THIS POLL GOES TO ELEVEN: THE ROB REINER DIRECTORIAL POLL

Early peaker. Should probably be sentenced to death for "Bucket List" but pardoned for "Spinal Tap"

As much as I love The Princess Bride (and A Few Good Men), it's got to be Spinal Tap.

I'll rep for Princess Bride if no one else is.

Early peaker. Should probably be sentenced to death for "Bucket List" but pardoned for "Spinal Tap"

YOU SNOTTY BASTARD

http://www.jack-nicholson.info/media/ms/fgm11.jpg

I actually never knew he directed A Few Good Men.

clearly YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

i deserve to be shot for that

Watching A Few Good Men, I'm not sure it was directed.

yeah its stage origins are readily apparent.

I vote Spinal Tap, but am pretty sure Reiner was not really the one holding the reins on that one.

I need to *ahem* "rescreen" Stand By Me.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

wow what a horrible track record

I watched Stand By Me a few months ago (before they started running it on AMC every other weekend). It is not that good, apart from a few sequences where River and Cory get to emote. Its funny how there is not a single female character.

well, in Reiner and Stephen King's minds, maybe Phoenix is supposed to be teh fag.

dude it doesn't get any gayer than Wesley Crusher does it?

"You fuckin' people."

http://www.ravenna.com/~forbes/images/fewgoodmen.jpg

The Bucket List was horrible even on a plane with the sound off.

roflz I am totally stealing that line the next time I have to sit through something awful

I am Rob Reiner-free since '92.

just to echo everyone else, crazy how bad most of his stuff is considering he's behind a couple real stone classics. got a real soft spot for princess bride (peter falk! wallace shawn!) but i guess it's gotta be spinal tap. his introduction to that is pretty f'in classic.

The Story of Us is a grim thing to endure on a cold winter's night.

Spinal Tap
Princess Bride
When Harry Met Sally
Cliff

The Story of Us is a grim thing to endure on a cold winter's night.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, September 17, 2008 1:50 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hahaha oh god.

Watched The Sure Thing a couple months back and it's OK. Straight-up meat-and-potatoes John Cusack comedy

that was, in fact, the first film that let Cusack be Cusack, and I might put it third behind Stand by Me (good of its type) and Tap (which tho funny = shooting fish in a barrel).

The Princess Bride is arch, I prefer that stuff played straight.

I have no problem watching A Few Good Men – serviceable, mindless, juicy.

however, I triple-dog dare anyone to watch North.

I couldn't watch A Few Good Men again, esp if someone put Cruise's drunk scene on a loop: "ZIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH!"

Kevin Bacon rules in it in a nothing part, however; no wonder miles Davis loved him.

Bacon's fine, and so's J.T. Walsh.

but, yeah, if someone conducted a poll of worst drunk scenes, Cruise's would make the cut.

I voted for Stand By Me. Maybe it had something to do with me being three months away from turning 13 when I first saw it. One of the only Stephen King stories I've ever really enjoyed. And Keifer was meaner in this one than he was in The Lost Boys.

A Few Good Men could've benefited from a pie-eating contest scene as well.

sure thing is toback manqué

isn't Demi Moore's part in AFGM originally a man?

stand by me, princess bride, spinal tap, even when harry met sally are just SUCH childhood favourites of mine, it's hard to look at them with any perspective. he was pretty good in the 80s.

ugh When Harry Met Sally. that's where it all went wrong.

I hope your parents showed you Annie Hall and Manhattan before When Harry Met Sally. "And this is how we learn what a ripoff is."

"Bad, BAD Nora Ephron!"

of course... i still dug it as a kid tho

i dont think i had any idea what any of it meant of course... weird how many movies i LOVED as a kid that went mostly over my head

Morbz OTM re: shitty woody allen ripoffs. not to mention the faked orgasm scene that's stolen from Reiner's dad's film, All of Me.

(All of Me faked orgasm scene also has a better punchline)

In pretty much all those '80s films Reiner is trying to not get in the way of the script and actors. After that, fire should've gotten to the scripts.

MAN did he get so bad. i think alex & emma might be the worst movie i have ever seen.

