Rob Reiner, Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind All in the Family and The Princess Bride, shares childhood memories of meeting Mel Brooks at Fire Island and his politically engaged upbringing with Norman Lear and Sid Caesar. He credits the show’s 30–45 million weekly viewers for sparking dialogue on civil rights, comparing its impact to Shaw’s plays, and laments modern media fragmentation. Reiner discusses his activism—challenging Proposition 8 (2008), advocating for climate science over false balance, and pushing California’s early childhood education reform—to bridge gaps in human rights, sustainability, and systemic progress, urging celebrities to engage with expertise rather than superficiality before Trump humorously interrupts, highlighting C-SPAN’s role in fostering bipartisan understanding through live congressional coverage. [Automatically generated summary]
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Filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle have both died in what has become an active homicide investigation in Los Angeles.
Rob Reiner, known for his long career in film and television, spanning several decades, including movie classics The Prince's Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, and of course the TV series All in the Family, among others.
Up next, Rob Reiner, in his own words, from a 2013 conversation hosted by the Commonwealth Club of California.
Here he talks about his career in Hollywood and political activism on a variety of social issues.
Good afternoon, and welcome to today's meeting of the Commonwealth Club of California, the place where you are in the know.
You can find the Commonwealth Club on the internet at CommonwealthClub.org.
I'm Dan Ashley, news anchor for ABC7 Television in San Francisco and a member of the Commonwealth Club Board of Directors and your moderator for today's program.
It is now my pleasure to introduce our distinguished speaker today, Rob Reiner.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
From his starring role as Meathead on the popular 1970s sitcom.
On that wonderful program, All in the Family, to his blockbuster films, and he has so many.
Boy, when you look at his list of films, it's really remarkable.
The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men, just to name a handful, there are many more.
Reiner has been entertaining audiences for decades with his singular humor and artistic vision.
As a director, he's worked with A-list actors, Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, Kathy Bates, as well as celebrated writers Nora Efren and Aaron Sorkin.
Son of comedic genius Carl Reiner, he grew up in a political family where civil rights were a frequent topic around the kitchen table.
As such, he has become not only a Hollywood legend, but a political activist as well.
After November 4th, 2008, when California passed a constitutional amendment banning marriage for gay and lesbian couples, Rob Reiner co-founded the American Foundation for Equal Rights as a way to challenge Proposition 8 in the courts.
In light of the Supreme Court's recent decision to hear challenges to both Prop 8 and DOMA this year, we are delighted to have Mr. Reiner here with us today to discuss his views on the future of marriage equality and his incredible contributions to the entertainment industry.
First of all, what I'd like to do is talk a little bit about the entertainment industry and your background, and then we'll move into your social activity.
I mean, they've known each other, you know, 60 years since the show shows.
And I met him when I was four years old.
I met Mel Brooks when I was four years old.
We had a little place in Fire Island, which is a little island off the coast of Long Island.
And my dad told me, and my sister, who was two at the time, there was going to be a man who was going to, we were going to go to bed, and there was going to be a man who was going to be staying over.
So if we woke up in the morning and we found a man, a strange man, just know that this friend of ours, this man is going to be sleeping.
And so at five o'clock in the morning, this is the introduction that Mel Brooks has to us.
There's two kids standing, and he's in this little window seat where he's sleeping.
And I'm turning to my sister, and I go, is that the man?
Well, I didn't know I wanted to be in the entertainment business, but my dad tells this story, and I don't remember it, but he tells it.
I was eight years old, and I went up to him and I said, Dad, I want to change my name.
And he went, oh, he felt so bad because he thought, oh, my God, this poor kid, you know, he has to live up to, you know, Carl Reiner and the fame and all the success.
And, you know, this poor kid.
And he says to me, what do you want to change your name to?
And I said, Carl.
And so I obviously wanted to be like him.
I didn't think about show business, but I wanted to be like him.
He always, he was very proud of me when I did all my family and all of that.
I remember when I did a, I was 19 years old, and I started when I was about 17 in summer theater, and I had an improvisational theater group when I was 19.
And when I was 19, I directed a production of No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit.
Richard Dreyfus was in it and a few other people that I knew.
And my father came to the show and he looked at me.
It was the first time that I knew I was, he looked at me in the eye and he said, that was good, no BS.
And he said, like, to me.
And I knew at that point, you know, he was, you know, saying you were going to be okay.
And then I went to visit him at his house and he said, I'm not worried about you.
Whatever you decide to do, you're going to be when he said to you, that was good.
I remember one time going down to the show of shows and there was the writer's room.
And, you know, we're talking about Neil Simon and Woody Allen and Mel Brooks, Larry Gelbar, some of the most brilliant writers, Sid Caesar, Melbourne, and my dad and everybody.
