TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. It was shocking and heartbreaking to hear about the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, especially since their son was arrested on suspicion of murder. Today we're going to listen back to the interview I recorded with Rob Reiner in September. But first our TV critic, David Bianculli, has an appreciation.
DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: Rob Reiner, as a film director, worked in many different genres and excelled at all of them. And before contributing significantly to the vocabulary and history of movies, he did the same thing for television. Rob Reiner was the son of Carl Reiner, who as both writer and performer was a key contributor to NBC's "Your Show Of Shows." That Sid Caesar series was the best sketch variety show of the 1950s. Carl Reiner then created and eventually appeared in the best TV sitcom of the '60s, "The Dick Van Dyke Show." His son, Rob Reiner, followed down a similar path.
Rob Reiner's first job in TV was as a writer on the best sketch variety series of the '60s, "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour." Then as an actor, he costarred in one of the best and most influential TV sitcoms of the '70s, Norman Lear's "All In The Family." In that long-running hit sitcom, Carroll O'Connor played a bigoted Queens working-class homeowner named Archie Bunker. Rob Reiner played Michael "Meathead" Stivic, the live-in son-in-law who was married to Archie's daughter, Gloria, played by Sally Struthers.
Before the series premiered, two previous versions had been filmed with other actors playing Michael and Gloria. The series only was bought by CBS, though, after Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers had been cast in those roles. Reiner won two Emmys for his work on "All In The Family." And his talent and chemistry with his fellow actors was obvious from the very first episode.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "ALL IN THE FAMILY")
ROB REINER: (As Michael 'Meathead' Stivic) I just want to learn a little bit about society so I can help people.
CARROLL O'CONNOR: (As Archie Bunker) People? Your mother-in-law and me is people. Help us, will you? Go to work.
(LAUGHTER)
REINER: (As Michael 'Meathead' Stivic) I know what's bothering you. You're upset because I was nailing you on that law and order thing.
O'CONNOR: (As Archie Bunker) You nailing me?
REINER: (As Michael 'Meathead' Stivic) Yeah, that's right. Now I'm going to tell you something.
SALLY STRUTHERS: (As Gloria Bunker-Stivic) Michael.
REINER: (As Michael 'Meathead' Stivic) No, no, wait a second. I'm sorry, Gloria. I know I promised, but I feel I got to say this. You know why we got a breakdown in law and order in this country, Archie? Because we got poverty, real poverty. And you know why we got that? Because guys like you are unwilling to give the Black man, the Mexican American and all the other minorities their just and rightful, hard-earned share of the American dream.
STRUTHERS: (As Gloria Bunker-Stivic) Who said he wasn't smart?
(LAUGHTER)
STRUTHERS: (As Gloria Bunker-Stivic) That's beautiful, Michael, beautiful.
BIANCULLI: Rob Reiner continued to act throughout his career, playing himself in "The Larry Sanders Show," "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and the movie "The Muse." And he also played different characters in such movies as "The First Wives Club," "Primary Colors" and "The Wolf Of Wall Street." But after leaving "All In The Family," Rob Reiner made his biggest mark as a film director, dabbling and succeeding in several different genres.
His mockumentary, "This Is Spinal Tap," proved so durable and lovable, earlier this year, it spawned a sequel. His adaptations of two Stephen King stories, "Stand By Me" and "Misery," are outstanding examples of, respectively, the coming-of-age tale and the horror movie. And "The Princess Bride," written by William Goldman and directed perfectly by Reiner, is quite simply the best family fantasy film since "The Wizard Of Oz."
Some of Reiner's visuals in his movies are indelible. The leeches in "Stand By Me," the amplifier knob that goes to 11 in "This Is Spinal Tap," the sledgehammer swing in "Misery," the grandfather reading to his grandson in "The Princess Bride." Even more memorable, though, are certain lines of dialogue and the way he presented them on screen. Reiner framed instantly recognizable catchphrases for Jack Nicholson on the witness stand in "A Few Good Men."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "A FEW GOOD MEN")
JACK NICHOLSON: (As Col. Nathan R. Jessep) You can't handle the truth.
BIANCULLI: Farmboy in "The Princess Bride."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE PRINCESS BRIDE")
CARY ELWES: (As Westley) As you wish.
