Playboy Interview: Rob Reiner

They say in Hollywood that Rob Reiner is hot. And not for the usual reasons.

He doesn't have a new TV series.

He isn't having an affair with Joan Collins.

He hasn't published a kiss-and-tell biography that he wants to push.

What Reiner has done is to demonstrate that there is life after situation comedy by becoming the director of two movie hits in a row---the very hip "This Is Spinal Tap" and the very commercial "The Sure Thing." To the surprise of many moguls, Reiner has dropped out of rerun heaven to become a big-time director and is doing it on his own terms---not as Mike "Meathead" Stivic from "All in the Family," not as Carl Reiner's son, not even as the former husband of actress and sitcom queen Penny Marshall. In short, Reiner is a Hollywood kid who may be on the way to doing something rare for that breed---becoming his own man.

The saga begins circa 1947, with Rob's birth in the proverbial vaudeville trunk. Poppa Carl was appearing at that time in a touring revue. Pretty soon, indelibly warped by such backstage baby sitters as Bob Fosse and Buddy Hackett, baby Rob, allegedly cuter than one might today imagine, was being reared in the Bronx. Across the street, unbeknown to him, lived a little girl named Penny Marshall.

Things were hopping in the Reiner household: Carl was writing and performing for "Your Show of Shows." He and his colleagues---the likes of Mel Brooks, Sid Caesar, Howard Morris, Imogene Coca---didn't know it then, but they had pretty much invented the golden age of television. The gang would often gather at the Reiner apartment and Fire Island summer house, and Rob would listen while the clever grownups incessantly tried to make one another laugh.

Soon, though, the Reiners moved on. First to suburban New Rochell---where Dad seemed just like any other commuter, except that he worked only 39 weeks a year---and then, in 1959, to Beverly Hills.

Rob spent his vacation afternoons watching his father put together "The Dick Van Dyke Show." He began to understand what audiences considered funny; the showbiz bug bit hard. Encouraged by his mother, Estelle, Rob spent a couple of summers working in theaters back East.

Reiner dropped out of UCLA and began to spend most of his time around other comedy-struck kids. The humor was centered in a small circle of Beverly Hills High School buddies, notably the class cutup, Albert Brooks, a scrawny would-be actor named Ricky Dreyfuss and another famous TV personality's son, Larry (son of Joey) Bishop. Dreamers all, constantly fantasizing about fame and fortune in comedy.

The guys, with a few other intrepid souls, formed a comedy troupe called The Session. Sometimes the gags were very broad (a TV-game-show take-off called "Let's Watch a Death," involving the electrocution of a midget, was a big favorite), sometimes nonexistent.

With some successful forays into stand-up comedy, Rob got noticed. He began appearing in The Committee, an improv group that, in the late Sixties, was as close to the cutting edge of music as of comedy. He'd be hanging out with the likes of Mama Cass, Harvey Brooks, Steve Miller; Janis Joplin would join the troupe on its San Francisco stage.

The critical break came in 1968, when the Smothers Brothers hired him as a writer. When the show was canceled, Reiner and partner Phil Mishkin wrote and performed some well-received stage works, while churning out gags for everything from a Robert Young TV special to an Andy Griffith series called "Headmaster."

Then came the audition for a new series, "All in the Family," created by old family friend Norman Lear. Rob got rejected. Twice. On the third try, he passed---and went home with the Meathead role. Sally Struthers was chosen to play Rob's wife, winning her role over a little-known actress from the Bronx named Penny Marshall.

As "All in the Family" zoomed in the ratings, Rob married the little-known actress from the Bronx. For the first five years of their marriage, with "All in the Family" and Rob picking up Emmy after Emmy, Penny Marshall Reiner looked for steady work. When "Laverne & Shirley" aired in 1976, it not only made Penny as big a TV star as her husband, it knocked his program out of the top Nielsen slot. For the next three seasons, Rob and Penny were a Burns and Allen for the Seventies---only on separate channels.

But from the time Rob finished his eighth and final "All in the Family" year, things started to come unstuck. He signed a production deal with ABC, but his two main projects---an ambitious comedy series about immigrants called "Free Country" and a satire program, "The TV Show"---died quickly in the midst of a network-management shakeup and disputes over censorship; the experience left him bitter and frustrated. The Reiners' two-star household had abruptly become a one-star enclave; it was hard for Rob to adjust to the supporting role. A divorce ensued, and Reiner began a determined effort to find his own way.

He wanted to direct. "This Is Spinal Tap," a send-up of everything bad, pretentious and just plain silly about the rock scene, was the vehicle. The problem was, Hollywood's moguls found the concept of an improvised pseudo documentary about a nonexistent heavy-metal band hard to fathom. Or finance. It took four and a half years of relentless hustling for the deal to be consummated. The critics loved the movie and it created a cult following.

With "The Sure Thing," a gentle romantic comedy, opening strongly last March, Reiner proved that "Spinal Tap's" success was no fluke. He is currently shooting "The Body," based on a Stephen King story, in Oregon, a project to be followed by his first big ($20,000,000)-budget film, "Princess Bride," by veteran screenwriter William Goldman.

With Reiner's career in high gear, we thought it a propitious moment to interview a man who is something of a human touchstone in American popular culture of the past two decades---he was born to it, grew up in it, auditioned for it, succeeded at it, married into it, rebelled against it and contributed to it. We asked writer and former managing editor of Rolling Stone David Rosenthal to take the assignment. His report:

"Rob Reiner begins each day with a moan. Not a primal one, mind you, but a good, honest-to-God guttural exhortation directed at the world at large. From what I can gather, nobody hears this daily cry, as Rob lives alone in his spacious Beverly Hills home. So much for my expectations about comedy. I started out thinking Rob Reiner would be a great guy to get drunk with until I found out he doesn't drink. Never been drunk in his life, he says; the stuff just doesn't agree with him. I was skeptical at first but soon came to believe him on that count and most other things.

"He's honest, almost compulsively candid. You get the feeling he's more than a bit embarrassed talking about himself, but once he's started, he's determined to go at it full tilt. He doesn't just want this to be an interview, he wants it to be the best interview. It's a drive and an attitude that extend throughout his entire life---not just ambition (though that's clearly there) but a need to achieve it all.

"To tell you the truth, even if Rob were a bald-faced liar, I wouldn't want to be the one to call him on it. He's big. At 6'2" and more than 200 pounds, he has the look of an aging athlete. A thick mustache offsets his shiny bald pate, and his blue eyes often seem more half-closed than half-open. The most animated thing about him is his voice; resonant even in polite conversation, it hits you like a sonic boom when he's riled---not an uncommon event. He is gracious to a fault, but he does have a temper---'Stupidity pisses me off, injustices piss me off, pigheadedness pisses me off,' he says---that witnesses claim is not a pretty sight.

"Reiner has a public image as being fast on his feet, funny, cynical and quicker than thou. But these days, he doesn't try to accommodate one's expectations of his cleverness. Instead, the impression he conveys is that of a man of surprising sensitivity and intelligence, serious and strangely somber. This is, after all, someone who grew up around comedians, inherently understanding the pain behind their facades. It seems not a bit out of character that as a child he idolized not only his father but also Emmett Kelly.

