"While trying to process this month's seismically awful events-and while reading Dana's deeply insightful and moving words about Rob Reiner and what a generous, menschy, joyously committed force for cinematic and civic decency he was-I found myself, like just about everyone, navigating a personal flood of formative Reiner memories. It may be solipsistic, but it's also only natural, to flash back on our first encounter with an artist whose work means something to us"
"I thought about first seeing The Princess Bride as a kid, with a still-primitive grasp of how TV and movies worked, and feeling mostly confused about what that kid from The Wonder Years was doing in the same film with that guy from my dad's favorite TV show, Columbo. I was too young to grasp, let alone quote, any of William Goldman's immortal dialogue, though that would come later, and how."
"(Officiating my friends' wedding in my mid-20s, I kicked off my little homily with a hearty "Mawwiage! Mawwiage is what bwings us twogevah twoday." As they wished.) I thought about watching When Harry Met Sally ... with my college dormmates and screening a bunch of Meathead-and-Archie smackdowns from All in the Family in an Intro to TV class. I thought, of all things,"
Recent seismically awful events prompted reflection on Rob Reiner's cultural influence and the personal memories attached to his work. Early encounters with Reiner films like The Princess Bride produced childhood confusion about casting and later lifelong habit of quoting William Goldman. Wedding officiants have invoked Princess Bride lines as ritual humor. College viewings of When Harry Met Sally and All in the Family excerpts shaped classmates' understanding of television comedy. Reiner's acting in EDtv illustrated his ability to play a blowhard corporate producer whose public humiliation leads to a moral turn. Those varied experiences show Reiner's pervasive presence in American popular culture.
Read at Slate Magazine
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]