BIANCULLI: Also from "The Princess Bride," Mandy Patinkin as the revenge-obsessed swordfighter.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE PRINCESS BRIDE")
MANDY PATINKIN: (As Inigo Montoya) Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
BIANCULLI: And Rob Reiner even gave a killer of a punchline to his own mother in a scene from "When Harry Met Sally..." set at Katz's Deli, in which she watches another patron, played by Meg Ryan, faking an orgasm.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WHEN HARRY MET SALLY...")
ESTELLE REINER: (As Older Woman Customer) I'll have what she's having.
BIANCULLI: Over his career, Rob Reiner sought out and worked with some of the best actors and writers in the business. He also was very active in political and humanitarian causes, making an impact there as well as on cinema and television.
GROSS: David Bianculli is FRESH AIR's TV critic.
I interviewed Rob Reiner in September about his life and career. The occasion for the interview was the release of his sequel to his groundbreaking 1984 mockumentary "This Is Spinal Tap." The sequel, "Spinal Tap II: The End Continues," is now streaming on HBO Max. "This Is Spinal Tap" was the most influential mockumentary and helped pave the way to movie and TV mockumentaries, including "The Office" and "Parks And Recreation."
The film satirized heavy metal bands and rock documentaries. The band is known for its excesses, its loud volume, a bass player who stuffs his pants, incredibly sexist lyrics, as well as on- and offstage mishaps. Let's start with a song from "Spinal Tap II."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "STONEHENGE")
CHRISTOPHER GUEST: (As Nigel Tufnel) In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, lived a strange race of people, the druids. No one knows who they were or what they were doing. But their legacy remains hewn into the living rock of Stonehenge.
SPINAL TAP AND ELTON JOHN: (Singing) Stonehenge.
ELTON JOHN: (Singing) Where the demons dwell, where the banshees live, and they do live well.
SPINAL TAP AND JOHN: (Singing) Stonehenge.
JOHN: (Singing) Where a man's a man, and the children dance to the pipes of Pan.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GROSS: Rob Reiner, welcome to FRESH AIR. Congratulation on the sequel. I'm very glad that you made it, and I know everyone else will be, too.
REINER: Thank you.
GROSS: One of the things that's very interesting about the film - the first and maybe particularly the sequel - is that you have a band that started off as, you know, kind of, like, young and rebellious and, you know, all that. And now, like, Spinal Tap, they're in their 70s. And it just makes no sense for them to be singing some of the lyrics that they're singing. And that happens to a lot of bands who end up performing their old material about teenage love, you know, when they're in their 70s. But these are songs about, like, their sexual prowess and...
REINER: (Laughter).
GROSS: And they're incredibly - some of them are just, like, incredibly, like, sexist. So it sounds so inappropriate in so many ways.
REINER: Yeah. The beauty of these guys - the members of the Spinal Tap - is that in all those years from their 20s, 30s, up now until their 70s, they have grown neither emotionally or musically. There's no growth. (Laughter) They're basically in a state of arrested development for, like, 50 years. And the only growth that there is is maybe skin tabs.
GROSS: (Laughter).
REINER: From getting older.
GROSS: (Laughter) They have to be biopsied (laughter).
REINER: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
GROSS: Did you want the second movie to reflect how music documentaries have changed? Because if I did my math right, like, "Spinal Tap," like "This Is Spinal Tap" precedes the MTV and VH1 music documentaries that became so famous. And so parodied.
REINER: Well, there were a lot of music documentaries before we made the first film. I mean, you know, Led Zeppelin had "The Song Remains The Same." The Who had "The Kids Are Alright." And then, of course, you know...
GROSS: "The Last Waltz."
REINER: Bob - yeah. "The Last Waltz" with Scorsese. And the first one was the Bob Dylan documentary by Pennebaker. You know, "Don't Look Back," you know?
GROSS: Yeah. "Don't Look Back," yeah.
REINER: Yeah. So there were these documentaries. So what we were doing was not only satirizing heavy metal, but we were satirizing the documentary form and the way in which documentaries were presented. And, you know, basically, the reason my character, Marty DiBergi, who's supposedly the documentarian of the film, is in the film is because in "The Last Waltz," I saw, yeah, there's Marty Scorsese. He's in the film. He's documenting this last concert by the band, but he's also in the film. The first film I shot with a 16-millimeter camera. You know, it's a film camera. Now we have digital cameras. And I shot with two cameras.
