot. “What Rob told them was this,” Goldman wrote. “Lose that aspect and stick with the characters… All I said was this: Rob’s dead right.”
The films weren’t all instant hits. Test audiences couldn’t understand Spinal Tap. Why make a film about a band no one had heard of? No one was sure who was supposed to go to The Princess Bride. Goldman’s memory was that Reiner hadn’t made an actual “hit” film until When Harry Met Sally. Even that was far from the Top 10 films of 1989, making a third of the gross of the year’s top romantic comedy. Which was, no peeking… Look Who’s Talking. When was the last time you watched, or thought about, Look Who’s Talking? The last time I thought about When Harry Met Sally was yesterday, because a friend was watching it.
But the films all found their audiences, drawn perhaps by one of the things that does unite these movies: a moral, humanistic outlook on life, perhaps: a belief that people are good, and decency will out. Anyone who creates hopes to make one thing that people love. That’s true, decades after they were made, of every film on that list. Reiner’s memory is a blessing.
