July 23rd, 2014 
James Shotwell 
Rob Reiner is one of those rare living legends that almost everyone you meet loves in one way or another. You may hate some of his work, sure, but that is bound to happen when you have had a career in entertainment that spans several decades. The important thing is that you remain as consistent as possible, and for the better part of the last thirty years Rob Reiner has continually raised the bar for simple, romantic storytelling. He can take any two characters, regardless of age or personality, and make audiences not only connect with them, but relate to and even love them. He’s a master class storyteller in every possible way, and earlier this month I had the good fortune of meeting the man, myth, and living legend in person when he passed through Boston during a promotional run for And So It Goes.
Seated across from Rob Reiner, it’s admittedly a little hard to think straight. I mean, the man has made and appeared in films that revolutionized cinema as a whole. What could someone like me, a man-child from the midwest with an affinity for anything on the silver screen, possibly ask that a man like Reiner has never heard before? The answer, it seems, was not that much. Fortunately, I was joined in the interview room by a few senior film critics who really helped keep things interesting throughout our allotted time. You can read highlights from our conversation below.
And So It Goes, Reiner’s latest directorial effort, arrives in theaters this week. Click here to read our official review.
His opinions on filmmaking becoming easier as you get older:
It does get easier in that you don’t spend your time doing things that are not essential. You learn what’s important, what’s not important and you don’t spin your wheels in areas that are not important. It does get easier from that standpoint. Now, the hard part is that you’re older, so physically it’s very taxing, but you learn where you need to spend your energy. I watched the NBA Finals. You look at Tim Duncan, this guy’s 38 years old. That’s an old guy for a basketball player. He played a whole season, but you watch how he played. They didn’t play him a lot of minutes. They got the most out of the minutes he played. So, even if he’s only playing twenty-five to thirty minutes, he’s still scoring his fifteen points, because he knows what he needs to do. That’s the part that becomes a little easier.
His view on making films:
I’ve always said that when you’re making a movie, especially the movies I make that studios would never make, you have limited budgets, you have limited amounts of time, so you learn there are certain things that are not essential that you can lose. You never cut into a vital organ though, because then you destroyed your project. But, you do learn how to delegate. When you’re young, you’re hopped up on everything. I learned as I went along. There’s a great moment in a Truffaut film called Day For Night, it’s all about movie making, and the guy comes up and says, “Do you want the red cup or the blue cup?” You can agonize over that. Then you go “You know something? The scheme of this picture is not going to matter that much.” Yeah, there’s probably a better choice, but you agonize over that and spin your wheels over that, you’re going to lose a bigger picture.
Having execs in the movie business being fans of him and his work:
The people who are running the movie companies or the TV outlets, they’re younger. By virtue, they have to be, because you can’t run these companies and be the age that I am unless you’re my friend Alan Horn. He’s the only guy I know that has the energy to be able to do it. So, yeah, there’s always people who look at you and say, “Yeah, grew up on you, you’re an icon and this and that.” Basically, I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. You want them to just basically know that you have experience and that you can do the thing. You know that you’re going to bring it in on time and on budget and that you know how it’s all going to work, but judge this thing for what it is. Is this script something that you’re interested in? You don’t want to be making the movie just because you’re a fan. You want to be making this movie because you feel that it’s going to work for your company, your outlet. So, I think it’s a double-edged sword in a weird way.
Pointing out that he does appreciate it even though it’s a double-edged sword:
It’s nice when people say “I like your work, I grew up on your films” or when they quote your lines. That’s really nice. It makes you feel good when you know that you’ve done things that have actually touched people and it’s stayed with them or whatever. That part’s good.
Reasons for using different crews as compared to in the past:
I used to have the same crew all the time when I used to make pictures in Los Angeles, but I can’t make pictures in Los Angeles anymore, because they’re too expensive and you don’t get tax breaks. So, I’ve had to go where the tax breaks are. I’ve made a picture in Michigan, I’ve made one in New York and now Connecticut. The last two pictures I did, I did it with the same DP (Director of Photography) and I love her (Reed Morano). I love all the digital stuff. I’m not old school. I’m not one of those people who says it has to be on film.
On if he misses doing work on film:
I don’t. To me, I’m a story-teller. I came at this as an actor, as a writer and as a storyteller. To me, it’s about telling the story. I’m not a cinematographer, I didn’t go to film school where all of those things are important. I want to just tell the story and I’ll use whatever tools there are to tell the story. I love the Avid. When I started working I worked on a Moviola, which is an upright thing. Then I went to the K-E-M (Keller-Elektro-Mechanik), then to the Avid. I love the Avid, because you can see right away if you made a good decision and you can undo it and then redo it. When you do it on the cutting bench, you have to take the reel down, you gotta redo it. It takes forever.
