Opinion | Martin Scorsese: Rob Reiner Had Me in the Palm of His Hand

Rob Reiner was my friend, and so was Michele. From now on, I’ll have to use the past tense, and that fills me with such profound sadness. But there’s no other choice.

Rob and I got to know each other in Los Angeles in the early 1970s. I had a good friend in New York named Bill Minkin, a legendary comedian, radio host and actor. Bill appeared in a few of my pictures, including my very first feature, “Who’s That Knocking at My Door.” Through Bill, I got to know George Memmoli, also in comedy (George played Joey in “Mean Streets” and Nicky in “New York, New York”). When I moved out to L.A., I started going to get-togethers at George’s house. These were stand-up comedy salons, all-night affairs. David Steinberg and Dick Gregory came by quite a bit, and that’s where I met Rob and his wife at the time, Penny Marshall.

Rob and I were both Eastern transplants, in a way. He and his family had moved to Los Angeles when he was young, but he was born in the Bronx and lived in New Rochelle as a child. Rob came from New York show business royalty. His mother, Estelle, was a wonderful singer and actress, and his father, Carl, came out of Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows” alongside Neil Simon and Mel Brooks, who later became his partner with the brilliant “2000 Year Old Man” routine. This was 100 percent New York humor, and it was in the air I breathed.

I should say there were several different improvisational groups that were part of that scene at the time. George’s outfit, with Bill Saluga and Michael Mislove, Patti Deutsch and Fred Willard, was the Ace Trucking Company. Rob was more connected with the Credibility Gap, satirists on alternative radio with a sharp political, countercultural edge. Just to give you an idea of where they were at, one of their broadcasts was called “J. Edgar Hoover: Too Proud to Die, Too Dead to Live.” Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Albert Brooks were also part of that scene.

Right away, I loved hanging out with Rob. We had a natural affinity for each other. He was hilarious and sometimes bitingly funny, but he was never the kind of guy who would take over the room. He had a beautiful sense of uninhibited freedom, fully enjoying the life of the moment, and he had a great barreling laugh. When they honored him at Lincoln Center, Michael McKean did a bit, which was a brilliant parody of solemn official tribute speeches. Before he got to the punchline, Rob laughed so hard you could hear it throughout the auditorium.

When we met that first time at George’s house, the song by War “The Cisco Kid” was all over the radio. Rob and I were talking, and he casually told me, “You know, the Cisco Kid was a friend of mine.”

“Really,” I said, “I didn’t know he was real.”

“Oh yeah, he was a friend of mine.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. The Cisco Kid was a friend of mine.”

Hmm, I wondered, maybe he knew Duncan Renaldo. We kept talking for quite a while before he finally broke it to me that he was kidding. I mean, pretty pathetic — the comic had to explain the joke. But Rob was so good that he had me in the palm of his hand.

We stayed in touch over the years and watched each other’s movies. My own favorite among his pictures is “Misery,” a very special film, beautifully acted by Kathy Bates and James Caan. But then, of course, there’s “This Is Spinal Tap.” Somehow, that picture is in a class of its own. It’s a kind of immaculate creation. And a big part of the greatness of that film is Rob himself, as director and as actor.

When I was casting “The Wolf of Wall Street,” I immediately thought of Rob to play Leonardo DiCaprio’s father. He could improvise with the best, he was a master at comedy, he worked beautifully with Leo and the rest of the guys, and he understood the human predicament of his character: The man loved his son, he was happy with his success, but he knew that he was destined for a fall. There’s that wonderful moment where Rob watches as Jon Favreau explains to Leo that he can get out relatively unscathed if he just walks away from his company before the S.E.C. has a chance to charge him with violations. The look on Rob’s face, as he realizes that Leo is hesitating and that he ultimately won’t stop, is so eloquent. “You got all the money in the world,” he says. “You need everybody else’s money?” A loving father, mystified by his son. I was moved by the delicacy and openness of his performance when we shot it, moved once again as we brought the scene together in the edit and moved as I watched the finished picture. Now, it breaks my heart to even think of the tenderness of Rob’s performance in this and other scenes.

What happened to Rob and Michele is an obscenity, an abyss in lived reality. The only thing that will help me to accept it is the passing of time. So, like all of their loved ones and their friends — and these were people with many, many friends — I have to be allowed to imagine them alive and well … and that one day, I’ll be at a dinner or a party and find myself seated next to Rob, and I’ll hear his laugh and see his beatific face and laugh at his stories and relish his natural comic timing, and feel lucky all over again to have him as a friend.

Martin Scorsese is an Academy Award-winning director, writer and producer. His most recent film is “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

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