And I remember as like five or six years old sitting waiting for him to come out of the writer's room and all I could remember was screaming crazy, screaming at each other, you know, because they were fighting for their jokes or whatever.
But some of the funniest stuff in the world came out.
And if you think about it, the second half of the 20th century, really you can trace back to anything you ever laughed at, really came out of that room because it's all of Woody Allen's work, all of Neil Simon's work.
Joe Stein, who wrote Fiddler on the Roof and Entitling, Larry Gelbot, who wrote MASH and Tootsie and Aaron Rubin, who created the Andy Griffith show and Gomer Pyle, my dad, and Mel Brooks, you know.
So everything, you know, basically the second half of the 20th century comedy was all coming out.
And Mike Stewart, who wrote Hello Dolly, I mean, they were incredible writers.
unidentified
When you think about it, when you put it like that, it's really actually remarkable.
It was a magic time with a very unique group of people creating this media.
Yes, and they called it the golden age of television because it was.
Television was a brand new medium, and you had to have some money to own a television set, quite frankly.
So the fair was more highbrow.
It was an extension of theater.
It was an extension of reviews and satire and a very upscale type of theater that was put on television.
You know, it had Lux Video Theater, the Playhouse 90.
And then television became a mass media, and you saw all kinds of dumbing down of things.
I contest that right now we're in our second golden age of television because of, You know, the cable TV, and you're looking at, you know, Mad Men and Breaking Bad and Homeland and brilliant shows that are done with great writing, great acting, and it's almost like the second golden age of television right now.
unidentified
I tell people a lot who ask me about television that, yes, there is a lot of junk on television now, but there's also more quality on television than there's probably ever been.
And I think that if you look at, you know, AMC and HBO and Netflix, I mean, all of these Apple TV, all these different ways of accessing these niche-type shows, they are really smart shows.
I mean, really, really smart.
Nothing that would have been put on the networks.
I mean, we were lucky in that we got All in the Family on, which was a fairly elevated type of show at the time that it was on.
Because when we came on the air, you had the Beverly Hillbillies, Gomer Pyle, Mayberry Off, all of the rural type shows.
And all of a sudden, we had this urban comedy that dealt with issues that came on.
So that was a rare thing at that time.
But now you see all kinds of really good television on.
unidentified
Yeah, no question.
Let's talk about All in the Family for a moment before we move on.
Do you find people then or even now sometimes it was progressive for the time?
Obviously, did people understand that it wasn't celebrating bigotry, it was ridiculing it?
Oh, no, we were basically shone a light on the ignorance of a bigot, and that's what we did.
But it was, you know, we didn't just, you know, go outside the box or go to the edge of the envelope.
We destroyed the envelope, we broke the box, everything.
I mean, CBS had a disclaimer on before we came on, which essentially said, we don't have anything to do with this show.
You want to watch it, it's up to you because we don't know what the heck this is.
And despite that, we were able to succeed.
And I think in large part, because aside from the fact that it was funny and we dealt with issues, there were real people that people could identify.
They saw themselves.
They either saw themselves in Archie or they saw themselves in Mike.
We presented two points of view.
Norman Lear talked about how growing up, his favorite play was Major Barber by George Bernard Shaw.
George Bernard Shaw was a liberal, but if you didn't know he was a liberal and you went to see that play, both the Hawk point of view and the Dove point of view were presented with equal eloquence, with equal intelligence, and then was let up to the audience to make their minds up as to what they believed.
That was Norman's feeling.
Let's just throw this out there and let's get a dialogue started.
And at the time, there was no VCRs, there was no DVR, no TiVo, nothing.
So it really did promote a dialogue.
If you wanted to watch the show, you had to watch it when it was on.
That meant that you were having a shared experience with everybody else who was watching it at that time.
And I've made this point before.
We at the time were a country of about 200 million people.
And of the 200 million people, anywhere between 30 and 45 million people at one time were watching that show.
Now we're in a country of over 300 million.
And if you have a show that does 10, 15 million viewers, that's a major hit right now.
So, and you're not watching it at the same time as everybody else because you've got it on your DVR or your TiVo, and you're, you know, so you're not.
But Saturday night, if you watch the show, that meant Monday, people were talking about whatever it is we talked about.
And that shared experience, I think, was a very good thing for our country.
unidentified
It's hard to cut through the noise now as a programmer.
I've often said that I feel with the internet, with 24-hour day cable news service, we have, I think, the potential of being less informed than being more informed.
Because when TV became a, when TV News became a profit center, it changed everything.
I mean, there was a big deal when Walter Cronkite was on CBS and the broadcast went from 15 minutes to a half hour.
That was a big deal.
It was like, oh my God, a half an hour?
That meant that CBS was throwing away a half hour of revenue because news outlets were a lost leader.
You didn't make money on news.
And all they did was report the news.
