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Martin Scorsese shared a heartfelt tribute to his late friend and legendary filmmaker Rob Reiner on Christmas Day.
Scorsese, in an article for The New York Times, wrote that it fills him with “deep sadness” to use the past tense to talk about his friends Rob and Michele Reiner, who were stabbed to death earlier this month, allegedly by their son Nick Reiner.
“What happened to Rob and Michele is an obscenity, an abyss in lived reality. The only thing that will help me accept it is the passage of time,” Scorsese wrote.
“So, like all their loved ones and their friends, and they were people with many, many friends, I must be allowed to imagine them alive and healthy…”
Scorsese reflected on the first time he met Rob Reiner in the early 1970s, noting that he “immediately loved hanging out” with the actor-director.
“We had a natural affinity for each other. He was hilarious and sometimes bitingly funny, but he was never the type of person who would take over the room,” the “Goodfellas” director wrote. “He had a beautiful sense of uninhibited freedom, he thoroughly enjoyed life in the moment and he had a great laugh.”
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Scorsese called Reiner’s “Misery” his favorite film from the director before adding that “This Is Spinal Tap,” Reiner’s directorial debut, was “in a class of its own.”
While casting for his 2013 film “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Scorsese wrote that Reiner “immediately” came up with the idea of playing Max Belfort, the father of stockbroker Jordan Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio).
“He could improvise with the best of them, he was a master of comedy, he worked wonderfully with Leo and the rest of the guys, and he understood the human situation of his character: the man loved his son, he was happy with his success, but he knew he was destined for a fall,” Scorsese explained.
Reiner, in a 2013 interview with Salon, called Scorsese “one of the great filmmakers of all time” and emphasized that when he calls to ask you to be in a film, “you just do what he says… you don’t ask questions” and “you just show up.”
That year he told a SAG-AFTRA panel that he had a lot of fun on the set of “The Wolf of Wall Street” and praised Scorsese for building a “great playground” to work in.
In his piece for the Times, Scorsese recalled a “wonderful moment” on set when Reiner’s “loving father” character was “bewildered by his son.”
Scorsese stated that he was “moved by the delicacy and directness” of Reiner’s performance throughout the filmmaking process.
“Now, it breaks my heart to even think about the tenderness of Rob’s performance in this and other scenes,” she wrote.