Just look at Misery – it's impossible to tell James Caan and Kathy Bates apart.

misery is pretty good.

I just bought Stand By Me the other day. It was in the $5 bin at Wal-Mart and I figured it was cheap enough to justify buying it to see if I liked it or not.

When I was in middle school, it was a huge favorite of mine. I probably checked it out a dozen times from the library. It led to lots of weekend adventures following train tracks with my friends. Haven't had the chance to review it yet though.

I'll be boring and pick Spinal Tap.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

however, I triple-dog dare anyone to watch North.

Never seen it, but I have a vivid memory of reading Ebert's review.

I forget if it was Reiner or Stephen King or someone else close to the movie (maybe Lynda Obst?) who talked about the groupthink of "movie jail" at the time (not being hire-able after a turkey or two), who mentioned that no one even considered Richard Gere for Misery (which he would've been amazing in) because it was before his Pretty Woman comeback.

Richard Gere in the Kathy Bates role?

Been trying to convince my 11yo to watch The Princess Bride for years, no dice, tempted to give up and start campaigning for her to watch It's A Wonderful Life with me instead.

― I said awfully coy u are. (stevie), Monday, December 15, 2025 2:28 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I asked my daughter to watch that movie with me for many years, but she never bit. One day, we were hanging out on the couch together, she was on her tablet playing video gamess, and I was like "you can just keep doing what you're doing, but I'm going to watch The Princess Bride. It'll just be on in the background." She immediately left the room and didn't return until the movie was over.

I took my kids to a theatrical screening of it when they were maybe a little too young to fully engage. They thought some parts were funny and were clearly bored by other parts.

Honestly, it's not like Caan was at the top of his game or anything, either, but I think he's great in it. The scene where he is pleading politely but clearly panicking before he is hobbled ... "Annie, whatever you're thinking about doing ..." I've never seen Gere in vulnerable mode, I don't think.

Gere would have been great in the Bates role!!!

The ending with Sad Nostalgic Richard Dreyfus typing nostalgic thoughts on his computer needed to get scissored out.

Reading this now I think I probably merged this scene with Daniel Stern's narration of The Wonder Years and unfairly misremembered it as being a bigger part of SBM. I also watched Dogfight for the first time the other day (omg so good!) and have been intending to rewatch some River Phoenix.

SBM is a movie that absolutely didn't need the narration at any point, it felt a bit cloying in a way that the rest of the movie wasn't. but it wasn't so bad that it had a major effect on the film, it was just thoroughly unnecessary for the most part.

. I also watched Dogfight for the first time the other day (omg so good!) and have been intending to rewatch some River Phoenix.

Nancy Savocs forever!

The Princess Bride, the book, is for adults*. The movie is all-ages, not for kids.

*so, fine for teens who’ve read widely.

It was Goldman btw who told the Gere/Misery story, in Which Lie Did I Tell?

I was eleven and already a Stephen King when Stand By Me came out, like I'm not even sure if I can articulate what absolute lock that movie had on me & my friends especially by the following summer when it had come out on home video and we had watched it zillion times, that movie truly stamped itself on my brain.

My late cousin was around the same age as you. When she was a tween, her faves were Labyrinth, Stand By Me, and The Princess Bride. I’m both really missing her right now and kind of relieved she didn’t experience this loss herself.

I don’t think WHMS is anything like a Woody Allen movie.

Well, I mean, it's a *little* like a Woody Allen movie, lol, come on. Anyway:

https://wilwheaton.net/2025/12/this-is-such-a-painful-loss-my-heart-is-broken/

damn. that one messed me up.

Nora Ephron was writing that way, with that voice (in her journalism, anyway) before Annie Hall

this thread is inspiring me to track down Stand by Me... if I saw it then, I've mostly forgotten it and keep conflating it with the Altman film where Huey Lewis finds a body in the river on the fishing trip

Can't find it on YouTube, but he had a good cameo on Larry Sanders (the charity benefit episode).

also loved him in New Girl as Deschanel’s Dad.