"Reiner's Century City office is a modest suite behind an unmarked door. He runs a casual operation. Joking with a guy who brings fresh bagels and cream cheese each morning, he works at a cranberry-colored desk. Behind him are mountain views and, on the walls, some 'Spinal Tap' paraphernalia and a framed Daily Variety ad picturing Rob and Carl Reiner congratulating themselves on being the first father/son team to have separate movies (Carl's 'All of Me,' Rob's 'Spinal Tap') on one year's ten-best list.

"His personal life is quiet these days. He either dines with one of a small circle of friends (close ones include comedians Albert Brooks, Billy Crystal and Christopher Guest) or catches a Lakers or Dodgers game. He is not much of a partygoer: He gets home early, watches some sports or news on his bedroom projection TV, then gets set to moan again the next day.

"However, there is always baseball. As the slugger on the L.A.-based Coney Island Whitefish, he has led his team to two league softball championships in the past three years. He assails his ample midriff---'Food,' he moans, 'is my drug'---but it apparently does not hamper a determined batting style.

"It is baseball, not showbiz, that gave Reiner his greatest thrill. 'I came in my pants,' is the way he describes it. There he was, left field in Dodger Stadium, a celebrity charity game, and a guy hit one out there, deep, off the wall; Rob ran it down, hurled and fired home, where it landed, on one bounce, in the catcher's mitt, deftly cutting down some audacious fool trying to score from second on Reiner's arm! People were screaming, the stadium was rocking in delight, everyone was applauding the big guy running off the field from left. As he passed the pitcher's mound, Don Newcombe, who had hurled the fateful ball, nodded his appreciation to his stalwart teammate. 'Thanks, kid,' Newcombe told Rob, 'you saved my shutout.' Ecstasy.

"Rob Reiner has a primal desire to compete, to equal if not surpass his peers. It seems to trace back to his father, the man he once wanted to be, the man he has tried professionally to escape. It seemed like a good time to talk, since Rob's career has eerily paralleled Carl's, and only now is the break clear. The films he's currently making are about as far from his father's brand of comedy as one can get. It's a conscious move; finally, Rob Reiner is competing only with himself."

[Q] Playboy: To start out---

[A] Reiner: Wait a second. I want you to understand something: If we're going to do this Interview, under no circumstances will I reveal the size of my penis.

[Q] Playboy: You leave us no alternative---

[A] Reiner: And another thing. You know those pictures Playboy runs on the first page of the Interview? Well, I'd like them all to be the same photo. Under the first one, the caption should say, "Rob wants the quote under this picture to refer to his relationship with his father." Under the second one, it should say, "Rob wants this quote to refer to his sexual attitudes." And under the third one, "Rob wants this quote to refer to his interest in the women's movement and the nuclear freeze."

[Q] Playboy: It may be tricky, but we'll see what we can do. If we can regain control here. You're someone who personifies American TV: Your father starred in Your Show of Shows and The Dick Van Dyke Show---two milestone programs of the Fifties and Sixties. You starred in All in the Family, while your wife at the time, Penny Marshall, was starring in Laverne & Shirley---monster shows of the Seventies. That makes you something of a living scrapbook---or television royalty.

[A] Reiner: I guess what's most interesting to me is the sort of parallels that exist. My father began by doing satire---that's what Your Show of Shows was---and moved on to Van Dyke, which was a family-oriented sitcom, a program that was considered a breakthrough then. I started with satire, too---writing for the Smothers Brothers, also doing improvisational comedy with The Session; both of those were satire. And from there, I went on to All in the Family, which was a family-oriented sitcom, considered a breakthrough show.

[Q] Playboy: As a kid, did you understand what your father did for a living?

[A] Reiner: I knew exactly what he did. He made a complete and utter fool of himself in front of millions of people and was highly paid for it. It was a good job.

[Q] Playboy: Let's start with the age of comprehension. Your Show of Shows went on in 1950 and made Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks and Sid Caesar huge stars. Do you have any strong impressions of it?

[A] Reiner: I was pretty young for a lot of the time it was on, but there are a couple of things I remember. One had to do with the show's sign-off. At the end of the program, the cast would line up for a goodbye. And during this, every single week, my father would straighten his tie; it was actually a signal to us at home, his secret way of saying hello. The other image I recall most clearly is going down to the studio with my father and standing outside the doorway of the writers' conference room. I'd stand there and see these 12 men, all smoking cigars, yelling and screaming at one another at the top of their lungs.

[Q] Playboy: What were they screaming about?

[A] Reiner: There was a lot of high-powered talent, egos and power in that room. They had to get their points across.

[Q] Playboy: We suppose you saw a lot of Mel Brooks. Besides Your Show of Shows, he and your father also did the 2000-Year-Old Man routines together for years.

[A] Reiner: When I was a kid, Mel would be with us a lot. We'd summer on Fire Island, and he'd go onto the beach and round up all the little kids, the real tiny ones, and say, "Follow me"; then he'd lead them in exercises, I mean, not like knee bends or push-ups but these hysterical, bizarre movements. He was funny when he did that; he was like another kid---a big kid.

Mel is also serious at times, but he does love to perform, loves to work as a standup, to work a room. You know, in 1979, I was in Venice, along with Mel, as part of a celebrity group to be on The Merv Griffin Show. We're in Saint Mark's Square, summertime, and there was a huge group of tourists; they're recognizing all the celebrities. But Mel wasn't getting recognized as much as he would like. All of a sudden, he jumps up in the middle of Saint Mark's Square and starts screaming, "I'm Mel Brooks; don't you know me? I'm a big star! Blazing Saddles! Young Frankenstein!." He just started screaming out all his credits!

There was this other scene once, which my father told me about, when he and Mel went to France. And Mel had difficulty communicating in French. So one day, they're in some little town, and Mel gets up on some steps and begins to yell, "All right, everyone! The joke is over! From now on, everybody goes back to talking English!"

[Q] Playboy: Didn't your father and Mel used to do a lot of comedy at your house?

[A] Reiner: There was a lot of shtick going on, but it was always in party situations. People begged them to do their 2000-Year-Old Man, and you'd be privileged to be there when they'd do the routine. There were moments in my house that were pure genius; when Mel was on a roll, it just didn't get any funnier.

[Q] Playboy: And you'd just watch?

[A] Reiner: I was young, but I always wanted to hang around and listen. But I'll tell you, one of the biggest thrills in my life came when I was about 16. I was sitting at home while Mel and my father were working on some new 2000-Year-Old Man material to do on The Ed Sullivan Show. And I came up with a routine! I couldn't believe how exciting it was. The bit was about the derivation of applause, who invented it. What the first man who applauded did was this: He saw something he liked, slapped his hands on the sides of his face and said, "O God, is that good!" But then this other guy points out that if the guy is going to do that all the time, he'll slap himself dead. So this first guy, when nobody was looking, snapped his head back from between his hands---and clapped. Pretty soon, other guys modified it, and eventually, everyone applauded the way we do now.

