Google
 

Dig A Hole: Estelle Reiner - Singer, Artist, Actress and Carl’s Loving Wife

October 29th, 2008 by Scott Marks

I first knew what Estelle Reiner looked like when I spied a photo of her parked on Carl Reiner’s desk. It was the summer of 1977 and I was in Los Angeles getting my first taste of film writing. I was lucky enough to have a two-part interview with Mr. Reiner. He was promoting Oh, God! and we spoke in his L.A. office before I saw the film and at his suite in Chicago’s Ritz Carlton after the press screening. Two moments are forever burned in my brain. I brought a movie-cover edition of Reiner’s Enter Laughing for him to sign. “Where’d you get this thing,” he asked. “I found it at a used book store for a quarter,” I told him. After inscribing, “To Scott, Thank you for saying nice things to and about me” he removed a quarter from his pocket and taped it to the book’s cover. He winked and said “It’s on me, Scotty” before handing me the paperback.

It’s one thing to have a photo of your spouse on your office desk, another to pack one when you’re on the road. There, on a table in Mr. Reiner’s Chicago suite, sat a framed photo of Estelle Reiner. Who knows why certain moments tend to linger, but I have always remembered this loving touch. As if needed, it confirmed in my heart that Carl Reiner is an über-mensch.

My heart goes out to Mr. Reiner who lost his wife of 64 years Saturday. Estelle Reiner, 94, died Saturday in Beverly Hills.

Estelle Lebost was born in the Bronx. As a teenager the future Ms. Reiner sang on radio  She graduated the National Academy of Design and during WWII, was the first female isometric draftsman to work at Sperry Rand, making blueprints for assembly workers building submarines and airplanes. On Christmas Eve, 1943, she and Carl Reiner married while he was on a weekend pass from the Army.

After raising her three children, actor/director, Rob; Annie, a writer and psychoanalyst and Lucas, a painter, Reiner began a career as a performer, studying with Viola Spolin and Lee Strasberg.

She had small roles in a handful of movies including Dom DeLuise’s Fatso, Mel Brooks’ To Be or Not to Be and her husband’s The Man With Two Brains. She secured a place in movie history with one line in her son Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally. After Meg Ryan finishes faking an orgasom in a deli, Ms. Reiner turns to her waiter and says, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

During the Vietnam War, she helped to organizer the group Another Mother For Peace, something Rob Reiner has said helped inspire his own political activism. At the age of 65, she embarked on a new career as a jazz singer. A well respected vocalist, Ms. Reiner regularly appeared at New York clubs and Los Angeles’ Cinegrill, Vine Street Bar and Grill, and at Luna Park.

Ms. Reiner was also an artist of note. She had four one-woman shows of her paintings in the 1970s.

According to nephew George Shapiro, his aunt died the way we all should - of old age. In addition to her husband and children, she is survived by five grandchildren.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Filed Under Obituaries

THE BUCKET LIST / Rob Reiner (2007)

December 21st, 2007 by Scott Marks

the-bucket-list.jpg

The Bucket List (2007)
Directed by Rob Reiner
Written by Justin Zackham
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, Sean Hayes, Beverly Todd & Rob Morrow
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

The letter in the FedEx bag filled with Warners and Full Focus screeners cautioned me against loaning or giving away my copies of the advance DVDs. Do they think a guy that loves movies as much as I do wants to see an industry reduced to opening night premieres on TV monitors or iPhone screens? That’s called television, not movies.

Anyone who pirates first run features for cheap imbeciles to watch on their computer equipment, thus stealing revenue from the industry I so dearly love, should be put hunted down and put to death while their family is forced to look on.

Normally, I set the screeners aside until I have a chance to see the film where it belongs, projected on the big screen. This is Rob Reiner. What chances were there that it would lose and cinematic voltage on my 35-inch Sony?

It’s a goddamned cancer travelogue.

The richest man in the world (Jack Nicholson) and an average Joe (Morgan Freeman) meet in a cancer ward owned by the former.