And I try to, you know - Marty, let's say, the character Marty, who's making the film. I have to always filter it through how he would make it, not necessarily how I would make it. And I try to say, will he be affected by the new, modern type of techniques that they use in reality shows and, you know, what you see up on social media and all that? And I think, you know, he may try a little bit. But basically, he's stuck in his own inabilities to make it any hipper or cooler than he was. So he hasn't grown all that much either.
GROSS: I want to play one of the most famous moments from the first Spinal Tap film. And it's the scene where Christopher Guest as Nigel Tufnel is showing you, the director of this documentary, his guitar equipment. And he's showing you his amp, which goes up so loud 'cause this band prides itself on how loud it is. It goes up so high, it goes past 10 to 11. So here's an excerpt of that scene.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THIS IS SPINAL TAP")
GUEST: (As Nigel Tufnel) What we do is if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
REINER: (As Marty DiBergi) Put it up to 11?
GUEST: (As Nigel Tufnel) Eleven, exactly. One louder.
REINER: (As Marty DiBergi) Why don't you just make 10 louder, and make 10 be the top number and make that a little louder?
GUEST: (As Nigel Tufnel) These go to 11.
GROSS: And he looks, like, totally baffled by what you said.
REINER: What makes that funny...
GROSS: Yeah.
REINER: ...Is the long pause he gives. And the reason he gives that pause is 'cause he doesn't know I'm going to say, why don't you make 10 a little louder? I just came up with that then, and so it stops him for a second. And then he says, well, these go to 11. And what's interesting is that that phrase - goes to 11 - is now in the Oxford English Dictionary as something that is commonly used for not just loud music, but anything that's done in excess, something that goes beyond what it normally does. So it's weird that something that we just threw off like that all of a sudden becomes part of the lexicon of our lives. It's very strange how these things have taken root.
GROSS: You started making "Spinal Tap II: The End Continues" in 2024 on your 77th birthday. And everyone in the movie is the same or approximately the same age as the characters they play.
REINER: Right. Right.
GROSS: Did making the film make you think more about how you've aged since the first one and all that's happened to you in between?
REINER: Oh, sure. You can't ignore it. I mean, you, you know - hopefully, our minds are still sharp and that we're still able to, you know, as Chris Guest calls it, schnadle (ph). We can schnadle with each other back and forth. But yeah, you don't walk...
GROSS: Schnadle is his word for improv?
REINER: Yeah, yeah. He says, you know, we schnadle with each other, which is true. I mean, and what's interesting is that after 15 years of not, you know, working together, we came back and started looking at this and seeing if we could come up with an idea. And we started schnadling (ph) right away. It was like falling right back in with friends that you hadn't talked to in a long time. It's like jazz musicians, you know? You just fall in and do what you do.
GROSS: We're listening to the interview I recorded with Rob Reiner in September after the release of the sequel to the film "This Is Spinal Tap." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF AVISHAI COHEN SONG, "GBEDE TEMIN")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Rob Reiner last September after the release of his film "This Is Spinal Tap (ph)."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GROSS: You are a part of so many comedy-related things, and so are your friends. So I'm going to start with, like, your father was Carl Reiner.
REINER: Yes.
GROSS: And he created "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and, before that, wrote for and acted in Sid Caesar shows back in the 1950s. Albert Brooks, your good friend from high school, you made a movie...
REINER: Yes.
GROSS: ...About him.
REINER: Yes.
GROSS: You did an act with Joey Bishop's son before he made movies. You co-founded an improv group and did a lot of improv. In the '70s, you were on one of the most popular and groundbreaking sitcoms, "All In The Family." You wrote with Steve Martin for the Smothers Brothers summer replacement show early in your career. You were the third host of "Saturday Night Live." I mean, I could go on. You have three movies in the National Film Registry - "When Harry Met Sally," "The Princess Bride" and "This Is Spinal Tap." Yikes, that's, like, so much comedy history.
REINER: I'm tired, Terry.
