In the wake of this Hollywood titan’s sudden and tragic demise, we look back at the life and work of an artist whose life was powered by empathy and humour.
“It was the summer of 1959, a long time ago. But only if you measure it in terms of years.” Richard Dreyfuss is desolate-looking in a truck parked up somewhere pastoral and private. On the seat beside him is a newspaper with a violent front page headline.
Stand By Me is a film steeped in nostalgia for a time full of pleasures and sorrows. Rob Reiner’s visual language heightens the emotions so that we feel everything that 12-year-old Gordy, Chris, Teddy and Vern feel as they set off to find a dead body. Every episode in their odyssey feels more vivid than life itself. In retrospect, these were halcyon days, and now they seem more unreachable than ever because Gordy, now a grownup novelist, has read some terrible news. Per the 4 September 1985 edition of The Oregonian, “Attorney Christopher Chambers Fatally Stabbed In Restaurant“.
Rob Reiner – son of comedian Carl – was an actor before he became a director and is best known for a particularly hot streak of movies: This is Spinal Tap (1984) , Stand By Me (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), When Harry Met Sally (1989), Misery (1990) and A Few Good Men (1992). As Jim Hemphill wrote in his tender, astute tribute for IndieWire, Reiner was “weirdly both widely celebrated and a bit underrated”. A cross-genre versatility meant that he was not an easily branded auteur. He made emotionally shrewd choices that served a story and brought out all the good and truth there was to find within collaborators.
His most famous films had greater recognition than his own name did. At least they did until 14 December 2025 when the desperately tragic circumstances of his own death generated front page headlines across the world. As anyone reading this almost certainly knows by now, he and wife Michelle were found stabbed to death in their LA home. Their 32-year-old son Nick has since been charged with double murder.
Heartbroken tributes from an eclectic cross-section of public figures evoked a man who cultivated lasting friendships across show business and politics. For, although he remained an active and beloved figure in Hollywood after his pinnacle, cropping up in cameos in everything from The Wolf of Wall Street to The Bear he also directed considerable resources towards activism for Democratic causes. He was part of a successful campaign to overturn the ban on gay marriage in California and got a tax passed on tobacco products that was used to fund early childhood development centres.
The enemies a man makes can be equally revealing of character. Not 24 hours after news of the double murder, the US President launched an execrable posthumous battle with Reiner’s memory, catalysing a deep bench of those compelled to speak publicly and warmly in his name. Even staunch Republican James Woods had this to say: “I judge people by how they treat me and Rob Reiner was a godsend in my life.”
There were suddenly a lot of dark rabbit holes to go down that had little to do with his movies, although the moment I read about Reiner’s death, Stand By Me rose up like a melody that has never gone away. The nostalgia it depicts blurred with the nostalgia it conjures for the time when I first watched it.
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I was a child with a greedy eye for the forbidden fruit of cinema. My mother believed that television in all forms rotted the brain. So our set sat silently in the living room – save for when it flicked on for The 10 O’Clock News. It was a triumph whenever playdates at friends’ houses led to movie notches on my belt. There were two Australian brothers who lived around the corner from our house in Hackney. Thank you Ross and Nicky for a thorough education in Jaws: all four films and the book by Peter Benchley.
My mother relented whenever the listings (that she must have secretly perused) revealed films of irresistible quality. Maybe that was how I ended up watching Stand By Me. I was 11 or 12 and had previously enjoyed films as a form of glamorous adventure that would hopefully lead to clout amongst classmates. Stand By Me was the first film that I understood to be bigger and more slippery than pure entertainment. The melancholy it contained reflected something unbearable about the wider world. I knew this because of my obsession with River Phoenix who played the ill-fated Chris. His arc upset me and when I tried to calm down, I couldn’t, because the reality was no better. By the time I discovered River Phoenix he was already dead, forever preserved as a golden 23-year-old after overdosing on a speedball outside Johnny Depp’s club in Los Angeles.
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2016 gave us Being Charlie, a film that Nick Reiner co-wrote based on his experience of addiction, rehab, mental illness and father-son animus. Rob directed it and together they gave several interviews.
There are obvious reasons why it’s disturbing to watch this now and it’s tempting, of course, to look for signs of gestating tragedy. For all of this, a strange and stirring integrity is present. Rob Reiner, a warm and natural camera presence, a beloved and legendary director, is admitting to doubts about the way he handled his son’s addiction. Nick Reiner, a young man, an awkward and glazed camera presence, has no charm to turn on. This interview is uncomfortable and Rob isn’t resorting to razmataz to distract from that. He is more concerned with reaching his son than trying to look good. More than a Hollywood director, he seems like a dad.
The conversation eventually broadens out and Rob says, “Nick was saying that the film that he likes best of the ones I did was Stand By Me and that makes me feel good because that film was the first film that really reflected my personality more than anything I have done. It had a moodiness and a melancholy to it, but it also has laughs and there’s fun to it. That’s more my personality. I always see funny things and also sad things. I try to blend the two, if I can.”
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I put off rewatching Stand by Me for this piece for as long as I could. “Nostalgia can be dangerous when it’s up close. I don’t exactly know what I mean by that, but it feels true,” wrote Stephen King in an emotional piece published on December 16 called ‘What Rob Reiner Saw in Me’. In it he resurfaces how he felt on first watching Stand By Me, an adaptation of his novella ‘The Body’. “I was surprised by how deeply affected I was by its 89 minutes,” he said, “I’ve written a lot of fiction, but ‘The Body’ remains the only nakedly autobiographical story I’ve ever done. Those kids were my friends.”
There must have been a mutual deep affect, for when Reiner co-founded a production company, it was named Castle Rock after the small town that birthed Gordy, Chris, Teddy and Vern.
What surprised me when I “stopped being a pussy” (as one of the boys might say) and watched the film was how much I laughed. The blend of melancholy and fun that Reiner mentioned is in harmony. The way they roast each other is really fucking funny – still – and it is perfectly judged. Maybe, finally, this was the Reiner touch: he never allowed the humour to get in the way of their love.
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