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  • Popular Post

Stephen King remembers Rob Reiner: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/opinion/culture/stephen-king-rob-reiner-stand-by-me.html?unlocked_article_code=1.9U8.agKp.xHBlDOoSiAzu&smid=nytcore-ios-share

In this case, I prefer to trust my feelings more than my memory. The only thing I’m positive about is how I felt when I heard Rob Reiner was dead: a combination of sadness and disbelief. As for the rest … Robert Stone had it right when he said “the mind is a monkey.”

I think I saw “Stand by Me” in the fall of 1985. Back then it was still called “The Body,” which was the name of my novella, on which Rob’s film was based. I think he showed it to me in a room at the Beverly Hills Hotel with a rock ’n’ roll band thudding away somewhere in the distance. That band was pure ’80s. The movie allowed me entry to another, more innocent, time: 1959.

I’m pretty sure Rob was wearing a checked short-sleeved shirt and khaki pants, as if he’d just come from the golf course. (For all I knew, he had.) The only thing I’m absolutely sure of is that he hovered until the movie was going and then left the room. Later he told me he couldn’t bear to see my reaction if I didn’t like it. I was an audience of one, sitting in a high-backed chair filched from one of the hotel’s meeting rooms.

I was surprised by how deeply affected I was by its 89 minutes. I’ve written a lot of fiction, but “The Body” remains the only nakedly autobiographical story I’ve ever done. Those kids were my friends. We never walked down a railroad track to see a dead body, but we got up to other stuff. The story was about my reality as I had lived it on the dirt roads of southern Maine. There really was a junkyard dog, although his name wasn’t Chopper. There really was a kid who went swimming and came out covered with leeches in surprising areas, but it wasn’t Gordie Lachance; it was me.

And there really was a kid who was accused of stealing milk money, although his name wasn’t Chris Chambers. He did borrow — we won’t call it stealing — his mom’s Bel Air. With me riding shotgun, he drove it 90 miles per hour down Route 9 in our backcountry hometown. We were 11.

What I’m saying is that in Rob’s hands, it all rang true. The funny parts were really funny (including the barf-o-rama) and the dramatic parts hit me where I lived, or where I did live back in the days when John F. Kennedy was president and gas was a quarter a gallon.

I had felt just that torn between the writing life and the lives of my friends, who were living for the moment and not going anywhere in particular, except maybe Vietnam. I chose writing, but it was a near thing.

When the movie was over, I thanked Rob and surprised the hell out of myself by giving him a hug. I’m not ordinarily a hugging man, and I don’t think he was used to getting them. He stiffened, muttered something about being glad I liked it, and we both stepped away.

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I apparently wasn’t done feeling my feelings. I went into the nearest men’s bathroom and sat in a stall until I got myself under control. Nostalgia can be dangerous when it’s up close. I don’t exactly know what I mean by that, but it feels true.
When I came back from the men’s, Rob and I had a more normal conversation. He asked me for notes; I had none. I had just let the whole thing wash over me. I marveled at what a good story the truth could make in the right hands.

Years later Rob arranged a screening of “Misery,” which was also based on one of my books, for me. I was equally delighted with that film but not as emotionally wrecked by it. What I liked — what Rob dared to catch — was the mixture of humor and suspense. When Annie Wilkes, perfectly portrayed by Kathy Bates, tells Paul Sheldon that the champagne they will drink is “Dom Per-IG-non,” it’s both funny and touching: This woman has never had anyone to teach her the correct pronunciation. Rob caught that perfectly.

Much later, after Rob had become an auteur and I had become whatever it is I became, we met in New York. At his behest I took part in a political documentary about how little liking we had for Donald Trump. Rob took a lot of brickbats and slurs for it on Twitter with his customary grace. (I refuse to call it X; that’s for porno films.) He was a political presence, a social commentator and a wicked satirist. But all that still pales for me when I watch Chris Chambers say to the weeping Gordie Lachance: “You’re gonna be a great writer someday.”

That weeping boy was me. It was Rob Reiner who put it on the screen.



6 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Sounds like the son was violent in the past. I'm unsure if there was evidence that he physically hurt his parents or not.

I have a couple of extended family members with drug and/or mental health issues. If I had an unexpected knock on the door from one of them, I would hesitate to let them inside. There will be a money request and I don't know what would happen when I refused. I know there has been violent or destructive behavior from them toward others in the past.

I'm a believer in tough love. If someone isn't actively getting better for an addiction issue then they're actually getting worse. And if you're not getting better, then they need to be on their own. The Reiners had substantial resources but I bet it's not easy to take the step of hiring full-time security for protection from your adult son.

"Tough love" or loving from a distance is the approved way to deal with active addict family members.  Anything else risks enablement of the addict, not to mention safety and property of the family.

Still, it's incredibly hard to watch a close family member self-destruct.  Many times, that leads in fairly short order to a rock bottom for the addict and the necessary realization that they need help and acceptance of it and recovery.  Other times, it's going to lead to long term homelessness, jail, prison, and mental institutions.

