In addition to Rob Reiner’s decades of success as a film and TV director, producer and actor — creating some of America’s “most cherished stories on screen,” as Barack Obama said — he also enjoyed what appeared to be an enviable family life. He was the son of iconic TV writer Carl Reiner and the publicly proud father of four adult children, three of whom he shared with his wife Michele.
But in the hours after a family member found Reiner 78, and his wife, Michele, 68, dead in their Los Angeles home — the victims of a reported double homicide — fans of “Stand By Me,” “The Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally” and “A Few Good Men” are revisiting a later film the director made with his 32-year-old son Nick Reiner.
That’s because both Rob and Nick Reiner admitted that the 2015 film, “Being Charlie,” (which is available on YouTube) was loosely based on their painful family dynamics as a long-troubled Nick struggled with drug addiction as a teenager and young adult.
Those dynamics have come into stark focus following the stunning news, first reported by People magazine and later confirmed by the Associated Press, that Nick Reiner had been taken into custody in the death of his parents. Police sources told multiple outlets that the couple died of stab wounds, while People also reported that their daughter, Romy Reiner, discovered their parents’ bodies.
People magazine cited multiple sources close to the family as saying that Nick Reiner killed his parents and been questioned overnight by LAPD’s elite Robbery-Homicide Division. AP said that online jail records showed that Nick was in custody with bail set at $4 million.
Nick last appeared in public with his parents, younger sister Romy and older brother Jake in September at the premiere of “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues,” the long-anticipated sequel to Reiner’s cult classic mockumentary, “This is Spinal Tap.”
Whatever the investigation reveals about Rob and Michele Reiners’ deaths, the film that Rob and Nick made together will become a vital text for people trying to make sense of the famous family at the center of Hollywood’s latest tragedy. Reiner directed “Being Charlie,” using a screenplay that Nick co-wrote with Matt Elisofon, a friend from one of his 17 self-described stints in rehab. It follows 18-year-old Charlie, who comes from a privileged background like Nick, and whose famous former actor father (played by “The Princess Bride” star Cary Elwes) is running for governor.
Because Charlie’s parents won’t welcome him back home unless he agrees to make a serious go at recovery, he comes to resent them — a situation that Rob and Nick Reiner said closely tracks with how they interacted as Nick refused to go into treatment and descended into heroin and homelessness.
The Hollywood Reporter said that the film, sanctioned by the Reiner family, gave “an unusually candid glimpse into the inner workings of the Reiner household” in the darkest times of Nick’s addiction.
When “Being Charlie” premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2015, the Los Angeles Times wrote that Reiner and his son were making the movie to “exorcise drug demons.” Key portions of the movie were lifted from the Reiners’ lives, including when Rob and Michele Reiner said they “wondered if there was an end in sight, and whether it would be the tragic one that a voice in the back of their heads kept telling them was coming.”
The movie offers few answers and ends with the father and son reaching “at best a détente,” The Hollywood Reporter said. This is when Elwes’ often self-involved though ultimately well-meaning father character — a stand-in for Reiner — offers his son an apology for the sometimes unsympathetic way he treated him. In interviews to promote the film, Reiner said he offered a similar apology to his son.
Following the film’s TIFF premiere, Rob and Nick Reiner, along with Elisofon, sat for a Q&A, which also can be viewed on YouTube. For people trying to understand the father-son dynamics, they will notice that Reiner does most of the talking during the Q&A, which may be expected, given that he was a Hollywood veteran, going back to his breakthrough acting role, playing Carroll O’Connor’s liberal son-in-law Mike “Meathead” Stivic on the iconic 1970s TV show, “All in the Family.”
Reiner, who also had decades of experience promoting his films and political activism, said that “Being Charlie” was “the most personal film that I’ve ever been involved in.” He explained that it drew “from our own experiences of what we went through.”
“We didn’t set out for it to be cathartic or for it to be therapeutic, but it turned out to be that,” Reiner continued. When a festival-goer asked about their real-life, father-son relationship, Nick Reiner, then 22, did not immediately respond, The Hollywood Reporter said. A moment his father said “there were disagreements” and “at times it was really rough” when the pair were trying to figure out how to depict the reality of their relationship in the movie. “I’ve said this before, this was the most difficult, emotional and the most satisfying, creative experience I’ve ever been involved in,” Reiner said.
Nick Reiner finally acknowledged, “Sometimes it would get overwhelming for me.”
On his own, in a 2016 interview with People at his father’s West Hollywood office, Nick Reiner opened up about how he first went to rehab around his 15th birthday. He also briefly faced homelessness because he resisted his parents’ efforts for him to go back to rehab after all the times he relapsed.
“If I wanted to do it my way and not go to the programs they were suggesting, then I had to be homeless,” he told People. “I was homeless in Maine. I was homeless in New Jersey. I was homeless in Texas. I spent weeks on the street. It was not fun.”
But Nick Reiner reflected on how that experience proved valuable, both for writing the film and in his personal life, though his IMDB page shows that “Being Charlie” marked his one and only credit as a screenwriter.
“That made me who I am now, having to deal with that stuff,” Nick Reiner said. “I met crazy great people there, so out of my element.”
“Now, I’ve been home for a really long time, and I’ve sort of gotten acclimated back to being in L.A. and being around my family,” he said. “But there was a lot of dark years there.”