There was no commentary.
There was no, you know, you had that for your newspapers.
You can get your op-eds from newspapers.
Then 60 Minutes came along, which is a brilliant show.
It's a great show.
But they started making money.
And all of a sudden, it was in 19 late 60s, early 70s, they realized, uh-oh, we can make money off the news.
And then you had big corporations taking over the TV outlets and news outlets, and it all became about profit center and bottom line.
And it, I think, has made us less informed.
I really believe that.
It's hard to find real accurate reporting.
I mean, how many people read the New York Times?
And a lot of people argue that that isn't, you know, certainly the people at Fox would argue that's not, they're biased, you know, or something like that.
But, you know, that's another.
unidentified
That sounds like some of my talk that I've got to do.
I always found it odd that, I mean, I walk, like I said, I made the joke, you know, you're the first, you know, that's the first person to call me meathead today.
I get called that virtually every day, even now, and I don't even look like anything that I look like on television.
My kids watch the show and they said, Dad, it sounds like you, but it doesn't look like you, you know.
But I get called that all the time.
And I used to find, it striked me funny that the guy who was espousing my point of view, who was clearly, whether or not you agreed with him or not on his liberal point of view, he was probably more schooled and intelligent than Archie, was being called the meathead.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays a real guy named Jordan Belford, who was a stock manipulator, went to jail in the late 80s, early 90s.
And I make the joke, I said, well, and I play his father, you know, and I said, well, what's more unbelievable that Leonardo DiCaprio is a Jew or that I'm his father?
I try to find, you know, I mean, Spinal Tap and Princess Bride were satires, and I kind of like satire, and that was a different kind of thing.
Princess Bride was my favorite book as a kid growing up.
But normally what I'll do is I'll look, how do I get into that?
Where is my way into this story?
What am I, is there a character that I can identify with that I can tell the story through, like in Stand By Me or even in A Few Good Men.
I'll look, and of course when Harry met Sally was born out of my inability to make a go of it with women during the time when I was going through a divorce.
I mean, I'd been divorced.
I'd been single for 10 years.
Oh yeah, it was totally autobiographical.
I was making a mess of it.
And I said, well, how the heck do you get with a woman?
And, you know, if you have sex, does it ruin the friendships?
And I couldn't figure out anything.
I said, this will be a good movie.
Let's make a movie.
So that gave birth.
So I usually try to find my way into it in terms of one of the characters.
unidentified
Is it a great joy to direct or is it stressful or both?
I mean, you know, I love doing it because what I've always said is a director, I mean, my thing, is not great at anything.
But you got to be good at a lot of little things.
The writers are better at it.
The actors can act better.
The cameraman can shoot better.
The music guy can make music better.
I can make music better.
The designer can design better.
But if you have a little knowledge in a lot of areas, you can do it, you know.
And I have one of those kind of brains that I have a little musical ability.
I have a little artistic thing.
I can act a little.
I can write a little.
And it all kind of comes together.
So it is the most satisfying because I get to use the most, more, all of the parts of me.
And I don't have to be good at anything.
So that's good.
unidentified
You know, one of the things I often do when I'm coming here or any sort of interview I do is I will ask my colleagues, not necessarily my reporting colleagues, but just people I work with in the building.
Hey, I'm going to see Rob Reiner tomorrow.
Anything you'd like to ask?
And I asked our floor director, who's been there for a number of years, and he's worked a lot in the movies.
And he said, yeah, ask him this.
He's never worked on a movie, a picture you've done.
But he said he has a reputation of being tough on the crew.
Well, I think it probably would have been when Harry met Sally, because it was the closest to me.
You know, my mother is in the deli there.
The woman who says, I'll have what she's having.
That's my mother there.
Oh, boy.
And there's a great story there because we had this scene and Meg Ryan was a little bit nervous about doing it because she had to fake an orgasm in front of all the crew there and all the extras and everybody.
And so she did it the first couple of times and it wasn't so good.
And she was kind of weak and kind of half-hearted.
And we did it again, again, again.
She couldn't do it.
I said, Meg, let me just show you what I want.
I sat down, sat down at the table opposite Billy, and I'm going, yes, yes, yes, I'm doing it.
I'm acting out the whole thing.
And Billy said it was like, you know, having being on a date with Sebastian Cabot.
But I realized that I'm having an orgasm in front of my mother, you know?
And I'm like, oh, my God, you know, but it worked out fine.
But I probably would have been that way.
unidentified
Are you sort of still recovering from that experience?
I've been asked that question, and what people don't understand is, yes, I grew up in a political household.
Both my mother and father were active.
My father marched in the moratorium here in San Francisco during the Vietnam War.
My mother was part of a group called Another Mother for Peace.
She helped design the poster, War is Unhealthy for Children and Other Living Things.
So those issues were always talked about in my house.