A lovely statement given the source.

this thread is inspiring me to track down Stand by Me... if I saw it then, I've mostly forgotten it and keep conflating it with the Altman film where Huey Lewis finds a body in the river on the fishing trip

― Andy the Grasshopper, Monday, December 15, 2025 7:35 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i need to go back and watch OC and Stiggs

Huey Lewis finds a body in the river

they say the heart of this young woman's not beatin

The kids in Stand By Me didn't fuck the dead body iirc

how did I forget Reiner was in Wolf of Wall Street.

lots of details coming out about the night of the murders:

The three Reiners attended Conan O’Brien’s gathering together. One person said Nick Reiner had at least one interaction that left partygoers concerned.

He is alleged to have interrupted a conversation involving comedian Bill Hader. When Hader told him the conversation was private, the source said, Nick Reiner appeared to stand still and stare before “storming off.”

they also seem to be uncovering photos of him where he looks like a total psycho rather than a bookish indie content creator

Every family photo I've seen picked up in the press has Nick looking like a total psycho, across different decades and in different styles of hair and dress. Basically everyone smiles or at least looks happy, and he looks disconnected and unpleasant like something's wrong. With the benefit of hindsight, Rob Reiner and Nick Reiner's PR appearances for the film they made together comes off as terribly unsettling, where Nick Reiner has convinced his father that he should be listening to his crazed and violent son and not to any of the professional help his father has consulted, where it's his father that's wrong for putting him into rehab when rehab "doesn't work for me." The film (which Nick Reiner wrote) sounds self-serving in that regard, and I don't think I'd have the stomach to see it now. The fact that he now has the same lawyer that represented Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein feels terribly appropriate - I imagine he's going to plead not guilty.

One unnamed source apparently said that Nick Reiner had “always been hostile and volatile” toward his family over the years, that his “problems were going on for so long, so while everyone is in a state of shock right now, it’s not entirely surprising...A lot of his anger was directed at his parents for many, many years. They did everything a parent could possibly do to help him. Even in his younger years, they really tried to get him help.”

i.e. 'We Need To Talk About Nick'

Not really looking forward to the weeks ahead of mass quarterbacking of what family members should do (or, worse, should have done) when one of them is an addict.

Obviously addiction and mental illness feed off each other, but from the little that's out there his mental illness seems very deep. Sad and scary in any family.

I was struck by this piece in the LA Times, about the film alluded to above:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-rob-reiner-nick-romy-toronto-drug-addiction-20150915-story.html

Rob Reiner seems to put the blame for his son's addiction on himself. And the intended message - that traditional rehab is bogus - doesn't have the same impact now that it did in 2015. Bizarrely Cary Elwes plays the Rob Reiner figure, although in the film he's an actor rather than a director.

"Self-involved and at times harsh toward his son, Elwes' Rob Reiner stand-in is decidedly unsympathetic. The actor incarnated the character in this manner even while the man he was playing was a few feet away from him, helming the scene. "There were times when I would want to tone it down and Rob would just tell me, 'No, turn it up.' He would tell me he didn't handle it well and we had to show that.

One striking aspect of the film is how little it seems to value traditional recovery wisdom. Though the counselors all mean well, they have little success in reaching Charlie, who remains skeptical of the system even at a moment when many other movie protagonists give in to it.

"The program works for some people but it can't work for everybody," Rob said. "When Nick would tell us that it wasn't working for him, we wouldn't listen. We were desperate and because the people had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them when we should have been listening to our son." Michele added: “We were so influenced by these people. They would tell us he's a liar, that he was trying to manipulate us. And we believed them."

A climactic scene in which David apologized to Nick for being cruel in pushing his son toward recovery - "I'd rather you hate me and you be alive," essentially - was taken almost verbatim from their own lives, and in fact developing the movie helped them achieve that level of communication."

Every family photo I've seen picked up in the press has Nick looking like a total psycho, across different decades and in different styles of hair and dress.

Sorry but I'm with Eazy here, and I gotta push back against this kind of reductiveness. There are a number of photos across the years where he's in with his family, smiling and looking well, and it's too easy to look at the 'bad' photos and immediately draw conclusions. There was an interview with Barry Markowitz, well established cinematographer who worked with Reiner on a variety of his films (including Being Charlie) and was a longtime friend, and who had stayed recently at the Reiner home in November while he was in town for a premiere. Markowitz was clearly very distraught, but said repeatedly that Nick seemed very well, was helping out with chores and things in the house, that there was laughter and love, and so forth.