I had seen an article in connection with the film About Charlie where the Reiners had used this approach for many years, but Nick remained incorrigible and they gave up and began enabling him again.

Fucking brutal.

I've spent a lot of time talking to and listening to the stories of addicts and the worst things I have ever heard inevitably concern their addict children.

1 hour ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

More reported news from the Conan party. Apparently Nick Reiner was asking weird questions of many guests, and bothered Bill Hader, who told Nick that he was interrupting a private conversation. Nick stormed off.

Sucks for Hader if he is now pulled into the drama.

I keep thinking how much it sucks for Conan. 

  • Popular Post
57 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

"Tough love" or loving from a distance is the approved way to deal with active addict family members.  Anything else risks enablement of the addict, not to mention safety and property of the family.

Still, it's incredibly hard to watch a close family member self-destruct.  Many times, that leads in fairly short order to a rock bottom for the addict and the necessary realization that they need help and acceptance of it and recovery.  Other times, it's going to lead to long term homelessness, jail, prison, and mental institutions.

I had seen an article in connection with the film About Charlie where the Reiners had used this approach for many years, but Nick remained incorrigible and they gave up and began enabling him again.

Fucking brutal.

I've spent a lot of time talking to and listening to the stories of addicts and the worst things I have ever heard inevitably concern their addict children.

My brother is an addict. Started smoking anything he could light on fire in middle school, then started selling it out of his bedroom window. After I moved away to college, he got into harder stuff and stole money from my parents' money market account to buy drugs. They kicked him out and he eventually made his way to Austin. He got a DUI in Travis County in 2007. We weren't speaking much then, so when I got a call from jail at 7 am I was more than surprised. After we hung up I made some calls and got him released without bail since he was a first-time offender. I guess there's still a lot of paperwork that has to happen, and one has to be given time to sober up, because at noon the same day he called back from jail. Started telling me the same exact story I'd heard 5 hours earlier. I cut him off, told him he was a fucking asshole, and that I was not going to pick him up. I called his roommate who went and got him.

He did alcohol counseling and stopped drinking. Still smokes weed like a chimney but as far as I know, it's the only thing he smokes. We got a lot closer after that, mainly due to his outreach to me (we have no other siblings). He still makes shit financial choices but has had a steady job for a long time and an apartment near us. He takes care of our dog when we're out of town and he would murder anyone who messed with that dog. He'd also murder anyone who messed with me, or my family. When I had to have emergency surgery last year, he was the first to call about visiting me at the hospital.

Lately things have been shakier than usual. His electricity almost got cut off and he almost got evicted until my parents intervened. He doesn't ask me for money or for a place to stay because he knows I'd say no, but if his dog needs food or if he needs to borrow a carpet cleaner or whatever, I'm ok with that. A few months ago he mentioned that he started drinking again. Not much, he says. But I know how it goes. We come from a family of alcoholics.

I guess all this is to say, I can see how someone can try and fail to help an addict they love. Not to be cliche, but even addicts contain multitudes. The Reiners, I'm sure, held out hope until the last minute. When it's your kid, I imagine it's another order of magnitude of difficulty. What a tragedy.

He was in the arraignment court today. In a suicide gown. Waived his right to a speedy arraignment. I assume the defense is going to pursue a "not guilty by reason of insanity" defense, which is probably the only angle they have. Will need to show that he was suffering from a mental/disease defect, and due to that disease/defect, was unable to understand the nature of his act or that his act was morally and legally wrong. Important to note that it cannot be based off of intoxication, or even that the disease/defect were caused by narcotics.

 

Nick Reiner appears in court on Wednesday in Los Angeles.

I listened to Reiner on Bill Mahers podcast in the last month.  I believe he alluded to (or directly stated) taking in of his son to live with him.  It was very much in passing to another part of the conversation.  I googled but don’t find anything and haven’t had time to try to find the moment.  
 

Having heard him talk briefly about that relationship made a shocking story all that more surreal.  
 

God awful tragedy.  Just unfathomable.
 

 

I think they alluded to it in the screenplay they wrote together, in that this seems like severe mental illness with drug addition as a symptom.  I think he said something along the lines of “taking drugs to silence the noise, but it only amplified it.”

20 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

"Tough love" or loving from a distance is the approved way to deal with active addict family members.  Anything else risks enablement of the addict, not to mention safety and property of the family.

Still, it's incredibly hard to watch a close family member self-destruct.  Many times, that leads in fairly short order to a rock bottom for the addict and the necessary realization that they need help and acceptance of it and recovery.  Other times, it's going to lead to long term homelessness, jail, prison, and mental institutions.

I had seen an article in connection with the film About Charlie where the Reiners had used this approach for many years, but Nick remained incorrigible and they gave up and began enabling him again.

Fucking brutal.

I've spent a lot of time talking to and listening to the stories of addicts and the worst things I have ever heard inevitably concern their addict children.

Kevin Smith talks about how he eventually had to do this for Jason Mewes. Reverse was the issue... he kept on enabling Jay, and eventually had to just... not let him back in.

This isn't the celebrity death that hit me the hardest, but it sucks in the way Phil Hartman's did.

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