Legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese penned an essay in The New York Times on Thursday remembering his late friends Rob and Michele Reiner.
"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," Scorsese opened the essay.
The Reiners were found dead in their Los Angeles home on Dec. 14 from stab wounds. Their son, Nick Reiner, was charged with murdering his parents days later.
Scorsese detailed meeting Rob Reiner through mutual friends in Los Angeles in the early 1970s. They bonded over being East Coast transplants and their shared "New York humor," Scorsese wrote.
"Right away, I loved hanging out with Rob. We had a natural affinity for each other," Scorsese said of his fellow filmmaker. "He was hilarious and sometimes bitingly funny, but he was never the kind of guy who would take over the room."
"Misery" is at the top of the list of Scorsese's favorite movies that Rob Reiner made, he said, and added that "This Is Spinal Tap," is in "a class of its own," calling it "a kind of immaculate creation."
"And a big part of the greatness of that film is Rob himself, as director and as actor," Scorsese wrote.
Scorsese remembered casting Rob Reiner to play Leonardo DiCaprio's dad in "The Wolf of Wall Street," saying he "immediately" thought of the late director for the role because "he could improvise with the best, he was a master at comedy, he worked beautifully with Leo and the rest of the guys," Scorsese said.
Rob Reiner's character in "The Wolf of Wall Street" was a man who "loved his son, he was happy with his success, but he knew that he was destined for a fall. ... 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," Scorsese wrote.
"Now, it breaks my heart to even think of the tenderness of Rob's performance in this and other scenes," he said.
Scorsese called the Reiners' murder "an obscenity, an abyss in lived reality" in the essay.
"I have to be allowed to imagine them alive and well …" Scorsese wrote, "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."