So that was something I grew up in.
Now, doing All in the Family, what got me interested in the active part of it, I was always interested in politics and what was going on.
But what got me interested to be active was essentially watching Norman Lear and how he functioned.
It was separate and apart from All in the Family, he took his fame, celebrity, success, what have you, and started an organization called People for the American Way, which was a way of pushing back against the religious right because they, at the time, the religious right was trying to own patriotism as if if you were not part of the religious right, you were not a patriot.
Or if you were a liberal, you weren't a patriot.
And he felt, no, I fought in the Second World War.
I'm a patriot.
I should have that, you know, I should have that represented for me.
And so he started People for the American Way.
I saw that there is a way in which you can use your celebrity, your fame, your success, whatever, and put it to some good.
So that's really the experience.
It was my parents, you know, introducing me to the area and then seeing how you could actively do something with your success.
So those are the things that pushed me forward.
unidentified
Is your father politically aligned with you, or do you find yourself arguing with him?
What I have discovered is that from activism and having a position on something to trying to get something done on an area, you cannot hold on to too strict positions because you find that the perfect is enemy of the good and that you can't move anything forward.
So you try to hold on to your principles, try to hold on to your beliefs, but at the same time, I've been informed by the process of having to get things done.
So I'm probably more conservative than my dad.
unidentified
You know, you're in a business that sells tickets to the public of all stripes.
Is it risky to be political when you're in that business?
It is not risky in terms of the Hollywood community because generally speaking, the Hollywood community is liberal, more so than conservative.
But when you take political positions, when you take views and you put yourself out there, and especially in this day and age in this country, you're upsetting half the country.
By nature of what you stand for, you're upsetting half the country.
And that half the country may take it out on you in terms of going to a movie that you've made or something like that.
They may be able to see past your politics and enjoy a film that may not have politics, but it's certainly we've seen that happen to a lot of artists, you know, the Dixie Chicks and a lot of people.
It does hurt.
It does hurt.
unidentified
Is that something that the studios sort of wish didn't occur, that they wish you guys would stay out of it or not so much?
No, no, because the studios, they make all different types of pictures.
Mostly they make tentpold type movies, you know, what they call franchise movies, movies that are, you know, action pictures, X-Men, you know, hunger games, those kind of things.
And those films don't have too much politics in it.
There's a little bit.
And then they also, there is room for Hurt Locker.
I mean, there are, you know, you don't get as broad an audience, but there is room for Hurt Locker and, you know, Zero Dark 30 and, you know, Argo.
And look at Argo.
I mean, it's, you know, it's doing very well.
And so there are room, you know, there is room for those kinds of pictures.
unidentified
Okay.
Let's talk about some of the causes that you care about.
Probably at the top of the list, Proposition 8, the ban on gay marriage.
Well, first of all, as I said, civil rights were discussed at my table as a kid growing up.
You know, people of my generation, they say, well, you remember where you were when Kennedy was assassinated.
We all do remember.
I remember where I was when Med Gerevers was assassinated.
I made a movie about the reprosecution of Med Gerevers.
So he was the first major civil rights leader that got assassinated in 1963.
So the idea of civil rights and the idea of all of us being equal was something that was always talked about in my household.
So then, flash forward, I'm making a movie, The American President, and a young man named Chad Griffin, who was 19 years old at the time, was working for D.D. Myers, who was the head of communication for President Clinton at the time.
And he was assigned to me to help me research the film.
And I went to the White House, and Chad Griffin showed me around, and he, you know, took me all throughout the White House, and I became friends with him.
He wound up running my foundation for early childhood education.
And Chad, oddly enough, and I make this joke, I knew Chad was gay before he knew it.
I mean, he came from Arkansas, a very conservative state, and he suppressed all of those feelings for a very long time.
And at one point, he came to me and it was like, I feel like a father to him.
He's like, he was 19, I was much older, and I'm very, very close to this guy.
And now he's the head of the human rights campaign.
He's a big deal now.
But I'm so proud every time I see him on television.
I thought, oh, there's my son.
But I asked him to run my organization.
And after a while, he came to me and said, he said, Rob, I have to tell you something.
He says, I'm gay.
And I said, what else is new?
We knew.
I mean, and as time goes by, and one of the reasons we took on Proposition 8, aside from the obvious reasons of marriage equality and we should all be treated equal under the law, and it's a bad initiative, and the courts have already overturned it.
We hope the Supreme Court will uphold those rulings.
But it was partly an education process.
We discover as we go along that, first of all, there's not one person in this audience or anywhere that doesn't have a gay person in their family or a gay friend or a gay person that they work with in their workplace.
Nobody.
Nobody.
So the normalizing of things, the being able to teach, the being able to show people that everybody is equal, that nobody is different.