[Q] Playboy: Where was your applause in all this?

[A] Reiner: Just the fact that they used it was enough for me. Here I was, 16, and I thought the stuff they were doing, the 2000-Year-Old Man, was the hippest thing around. I'd come home from school and listen to the record every single day. There was a cult of people, including kids, who loved it. And you knew you had a bond with someone if you could throw out a line from the 2000-Year-Old Man and he could tell you the next joke; it meant you could talk with each other.

[Q] Playboy: What about the rest of the Your Show of Shows crew? Neil Simon, for instance, was one of the writers there.

[A] Reiner: He didn't make a big impression on me, because he was so quiet. My father used to talk about how Neil, during the writing sessions, would invariably come up with some brilliant line, the best line. Trouble was, there were such loud, vocal people in there, my father would have to sit next to Neil so he could listen to what he was saying. Then my father would jump up and yell, "He's got something! He's got something!"

[Q] Playboy: Another quick take: Sid Caesar. Did you see a lot of him as a kid?

[A] Reiner: Sure. The first time I ever went swimming, it was in Sid Caesar's pool in Great Neck. But what's intriguing is that when I started acting and doing improvisational comedy, people would frequently say I reminded them of Sid---many times they didn't know I was Carl Reiner's son. This was interesting to me, because at that stage of my life, as a teenager, I was more influenced by Sid than by my father---as far as performing is concerned. I've always thought Sid is the most brilliant sketch comedian who's ever lived.

[Q] Playboy: It's striking, by the way, that all those people working on Show of Shows were Jewish.

[A] Reiner: Everybody.

[Q] Playboy: Did you think everyone in the world was Jewish?

[A] Reiner: Actually, I thought the world was divided into Jews and Catholics. Where I grew up in the Bronx, the neighborhood was half Jewish, half Italian. Since all the Italians were Catholics, I thought that if you weren't Jewish, you were Catholic.

[Q] Playboy: When did you learn otherwise?

[A] Reiner: [Shocked] You mean there is something else?

[Q] Playboy: In 1959, your family moved from New York to California so your father could work on The Dinah Shore Show. And not long after, the Van Dyke program started. Your father wrote the show and also appeared in it, playing the irascible comedian supposedly based on Sid Caesar.

[A] Reiner: Actually, that character was an amalgam of a lot of variety-show stars, sort of Sid, Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, all rolled up into one.

[Q] Playboy: In any case, you got to hang out with all those TV stars and comedians when your father took you to work with him---and you were still just a kid. Didn't you get on everybody's nerves?

[A] Reiner: Everybody included me and allowed me to be there. I was like everyone's kid. I was in awe of those people.

[Q] Playboy: Was the Van Dyke set as boisterous as the Show of Shows set?

[A] Reiner: I remember my father and Sheldon Leonard, the producer, fighting a lot. They'd throw cigars at each other. But all it was, really, was two guys being passionate about something. Sheldon used to say, "Polite story conferences lead to polite scripts."

[Q] Playboy: But at that age, was hanging out on a TV set more fun than being out in the sunshine, picking up girls?

[A] Reiner: Well, I grabbed Mary Tyler Moore by the ass once.

[Q] Playboy: Really?

[A] Reiner: Yes. I was 14 and she was about 24. She's such a nice lady and was so cute---the cutest. And I was hot for her. She always wore these pants---you know, she was the first leading lady to wear pants on a television show. Well, she's got this fabulous body and I looked at her ass and it was so great, like the best thing I'd ever seen. So I had to touch it. I just had to grab it.

[Q] Playboy: How did she react?

[A] Reiner: She was shocked, and she went and told my father.

[Q] Playboy: What was his reaction?

[A] Reiner: I think a father is always proud when a son does any sexual kind of thing. But here, I think propriety won out; my father took me aside and said, "Did you grab Mary Tyler Moore by the ass?" And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "Well, don't ever do that again." So I didn't, but, boy, I really wanted to.

[Q] Playboy: You were in your late teens before you decided you wanted to go into television yourself. You'd been kicked out of UCLA for skipping classes and had the Vietnam war to contend with, right?

[A] Reiner: Yeah, I'd been called for my physical. And I got a note from a psychiatrist that said, "He's crazy and would not do well in the Army. This man would not be helpful to us in Vietnam." I got a deferment. It was a rough time. I didn't want to go to Canada; I was definitely prepared to go to jail. To tell you the truth, though, you know what I think was maybe the worst thing about the war? It made people who were patriotic feel they were not patriotic: You were told you weren't a patriot because you didn't want to go and kill people whose country we had no business being in in the first place. That, to me, was the biggest crime of all. I remember my father was very much involved in the moratorium in San Francisco. He marched---

[Q] Playboy: Did you, too?

[A] Reiner: No, I don't know what I was doing. Running around, doing some kind of hallucinating. I did my little stint in Haight-Ashbury in 1967. The summer of love. Peace, love and togetherness. Janis Joplin.

[Q] Playboy: Were you living there then?

[A] Reiner: I was seeing somebody who was living there and spent quite a bit of time up there. Plus, I had friends there in The Committee, the improvisational group I had done some acting with, so I was in San Francisco every other weekend.

[Q] Playboy: Did you wear flowers in your hair?

[A] Reiner: No flowers, but psychedelic clothes---large bell-bottom jeans, weird sunglasses. I didn't wear peace symbols around my neck, but I did wear love beads. I had long, long hair, the beard, everything. I was a hippie.

[Q] Playboy: Were you an acid freak?

[A] Reiner: No. I did my share of experimentation, but I was a real moderate user. But there were guys taking 100 trips and shit like that. Some of the guys in The Committee used to go on stage on acid. One time, I got stoned on grass before I went on---it was the worst fucking set I ever played. I never did it again.

[Q] Playboy: So while all this was going on, you started to work in TV?

[A] Reiner: I was about 19 then, and I began to get jobs: I was hired to play every TV hippie you can imagine on the most unhip shows. I did two Beverly Hillbillies, a Gomer Pyle, a That Girl---I played hippies in all of them. Then I did one called The Mothers-in-Law.

[Q] Playboy: Who was in that?

[A] Reiner: Eve Arden and Kaye Ballard. And Desi Arnaz was the producer. What happened was this: I was playing this hippie---what else?---and we were doing a run-through before the final taping. I had this tiny little scene, and, in the middle of the run-through, I came up with a funny line and just threw it in. I got a big laugh, but Desi didn't like it, because I was improvising. He got furious. He started screaming at me [heavy Spanish accent]: "Maybe that's what they do at The Session, maybe that's what they do at The Committee, maybe that's what they do on The Dick Van Dyke Show, but we don't do that here. I'm paying $10,000 a script and I don't need you to fuck around with the lines!" He went nuts. And I thought, Jesus Christ, I've upset Desi Arnaz! Then he says, "You want to talk to me, you come outside." So we walk off the sound stage, everybody's standing around, and I'm thinking, Oy, oy, oy! and he starts screaming again. So I said, "Listen, let's just forget about it. It's only a five-line part; you can get someone else." And he says, "No, amigo, no. Don't worry about it, amigo; we'll fix it." He kept calling me amigo. But eventually I said, "No, I think it's better if you get another actor." So I left, and they found another guy to do it. It's all no big deal. But that night, on the Rona Barrett news from Hollywood, this comes on: "Rob Reiner, actor, hippie-psychedelic son of actor Carl Reiner, got into a fight with Desi Arnaz on the Mothers-in-Law set and---whoops!---the bearded bad boy walked off."

