Martin Scorsese has penned an emotional tribute to the late Hollywood director Rob Reiner, describing him as a “master”.
The 78-year-old filmmaker – known for classics including This Is Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery and A Few Good Men – was found murdered alongside his wife, 70-year-old photographer Michele Singer Reiner, in their Los Angeles home on December 14.
Reiner was also a celebrated comic actor and Scorsese directed him in his 2013 film The Wolf Of Wall Street, in which Reiner played Max Belfort, the father of Leonardo DiCaprio’s lead character Jordan Belfort.
Scorsese has written an essay for the New York Times in which he outlines his relationship with Reiner, who he first met in the 1970s. “Rob Reiner was my friend, and so was Michele,” he wrote. “From now on, I’ll have to use the past tense, and that fills me with such profound sadness. But there’s no other choice.”
“Right away, I loved hanging out with Rob. We had a natural affinity for each other. He was hilarious and sometimes bitingly funny, but he was never the kind of guy who would take over the room. He had a beautiful sense of uninhibited freedom, fully enjoying the life of the moment, and he had a great barrelling laugh,” he added.
Scorsese named his favourite of Reiner’s films as Misery, the 1990 adaptation of the Stephen King thriller, calling it “a very special film, beautifully acted by Kathy Bates and James Caan”, while he also described This Is Spinal Tap as being “in a class of its own” and “a kind of immaculate creation”.
Speaking about directing him in The Wolf Of Wall Street, he added: “He could improvise with the best, he was a master at comedy, he worked beautifully with Leo and the rest of the guys, and he understood the human predicament of his character: The man loved his son, he was happy with his success, but he knew that he was destined for a fall.”
A day after the couple’s bodies were found, their 32-year-old son Nick Reiner was arrested in connection with their deaths, and he has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder with “special circumstances”. His charges could carry a life sentence or the death penalty under California law.
Their death certificates state that their deaths were due to “multiple sharp force injuries”, with circumstances described as “homicide”, “with knife, by another”.
Tributes have poured in for Reiner since the news broke earlier this month, from the likes of Jack Black, Jane Fonda, Stephen King, Barack and Michelle Obama, Paul McCartney and Meg Ryan.
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