If they can do, if they're doing their job, it shouldn't be thought of as different.
That was one of the reasons we took on Prop 8.
And one of the reasons we did the Play 8, which was a dramatization of what went on inside the courtroom here in San Francisco at the district trial.
We put that on because we wanted to show people what actually went on in that courtroom and to normalize it.
And so we find that as we move along, the wind is at our back.
It is like we're hitting critical mass.
You're seeing more and more states adopting it.
Now Great Britain, you're seeing more countries.
It will happen.
It is supposed to happen.
And I've said this many, many times, that we can't imagine that there was a time that women couldn't vote.
We can't imagine that there were times when black people couldn't vote.
We can't imagine there was a time when black people couldn't marry white people.
And there will be a time years from now where we'll say, gay marriage, what was that fuss all about?
It's going to take time, and we are moving in the right direction, but it is about a fundamental right.
And we cannot look at our fellow citizens.
I couldn't look at Chad Griffin, who is somebody who I love, and say, you are lesser than me.
You deserve less than me.
You are a second-class citizen.
You can't do that.
You can't feel comfortable about yourself knowing that there is a whole, there are millions of people in this country that are not considered equal under the law.
unidentified
Do you think that will, are you optimistic about what the Supreme Court will do?
I mean, obviously, you never know when a case is in front of the Supreme Court.
But if they are going to rule, and this is what they do, based on the law, we had a trial here in San Francisco with many weeks of evidence.
We brought on 17 witnesses.
They brought on two.
And one of their witnesses, who is their expert against the idea of gay marriage, has done a 180.
His name is David Blankenhorn and has now said it absolutely should be something that should be done.
If you look at it just from a legal standpoint, there is really nothing to argue.
You can argue from a moral standpoint.
You can say morally, I don't like the idea of gay marriage because your church teaches you a certain thing.
That's fine.
And we're not asking anybody, we're not forcing any church to perform ceremonies.
We're not asking anybody to go outside their religious beliefs.
But marriage is not a religious right.
It is a civil right that is provided by the government.
A church does not have a right to marry someone except that it is given the right by the government.
The government issues marriage licenses.
The government decides who gets married and who doesn't.
So in 1967, there was a Supreme Court case, Loving versus Virginia, and blacks couldn't marry whites.
They challenged that, and the Supreme Court ruled that 9-0.
And they have ruled now 14 times about the fundamental right to marriage.
So, and from a legal standpoint, there is no argument.
You can make a moral standpoint if you want, but from a legal standpoint, there is no argument.
So, we feel confident that we now, how broadly the Supreme Court will rule, that we don't know.
And that will have to see.
I mean, the Ninth Circuit, which is the appellate court that heard the case, they issued an opinion that can be taken a number of ways.
Maybe the Supreme Court just upholds the Ninth Circuit's opinion that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional because it took away a right that was initially had by gays and lesbians.
So they may just rule in terms of that.
But we also argued that there is a fundamental right to marriage.
So if they rule on that basis, then that marriage will be made a fundamental right for everybody in the country.
That doesn't mean immediately every state you can go to and you can get married.
Brown versus the Board of Education 1954 said separate but not equal is not equal.
And that every black person has a right to go to whatever school they want to, every public school they want to.
But there were many prejudices against that in many of the southern states, and it took a long time before the schools could be integrated.
So it may take a while, even if we win the case in the broadest sense, for all that to happen.
But it will happen.
It will happen.
I mean, this is not, it's just a matter of time.
And hopefully, you know, the Supreme Court will be on the right side of history, and I think they will.
unidentified
When you produce a play like 8 on a social issue, and you've done that a number of times over your career, is that a different demand?
It must be satisfying to tell a story about which you are so passionate politically, but that's a different set of demands and research that has to go into it.
There's sort of a historical accuracy that has to be a part of it, I would think.
Well, you're not making a documentary necessarily.
No, but Lance Black, the writer of the play 8, who also won an Academy Award for MIL, you know, the story of Harvey Milk, he basically took the transcripts and made it a trial, you know, basically dramatized the transcripts.
Anything that is said by a witness in the play was taken exactly word for word from the transcripts of the trial.
Now, he added some personal stuff about the plaintiffs, and that was brought in to dramatize.
But if you wanted to know what went on inside that courtroom, because they didn't allow cameras in the courtroom, you just look at that play and it'll tell you exactly what happened during that trial.
unidentified
This the fight that you've been leading against Prop 8, I imagine that it has, has it come at any personal cost at all in terms of friendships?
I mean, you know, if somebody wants to not like me because I want everybody to have equality, then they should go someplace else.
That's not what America's about.
That is not what America's about.
unidentified
One of the other issues that you care about, and I'm curious, and one of the members of the audience wants to ask why you got into the anti-smoking campaign.
Well, the anti-smoking campaign was in conjunction with early childhood development.