[Q] Playboy: You must have been very proud.

[A] Reiner: Yeah. Rona Barrett was very big at the time, and I loved the way she described me; I thought it was a giggle. I just remember hearing that phrase and liking it so much: hippie-psychedelic son. Bearded bad boy!

[Q] Playboy: The incident didn't irreparably damage your TV future: Pretty soon afterward, you were working for the Smothers Brothers. How did that come about?

[A] Reiner: I was with the Committee troupe in L.A. when Tommy Smothers came to see our show. I think this was 1968, and he was producing The Glen Campbell Show then. He liked the Committee guys and hired me and Carl Gottlieb. So we did Campbell and then joined the Smothers show when it began again in the fall. It was their last season.

[Q] Playboy: That must have been quite a step. The Smothers Brothers was the hottest show on television then.

[A] Reiner: Along with my divorce later on, it was one of the two major upheavals in my life. It was the change from being the kid in the household to kind of entering the adult world. I guess it was the first realization that I wasn't going to be able to lean on my folks as I had before. You take these big steps and they're painful, but you wind up getting stronger and better. I hope I don't have any more of these upheavals---I always worry about whether there'll be another one and, if it happens, is it going to be horrendous.

[Q] Playboy: Why horrendous? With the Smothers Brothers, you'd just gotten a great job.

[A] Reiner: Let's put it this way: I was confused, very confused about where my place was in the world, where I fit in.

[Q] Playboy: But the work on the show went well, didn't it?

[A] Reiner: It was a good writing staff. Steve Martin and I were partners, and we were the youngest ones---that's why they stuck us together. We wrote a couple of funny sketches, but it was a bitch trying to get them on the air. When you're the young guys, people try to slough you off, push you aside. It was very frustrating. Also, we had censorship problems; Tommy was always fighting with the censors, and at the last minute, something would be thrown out.

[Q] Playboy: So you had to do another sketch fast.

[A] Reiner:Real fast. I remember, three in the morning, we're sitting with Alan Bly and Mason Williams, the head writers, and Bly says, "God, does anybody have anything we can throw in?" So Steve and I say, "Hey, we've got this Hollywood-premiere thing." It was a very funny sketch, a take-off on a Hollywood opening, with all the stars and starlets arriving, all the interviews and that stuff. And we act it out, and all the writers are laughing hysterically; they love it.

But Alan would go, "No, I don't think this one works." So, two, three months later, we're in the same fix and Bly says, "Does anybody have anything?" Then he'd look at Steve and me and say, "You guys had that Hollywood-premiere thing. It was pretty good. Let's hear that again." So we performed it once more, everybody laughing. Then they'd go, "Nah." I think Alan Bly just liked hearing us do the bit.

[Q] Playboy: It never got on?

[A] Reiner: Never. But one I did for Pat Paulsen did. We had him as the owner of a novelty firm, the folks that make hot gum, the dribble glass and all that stuff. He's demonstrating all these things for some clients and, of course, they all backfire. At one point, though, he sits down and you hear this big fart and he goes, "Huh! Somebody must have slipped a whoopee cushion when I wasn't looking." He gets up, looks down, and there's nothing there. It was, to my knowledge, the first fart joke done on television. I'm quite proud of that. I think I'm also the first American actor to ever say the word cocksucker in a movie. It was in Where's Poppa?, which my father directed. He made me do it. It's his fault.

[Q] Playboy: Were you upset?

[A] Reiner: No, these are my scatological distinctions.

[Q] Playboy: Was it strange for you when Steve Martin began making all those pictures with your father? After all, you and Steve had started together as TV writers, and all of a sudden his movie career took off under the direction of Carl Reiner. Do you see any irony in that?

[A] Reiner: It's interesting. They've made four films together, and the first one, The Jerk, became one of the largest-grossing comedies of its time. And it was a little weird, because here was Steve, a contemporary of mine, and my father---Steve was like another son, the son my father would have liked to have, the funny son, not the brooding, introverted child that was me. I think I was a little bit jealous, a little bit threatened. But by the same token, I knew that I could never do the kinds of things that Steve did and does.

[Q] Playboy: Does that depress you?

[A] Reiner: Not really. It wasn't as if he got the job and I didn't. It was "This is the kind of stuff he does."

[Q] Playboy: Do you see Steve a lot now?

[A] Reiner: Once in a while---usually if my father's with him.

[Q] Playboy: Besides Where's Poppa?, has your father ever asked you to be in any of his productions?

[A] Reiner: Sure. I did The Roast, which he directed, on Broadway, and I had a tiny little bit in Enter Laughing.

[Q] Playboy: How tiny was it?

[A] Reiner: I had three lines. That was a big disappointment for me. I'd wanted to play the supporting lead, the part of David's best friend. I auditioned for it. It was most uncomfortable---probably more for my father than it was for me. I did pretty well at the audition, but I didn't get it.

[Q] Playboy: Wait a minute. This sounds absurd---

[A] Reiner: I know. I auditioned for my own father! And he turned me down! God, no wonder I'm in analysis.

[Q] Playboy: Wasn't that destructive?

[A] Reiner: I guess I wanted his approval so badly. . . .

[Q] Playboy: And he let you go through with it?

[A] Reiner: And I didn't get the part!

[Q] Playboy: It's mind-boggling.

[A] Reiner: [Laughs, voice rising] I know what I did! I put myself in the worst possible position and I got rejected. OK? OK? Why are you torturing me like this?

[Q] Playboy: At least this is cheaper than analysis. How often do you go?

[A] Reiner: How many days are there in the week?

[Q] Playboy: Last we looked, seven.

[A] Reiner: Well, if they could make up some more days, they'd be putting me on the calendar for those days, too.

[Q] Playboy: You had to audition for a friend of your father's, too, didn't you? You knew Norman Lear when you were a kid, and years later, when Lear was casting a new comedy series---

[A] Reiner: Yes, I auditioned for All in the Family---three times. And I didn't get the part the first or second time. There were two pilots and two sets of Mikes and Glorias before I got cast. So, at least, I can say that my getting the part of Mike Stivic---Meathead---had nothing to do with my knowing Norman. If it had, he would have cast me the first time out. You know, nobody hires anybody else for a favor, because it's his ass on the line.

[Q] Playboy: We suppose there were always folks who said you got the All in the Family part because of your relationship and your father's relationship with Lear.

[A] Reiner: Let me start this way: Because of my father, doors were definitely open to me; no question. But those doors will close faster than they will for anybody else, because you're under scrutiny. You'd better be able to deliver right away, because people are set to knock you down or say you're not as good. Certainly, it is much more difficult getting there in the first place if you're not connected. But you can sneak in the back door, hone your craft, fail a little more easily until you're ready.