Initially the two don’t hit it off, but after weeks of sharing a room together, surly Jack thaws and decides to do a good deed by making Freeman’s “bucket list” come true. (A “bucket list” consists of things you never had a chance to do before you kick the bucket.)

For the first thirty minutes, I was convinced that this was based on a two character play set entirely in a hospital room. No such luck. What starts as acerbic and perhaps even a bit insightful soon gives way to a travelogue that would make the folks at Hallmark greeting cards stand up and cheer.

With “f.u.” money to burn, the boys leave their hospital beds in search of a slam-bang final chapter to their lives. From Tibet to the Taj Majal and Singapore our terminally ill twosome embark on an all access, picture postcard world tour that would have a dizzying effect on the similarly booked-to-capacity travelers in Les Blank’s contemptuous documentary Innocents Abroad. (It would make a great double bill with The Bucket List, particularly if it was the first feature and you decided to kick The Bucket.)

Freeman’s character is happily married and the film never quite comes to terms with why, in his last months alive, he decides to abandon his loving family in favor of globe trotting with a cranky billionaire.

A one-woman man, when the topic of getting some strange before he exits comes up, Freeman politely declines. Even the advances of a beautiful woman (a hooker bankrolled by Jack) fail to get Freeman’s attention. He obviously loves his wife. Why would he want to spend his remaining time anywhere but in her company?

Both of the actors are superb, and while I’d hesitate to peg this as material Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau would have turned down (I suffered through Out to Sea and The Odd Couple II), it comes close to that type of cutesy, doddering entertainment bound to sell a boatload of senior tickets.

Nicholson hasn’t been in a thoroughly satisfying film in ages. The Two Jakes instantly compensated for Batman’s hambone mugging and it’s been downhill ever since. Over the years he’s shown a commendable allegiance to directors who did him justice, particularly Mike Nichols and Bob Rafelson. Wolf lacked the bite of Carnal Knowledge and both Man Trouble and Blood and Wine were miscalculations at best. A sequel to Terms of Endearment was unthinkable.

Jack must have been feeling sentimental when Rob Reiner (who directed Nicholson to an Oscar nomination in A Few Good Men) called. His Batman-esque funny faces and arm flailing in The Departed were as much a deterrent as Marty’s lazy direction. And how humiliating must it have been for the Academy to slight Jack in favor of Marky Mark? It was time to return to the safety of a sitcom actor turned big screen sitcom director and the potential of Oscar that it offers.

The role fits Nicholson better than the hospital gown his gut wrestles with for the first third of the picture. Something tells me that when Jack’s partied-out lungs finally give out and it’s time to dig a hole, every entertainment program in the know universe will lead with clips from this movie.

Still, one must see everything with Jack Nicholson or Morgan Freeman in it. Unfortunately this turned out to be the film that stars both.

Tags: , , ,

Filed Under Reviews, Theatrical

THIS IS SPINAL TAP / Rob Reiner (1984)

September 12th, 2007 by Scott Marks

Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest & Michael McKean in THIS IS SPINAL TAP (1984)

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

Directed by: Rob Reiner

Written by: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean

Cast: Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, Bruno Kirby, Rob Reiner, Kimberly Stringer, Chazz Dominguez, Shari Hall, R.J. Parnell, David Kaff, Tony Hendra, Jean Cromie, Patrick Maher, Ed Begley Jr., Danny Kortchmar

Aspect Ratio: 1.70 : 1

Running Time: 82 min.

Genres: Mockumentary

For his first film, Rob Reiner assembled a bunch of his TV cronies to chart the rise and fall of the world’s loudest rock band. (I know, I know. It’s an “11.”) The only thing easier than kicking a crippled dog is making fun of rock and rollers, and while the film is frequently funny, there is not enough material to justify the running time. Another example of a superb seven-minute SNL skit blown up to outrageous proportions.

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Tags: , ,

Filed Under DVD, Reviews