GROSS: (Laughter).
REINER: I'm tired when you read that (laughter).
GROSS: When you make a friend or meet somebody, is being funny one of the first traits you look for in someone?
REINER: Well, you know, it's interesting. Yes, of course, you want to, you know, connect with somebody that, you know, you can connect with on the same level. When I was young, you know, you mentioned, you know, my dad and Sid Caesar. You know, he also did, to me, the greatest comedy albums ever done with Mel Brooks called, you know, the "2000 Year Old Man." And to me, they're the hippest, funniest comedy albums ever. And when I was a kid and teenager and I'd come home from school, I would put on one of the albums. I did it almost every day for a long time. And I listened to it because I thought, God, this is so brilliant. And that was improvised, too. I thought, you know, when I met somebody, if they dug the "2000 Year Old Man" and they could quote lines from it, I knew it was somebody I could connect with because they were on the same wavelength as I. It was like a good test to see if this is somebody I could connect with.
GROSS: Was the "2000 Year Old Man" album and subsequent versions of it one of the reasons why you wanted to do improv?
REINER: Well, no, not really. I mean, that's something I always - you know, I was drawn to. I mean, I loved Second City. I love the committee. I used to go visit the committee when up - when they were up in San Francisco. And we got the idea when I was at UCLA - I guess I was about 18 or 19 at the time - to start our own improvisation group. And I wanted to do what my dad did. I - you know, when I was a little boy, my parents said I came up to them and I said, you know, I want to change my name. And I was about 8 years old, I guess. I said, I want to change my name. And they said - they were, oh, my God, this poor kid, he's worried about being in the shadow of a famous guy and living up to and all this. And they said, well, what do you want to change your name to? And I said, Carl.
GROSS: (Laughter).
REINER: And they said - I said I loved him so much. I just wanted to be like him, you know? And I wanted to do what he did. And I just looked up to him so much. So, yeah, I was surrounded by all of this. And I look at - there's a picture in my office of all the writers who wrote for Sid Caesar and the "Show Of Shows" over the nine years, I guess, that they were on. And when you look at that picture, you're basically looking at everything you ever laughed at in the first half of the 20th century. I mean, there's Mel Brooks. There's my dad. There's Neil Simon. There's Woody Allen. There's Larry Gelbart. I mean - Joe Stein, who wrote "Fiddler On The Roof," Aaron Ruben, who created "The Andy Griffith Show." Everybody - anything you ever laughed at is represented by those people. So these are the people I look up to, and these are the people that were around me, you know, as a kid growing up.
GROSS: Did you ever want to be in a band? 'Cause so many people in the entertainment world at some point wanted to be in a band.
REINER: Of course I did, you know? I mean...
GROSS: But did you ever play?
REINER: I can sing. I can sing, and I can sing on pitch, but that's about it. And I - you know, I would have killed to be able to - I love blues. I'm a big fan of the blues. I mean, I can - I listen - any blues guitarist, you know, you got me hooked. And when I saw Michael Bloomfield, who played with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and then played with a band called Electric Flag, I said, wow, God. And he's Jewish, you know?
GROSS: (Laughter).
REINER: He's a white Jewish guy.
GROSS: (Laughter).
REINER: And he's playing the blues, and he's unbelievable. And I thought, boy, I would just kill to be like Michael Bloomfield. Just the playing of the music, not the other parts, which weren't so good for him.
GROSS: We're listening to the interview I recorded with Rob Reiner in September. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THIS IS SPINAL TAP")
REINER: (As Marty DiBergi) Do you remember the first song that you guys ever wrote together?
MICHAEL MCKEAN: (As David St. Hubbins) "All the Way Home," probably.
REINER: (As Marty DiBergi) "All The Way Home"?
MCKEAN: (As David St. Hubbins) Yeah.
REINER: (As Marty DiBergi) Can you remember a little bit of it? I'd love to hear it.
MCKEAN: (As David St. Hubbins) Christ. Some black coffee, maybe we could do it.
GUEST: (As Nigel Tufnel) How's it go?
MICHAEL MCKEAN AND CHRISTOPHER GUEST: (As David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel) I'm standing here beside the railroad track. And I'm waiting for that train to bring you back, bring you back. If she's not on the 5:19, then I'm going to know what sorrow means. And I'm going to cry, cry, cry all the way home, all the way home, all the way home, all the way home, all the way home.