[Q] Playboy: Did you feel guilty about your connections?

[A] Reiner: No, because I always felt there was pressure on me. People always compared me with my father. Even if their expectations of me weren't as great as mine, they had some preconceived notions.

[Q] Playboy: When you got the role of Mike Stivic, did you feel you had finally had it made---on your own?

[A] Reiner: Actually, I'd never wanted to do a TV series. I didn't want to work for five years making a whole career out of playing one character. The only thing that attracted me to All in the Family was the script I had read. I said, "Wow! This is unlike anything that's ever been on television, and if I have a chance to be part of it, I want to." But I thought the show would last 13 weeks and we'd go off the air. I didn't think anybody would accept that kind of show. And it's interesting, because we weren't a hit right away. We came on in the spring, and the audience caught on when the original 13 episodes were rerun over the summer.

[Q] Playboy: After that first season, you were quoted as saying you were already bored with the show.

[A] Reiner: I probably was. But I'll tell you how it progressed: By the second year, we were tremendously hot and successful. It was wonderful to be part of something that was so talked about, that had so much impact on the American people. The third year, though, was really frightening. I thought the excitement was starting to wear off; I saw myself stuck for years on end doing the same thing. I was very disheartened.

[Q] Playboy: Was it because of the money? In a magazine article at that time, you complained about your deal. "I can tell you one thing," you were quoted as saying, "I'll never sign a contract again until my lawyer's looked over every single word."

[A] Reiner: I doubt seriously that I said that. But if I did, I'm sure I was in the middle of a renegotiation or I was upset. We're talking about something that happened maybe 12 years ago! I did just fine on the show. I made good money. What we did have, though, was a terrible residual deal. In those days, you made a buy-out, meaning that after six runs of the show, that would be it. All my shows have run a lot more than six times. But I'll tell you, I have no remorse, regrets or anger about what I earned from the show. None.

[Q] Playboy: How did you finally deal with your feelings of being stuck in the series?

[A] Reiner: Well, you're a professional and you go to work and do your job. In the fourth year of All in the Family, I started to make peace. I said to myself, "I'll try to make the best of it and get something out of it." And after I did that, the fifth through the eighth years were wonderful, because it was like going to school. I thought, I'm learning what this is all about.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean?

[A] Reiner: Norman and Carroll O'Connor had set up ground rules that allowed me and Sally Struthers and Jean Stapleton to have creative input. I was involved in helping structure the stories, in rewriting, in editing---all the things that made the program. If I had just had to do my part as an actor, go in every week and play the part, I think I would have been unhappy. It was an egoless show, though, and it taught me that actors, writers, directors must serve the piece. All in the Family was a pure example of that.

I remember Herb Gardner came to one of our run-throughs and watched us as we sat around afterward doing notes. And everybody spoke up. I'd tell Carroll how to do a line, Sally would tell Carroll, Jean would tell Carroll, Carroll would tell Jean; we'd all talk to one another, help one another out, talk with the writers. If there was a scene where I felt extraneous, for instance, I'd say, "Take me out; put me in something else." The attitude was "Let's make the best possible show, because if we do, it'll make us all look better." And Herb Gardner's sitting there through all of this, and afterward he says, "I can't believe what I'm seeing here. This is creative communism!"

[Q] Playboy: When All in the Family first went on, it stirred a tremendous amount of controversy. Everybody from the Anti-Defamation League to Laura Z. Hobson, who wrote Gentlemen's Agreement, attacked it for celebrating bigotry. Did its political impact concern you?

[A] Reiner: In terms of social change or import, I don't think the show had any. If it had any impact at all, or anything important to say, it was that people could be portrayed on television in a realistic manner. Its impact was on people, and that's what all theater is about. To me, All in the Family was good theater.

[Q] Playboy: How?

[A] Reiner: What a good dramatist can do is portray an aspect of life so that the people who watch it have their own experiences enhanced. They see something that strikes a responsive chord in them that makes them say, "I know what that feels like; I know what that is." They will get more out of their own experiences because somebody else has told them what they were actually experiencing.

As to politics, what's interesting is that everyone involved in All in the Family was a Democrat or even more liberal than that. But what we were showing was a bigoted person, Archie, and a liberal-minded one, Mike, and saying, "These people exist; you draw your own conclusions." The reason the program was so successful was that half the people, or more than half, thought Archie was right. Norman Lear's favorite play, in fact, is Major Barbara, by George Bernard Shaw. The play is written as a polemic, and if you don't know that Shaw was a liberal, you leave the theater asking, "Who's right, the warmonger or the liberal?"

[Q] Playboy: Do you think the show succeeded in what it set out to do?

[A] Reiner: Absolutely. Better than any other half-hour show has ever done. I've studied all the fucking sitcoms; I've seen every goddamn one. And while there have been some great ones---Mary Tyler Moore, M*A*S*H, Cheers, Taxi, Van Dyke---All in the Family was the best.

[Q] Playboy: How did you feel about the show after you left and its format changed, when it became Archie Bunker's Place?

[A] Reiner: I wasn't interested in it. I watched only one episode, and there wasn't the kind of tension we had. It didn't have the natural antagonists. It was much softer.

[Q] Playboy: What about Mike Stivic? Do you miss the character?

[A] Reiner: Mike was very similar to me. He went through a transition over the years. He began very idealistically and, as he gained responsibility, with a baby and a job, he began swinging toward the center. As we all do, he began accepting certain realities of life.

[Q] Playboy: He was also a bit of a knee-jerk liberal.

[A] Reiner: He was always left of center, and as for myself, I'm sort of off the chart somewhere. I'm conservative in some ways but incredibly radical and anarchistic in others.

But Mike was full of shit sometimes. He espoused all these liberal points of view, but when push came to shove, especially on women's issues, he'd take the party line with the chauvinists.

[Q] Playboy: Mike's vast wardrobe was memorable, wasn't it?

[A] Reiner: Yeah. For eight years, I wore the same jeans and work shirt and cowboy boots every single week.

[Q] Playboy: Did they still fit you by the end of the run?

[A] Reiner: I went through a lot of ups and downs. I weighed as much as 208 pounds, as little as 190. It's funny, because when they show All in the Family in reruns, they don't go in order, they just bounce around. So one day, I've got lots of hair and I'm skinny. The next day, I've got just a little hair and I'm fat. The next day, lots of hair and fat and the next, a little hair and skinny. There was one year, for maybe one or two shows, when I looked good.

[Q] Playboy: And those are the tapes you keep at home.

[A] Reiner: [Laughs] Exactly. Hair and thin.

[Q] Playboy: Your ex-wife, Penny Marshall, told us that after All in the Family ended for you and your new TV projects didn't hit, you went into a bit of a tail spin.

[A] Reiner: It was a particularly rough time. I was upset, because when you've done a show like All in the Family for eight years, you get to thinking nothing bad can happen to you. You feel invulnerable. I was a young man, very successful, making a lot of money, had a marriage that was going pretty well for a long time. Then I hit a couple of failures. It was the same period Penny and I were drifting apart. I was badly shaken.

