Rob Reiner, son of a comedy giant who became one, too, dies at 78

AP 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 He was Reiner and his wife Michele Singer were uncovered dead Sunday at their home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles A law enforcement official briefed on the assessment proven that Reiner and Singer were the casualties The official could not publicly discuss details of the study and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Executives were assessing an apparent homicide explained Capt Mike Bland with the Los Angeles Police Department The Los Angeles Fire Department reported it responded to a health aid request shortly after p m Reiner grew up thinking his father Carl Reiner didn t understand him or find him funny But the younger Reiner would in multiple techniques 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 My father thought Oh my God this poor kid is worried about being in the shadow of a famous father Reiner revealed recalling the temptation to change his name to Minutes in October And he says What do you want to change your name to And I revealed Carl I just wished to be like him After starting out as a writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour Reiner s breakthrough came when he was at age cast in Norman Lear s All in the Family as Archie Bunker s liberal son-in-law Michael Meathead Stivic But by the s Reiner began as a feature film director churning out particular of the bulk beloved films of that or any era His first film the largely improvised cult classic This Is Spinal Tap remains the urtext mockumentary After the John Cusack summer comedy The Sure Thing Reiner made Stand By Me The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally a four-year stretch that resulted in a trio of American classics all of them among the greater part often quoted movies of the th century A legacy on and off screen 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 distributed the long-in-coming sequel Spinal Tap II The End Continues All the while Reiner was one of the film industry s most of 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 He also chaired the campaign for Prop a California initiative to fund early childhood advance services with a tax on tobacco products Reiner was also a critic of President Donald Trump That ran in the family too Reiner s father opposed the Communist hunt of McCarthyism in the s and his mother Estelle Reiner a singer and actor protested the Vietnam War If you re a nepo baby doors will open Reiner recounted the Guardian in But you have to deliver If you don t deliver the door will close just as fast as it opened All in the Family to Stand By Me Robert Reiner was born in the Bronx on March As a young man he swiftly set out to follow his father into entertainment He studied at the University of California Los Angeles film school and in the s began appearing in small parts in various television shows But when Lear saw Reiner as a key cast member in All in the Family it came as a surprise to the elder Reiner Norman says to my dad You know this kid is really funny And I think my dad noted What That kid That kid He s sullen He sits quiet He doesn t you know he s not funny He didn t think I was anyway Reiner described Minutes On All in the Family Reiner served as a pivotal foil to Carroll O Connor s bigoted conservative Archie Bunker Reiner was five times nominated for an Emmy for his performance on the show winning in and In Lear Reiner also located a mentor He called him a second father It wasn t just that he hired me for All in the Family Reiner narrated American Masters in It was that I saw in how he conducted his life that there was room to be an activist as well That you could use your celebrity your good fortune to help make various change Lear also helped launch Reiner as a filmmaker He put million of his own money to help finance Stand By Me Reiner s adaptation of the Stephen King novella The Body The movie about four boys who go looking for the dead body of a missing boy became a coming-of-age classic made breakthroughs of its young cast particularly River Phoenix and even earned the praise of King With his stock rising Reiner devoted himself to adapting William Goldman s s The Princess Bride a book Reiner had loved since his father gave him a copy as a gift Everyone from Fran ois Truffaut to Robert Redford had considered adapting Goldman s book but it ultimately fell to Reiner from Goldman s own script to capture the unique comic tone of The Princess Bride But only once he had Goldman s blessing At the door he greeted me and he mentioned This is my baby I want this on my tombstone This is my favorite thing I ve ever written in my life What are you going to do with it Reiner recalled in a Television Academy interview And we sat down with him and started going through what I thought should be done with the film Though only a modest success in theaters the movie starring Cary Elwes Mandy Patinkin Wallace Shawn Andr the Giant and Robin Wright would grow in stature over the years leading to countless impressions of Inigo Montoya s vow of revenge and the risky nature of land wars in Asia When Harry Met Sally Reiner was married to Penny Marshall the actor and filmmaker for years beginning in Like Reiner Marshall experienced sitcom fame with Laverne Shirley but exposed a more lasting legacy behind the camera After their divorce Reiner at a lunch with Nora Ephron suggested a comedy about dating In writing what became When Harry Met Sally Ephron and Reiner charted a relationship between a man and a woman played in the film by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan over the class of years Along the way the movie s ending changed as did particular of the film s indelible moments The famous line I ll have what she s having declared after witnessing Ryan s fake orgasm at Katz s Delicatessen was a suggestion by Crystal delivered by none other than Reiner s mother Estelle The movie s happy ending also had particular real-life basis Reiner met Singer a photographer on the set of When Harry Met Sally In they were wed They had three children together Nick Jake and Romy Reiner s subsequent films included another King adaptation Misery and a pair of Aaron Sorkin-penned dramas the military courtroom tale A Scarce Good Men and s The American President By the late s Reiner s films s Ghosts of Mississippi s The Bucket List no longer had the same success rate But he remained a frequent actor often memorably enlivening films like Sleepless in Seattle and The Wolf of Wall Street In he directed the documentary Albert Brooks Defending My Life In an interview earlier this year with Seth Rogen Reiner suggested everything in his career boiled down to one thing All I ve ever done is say Is this something that is an extension of me For Stand by Me I didn t know if it was going to be fruitful or not All I thought was I like this because I know what it feels like