We tried to find a way to use some funds to, which, you know, smoking is bad for children, bad for their health, bad for, you know, in prenatal care and all of that.
And we also wanted to expand it to include all aspects of school readiness, you know, health care, childcare, preschool, parent education, all the things that would be helpful for a child to get off on the right track.
So it was connected, it was not just about anti-smoking, it was also about early childhood development.
unidentified
Thank you.
One of the other issues, and I want to just touch a few and then we'll go back to talking to Tip.
Environmental causes that you care about, climate change.
Are you working on a project involving climate change?
You know, I've said many times, I mean, we've got basically two issues, two things that we think about.
And when you think about in a global way, and I think very big, it doesn't, you know, doesn't necessarily get me into too good a straight, but I do think big.
There's the planet and then there's the people living on the planet.
And basically that's it.
So what can we do to make life better for the people living on the planet?
So, you know, my take was if we gave every child, every young child, a good start in life, made sure that they had good nurturing parental experiences early on in life, if they had the right kind of health care, if they had the right early education, they would have an opportunity to live a happy, productive, you know, fruitful life.
Then there's the planet that we live on.
You know, so the idea was with early childhood, if we give people what they need, we will produce non-toxic adults.
They will not harm society.
They will not act out against their neighbor.
They won't rape.
They won't steal.
They won't kill.
And then do we have a planet, a toxic or non-toxic planet?
And so that is the other issue.
And I've always said if you don't have a healthy planet, nothing else means anything.
It doesn't matter whether, gee, I hope my social security check.
None of it matters.
Social security, gun control, whatever it is, none of it matters if you don't have a sustainable planet.
So right now, climate change, there's, I think, seven people in this country that don't believe in the science.
But I believe there is an enormous economy, a green economy that is the next big boom, and that those technologies can be exported.
Those technologies can help bring along some of these emerging countries, these third world countries.
And the other thing is, we have no option.
It's not like there's an option.
You know, there's a fear right now amongst people who are in the know that we've already maybe waited too long because there's a point at which things are irreversible.
We may be already at that place.
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
It's like this gun control debate they have.
Does it mean because there's not one thing you can do that's going to eradicate all gun violence that you shouldn't do anything?
You have to try.
You have to try and do something.
unidentified
On the subject, Rob, of gun control, this is from someone in the audience.
You mentioned that Hollywood tends to be more on the liberal side.
There is a lot of violence in film, certainly a lot of gunplay in film.
And I would imagine the Hollywood community, many of them, favor gun control, and yet gun violence is sort of celebrated in the movies.
I don't believe there's a conflict in terms of what needs to be done.
And I'm not a guy who makes those kinds of movies, so I'm not like protecting my franchise or anything.
But I've read every study now done about the effects of violent movies and violent video games on young people in terms of their proclivity to act out.
And there isn't a correlation.
Now, that doesn't mean to say that young people who have mental illnesses and have problems who also watch those video games might be tipped over by something like that.
Yes, but those people, if they didn't have access to guns, they'd probably go and stab somebody or hit somebody with a baseball bat or whatever.
As you know, it takes a tremendous toll on the family, you know, putting yourself out there in the public arena like that.
And, you know, I do anyway.
And I had a meeting with my family, because I was seriously considering it.
And my kids were young at the time.
My youngest son was friends with Patrick Schwarzenegger, so he knew that the Secret Service detail, that would follow the security detail that would follow him around.
He didn't like that idea.
And we sat around, and there was my three kids, me and my wife, and my son was crying, Daddy, please don't do it.
I don't want you to do it.
My little daughter says, Daddy, I don't want you.
My wife didn't want it.
My oldest son was in support of me.
And basically, I polled 40% of my family.
I didn't carry my family.
So I figured if I can't carry my family, I better not do.
No, I don't regret it at all because what I've discovered also, particularly in California, and I think Jerry Brown's done an incredible job considering what he had to deal with here.
You know, this state was left in an absolute mess by the previous administration.
And to be able to get it on track with the governance structure that we have here in California, which forces you to get a two-thirds majority to pass a budget, a two-thirds majority to raise taxes.
That's why he decided to put an initiative on the ballot rather than go through the legislature, which, by the way, even though I've benefited from the initiative process in passing Proposition 10 for early childhood, I'm not in favor of the initiative process personally.
I don't think it's a good way to govern because most people don't really know what's in these initiatives.
They don't know the implications of it.
They don't know really what they're voting for.
They're voting based on 30-second ads and who has the most money to take out ads.
But you then have to allow your elected representatives the ability to govern.
And if you're hamstringing them with a two-thirds majority every time for anything significant, it makes it difficult.
So I think basically being a governor of California is very difficult because of the governance structure.
Now, that's not to say there aren't great elected positions where you can't actually get stuff done.