[Q] Playboy: Was it just because you found yourself out of work for the first time?

[A] Reiner: No, because I could always get work. The problem was that I wasn't being allowed to do what I wanted to---a series I created called Free Country. I was about to take a step out on my own and the door was slammed. It frightened the shit out of me.

[Q] Playboy: Do you still feel bitter about Free Country?

[A] Reiner: I think it was one of the most innovative TV series ever created. It was basically a Jewish Roots. I think the networks weren't too thrilled about putting on a show about Jews. It was weird, because the guys we pitched it to at the network were all Jews. To be fair to them, though, they have a constituency out there they have to program for, and shows like Happy Days were very big and successful then.

[Q] Playboy: But you feel there's no real quality programing?

[A] Reiner: I never believed TV should all be quality stuff. Everybody should be allowed to have something that he wants to watch. The networks always point to Cheers and Hill Street Blues as examples of programs that are supposedly good---and they are, but they're not innovative. I believe there should be a place for one or two shows that are really intelligent, really sophisticated, for that segment of the audience that wants them. And I don't give a fuck what the numbers are, what the ratings are--- they should keep those shows on the air!

But I'll tell you something: The networks aren't interested in just making money.

[Q] Playboy: What are they interested in?

[A] Reiner: They are interested in making ridiculous amounts of money. Unbridled greed. Don't forget---if every TV program were in the bottom 20 of the Nielsens, they'd still make enormous amounts of money.

[Q] Playboy: Penny Marshall implied that you were disturbed by the fact that her series Laverne & Shirley was a big hit, that she was taking home the pay check, not you.

[A] Reiner: Yes, I think so. I think any man would be lying if he said it wouldn't be an ego blow to see his wife making more money than he was or working when he was not. The role that I'd played through the marriage was that of supporting her, taking care of her, because for many years I worked far more than she did. All of a sudden, I wasn't doing that job. I was at an ebb point in my career---and life---and I looked to her for support. But at that time, she was consumed with her problems on Laverne & Shirley---there was always some kind of trouble or crisis there. And I was thinking, Wait a minute; I'm not getting anything here. I'm suffering, I'm not working and I don't have anybody around supporting me.

[Q] Playboy: Did you blame her?

[A] Reiner: It wasn't her fault. This was who she was. She needed a lot of attention when she wasn't working and she needed as much, if not more, when she was. I'd always thought that when she started working, it would be easier, because she'd have her own identity, she'd have her own job, she wouldn't feel such a lack of self-esteem. But it didn't work out that way.

[Q] Playboy: What happened after that?

[A] Reiner: We got divorced pretty soon after. That period afterward, for several years, was a 24-hour-a-day horror show. It was like being slipped bad acid and going on a downward spiral. I cried quite a bit. It was a one-two punch. I had no work, no marriage. There was an air of desperation about me for a lot of years after that. I never thought I would say, "I like being alone." I'm sure that's not going to be my state for the rest of my life, but I think it's important I spend some years feeling comfortable on my own. That way, the next time I go into a relationship, it will be with a little more strength within myself.

[Q] Playboy: Before we get there, let's back up a bit. You were 21, young, carefree. You discovered Penny. What was it like then?

[A] Reiner: She faked me out: When I met her, I thought she was Jewish. And, you know, Jewish guys are supposed to be attracted only to shiksas---which I am to a great degree. So after I met her, I said to myself, "Gee, look at this, I'm actually attracted to a Jewish girl---this must be a match made in heaven!" Then I found out she was Italian and it all fell into place.

[Q] Playboy: How did you meet?

[A] Reiner: It was at Barney's Beanery, which was and is still a big hangout bar on Santa Monica Boulevard. Janis Joplin would be there, Jack Nicholson always used to come and Harry Dean Stanton was a fixture. I was with some friends and she was with some friends and we just. . . .

[Q] Playboy: You mean you picked her up?

[A] Reiner: I think she picked me up, actually.

[Q] Playboy: Love at first sight?

[A] Reiner: No, it wasn't. We were friends for a couple of years; we hardly even dated at first. Before we began living together, I was sharing a house with Albert Brooks. There were separate entrances, like a duplex, and he'd be downstairs and I'd be up. And when Penny and I started going together, I would take her upstairs and we'd make love. We'd finish and the phone would ring; it would be Albert calling from downstairs. He'd say, "Are you done?" We'd say, "Yeah." And Albert would ask, "You want to go get something to eat?" So we'd get dressed and go over to the drugstore at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel about midnight and have dinner.

[Q] Playboy: Was it embarrassing to have to be so open about your sex life?

[A] Reiner: No, we were young, we were free. This was the age of the sexual revolution and all that. It was uncool to be prim or shy about any of it, real uncool, even though before Penny, I had been pretty naïve---didn't lose my virginity until I was 20. We never talked about sex at home.

[Q] Playboy: Then you decided to get married.

[A] Reiner: It seemed like a logical step. I'd just turned 24. We'd been living together for a year and a half, were getting along well, and we thought it was the next thing to do.

[Q] Playboy: Where was the ceremony?

[A] Reiner: In my folks' back yard. There were about 100 people and we ordered all the food from a Chinese restaurant. It was so funny, because the bill came with the order---it was, like, $1000 to go! But it was real nice; we improvised our vows to each other and had our friends run the ceremony with a judge around to make it legal. I had three best men: Phil Mishkin, who was my writing partner then, Rick Dreyfuss and Albert Brooks.

[Q] Playboy: Were you a faithful husband?

[A] Reiner: Actually, no. We did experiment. You've got to take this in context; this was the Sixties generation. But we did experiment with an open marriage for a short stint and it wasn't particularly good. The idea of an open marriage seemed good at the time, because it meant you could just fuck anybody you wanted and there was no guilt.

[Q] Playboy: But it didn't work out that way?

[A] Reiner: No, because when you feel strongly for somebody, you really don't want to fuck other people. You get to a point where you don't want to engage in a lot of meaningless sex. I'm sure a lot of people enjoy doing that, but I don't. I never have.

[Q] Playboy: But you tried it?

[A] Reiner: Oh, sure, I tried it plenty. And the actual act itself, while you're doing it, certainly feels great. It's just that afterward, you know the old joke, you want the woman to turn into a pizza. It's because you're not emotionally connected---and that feeling is horrible.

[Q] Playboy: About the open-marriage experimentation---

[A] Reiner: Well, to be honest, it wasn't really a successful open marriage, because we never talked to each other about it.

[Q] Playboy: You mean you never told Penny it was an open marriage?

[A] Reiner: [Laughs] Right. No, what I really mean is that we never told each other if we had been with other people. So it was more or less that in case we cheated, it was like a pact that it wouldn't mean the end of our marriage. I never knew anybody she was with and I don't think she knew anybody I was with. I can't speak for Penny, but for me, it happened very rarely. I mean, it was fewer than what you can count on one hand---fewer than five but more than one.

[Q] Playboy: Your marriage lasted ten years. Why did it end?

