Rob Reiner Dead at 78

Rob Reiner, the son of a comedy giant who went on to become one himself as one of the preeminent filmmakers of his generation with movies such as The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally..., and This Is Spinal Tap, has died, the AP reports. He was 78. Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer, were found dead Sunday at their home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. (More on their deaths here.) Reiner grew up thinking his father, Carl Reiner, didn't understand him or find him funny. But the younger Reiner would in many ways follow in his father's footsteps, working both in front and behind the camera, in comedies that stretched from broad sketch work to accomplished dramedies.

• After starting out as a writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Reiner's breakthrough came when he was, at age 23, cast in Norman Lear's All in the Family as Archie Bunker's liberal son-in-law, Michael "Meathead" Stivic.
• But by the 1980s, Reiner began as a feature film director, churning out some of the most beloved films of that, or any, era. His first film, the largely improvised 1984 cult classic This Is Spinal Tap, remains the urtext mockumentary. After the 1985 John Cusack summer comedy, The Sure Thing, Reiner made Stand By Me (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), and When Harry Met Sally... (1989), a four-year stretch that resulted in a trio of American classics, all of them among the most oft-quoted movies of the 20th century.

• For the next four decades, Reiner, a warm and gregarious presence on screen and an outspoken liberal advocate off it, remained a constant fixture in Hollywood. The production company he co-founded, Castle Rock Entertainment, launched an enviable string of hits, including Seinfeld and The Shawshank Redemption. By the turn of the century, its success rate had fallen considerably, but Reiner revived it earlier this decade. This fall, Reiner and Castle Rock released the long-in-coming sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.
• All the while, Reiner was one of the film industry's most passionate Democrat activists, regularly hosting fundraisers and campaigning for liberal issues. He was co-founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which challenged in court California's ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8. He also chaired the campaign for Prop 10, a California initiative to fund early childhood development services with a tax on tobacco products. Reiner was also a critic of President Trump. Activism ran in the family, too. Reiner's father opposed the Communist hunt of McCarthyism in the 1950s and his mother, Estelle Reiner, a singer and actor, protested the Vietnam War.

• Reiner was married to Penny Marshall, the actor and filmmaker, for 10 years beginning in 1971. Like Reiner, Marshall experienced sitcom fame, with Laverne & Shirley, but found a more lasting legacy behind the camera. He adopted her daughter Tracy, and later had three children, Jake, Nick, and Romy, with Michele Singer, whom he met while filming When Harry Met Sally..., Variety reports.