GUEST: (As Nigel Tufnel) Cry, cry, cry all the way home.
MCKEAN: (As David St. Hubbins) Fairly simple. There's about six words in the whole song, you know?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALL THE WAY HOME")
SPINAL TAP: (Singing) Well, I'm sitting here beside the railroad track. And I'm waiting for that train to bring her back. If she's not on the 5:19, then I'm going to know what sorrow means. And I'm going to cry, cry, cry all the way home, all the way home, all the way home, all the way home, all the way home. Yes, I'm going to cry, cry, cry all the way home. Now, her daddy never liked me, this he said. And he could not get it through his old gray head that I loved his daughter so, did not mean to see her go. Now I'm going to cry, cry, cry all the way home. All the way home, all the way home, all the way home, all the way home. Yes, I'm going to cry, cry, cry all the way home. Woo. Here it comes, here it comes. All the way home, all the way home, all the way home, all the way home. Yes, I'm going to cry, cry, cry all the way home. One more time. All the way home, all the way home, all the way home, all the way home. I'm going to cry, cry, cry all the way home.
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Rob Reiner last September after the release of the sequel to his film "This Is Spinal Tap." Reiner and his wife were murdered in their home on Sunday.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GROSS: So I want to play a scene from "A Few Good Men." And this scene has that very famous line, you can't handle the truth. But it's so like - he and Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise is prosecuting the colonel, played by Nicholson, who's being court-martialed. So this is, like, the dramatic climax to that whole part of the story. And so I want to play that scene. And I have a very specific question for you, which is in directing Jack Nicholson, how do you draw the line between giving a lot and giving too much? You know, like, where is the line between, like, chewing the scenery and a great dramatic performance? So let's listen to the scene.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "A FEW GOOD MEN")
NICHOLSON: (As Col. Nathan R. Jessep) You want answers?
TOM CRUISE: (As Lieutenant Lt. Daniel Kaffee) I think I'm entitled to them.
NICHOLSON: (As Col. Nathan R. Jessep) You want answers?
CRUISE: (As Lieutenant Lt. Daniel Kaffee) I want the truth.
NICHOLSON: (As Col. Nathan R. Jessep) You can't handle the truth. Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's going to do it, you? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know, that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
GROSS: So, Rob Reiner, you directed "A Few Good Men," which that scene is from. So with Nicholson, he's a great actor. But, you know, some great actors can just give a little too much sometimes. And that's such a heightened scene. Did you have to figure out, like, is that enough? Is that too much?
REINER: I tell you, with Jack Nicholson, he's one of the greatest actors of all time. He's in the pantheon of all-time great movie stars and actors. And his instincts are impeccable. You don't have to tell Jack Nicholson to hold back or, you know, give more or whatever. He knows what he needs to do.
Interestingly enough - and to my opinion, really great actor - he doesn't mind if there's a humorous thing or something that needs a line reading. He doesn't mind. He'll say, how do you want me to say that? Because he likes - it's like a great musician. He wants to hear the notes. How do you say that? And since, you know, that's one of the things I do, you know, he'll say, how do you want me to say that? And he's happy to take a line reading. But I got to tell you...
GROSS: Can you give us an example?
REINER: The first day of rehearsal, you do a table read. You know, you sit around and you read the script. The performance that you see on film is the same performance he gave in the read around the table. And normally, actors will just kind of mark it just to hear. But he gave a full-out performance. And it sent a message to all the other actors - Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Kiefer Sutherland, you know, Kevin Bacon and Kevin Pollak - all the actors that were there that we come to play here. This is - you know, this is what we do. And it put everybody in a place.
It's like being on a baseball team and watching Babe Ruth step into the batting cage before the game, and he's hitting one ball after the other out of the park. And so they said, oh, we got to step up our games, too. And Jack is smart because he knows that the more he gives, the more he's going to get back. And it's going to make other people's performances better, and that ultimately is going to make his performance better. So when we...
GROSS: More to react to.