[A] Reiner: I know it sounds like a cliché, but you know how you talk about two people's growing in different directions? Boy, that was it for us. I still like Penny, she likes me and we get along really well. But back then, my attitude was probably upsetting to her.

[Q] Playboy: How?

[A] Reiner: Well, she was doing Laverne & Shirley, and I didn't like the show. I had a much more elitist attitude then than I do now. I loved my wife in it---she is a brilliant comedienne and did a wonderful job---but I thought the program was not very intelligent and all that.

[Q] Playboy: And you'd tell her that?

[A] Reiner: She always wanted to know what I thought, and it was hard. It never worked, making the separation, telling her what I thought of her performance and what I thought of the show. If I said anything negative about the show, she'd take it as "You don't like me" or "You don't like what I do." This shit went on all the time. But I think Penny had a point. You want your spouse to be supportive and on your side. She wanted me to just love what she was doing. And the fact that I didn't. . . . I was at fault in that I wasn't as supportive as I could have been.

[Q] Playboy: Yours wasn't the only negative voice; Laverne & Shirley never got good reviews.

[A] Reiner: Penny and Garry [Marshall, the show's creator and Penny's brother] were always upset because there wasn't a good critical response to Laverne & Shirley and because they didn't get nominated for awards.

[Q] Playboy: Especially since you and All in the Family raked in the Emmys every year.

[A] Reiner: Sure, that was upsetting. You know, when we were breaking up, we had this fight. We were screaming at each other. And at the height of it, Penny told me to take my Emmy awards and shove them up my ass.

[Q] Playboy: How did you react?

[A] Reiner: All I could think at the time was, I wish I were a movie actor, because the Oscars don't have those pointy wings the Emmys have. I thought, God, that would be awfully painful.

[Q] Playboy: Is that your instinct---when someone says something truly nasty to you, you reflexively think of a gag?

[A] Reiner: I've had moments like that. We had very few fights, very few. But one time, I remember, she was really mad at me and yelled, "You stink!" And I said, "Wait a minute here! Let's get this straight. I may be wrong, I may be doing the wrong thing, but I don't stink!"

[Q] Playboy: You told her, eh?

[A] Reiner: I couldn't let it ride. One time, though, she threw cherries at me. It was the most physical thing we ever did.

[Q] Playboy: Other than sex, we assume.

[A] Reiner: Yes, occasionally we did that.

[Q] Playboy: Early in the marriage?

[A] Reiner: There's a saying---I don't know if it's true---that if you take a penny and put it in a jar every time you have sex the first (continued on page 156)Rob Reiner(continued from page 76) two years of your marriage and then, after that, you take a penny out each time you have sex, you won't empty the jar if you're married 20 years.

[Q] Playboy: How many pennies did you have left?

[A] Reiner: I know there's one big Penny I don't have anymore.

[Q] Playboy: Was there a single moment when you realized that the marriage was over?

[A] Reiner: No, it really just dissolved over time. But I'll tell you a weird, freaky story. Penny and I had been in New York doing a TV movie; we'd been building this house out here, and it was taking about two years. And we kept wondering when we were going to move in---it never got done. So, just before we came back, the decorator told us, "I guarantee that when you get back from New York, it'll be ready and you can move right in." And sure enough, when we got back, we walked into the house and it looked just incredible.

Well, it was night, we were exhausted, so we just went upstairs to the bedroom, didn't even unpack, and just flopped down on the bed. So I turned on the TV---and I swear to God this is the absolute truth--- the first image that popped onto the screen was an ad for the National Enquirer and it said, "National Enquirer predicts Penny and Rob will split."

[Q] Playboy: You knew which Penny and Rob it was talking about?

[A] Reiner: I did. In fact, that's the reason we got divorced---we didn't want to make the National Enquirer look bad. We wanted to preserve the integrity of the publication.

[Q] Playboy: Competition with your wife wasn't the only problem you faced along those lines. Wasn't it also tough living up to your father? A few years ago, your father told an interviewer, "Rob wanted to grow up to be me." Was he being serious?

[A] Reiner: My father was somebody in the public eye, somebody who was brilliantly funny; all his friends were brilliantly funny. It was something I felt I had to do. And I can do it; I have done it. But I have also found it uncomfortable to feel that I'm being funny just to be competitive or to be accepted.

[Q] Playboy: So there's guilt after comedy?

[A] Reiner: No, but I just don't feel a sense of satisfaction from it, as my father does. For instance, my father loves to perform; he gets tremendous pleasure out of it. I like to perform, too, but I'm not driven with a need as great as his to be on stage, to be the center of attention. When I was a kid, he used to embarrass me sometimes; we'd be walking down the street in New York and he'd start singing at the top of his lungs:" 'It's a lovely day today, so whatever you've got to do . . .' " or " 'Beyond the blue horizon. . . .' " Of course, everybody would look. And I'd be hiding my face, going, "C'mon, Dad, please!"

I like and need to have attention, just like anybody else, but my natural state is not jumping up in front of people and performing. I think a lot of what I did with my acting career was, in a way, to show people---show my father---"Look, I can do this, too; I'm good at this." It's only lately that I don't feel that need as greatly as I did.

I'm just beginning to feel comfortable enough with myself to say that if I feel like doing shtick, I'll do it, and if I don't, I won't. People have certain expectations of me because of All in the Family and This Is Spinal Tap, but I'm a much more serious person than people think---much more serious than my father. You know, when I was growing up, my father was---and is--- the sweetest, kindest man, well liked, with a wonderful sense of humor. And all I ever heard was "Your dad's the greatest! He's the most wonderful, terrific man around!" I just thought, Jesus, there's no way I'm going to be able to be like him. I was in awe of him; he was like a god to me. I remember when I went over to the Van Dyke show with him, he'd go down to the set, and I'd crawl into his office and sit behind his desk. And I used to look around and think, God, look at all this! He's creating these TV shows, he's winning Emmys, he's a genius---and I'm inadequate. There I was, thinking I should be able to write for the Van Dyke show---and at 13, that was probably fairly ambitious, but that's what I thought. I couldn't, and it was very frustrating. I was jealous of him.

[Q] Playboy: Did you try to emulate him, to be as outgoing as he was?

[A] Reiner: Sure, but I was shy, incredibly shy. That's always been my nature. When I was a kid, I was very introspective. So I was probably reacting against my father's personality. I know it was difficult for me to feel that I had a place in the house, because my father is so demonstrative, so much larger than life. I couldn't figure out how I fit in there. When you're little, you really can't compete. I don't think he quite understood how I was as a person. He never thought I had a sense of humor, never thought I was funny. When I was eight or nine and we were spending the summer on Fire Island, Norman Lear was there. Norman remembers me playing jacks with him one day and making up jokes and doing shtick. I made him laugh. But when he went and told my father, "You know, Rob is really a funny kid," my father answered, "Get out of here! That kid? That sullen, brooding kid is not funny. No way." Later, I did a summer production of my father's own play Enter Laughing. The audience loved it, but I knew he hated it. He was applying rules to me that he wouldn't have applied to just another 18-year-old boy.

[Q] Playboy: When did your father change his mind?

