Filmmaking legend Martin Scorsese has published a lovely tribute to Rob and Michele Reiner, who died this month, allegedly at the hands of their son, Nick. In an essay for The New York Times, the Oscar winner began, “Rob Reiner was my friend, and so was Michele. From now on, I’ll have to use the past tense, and that fills me with such profound sadness. But there’s no other choice.”
Scorsese reflects on meeting Rob Reiner in the early 1970s, and “Right away, I loved hanging out with Rob. We had a natural affinity for each other. He was hilarious and sometimes bitingly funny, but he was never the kind of guy who would take over the room. He had a beautiful sense of uninhibited freedom, fully enjoying the life of the moment, and he had a great barreling laugh.”
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He also reminisces about the pair being fellow New York transplants in Hollywood; the first time they met, when Reiner made a joke to the strains of War’s hit “The Cisco Kid”; casting Reiner in The Wolf of Wall Street; a funny moment during a Kennedy Center tribute; and his favorite Reiner films.
“We stayed in touch over the years and watched each other’s movies,” Scorsese wrote. “My own favorite among his pictures is ‘Misery,’ a very special film, beautifully acted by Kathy Bates and James Caan. But then, of course, there’s ‘This Is Spinal Tap.’ Somehow, that picture is in a class of its own. It’s a kind of immaculate creation. And a big part of the greatness of that film is Rob himself, as director and as actor.”
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Here’s how he finished the tribute: “What happened to Rob and Michele is an obscenity, an abyss in lived reality. The only thing that will help me to accept it is the passing of time. So, like all of their loved ones and their friends — and these were people with many, many friends — I have to be allowed to imagine them alive and well … and that one day, I’ll be at a dinner or a party and find myself seated next to Rob, and I’ll hear his laugh and see his beatific face and laugh at his stories and relish his natural comic timing, and feel lucky all over again to have him as a friend.”
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