Nothing is typically romantic about a corporate logo, but when I think of Rob Reiner, I think of Castle Rock. Reiner, who was killed on the weekend alongside his wife Michele, co-created the production company in 1987, and I find that little more encapsulates the grand, wistful magic of moviemaking than the animation that opens the films it made, or closes out the TV it produced. In it, the lamp from a lighthouse twirls around the night sky, illuminating the sea and the land, while a glorious orange sun rises behind it. For its later incarnations, a musical flutter – stardust, it sounds like – serenades its eventual fade to black. The Castle Rock Entertainment logo introduces films including the seminal romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally..., which Reiner directed, as well as The Shawshank Redemption, Before Sunrise, Miss Congeniality and Christopher Guest’s canine mockumentary Best in Show. It shows up at the end of every episode of Seinfeld.
These animated logos – or “bumpers”, as they’re officially known – are designed to say lots with little. If the bouncing table lamp of Pixar promised slapstick ingenuity, or the majestic wallop of 20th Century Fox’s floodlights and trumpets teased pure grandeur, the appearance of Castle Rock meant you were in store for a hug. The works this stamp preceded were enveloping and character-driven, usually shot in autumnal or wintry climates, and dealt in very human conundrums even if their contexts were fantastical: love, grief, betrayal, obsession. And those films took after Reiner himself, whose work as a director was broad in scope and tone, more often than not kind and tender, and slightly astonishing in its cultural significance.
Whether you were a child of the Eighties or much later, it’s probable that something he was involved with made you fall in love with movies. When Harry Met Sally..., which practically invented the modern romcom, was released in 1989, arriving on the heels of Reiner’s rock mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap (1984), his adaptation of Stephen King’s haunting coming-of-age tale Stand by Me (1986), and his rollicking fantasy film The Princess Bride (1987). The eclecticism of those films, and their overall influence on Hollywood storytelling to this day, could quite easily make him the most important American filmmaker of the Eighties.
Both Reiner and his wife, the photographer Michele Singer, were found dead on Sunday night in their Brentwood, California home. A police investigation is currently ongoing, with their son Nick arrested on suspicion of their murders. For Reiner, it is a senseless and disturbing end for a filmmaker whose bright, round face, flecked with white hair, suggested only pure benevolence.
Possibly due to the range of his output, which also included the marvellous psycho-thriller Misery (1990) and the courtroom drama A Few Good Men (1992), Reiner isn’t typically included among the names of directorial greats. It may also be down to his modesty (he was open about his struggles with confidence throughout his career), and the slow-burn success of many of his highest-profile films. This Is Spinal Tap took years to develop a cult following, while both Stand by Me and The Princess Bride were met with mixed reviews upon release. There is a softness to his work that some corners of the critical sphere read as treacly, or lacking in bite. Admittedly, danger isn’t really a factor in Reiner’s greatest work (save for Kathy Bates going kamikaze with a sledgehammer, of course), but therein lies their comforting power.
He made films for audiences to sink into, to relax into, and to be pored over by young and old, parents and children. I distinctly remember being in a school classroom at the age of eight or nine, and a friend telling our teacher that his favourite film was Stand by Me, and that he would watch it over and over with his dad. Stand by Me was about scrappy white kids in rural Maine in the Fifties, and my friend was Black, Bristolian, and – like myself – by and large cinematically educated in the works of Walt Disney at that point. But there was something about Stand by Me that punctured him, and made him feel something. I had to watch it immediately, too.
Reiner always made films – a Spinal Tap sequel was released in September – but the stature of his work did decrease over time. He became focused on political causes and fundraising, and his output got a little anonymous and didactic. He made Rumor Has It..., a Jennifer Aniston vehicle that flirts with comedy incest, as well as movies you’ve probably never heard of (among them the political drama Shock and Awe, the Michael Douglas romcom And So It Goes, and the Morgan Freeman weepie The Magic of Belle Isle).
But this feels almost irrelevant when Reiner’s peak was unimpeachable, and so endlessly replicated. Every romcom is When Harry Met Sally. Every mortifying glance to camera in The Office and its many, many imitators is Spinal Tap. Every coming-of-age story has whispers of Stand by Me. And, more than anything, Reiner understood why and how we watch movies, the transportative effect of sitting alone in the dark and absorbing the stories of others. A little like that Castle Rock logo, his films were lighthouses.