[A] Reiner: When I was 19. I'd directed a production of Sartre's No Exit at a little playhouse in Beverly Hills, the Roxbury---Rick Dreyfuss was in it, in fact. And I'll never forget it, because my father came backstage, looked me straight in the eye and said, "That was good. No bullshit." It was the first time I'd gotten that sort of validation from him.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that children threaten their parents?

[A] Reiner: No question about it. I'm sure a lot of that was operating. And it continues to operate.

[Q] Playboy: You mean he wants you to do well---but not that well?

[A] Reiner: It's mixed. He's tremendously proud of me and loves me very much, but I'm sure there's always the fear of being superseded, of being replaced. I'm sure it goes on with all fathers and sons. There's a battle that goes on inside you, which is this: You don't want to hurt your father; you don't want to surpass him, because it may hurt him. At the same time, though, you don't want that to stop you from achieving in your career. It's a rough knot. I know my desire to achieve will always win out, and I think that deep down inside, he would hope that would be the case. Deep down, I think all fathers want their sons to be successful.

[Q] Playboy: Hypothetical question: Let's say you and your father had both been nominated for Oscars this year for best director---you for This Is Spinal Tap, he for All of Me. Who would you like to see win?

[A] Reiner: Me. Between interview sessions, you spoke with my father; what did he say when you asked him that?

[Q] Playboy: He said he'd want you to win.

[A] Reiner: He said me?

[Q] Playboy: Yes.

[A] Reiner: All right, Pop! Isn't that nice? . . . Maybe he's lying Seriously, if he won, I'd be real thrilled; I wouldn't feel bad. I'd feel better if I won, but I'll tell you, that's a rough one. Part of me would feel bad if he didn't get it, but if I am totally honest with myself, I'd rather be the one to win. You know, we do love each other dearly; the best hug I've ever had in the whole world was from him. When he hugs you, you feel hugged---it's a wonderful feeling. He's terrific, but we're very different.

[Q] Playboy: Although you're in the same business, you seem to be declaring your independence.

[A] Reiner: I'm starting to do work that reflects who I am. Most of what I've done until now have been things that came from what I learned at my father's knee. Spinal Tap, for instance, is satire; and my father was one of the great satirists of all time. With The Sure Thing, though, I was attracted by the idea of a young man's starting to make the connection between love and sex---a concept expressive of me---and the film is in a romantic-comedy setting that is not so much unlike things my father would do. With my next film, The Body, I'm making a movie my father would never begin to make. He'll appreciate it, I think---I hope he loves it---but I don't think it's a choice he would ever make. It's scary, because I don't know if I'm going to get accepted this way.

[Q] Playboy: How did Spinal Tap come about?

[A] Reiner: The script was kicking around for quite some time, and it was frustrating beyond belief. I got very disheartened. It took four and a half years from the time we began working on it until the time it got on screen. We had this little 20-minute product reel that was a demonstration of the kind of satire we wanted to do. We had a screening at Columbia once, and there was no laughter at all. The lights went up and they said, "Well, that's interesting; we'll think about it." It was like death. I finally sold it to AVCO/Embassy, but then Norman Lear, of all people, and a partner bought the studios, and I thought he'd dump the project. Instead, he was the one who ended up spearheading Spinal Tap.

[Q] Playboy: So Lear came through for you again, as he did for The Sure Thing.

[A] Reiner: Actually, Norman didn't like the script for The Sure Thing very much at all; he told me that in no uncertain terms. He just didn't think it was funny. It was real tough for me, because this is a man I respect so much---the one man besides my father I can absolutely say I love. It was like taking a woman home, saying, "This is the woman I'm going to marry," and your father says, "Well, she's a tramp, but if you want to marry her, be my guest." Norman's attitude finally was, "If you think this is good and think you can make something out of it, go do it."

[Q] Playboy: It seemed like a high-risk film, though: a teenage romantic comedy that isn't gross.

[A] Reiner: Well, I don't like Porky's or Police Academy or those kinds of films. And they used to make me angry, because I thought they were taking food out of my mouth: If everyone goes to see Porky's, there's no room for anything else. But what I've learned is that there's room for other kinds of movies.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't The Sure Thing a reaction against teenage exploitation movies?

[A] Reiner: It may turn out that way, but it wasn't our intention. We just wanted to make a good movie that treated young people with some respect and showed that they had feelings that were as deep as anyone else's. At first, though, I was worried, because we didn't have car crashes, we didn't have nudity, we didn't have food fights. Basically, what we have here is a simple love story about two characters who are on screen practically all the time. And I thought, God, will an audience sit still for this? But I think maybe audiences were starved for something like this.

[Q] Playboy: Your next film is by Stephen King, right?

[A] Reiner:The Body is based on a short story of his, but it doesn't have horror, murders or anything like that. It's the story of a 12-year-old boy, misunderstood by his father, who starts to like himself and think he's valid. That's what's beginning to happen to me now. It's a hard process. You find out your parents are human, and at first you're angry, because you don't want them to be. You want them to be perfect, godlike. But you learn to forgive them; and once you do, then you can go about the business of living your life.

[Q] Playboy: You say you're feeling better about things today, but Richard Dreyfuss told us that the day after the Hollywood screening of The Sure Thing, which was a triumph, you sounded miserable.

[A] Reiner: It's true enough. I can't sit still for a minute and think, Ooooh! I did good! You know how a woman puts on a makeup base? Well, I have a base of depression that's always there. I don't allow myself to feel great too much of the time---which to me is horribly tragic.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever wake up and just feel happy?

[A] Reiner: No. In fact, when people say "Have a nice day" to me, I feel a lot of pressure; I don't know how the fuck to do it. I have moments when I seem joyful, but they always catch me by surprise. I remember driving through Coldwater Canyon one time, and all of a sudden, this unbridled joy just started bubbling up in me. I don't know where it came from--- and it lasted six seconds. To be honest, I think I've been happy 18 seconds in my whole life, and they've been spread out. Where there's hope, though, is that I feel there's a happy person trying to creep out of this depression.

[Q] Playboy: Professionally, you're soaring. What would make you feel better personally?

[A] Reiner: To be able to have a good relationship with a woman and have a family. But I would have to feel good about myself first. Marriage is very attractive to me. I've never thought, Oh, boy! Single! I get to fuck a lot of women! That's never been appealing to me. Now, though, I'm like a pendulum: I go through stages when I run around a lot, get tired of it, then want something with real emotional content. And when I'm not able to make that work, I go back to running around. I think what it boils down to is that I'm not ready yet for another long, long-term relationship.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds as if you're still afraid of something.

[A] Reiner: The only things I'm afraid of are my own feelings, my own emotions---that I won't be able to control them or understand them. That would be the root of it.

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of which: We probably shouldn't ask, but why won't you discuss your penis size, Rob?

[A] Reiner: How crass of you! No! No!

[Q] Playboy: This is the big interview: You're supposed to come clean about everything.

[A] Reiner: Listen: If you had a penis that was only an eighth of an inch long, you wouldn't want to talk about it, either.

"I don't think 'All in the Family' had any impact on social change. It just portrayed people realistically."