The movie Rob Reiner considered his masterpiece: “The one that means the most to me”
Most directors would be thrilled to direct just one movie that left an indelible imprint on popular culture, but Rob Reiner turned it into the habit of a lifetime, helming several genre-spanning films that have become iconic in their own right.
His feature-length debut, This Is Spinal Tap, may not have been cinema’s first mockumentary, but it was by far the most influential. More than 40 years after its initial release, you can still state a very strong case for the 1984 classic continuing to reign supreme as the subgenre’s finest-ever effort.
The Princess Bride is one of the most beloved and endlessly quotable fantasy capers of all time. When Harry Met Sally… is one of Hollywood’s definitive rom-coms that seeped into the cultural consciousness and refused to disappear, and Misery endures as one of the top-tier Stephen King adaptations, with Reiner steering Kathy Bates to an Academy Award win for ‘Best Actress’.
That’s without even mentioning A Few Good Men, which boasts one of the most unforgettable courtroom scenes ever captured on film when Jack Nicholson informs everyone in attendance that they, in fact, cannot handle the truth, while 2007’s The Bucket List united Nicholson and Morgan Freeman for a dramedy that may not have set the world on fire, but was nonetheless absorbed into the zeitgeist, thanks to its title.
What’s even more impressive is that with the exception of the latter, Reiner made all of those pictures within the space of eight years, and it’s undoubtedly one of the hottest streaks any filmmaker has ever been on behind the camera. Of course, there was one more classic that he directed during that period, and it his other King adaptation, which he anointed as his masterpiece.
“People always ask me, ‘What’s your favourite?’ I don’t know that it’s the best film or not, but Stand by Me, of all of the films that I’ve made, it’s certainly the one that means the most to me, because it was the first time I made a film that was really reflective of my personality and my sensibility,” he told The AV Club.
The film’s “mixture of melancholy and humour” allowed Reiner to inject more of himself into the production than he’d done before, and for the next four decades, it remained unsurpassed as the one entry in his back catalogue that he was proudest of. If anyone asked him to name one movie of his that he wanted people to see to understand who he was as an auteur, the answer remained Stand by Me.
“It meant a lot to me that people liked it,” he explained. “Because I thought, if they don’t like this, then they’re not going to like the kinds of things that I’m interested in, which is to try and blend these more serious, darker things with humour. And any time a movie lasts, it’s really a thrill. I mean, that people can still pick up on it, and still enjoy it, that makes you feel great.”
Second-generation talents typically face more pressure to succeed based on their lineage, but Reiner effortlessly stepped out of his father, Carl’s, shadow to kick off his directorial career with a remarkable bang by directing seven great movies in a row, at least five of which can be called stone-cold classics, if not more.