Technique for getting the opening tracking shot in And So It Goes:
It’s a drone. It’s the only way to do a shot like that, because a helicopter, you can’t get close enough on those things and the wind from the rotors would make everything flop around. And you couldn’t get that in that close. It’s a little drone; you’ve seen them. Amazon uses them, it’s done remotely and they mount a very small camera on it. We did it a number of times. You pick the location of where you want. It’s a design thing, you have to really design it. The shot that we used in the film, the drone crashed. We took every frame of it until it flew down and hit the ground.
His reasons for shooting in Connecticut:
Tax breaks.
Putting pieces of himself into his films and first getting idea for And So It Goes:
There’s something in me in all of the things that I do in that these are things that I think about. The whole idea for this film was based on the experience I had when I made The Bucket List. We had the press junket and everybody asked, “What’s on your bucket list?” Whenever they’d ask Jack Nicholson, he would say “One more great romance.” So, I said, “Wait, that’s a great idea for a movie.” Two people who are finding each other at a later point in life. So, that became the basis for this film. Then we hired Mark Andrus to come in and write it. When I turned sixty, all these things that you think about intellectually, you start internalizing them. Which is that your life isn’t going to be forever and that it is precious and you have to make the most of every little moment. When I turned sixty, that started hitting me. I realized that I was like a very, very young old person.
Why Jack Nicholson didn’t play the role:
Jack had quit acting. He quit acting. He said he didn’t want to act anymore. Obviously, if he wanted to be in the movie I would have. I hope he’s not done, I really hope not. Jack is one of the great film actors of all time, so I’d hope he wants to do more.
If he was worried about the compatibility of Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton:
Sure you are, because they’ve never worked together. And that’s unusual, because you’ve got these two Academy Award, iconic winning actors that I always wanted to work together and they hadn’t. And they have very different styles. Michael has great craft. He’s learned his craft from Streets of San Francisco all the way through and he’s like an ally on set. He knows the drill, he knows how to help you make the day and all that stuff. Then Diane, who is a completely instinctive actress is actually more like the way I am. Before we started shooting she actually said, “I don’t act at all. I just am what I am and I just do it.” I said, “That’s great. Whatever it is, it’s great, what you do.” She takes the dialog and makes it her own. That’s what she does. That’s the way I’ve worked my whole life. I’m an improvisational actor and she’s very much that way, so it was great for me to work with her.
Speaking about how much of his role in The Wolf of Wall Street was improvised:
It was completely improvised. They had a script and it was good, but we went off and Marty just let us go. And it works if you have people who can do it. Like in Spinal Tap, the whole thing is improvised, but you have actors who feel comfortable doing that like Jonah Hill. It’s easy with somebody like Jonah. Leo was great at it, but some actors don’t like doing that.
If he prefers to work with actors who improvise or actors who stick to the script:
Both. One’s who are buttoned down and one’s who likes to improvise. Morgan Freeman, I couldn’t have a better experience and he likes to do what’s there, but he’ll do whatever you want him to do.
Has he ever thought about directing himself as the lead in a film:
Not in the starring role. I’ve been in a few. I was in This Is Spinal Tap, I was in this film, I was in Story of Us. I’ve done little parts in things, but I don’t like it, because it’s confusing. I get a split focus and don’t like it. I like acting in other people’s movies. That’s fun, because somebody else has the headache.
His experience as a teenager on set of The Dick Van Dyke Show:
As a kid, when I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old and the summer came around, they were shooting The Dick Van Dyke Show, and I went every single day, all day for my entire summer vacation. I spent with them watching my dad work with the actors and the writers and seeing how the directors staged the actors and how they used the characters. I was totally taking all that in when I was young.
An unexpected experience with Mary Tyler Moore:
I’m not telling tales out of school, because Mary Tyler Moore has this in her book, and that is that I did grab her by the ass when I was fourteen years old. I didn’t know what came over me, but she was so pretty. She was twenty-four and she wore these tight capri pants. I don’t know what possessed me, but I grabbed her and she told my dad on me. My dad called me in the office and said, “Did you grab Mary Tyler Moore’s ass?” I said “yeah.” Then with a big smile on his face he says, “Don’t ever do that again.” She did talk about it. She said it on the David Letterman Show, so I’m not making it up.
Mary Tyler Moore’s reaction to the incident:
I don’t think she was flattered by it at the time. Years later they did a reunion show for The Dick Van Dyke Show. My dad was directing and producing it and I had already become a star from All in the Family, and I was visiting the set. Dick was in a tuxedo and Mary was in an evening gown after they had just come back from some formal thing and they’re standing on the set. So, I walk out on the set and say, “Mary, I just gotta tell you that I want to apologize. After all these years, I never said I was sorry for what I did when I was fourteen, but I couldn’t help myself. I was young, you were so beautiful.” And I said, “not that you’re not beautiful now. If you…” then she bends over and I grab her by the ass and she says, “Oh, Rob!” So I thought that was a great pay off for something from thirty years earlier.
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