Apologies, point taken and I concede I got carried away with making judgments based on photos that obviously could have been cherry-picked and not accurately reflect the complexities of the family's relationships.

All four of Nick Reiner's appearance on the Dopey podcast have been compiled into one long episode. It's grim listening. He talks about the 17 different rehabs he went to and is perceptive about economics and dogma of the recovery industry but never breaks out of the high schoolish "I know what they're all about maaaan" attitude. Elsewhere he's been described as a writer, but in these interviews he doesn't offer up any evidence that he's interested in anything other than continuing to be a nihilistic drug fiend with the means to sustain the addiction/mental illness feedback loop.

When he talks about the first time he got caught, there's a sense that things could have gone another less-tragic way. I would have liked to believe him, but his words are indistinguishable from the meandering justifications of junkie talk. If I was listening to this in 2018, I would have assumed that he would have OD'ed or committed suicide by now.

The most chilling part of the conversations is when the talk turns to cocaine and meth-induced paranoid psychosis. According to Barry Markowitz, Nick Reiner self-reported that he (NR) been clean for several years. This is only my theory, but I believe NR decided to full-strength speedball his way through a stressful event (like, say, a holiday party with lots of famous people) and had a total psychotic break. I suspect the defense's argument at trial will be similar.

Because we can't stop talking about the murders, we watched Being Charlie last night. Midway through I blurted out "does Rob Reiner hate his son?" before the story sinks into a Hollywood addiction/redemption story seemingly at odds with the lived reality of those who are in it. In that Dopey interview, NR says that the movie was a mistake that didn't bring he and his dad together but drove them further apart and I can see how that's the case.

I can't imagine he hated his son. I can imagine his role as a parent was very painful and frustrating, agonising even. But it seemed - from a very facile perspective, no real insight here - like he loved his son very much. I think recent history is littered with people struggling with addiction that their friends, families, etc, weren't able to 'rescue'. I can't imagine what that must feel like, the powerlessness of it. I hope I never experience it, as a parent myself. But even in my very limited experience of parenting a superstar kid, the limits of your protection, your - for want of a better word - control over your kid is very humbling, and not a little terrifying. And I can't imagine how it must feel, to have a kid stumble into addiction, to try every option your money can buy to treat it in the ways our culture recognises as healthy, and for all those methods to prove useless, and perhaps even more damaging.

I think recent history is littered with people struggling with addiction that their friends, families, etc, weren't able to 'rescue'.

by which I mean celebs. the idea that Kurt Cobain's management, or Amy's father, were perpetuating their golden goose's addiction for their own benefit seems a less compelling theory to me than sometimes it's really fucking hard to save someone from themselves.

i really hesitate to say too much about this specific thing because it feels gross to gawk, but one thing this brings to mind is that sometimes codependent relationships can keep an addict from ever reaching "rock bottom". ofc sometimes that's not what's going on at all.

Hi Map, can you explain a bit what you mean with that last sentence?

sometimes it's really fucking hard to save someone from themselves.

I've had cause to think about this in particular these last couple of months, and I know Elvis T. is of the same mind. It's incredibly hard to see.

Sorry if this has been noted already--kind of amazing. (Remember the episode well.)

https://ew.com/rob-reiner-and-anthony-geary-shared-scene-on-all-in-the-family-11869911

Hi Map, can you explain a bit what you mean with that last sentence?

― thono, Thursday, December 18, 2025 4:56 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

mainly it's a hedge because i really don't know anything about this relationship or dynamic at all. there is just a faint whiff of what i've gleaned from the story that brings to mind something i've noticed, in my own experience, which is that sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do for someone is remove yourself from their life.

but addiction is weird and gnarled and stubborn of course. a big complicated knot unique to each individual. so much of what works for some does not work for others.

also I have a feeling “rock Bottom” is different for different people.

Gonna watch When Harry Met Sally for the first time in 30 years.

Looking forward to your thoughts in 2056!

lol

lol x2