If you look at the mayor of New York, for instance, there's a great city charter in New York, which allows you tremendous latitude to get things done.
And I think Bloomberg's done a very good job.
But, you know, in Los Angeles, the charter is much weaker.
So the mayor of Los Angeles doesn't have control over the education system throughout the city of Los Angeles.
So, you know, it depends on the job.
And what I've discovered is I can use my whatever I have, whatever, you know, avenues I have, better.
I'm better serving in looking at openings and taking them.
It's like, you know, I see an opening.
It's like a guy with a football.
You know, I say, oh, there's some daylight.
I'm going to go there.
That's what we did on the decision to go on the federal court case on Prop 8.
We saw that there was a possibility to get this done, an actual possibility, because I'm not unmindful of the politics of it.
I'm not unmindful of the economics of it and how to, and plus the religious implications and all of that.
But I could see the Supreme Court, I could see the way the country was moving, and I just felt along with Chad and my wife and Christina and Lance Black and Bruce, and we saw an opening there and we took it.
Well, it makes me seem old, but it also makes me put pressure on me that I have to be more intelligent than I really am.
unidentified
On the subject of intelligence, you are obviously extremely intelligent and very well informed on these issues, and you use your celebrity for great purpose.
I try to.
Sometimes you talk about the electorate not necessarily always being as informed as we might be.
How do you feel about celebrities who lend their names to causes who may not be so well informed?
But the truth of the matter is, you know, Washington uses Hollywood a lot of times because a celebrity can bring attention to a particular issue.
And if it's an issue that they're trying to push, they can use a celebrity.
Celebrities like to use Washington because it gives them some more, what they think, gravitas, or that gives them some more seriousness or, you know, substantive thoughts about things.
But what I've discovered is that if you steep yourself in an issue, if you really do understand the issue, the ins and outs, and the, you know, can get down in the weeds and out wonk a wonk on a particular issue, you can actually really move the ball forward.
You can not only draw attention to something, but you can actually move the ball forward.
I look at somebody like Michael J. Fox, who really understands the science of Parkinson's and how to move in stem cell research and how to move all that stuff forward.
Then celebrity can be used good.
But if a celebrity just wants to be seen and wants to dance around, then he makes a fool of himself and also ultimately hurts whatever particular issue he's trying to push.
So it's a double-edged sword, and I always counsel celebrities: if you're going to get into something, really do your homework and really understand what it is you're trying to do.
That when the reporters and when news people ask you and they start drilling down, be able to answer the second, third, fourth, fifth-tier questions and be able to go, you know, be the smartest guy in the room.
Be as smart as anybody who's an expert on it.
Become an expert.
unidentified
You campaigned for President Obama.
He's re-elected, of course.
He was just inaugurated.
Yeah.
Your assessment on some liberals were disappointed in his first four years.
Many were pleased at some of the things he did.
What do you hope he accomplishes in the next four years that he did not accomplish in the past?
I mean, if you think about it, a lot of liberals were unhappy because he maybe didn't exhibit the kind of fire and passion that he did on the stump.
But if you look at, you know, he's a cool customer, and if you look at what he did, I mean, he did save an auto industry.
He did kill bin Laden.
He did pass universal health care coverage for the first time since it was brought up in 1948.
There were some major, major accomplishments done in a very kind of quiet way.
There are obviously huge big ticket items still out there.
We still have to get our fiscal house in order.
That's going to take some doing.
He's certainly not going to be able to do it during his term, but he can put it on a path towards some kind of sustainability down the road.
Secondly, they're fighting on immigration reform right now.
I believe that may even get to be done because you've got political interests on the right, maybe not such heartfelt interests, but at least political interests on the right to get that done.
What we can do on gun safety, I'm not sure.
It seems like background, universal background checks should pass every, I mean, even NRI members are 80-some-odd percent in favor of that.
That could be a diagnosis.
But the big ticket items are going to come down to climate change.
Climate change is the big one.
I hope something starts emerging on that.
He did mention it in the State of the Union, and then the fiscal stuff.
So hopefully we can see some stuff happening on climate change.
We touched a little bit on early childhood development, but I want to ask you a little bit more because I know that's something you're also very passionate about.
Your concerns about the state of education in California and the country.
You know, so many statistics show that we are so far behind many other ways.
Well, California, you know, you talk about California because California educates one out of every eight children in America.
And California, before Proposition 13, had the best education system in the country.
We now have, if not the worst, close to the worst in the country.
So if we are able to fix the education system in California, that will go a long way towards making a healthy education system in America.
It's a very complicated thing because Prop 13 is the third rail of California politics, and money alone is not going to solve the problem.
We have to see reform and money come together.
But you can't have just reform.
You need reform and resources.
They both have to come together at the same time.
But there are ways to do it.
