“When Harry Met Sally” and 5 other cult films by director Rob Reiner, who was found dead with his wife

Reiner told the British Film Institute (BFI) in 2022 that DiBergi was based on Martin Scorsese’s work in the film “The Last Waltz.”

“By and large it is,” he said. “He put himself into ‘The Last Waltz’ and I thought, ‘This is what I’m going to do.’ When he first saw it he was a little upset that I was making fun of him, but now, as the years have passed, he loves it. He came to love it.

Reiner once said that singer Sting told him that he had seen “This is Spinal Tap” 50 times. “Every time I see her, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” he told her.

Just a few months ago, Reiner reprized his role as DiBergi in Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, which he also directed.

This was followed in 1986 by the coming-of-age classic “Count On Me”.

Based on a short story by Stephen King, the film tells the story of a group of young friends in Oregon in 1959 who embark on a two-day journey to find the body of a missing child.

The film, which explored the bittersweet transition from childhood innocence to adulthood, helped establish characters like River Phoenix and Kiefer Sutherland as stars.

Reiner explained on the Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard: “This film was the most meaningful to me because it was the first time I did something so different than what my father (American comic actor and author Carl Reiner) would have done.”

“It was the first time that something really reflected my personality: it had humor but also some melancholy and nostalgia, so I thought: This is really what I want to do.”

Her next hit was the 1987 fantasy fairy tale “The Princess Bride,” based on a novel by William Goldman.

It took actors Robin Wright, Cary Elwes and Billy Crystal into a world of adventure, romance and satire.

A woman once told Reiner that the film saved her life, recounting how when she and several other skiers were caught in an avalanche, she recited every line from the film to stay awake and keep everyone else awake.

“That was the best sentence I’ve ever heard: ‘The prince’s bride saved my life,'” Reiner said diversity.

In 1989, Reiner set standards for the romantic comedy genre with “Harry and Sally.”

The film stars Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan as two decades-long friends and is one of the most iconic scenes in Hollywood history.

After Sally’s character fakes an orgasm in the middle of a restaurant to get her attention to Harry, another customer, played by Reiner’s mother Estelle, declares, “I’ll have the same thing as her!”

While directing the film, Reiner met photographer Michele Singer. This meeting influenced his decision to change the film’s ending.

He told it on Ted Danson’s podcast: “We started seeing each other while we were making this movie and one thing led to another and, well, I changed the ending.”

“I didn’t think I would be with anyone again, I didn’t know how to be with anyone, and I got to the point where Harry and Sally aren’t together anymore. They meet in New York, talk for a while and then go in opposite directions.”

“But I met Michele and said, ‘Well, I understand how this works,’ and I changed it. I reshot the ending where you see Billy running and seeing Meg at the New Year’s Eve party.”

Reiner and Singer married soon afterwards and had three children.

He was already married to the actress and director Penny Marshall in 1971 and adopted her daughter, the actress Tracy.

The director’s work took a darker turn in 1990 Misery, another adaptation of a King novel.

The film starred Kathy Bates, who played Annie Wilkes, a disturbed woman who imprisons her favorite author, played by James Caan.

Bates won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her frighteningly human performance.

During an appearance at San Diego Comic-Con earlier this year, Reiner recalled feeling at the time that Misery would be the only thriller he would make.

“But I studied Hitchcock,” he said. “I studied every thriller I could find to figure out what the grammar of cinematic thrillers was.”

Bates, then a stage actress, feared she had ruined her audition on the big screen. However, the director had no such concerns.

“He read about two or three lines, I think, and I said, ‘Stop it, you can do this,'” Reiner said, according to the deposition Weekly entertainment. “But she said, ‘What do you mean? I’ll leave her out.’ And I said, ‘No, no, you can do it, I know you can.'”

“Then she says, ‘Really?'” and as she leaves the room she asks me, ‘Can I call my mom?'”

The 1992 courtroom drama “A Cuestión de Honor” (“Some Good Men” in Spain) was about the military trial of two marines over the death of a comrade.

Reiner directed Hollywood stars Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Kevin Bacon as well as Jack Nicholson.

Nicholson played a colonel who, during his testimony, uttered the immortal line: “You can’t handle the truth!”

The actor enjoyed saying this line so much that he even enthusiastically repeated it in every off-camera shot as Reiner filmed Cruise’s character’s reaction.

“Every time we shot the scene, Jack did it perfectly,” Reiner said with a laugh. “After a few takes, I said, ‘Jack, maybe you’d like to save some of this for when we record you.’ And he said, ‘Rob, you don’t understand, I love acting.'”

The film received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.

Away from the screen, Reiner was also known for his political and social activism, often speaking out on issues such as climate change and gun control.

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 on Monday, Los Angeles-based entertainment journalist KJ Matthews described him as “a big-hearted genius who is responsible for so many of the classic stories we love”.

“Many people were touched by him and his generosity,” he said.

“He was known for advocating for members of the LGBTQ+ community and trying to help low-income people in various Los Angeles neighborhoods.”

“So he wasn’t just a figure who was in front of the camera and producing, someone who was known for giving us great films over the years… He was truly a humanitarian.”

Reiner campaigned for early childhood education and health care as well as gay rights.

His other films include Homecoming (1994), starring Elijah Wood, and My Dear President (1995), starring Michael Douglas and Annette Bening; and “Ghosts of the Past” (1996), about the trial of Byron De La Beckwith, who murdered civil rights activist Medgar Evers.

The filmmaker found form again after several commercial failures with Before I Part (2007), in which Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play two terminally ill men who set out to fulfill their ambitions before they die.

In 2015, the semi-autobiographical film Being Charlie, co-written by Reiner’s son Nick, explores the painful relationship between a young man affected by addiction and his father.

Two years later, Reiner directed and appeared in the 2017 film “Unveiling the Truth,” which was about a group of reporters covering the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

He also played the father of Zooey Deschanel’s character New girl and exuberant versions of himself on television shows such as “Hannah Montana,” “Wizards of Waverly Place,” “30 Rock,” and Cheerful.

Reiner, who also appeared as a film studio manager in the 2020 miniseries Hollywood He once said, “If you are a creative person, you try to create things that are an extension of yourself.”

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