Martin Scorsese mourns the devastating loss of his close friends Rob and Michele Reiner and shares a deeply personal reflection on their lives and the impact they had on him.
In a heartfelt guest essay for New York Timesthe legendary filmmaker opened up about his grief following the tragic deaths of the couple, who were found dead in their Los Angeles home on December 14.
Their son, Nick Reiner, has since been arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
“What happened to Rob and Michele is an obscenity, an abyss of lived reality,” Scorsese wrote, expressing the shock and sadness that has followed the news.
“From now on I will have to use the past tense and it fills me with such deep sadness.”
Reflecting on his longtime friendship with Rob Reiner, Scorsese noted that the two bonded early on through their shared love of storytelling and film.
He recalled meeting Rob and his then-wife Penny Marshall in the early 1970s and immediately feeling a connection.
“Immediately loved hanging out with Rob,” he wrote. “He was funny, warm and had a kind of joy that filled the room.”
The director praised Reiner’s creative legacy, calling This is Spinal Tap “in a class of its own” and highlights his work in Misery as particularly powerful.
He also reflected on working with Reiner in The Wolf of Wall Streetthat describes a scene in which Reiner played Leonardo DiCaprio’s father as deeply moving.
“I was struck by the tenderness he brought to it,” Scorsese told me, adding that revisiting that performance now is especially painful.
In closing, Scorsese expressed a longing that feels both personal and universal, the hope to once again share laughter and conversation with his late friend.
“I will always wish I could sit next to him again,” he wrote, “and hear that laugh and feel lucky just to be in his presence.”