There are certain models for what constitutes a good education system.
I would submit that you have quality early childhood preschool education for every child.
So by the time they're, you know, that to me is my big fight because, you know, by third grade, when you're eight years old, you should be reading because you learn to read so that you can read to learn.
And if you're not reading by the third grade, you're off the rails.
And the reason you see the 50% and more dropout rate at college is because the kids are not keeping up.
But kids that have had access to high-quality preschool are kids that are not dropping out of school.
So you have to start at the beginning with integrating a comprehensive early childhood education program from the get-go.
And then we're talking about reforming the K through 12 system, which needs reform and teacher training and being able to make sure that a qualified teacher is in every class, and then resources.
And both of those things need to come together.
There are a lot of money people around this state who are nervous about putting money into our system because they know it's going to be money thrown down a rat hole and a bad.
So we have to go with reform at the same time and we need to see real reform.
And if we don't, there's no chance to even talk about reforming Prop 13.
Not getting rid of Prop 13, but reforming Prop 13.
unidentified
All right.
Let's spend the last few minutes, Rob, if it's all right with you lightening up, lightening it up a little bit and talking about a few more people.
No, I don't think it's inherently liberal, but you find more liberal people funnier because look at South Park.
Those guys, you know, Parker and Stone, they're equal opportunity satirists.
They skew the right and the left, you know.
So, no, it doesn't have to be liberal, but I find, generally speaking, liberals are funnier because liberal means open, you know, open-minded.
Conservative means you conserve.
You keep things as they are.
Liberal means you open up yourself to all the different possibilities.
When you do that, there's more of an opportunity to find what's dopey about the world.
unidentified
Someone in the audience, and we talked about this backstage here, one of my favorite movies over the years has been one of yours, Princess Bride, which was such a charming movie.
And you are very proud of that movie because it endures.
And I love that people come up to me and they say, you know, my wedding ring, it says, as you wish, inside of it.
Or, you know, kids who saw the movie when they were seven, eight, nine, ten years old, now grown up and they have little kids and they're introducing the kids to the movie.
It makes me feel great.
I have one great story about it that was these years ago, Nora Efron, who just passed away, was a good friend.
She wrote when Harry met Sally.
We went to a restaurant.
She said, you know, there's a restaurant, very good Italian place.
John Gotti goes there every Thursday night.
I said, oh, okay, we'll go.
We'll see.
It's probably going to be a safe.
Maybe it's not such a safe.
But I went, we'll go there.
So we go there and eight o'clock, sure enough, John Gotti walks into the restaurant with like six wise guys.
They sit down at a table and I look over there and I see him.
He kind of sees me.
We kind of recognize you.
I don't want to say like I recognize him too much, you know.
Again, you stay over there, but we finish our meal.
Then I go outside and there's a big limo parked out of there and a guy in front of a limo who looks like Luca Brazzi from The Godfather.
And he looks at me, he goes, you killed my father, prepared to die.
We had two long laughs that were about the same length.
The Sammy Davis Jr. kiss, the audience just never stopped.
There was another one where this was like the, I think it was like the seventh episode we ever did.
My character was very anxious about having to take final exams.
And my character, my character, became impotent.
Just, you know, showbiz, you know.
And the whole thing was I couldn't, Gloria was all upset that we couldn't make love.
And so Archie goes down to the bar and he runs into Jefferson and he says to Jefferson, he says, you people are good with these things and these issues.
He says, my son, he's, how should I say, he's stuck in neutral.
And that got one of the biggest laughs we ever had.
unidentified
What is it like all in the family?
What is it like to have been part of a TV family that is so iconic?
I've had projects that I've wanted to make that I have been able to make for one reason or another, but not one that I'm that that's the one.
But there have been a couple.
I've always wanted to make the great baseball movie.
I mean, I'm a huge baseball fan.
As a kid growing up, I was a New York Giant fan and then a San Francisco Giant fan because I loved Willie Mays and you know, I admired him so much.
And so I love baseball.
So I've always wanted to do something about that.
I've tried to do that.
I couldn't do it.
I've always wanted to do a musical, you know, just a movie musical, not like Spinal Tap, but I mean, a real musical with a story with characters.
And I've tried that and I have been able to do that.
So, and then I've also wanted to do a movie about what happened during the 60s, what actually happened during the 60s, and because I think it certainly informed my generation and all the issues that were going on, you know, the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, sexual revolution, the drug culture, and all that.
And so, those are the three areas that I've been interested in.
There's a lot of things that Congress fights about that they disagree on.
unidentified
We can all watch that on C-SPAN.
Millions of people across the country tuned into C-SPAN.
That was a make-for-C-SPAN moment.
If you watch on C-SPAN, you're going to see me physically across the aisle every day, just trying to build relationships and try to understand their perspective and find common ground.