Reiner, Rob

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    Rob Reiner on ‘the Greatest Single Performance’ in U.S. Cinema

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    The filmmaker says it’s one of Marlon Brando’s: “To this day I don’t know that there’s as good a performance as that.”Rob Reiner was well aware that the Christian nationalist movement had achieved considerable political clout.But he didn’t realize just how much until he started producing the documentary “God & Country.”Inspired by Katherine Stewart’s book “The Power Worshippers,” the film gives voice to prominent Christian leaders concerned about not only what the movement is doing to the United States, but also to Christianity itself.“We saw the success that they had in being able to overturn Roe v. Wade in promoting very conservative judges that got onto the Supreme Court,” said Reiner, 76, who is adamant that the film is not meant to be an attack on Christian communities in any way.In a video call from Los Angeles, Reiner, who will begin shooting a sequel to “This Is Spinal Tap” in March, reminisced about his movies “Stand by Me” and “The Princess Bride,” and spoke about why he can never get too much of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” blues guitarists and Marlon Brando. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1My Wife and KidsThat’s the most important to me. There’s that joke, “Nobody on their death bed ever said, ‘I should have spent more time at the office.’” Nobody says that.2My DadI was lucky to have a man in my life who conducted his career in a way that was very honorable and decent. I saw how he treated other people, and I saw how he handled his fame. People have always asked me, “Did he sit down and give you advice?” And I said, “No, he never gave me any advice. He just lived a certain way, and that was the best advice I could have gotten.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rob Reiner Remembers Norman Lear and ‘All in the Family’

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      With “All in the Family,” Lear “tapped into something that nobody had ever done before or even since,” the star of the hit sitcom said.Reflecting on Norman Lear’s death, Rob Reiner was understandably heartbroken on Wednesday. Not only because he loved Lear, whom he’d first met as an 8-year-old, like a second father, as Reiner put it, but because Lear exited this world during a resurgence of many of the problems he’d tried to air out and squash through his television shows — namely, intolerance and bigotry.“He just couldn’t believe that this was happening to America,” said Reiner, who had seen Lear several times in the past couple of months, in a phone interview on Wednesday. “He would always say, ‘This is not the America that I grew up in and that we fought for to preserve. Something’s happened to this country that’s gone so far away from everything it stands for.’”“We’d talk about this, and he would say, ‘It’s like Alice in Wonderland,’” said Reiner, 76, an Oscar-nominated director. Reiner won two Emmy Awards for playing the liberal son-in-law, Michael, of the close-minded racist Archie Bunker on Lear’s most famous sitcom, “All in the Family,” which ran from 1971 to 1979 on CBS.The show aired in the era of appointment viewing, when there were only a handful of TV channels and households across the United States tuned in to the same programs at the same time. The shifting habits of American viewers, who can much more easily silo themselves in echo chambers when it comes to viewing habits, has only contributed to the fracturing and divisions, Reiner said.Of about 200 million Americans in the 1970s, “we were seen by 40-45 million people every single week,” he said. “There was no TiVo. There was no DVR. If you wanted to watch it, you had to watch it when it was on. That meant that you had a shared experience with 40 million people in America.”No matter the issue that “All in the Family” dealt with on any given week — and it tackled thorny topics that would be considered contentious today: abortion, racism, gun rights — that issue would became water cooler talk the next morning. “You don’t have those kinds of communal experiences where you can talk to people,” Reiner said.“The country either sided with Archie or sided with Mike, and that made for great discussions,” he continued. Lear “definitely tapped into something that nobody had ever done before or even since.”Lear, who was 101 years old, drew inspiration from his favorite play: George Bernard Shaw’s “Major Barbara.” If you did not know that Shaw was a liberal, Reiner said, “you’d go to the play and you’d come away with the equal pro-war/antiwar — you’d come away with equal arguments on both sides, and it was made to spawn discussion.” And that’s what Lear wanted to do. “So he presented both sides. Archie had his side. And the character I played had my side, and we went at each other,” Reiner added.That approach would likely never gain ground today, Reiner said. “He put a racist out there and the way racists really talk. And now, if you said things like that, you would get canceled.”Lear would stir the pot. “He would ask us to look into ourselves and what did we think, what were our feelings about this. And we poured it into the show. So it made the show better. And he did that with everything he did. Fearless.”“This is the guy who — he flew 57 missions, bombing missions over Nazi Germany during the Second World War. And so he was scared enough in the sky,” Reiner said, adding that Lear was particularly disgusted by former President Donald Trump’s brand of politics. (“I don’t take the threat of authoritarianism lightly,” Lear wrote in The New York Times just last year.)Reiner reflected on comparisons between Trump and Archie Bunker. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser who remains an influential figure in right-wing circles, has playfully compared Bunker to Trump, at one point saying, “Dude, he’s Archie Bunker.”“I said, no, no, it’s not like Archie Bunker. Archie Bunker, he had conservative views and he certainly was racist and all those things, but he had a decent heart,” Reiner said. “You could argue with him. You could fight with him and stuff. You can’t do that now, and that’s the difference with him and Trump.”But it was Lear’s convictions and his desire to demystify tough topics that Reiner hopes will endure in the memories of Americans. “I’m going to miss him for a million reasons. He showed me the way, which is, you can take your fame and celebrity and you can do something with it, do something positive with it. And I learned from him.”“He always has hope. That’s what’s so great about him. He was a realist, but he also had hope that we would find the right path, and I still hope that we can,” Reiner went on. “He was a man who really cared about this country and wanted it to succeed and be a more perfect union and all that. And then we’re losing a guy, a real champion of America.” More