REINER: Yeah. And when we did that scene, the famous, you know, you-can't-handle-the-truth scene, I asked him. I said, Jack, you know, you got this great speech. And, you know, I can either shoot the coverage, meaning the reaction shots and have you off camera, or I can - if you're ready, I'll shoot you now, and then, you know, I get the reaction shots later. He said, well, why don't you shoot the reaction shots, you know, and that way, it'll give me a chance to work into it. I said fine. So he's off camera. And I'm shooting, you know, a shot for, you know, Tom Cruise and one of Demi and one of the - of Kevin Bacon. And, you know, I've got different angles. And every time we go through the scene, he gives the exact same performance, the one you see on camera.
And at one point, I go back to Jack. I said, Jack, you know, maybe you want to wait and hold some of this back. And, you know, when I turn around the camera and be on you, you'll have everything, you know? You don't want to waste it here. He says, no, Rob, you don't understand. I love to act. He said, this is a great part, and I don't get a chance to play great parts that often. So that was him. What he did off camera, what he did at the reading, what you see on camera is what you get from Jack Nicholson.
GROSS: We're listening to the interview I recorded with Rob Reiner in September. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF SOLANGE SONG, "WEARY")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Rob Reiner last September.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GROSS: You decided to give your mother what turned out to be the most famous, most quoted line from "When Harry Met Sally..." This takes place in the deli, a very famous deli in Manhattan, Katz's Deli, when Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal - their characters are having lunch together. They're friends. And Billy Crystal is kind of, like, going on about, you know, his dating life, how good it is and how satisfied - you know, sexually satisfied the women he's dating are. And Meg Ryan is a little skeptical.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: And she says, like, how do you know that it's real? I mean, how can you judge if what they're expressing is real or not? And he goes, oh, I know. And she goes, oh, really? And then she starts faking the noises as if she's having an orgasm, and everyone in the deli stops eating. Everyone's staring at her. Billy Crystal is watching people stare at him and Meg Ryan. And she's going on and on. And then your mother has this famous line that - when Meg Ryan is done that your mother says to the waiter. So let's play a short excerpt of that.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WHEN HARRY MET SALLY...")
MEG RYAN: (As Sally Albright) Oh. Oh. Oh, God. Oh.
REINER: (As character) I'll have what she's having.
GROSS: I'll have what she's having.
REINER: Yeah.
GROSS: How did you decide, oh, that's the line I'm giving my mother?
REINER: Well, first of all, Billy Crystal came up with that line. We had the scene. We knew we were going to do a scene where Meg was going to fake an orgasm in an incongruous place, like a deli. And Billy came up with the line, I'll have what she's having. And when he did - and he came up with it, you know, before we went to New York. He came up with it in rehearsal. I said, we need to find somebody, an older Jewish woman who could deliver that line, which would seem incongruous. And I thought of my mother because my mother had done a couple of little things. She did a thing in a movie that Anne Bancroft directed called "Fatso," and she did a couple of other little things. And so I thought, oh, she'd be perfect for it.
And so I asked her if she wanted to do it, and she said sure. And I said, now, listen, Mom, you know, we don't know - hopefully, that'll be the topper of the scene, it'll get the big laugh. And if it doesn't, you know, I may have to cut it out because I know the scene is funny with Meg doing that. And she said, that's fine. You know, I just want to spend the day with you. I'll go to Katz's. I'll get a hot dog, you know, whatever it is.
GROSS: (Laughter).
REINER: She was fine with it, you know? She was OK. And then when we did the scene, the first couple of times through, Meg was kind of tepid about it. She didn't, you know, give it her all. She didn't go full out. And so I said, let's try it again. And she was nervous. She's in front of, you know, the crew and there's extras and people. She did it a few times, and then it was never exactly what eventually wound up in the film. And at one point, I get in there, and I said, Meg, let me show you what I meant. And I sat opposite Billy, and I'm acting it out. And I'm going - pounding the table.
GROSS: (Laughter).
REINER: And I'm going, yes, yes, yes. I'm pounding the table.
GROSS: (Laughter).
REINER: And then I turned to Billy, and I said, Billy, this is embarrassing here. He says, what? I said, I just had an orgasm in front of my mother.
(LAUGHTER)
REINER: You know, but then Meg came in. And she did it, obviously, way better than I could do it. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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