{"id":359841,"date":"2025-12-20T05:46:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T05:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/359841\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T05:46:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T05:46:17","slug":"rob-reiner-influenced-todays-comedy-creatives-with-spinal-tap-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/359841\/","title":{"rendered":"Rob Reiner Influenced Today’s Comedy Creatives With Spinal Tap, More"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAfter growing up with Rob Reiner<\/a>\u2018s movies playing on repeat in his home, Jake Szymanski recently got to explore the beloved filmmaker\u2019s legacy in a unique way. Szymanski \u2014 the director of Jury Duty and Netflix\u2019s forthcoming Cameron Diaz-led Bad Day<\/a> \u2014 helmed the buzzy 2025 Super Bowl commercial<\/a> that reunited Meg Ryan<\/a> and Billy Crystal<\/a> at Katz\u2019s Delicatessen for the first time since they filmed their iconic scene<\/a> in When Harry Met Sally.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe best part for me was just getting to ask them questions and have them tell stories about making When Harry Met Sally and about Rob,\u201d Szymanski tells The Hollywood Reporter. \u201cHe was very collaborative and let comedians do their thing, which I\u2019m a huge believer in, and I don\u2019t think I knew that\u2019s what he was doing until later. Rob was able to make a movie that could only be his, while still letting comedic performers get their voice through.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tHollywood continues to mourn the legendary figure and process the senseless tragedy of Reiner and wife Michele having been found dead Sunday in their Brentwood home. Loved ones and former colleagues<\/a> have shared endless praise for the entertainer behind such other indelible favorites as This Is Spinal Tap<\/a>, The Princess Bride<\/a> and A Few Good Men. But even if they didn\u2019t know him personally, Reiner\u2019s impact endures for the industry\u2019s top creatives through his storytelling and devotion to character.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMovies like When Harry Met Sally and The Princess Bride are timeless because they\u2019re built around people, not punchlines,\u201d says Andy Jones, whose writing credits include It\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He points out that the dynamic between the When Harry Met Sally leads \u2014 a man (Crystal) and woman (Ryan) trying to remain platonic friends despite sexual tension \u2014 has continued to impact popular projects in recent years. This includes New Girl, the Fox comedy series that featured the will-they-won\u2019t-they connection between Zooey Deschanel\u2019s Jess and Jake Johnson\u2019s Nick \u2014 and also saw Reiner portraying Jess\u2019 father.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRob Reiner (left) and Christopher Guest in This Is Spinal Tap.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tAdds Jones, \u201cIt was great to see Rob play Jess\u2019 dad on New Girl because Nick and Jess have the same dynamic as Harry and Sally, or Gib and Alison in [Reiner\u2019s 1985 comedy] The Sure Thing. It\u2019s that brand of comedy that\u2019s rooted in awkwardness, sincerity and people slowly realizing they care more than they planned to.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tOne film that included direct acknowledgement of the joy from Reiner\u2019s work was What If<\/a>, the Daniel Radcliffe-Zoe Kazan romantic comedy that premiered at TIFF in 2013 and centers on two friends trying to ignore their romantic feelings. The movie includes references to When Harry Met Sally, and one scene involves the leads spotting each other at a screening of The Princess Bride. <\/p>\n

\n\tElan Mastai<\/a>, who wrote What If<\/a>, has heard that Reiner was very touched that the film wore its affections for his work on its sleeve. \u201cWhen Harry Met Sally is my Godfather, and Princess Bride is my Star Wars,\u201d Mastai, who earned an Emmy nomination for his work on This Is Us, admits with a laugh. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt really strikes me just how rich the characters in these movies are, and you never feel like these are marionettes being put through the paces of a plot just to hit a punchline,\u201d he continues. \u201cThese are fully fleshed-out characters, and the choices that they make, while hilarious, come from what makes these people tick \u2014 their wounds, their passions, their ambitions, their misguided beliefs. There\u2019s such a deep empathy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tZoe Kazan (left) and Daniel Radcliffe attend a screening of The Princess Bride in their film What If.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Reiner has been heralded for being somewhat genre-agnostic \u2014 given that his work includes thrillers, political comedies and quieter dramas \u2014 he will continue to be closely associated with the mockumentary<\/a> thanks to his first directorial effort, This Is Spinal Tap, an eternal classic that spawned a sequel that hit theaters in September. Among those appreciating the impact of the 1984 original was the team behind American Vandal<\/a>, the Netflix mockumentary series that satirized true-crime docs.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn Spinal Tap, you see this idea that every idiot has a story that\u2019s worth telling and worth seeing, and that\u2019s such a lovely way to approach not just characters or comedy, but people in general,\u201d says American Vandal writer Lauren Herstik. \u201cIf you talk to anyone who\u2019s making a mockumentary, in the first breath, they\u2019re going to say, \u2018Spinal Tap \u2014 that\u2019s the guiding light. That\u2019s what we\u2019re going for.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSzymanski, who directed Ryan and Crystal in the Super Bowl<\/a> ad, grew up obsessing over The Princess Bride and Stand by Me but would later come to appreciate Spinal Tap. When he was working with the Lonely Island team on Saturday Night Live shorts and would then direct Andy Samberg in HBO\u2019s sports mockumentaries Tour de Pharmacy and 7 Days in Hell, he found himself hoping to live up to such benchmarks as Reiner\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\n\tSays Szymanski, \u201cRob\u2019s one of those filmmakers who \u2014 even though I never spent time with him \u2014 in a way, I owe a large part of my career to him because of his work on things like Spinal Tap.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After growing up with Rob Reiner\u2018s movies playing on repeat in his home, Jake Szymanski recently got to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[196367,64,63,3949,196368,134,3950,344,192369,7508,193208,95990,175726,3948],"class_list":["post-359841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-american-vandal","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-billy-crystal","tag-elan-mastai","tag-entertainment","tag-meg-ryan","tag-movies","tag-rob-reiner","tag-super-bowl","tag-the-princess-bride","tag-this-is-spinal-tap","tag-what-if","tag-when-harry-met-sally"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}