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      Rob Reiner Teases Details of ‘Spinal Tap’ Sequel

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      Speaking on a podcast this week, the director said Paul McCartney and Elton John will appear in the film, among other real musical stars.The director Rob Reiner has said that an upcoming sequel to his 1984 documentary parody “This Is Spinal Tap” is scheduled to begin shooting in late February and will feature Paul McCartney, Elton John and Garth Brooks, among other stars.“Spinal Tap” satirized a bungled tour by a fictitious British heavy-metal band of that name, as well as the process of documenting it. The film, which was mostly improvised, was inspired by “The Last Waltz,” a Martin Scorsese documentary about the rock group the Band.Plans for “Spinal Tap II” were first announced last year. The entertainment news outlet Deadline reported at the time that the members of the fictitious band — the actors Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer — would all return for the sequel. Over the years, the three have played real-life concerts as their Spinal Tap characters.Reiner announced new details about the “Spinal Tap” sequel during an episode of a podcast hosted by the comedian Richard Herring that was released on Monday. The film had initially been scheduled for release in 2024, but that was before strikes that disrupted filming schedules in Hollywood. No updated release date has been announced, according to Variety.Without elaborating, Reiner said that there would also be a few other surprise appearances in the film.For most of the podcast episode on Monday, Herring and Reiner mostly talked about Reiner’s new podcast, “Who Killed JFK?” But they also discussed the original “Spinal Tap” movie, his directorial debut, which Herring said was his favorite film of all time.Asked if he regretted anything about what was and wasn’t in the 1984 film, Reiner said no. And did he anticipate how influential it would prove to be? Also no.“When we first previewed it, we previewed it in a theater in Dallas, Texas, and people … they didn’t know what the heck they were looking at,” Reiner said.“They came up to me afterward and said, ‘I don’t understand. Why would you make a movie about a band that nobody’s ever heard of? And they’re so bad! Why would you do that?’” Reiner recalled. “They said, ‘You should make a movie about the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.’”“I said, ‘Well, it’s a satire,’” Reiner said on the podcast. “I tried to explain, you know. But over the years, people got it, and they started to like it.”Reiner’s comments on Herring’s podcast were reported earlier by the music magazine NME and other outlets. More

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      ‘Albert Brooks: Defending My Life’ Review: Revisiting Past Hilarity

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      This actor, comic, writer and director is seen in a cinematic retrospective that celebrates his talent, but not always in a critically discerning way.“Albert Brooks: Defending My Life,” a documentary about the venerable comedian, filmmaker, actor and writer, directed by his lifelong friend Rob Reiner, has the easy, amiable air of a career retrospective — wistful and hagiographic, it’s the kind of thing that usually accompanies a lifetime achievement award.Now 76, Brooks certainly deserves the recognition: the first four of the films he wrote and directed between 1979 and 2005, “Real Life,” “Modern Romance,” “Lost in America” and “Defending Your Life,” are among the finest American comedies ever made, and his trailblazing work on the late-night talk show circuit during the 1960s and 1970s had a seismic impact on the landscape of contemporary comedy. (To say nothing of his Academy Award-nominated turn in “Broadcast News,” a near-peerless masterpiece.)But there’s a reason we have comedy roasts, not toasts, as the rhapsodic tone of this film makes clear — breathless flattery just isn’t that interesting, no matter how funny the person receiving it. While Brooks deserves acclaim, he deserves it in a format as compelling and dynamic as he is. “Defending My Life” is simply too flat.Brooks and Reiner, lounging in a booth at Matteo’s Restaurant in Los Angeles, reminisce chummily about Brooks’s life and work, while an ensemble of comedy A-listers including Chris Rock, Ben Stiller, Jonah Hill and Larry David gush over his influence in a series of standard-issue talking head interviews. There are also clips from Brooks’s films and standup routines, which render much of the praise from the interviewees redundant. We don’t need to be told that Brooks is a genius. Even a brief glimpse of his work makes the case.Albert Brooks: Defending My LifeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. Watch on Max. More

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      Ric Parnell, Real Drummer in a Famous Fake Band, Dies at 70

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      The central characters in the mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap” were comic actors, but Mr. Parnell was an actual professional musician.Ric Parnell, a real drummer best known for playing in a fake band, the one chronicled in Rob Reiner’s fabled 1984 mockumentary, “This Is Spinal Tap,” died on May 1 in Missoula, Mont., where he had lived for some two decades. He was 70.His partner, McKenzie Sweeney, confirmed the death. She said a blood clot in his lungs led to organ failure.Mr. Parnell had been in several bands, including the British prog-rock outfit Atomic Rooster, when he auditioned for “This Is Spinal Tap,” a deadpan sendup of rock clichés, and got the role of the drummer, Mick Shrimpton. The central band members, though, weren’t primarily musicians, though they had musical ability; they were comic actors — Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer. Mr. Reiner played the role of Marty DiBergi, a documentarian recording what turns out to be a disastrous tour by Spinal Tap, a heavy metal band that is past its prime and poorly managed.Mr. McKean said Mr. Parnell fit in seamlessly.“He looked perfect, all hair and cheekbones, but he also got the joke and knew to play the reality without comment,” he said by email. “And he was a great drummer in the tradition of his hero, John Bonham” — the drummer for Led Zeppelin.“Onstage,” Mr. McKean added, “he was the best kind of monster; offstage, a very nice, very funny guy.”Mr. Parnell had only a few lines in the movie, but he was pivotal to one of its funniest gags: Drummers for the band had a habit of dying in bizarre and unpleasant ways. In one scene, he lounges in a bathtub while Marty DiBergi asks him if he’s bothered by that history.“It did kind of freak me out a bit, but it can’t always happen,” Mick says, and Marty agrees, telling him, “The law of averages says you will survive.”The law of averages, alas, was wrong — near the end of the film, Mick spontaneously combusts onstage. When the film developed such a cult following that the fake band went on tour in the early 1990s, playing actual shows, that necessitated a tweaking of Mr. Parnell’s persona — he was now Rick Shrimpton, the twin brother of the deceased Mick.Life almost imitated art in mid-1992, when Mr. Parnell fell down some stairs while hurrying to a sound check as the band was rehearsing in Los Angeles. He injured an ankle.“Despite the odds of meeting with death by remaining with Spinal Tap,” a publicist for the band said at the time, “he’s looking forward to continuing the tour.”That “Return of Spinal Tap” tour eventually took the group to the Royal Albert Hall in London, a pinch-me moment for the British-born Mr. Parnell as he waited to go on alongside Mr. Shearer.“I remember during ‘The Return of Spinal Tap’ standing backstage with Harry and hearing the Albert Hall crowd just chanting, ‘Tap!’ ‘Tap!’ ‘Tap!’ ‘Tap!,’” Mr. Parnell told The Missoula Independent in 2006. “I turned to Harry and I said, ‘Come on, now. We’re a joke! Don’t they know that?’ It was just amazing how quite massive it all became.”The members of Spinal Tap, from left: Christopher Guest, Mr. Parnell, David Kaff, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean.Aaron Rapoport/Corbis/Getty ImagesAbout two decades ago, Mr. Parnell settled into a much quieter sort of life in Missoula, where for a time he had a radio show called “Spontaneous Combustion” on KDTR-FM, on which he told stories and indulged his eclectic musical tastes. For one show he played only artists who were alumni of Antelope Valley High School in California, among them Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart.“I get to play what I want, do whatever I want — all as long as I don’t swear,” he told The Independent. “That’s the only hard part.”Richard John Parnell was born on Aug. 13, 1951, in London to Jack and Monique (Bonneau) Parnell. His father was a composer, conductor and drummer, and he said that drumming came naturally from a young age.“I got it from my dad,” he told The Missoulian in 2007. “I could sit down at the drum kit and play a beat straight away.”Lessons, he said, were not his thing; he learned by playing in groups.“Over the years, I’ve built up a technique,” he told the newspaper. “I get drummers saying, ‘How did you do that?’ I say, ‘I have no idea. I’m just hitting.’ I wouldn’t know a paradiddle from a flam-doodlehead.”His father, who worked as musical director or in other capacities on numerous television shows, sometimes added to his education by taking him to the set. He recalled sitting at the feet of Jimi Hendrix when he performed on the singer Dusty Springfield’s British TV series in 1968.Mr. Parnell’s own career was starting about the same time. He recalled touring with Engelbert Humperdinck as a teenager. He joined Atomic Rooster in 1970, and then came a stint with an Italian group, Ibis. In 1977 he moved to the United States with a band called Nova, which settled in Boulder, Colo.He played numerous studio sessions over the years and can be heard on records by Beck, Toni Basil and others. For a time he toured with the R&B saxophonist Joe Houston. They would stop every year for a few shows in Missoula before heading into Canada to tour there. But, as Mr. Parnell often told the story, one year the group didn’t have the right paperwork to cross the border and had to extend its stay in Missoula.“I basically got stuck here and then didn’t want to leave,” he told The Independent. “I’d always liked this place — it’s like Boulder in the 1970s, when I first came to the states. I became a Missoulian instantly.”Mr. Parnell was married and divorced four times. In addition to Ms. Sweeney, he is survived by two brothers, Will and Marc, and two stepsisters, Emma Parnell and Sarah Currie.Over the last two decades he could often be found playing with one group or another at local spots in Missoula. In 2004, a writer for The Missoulian asked if he, as an accomplished musician, ever got tired of being recognized only for his joke band.“No, not really,” he said. “Really it’s quite nice to be a part of such a legendary thing.” More