CSPAN - Conversation with Filmmaker Rob Reiner

All Episodes

Previous Next

Jan. 1, 2026 21:59-22:27 - CSPAN

27:52

Conversation with Filmmaker Rob Reiner

Participants

Main

rob reiner

16:50

Appearances

Clips

alex jones

infowars 00:27

charlie kirk

00:16

david gergen

00:07

dick cheney

r 00:08

jane goodall

00:06

joe biden

d 00:24

justice david souter

scotus 00:05

mia love

rep/r 00:08

pope francis

00:24

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Show episode speakers

Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		This is your government at work.
		This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered.
		Another notable person to pass away in 2025 was filmmaker Rob Reiner.
		Rob Reiner is known for his long career in film and television, spanning several decades, including movie classics, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, and 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 Commonwealth Club.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.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		By the way, you're the first person to call me that today.
unidentified		It's still early, yes, it's true.
		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 POP 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.
		Please, once again, a warm welcome to Rob Reiner.
		Thank you.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much.
unidentified		Thanks, Dad.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		Thank you.
		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.
		How's your dad, by the way, Carl Reiner?
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		My dad, thanks for asking.
		My dad is doing great.
		He's 90 years old.
		He's going to be 91 in a month and a half.
		And he's still sharp as attack.
		He walks around the block every day.
		I can't keep up with him.
		I mean, it's like, it's incredible.
unidentified		Does he work still?
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		He writes.
		He just wrote an autobiography called I Remember Me.
		And it's just coming out now.
		And, you know, he writes every day.
		And he and Mel Brooks, every single night, they get together.
		Mel comes over to the house every night.
		They sit and they have dinner and they watch a movie.
		And their thing is they say any movie that has Secure the Perimeter in it, they'll watch.
		So, yeah, but they have fun with each other and they have each other and it's great.
		Mel is about, I think, 86 or 87.
unidentified		And he's doing great.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		And he's doing great, too.
unidentified		How fortunate to have that lifelong friendship with somebody?
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's incredible.
		I mean, they've known each other, you know, 60 years since the show of 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 there's a 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, I go, is that the man?
		She says, is that the man?
		Is that the man?
		I said, yeah, that's the man.
		That's the man.
		That man is the man.
		And so she goes and she takes his eyes like this.
		I said, that's the man?
		Yeah, I said, that's the man.
		So that's all.
		So the Mel Brooks, he was the man, and he's still the man.
unidentified		Yeah.
		Yeah.
		What a wonderful upbringing to be around these characters.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
unidentified		Did it dawn on you at the time that it was unusual?
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, no, it didn't actually, because my house, I mean, there was Mel Brooks, the Norman Lear said, Caesar, I mean, some of the funniest people, you know, in the world were coming through my house.
		But, you know, as a kid growing up, you don't think of yourself as different.
		You know, you're just in your house as a kid.
		And it wasn't until I went to my friend Stephen Rabin's house where I realized it's not so funny over there.
		Not nearly as funny as at my house.
unidentified		Did you know early on, because of that environment, that you wanted to be in the entertainment industry?
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		And he was supportive as you got into showbus.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		No, he always was.
		He always 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 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 okay.
unidentified		When he said to you, that was good.
unidentified		That must have been a very problematic.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
		It was incredibly.
		I felt so good about that because I did look up to him.
		He was like a god to me.
		I mean, he had done the Dick Van Dyke show and he's on the show of shows.
		And I was like, you know, he was my idol.
		So when he said that to me, it meant a lot.
		This is a great story.
		When I was a little boy, And this is true.
		My father was on television before we owned a television.
		It's true.
unidentified		Really?
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		He was on, yeah.
		And we got a television when I was about four or five years old so we could watch him.
		You know, he was doing show of shows.
		We had the little tiny television, black and white, that was a screen that big.
		And my father used to say to me, at the end of the show, they'd have the good night.
		So the whole cast would come out to say their final bows and everything.
		And my father said, you know, I can't wave at you.
		You know, I'm not allowed to wave at you because they don't like that.
		But when they come out at the end, I'm going to go like this with my tie.
		And that's me telling you that I love you and it's time for you to go to sleep.
		So every Saturday night he would go like this with the tie.
		And that was a thing.
		So I learned to, you know, that was my relationship.
		My dad, and he was a great guy around the house.
		He was a regular dad.
		And oddly enough, we had a real kind of normal life in a way because the show of shows was on 13 weeks.
		It was on 39 weeks a year, live, an hour and a half live, 39 weeks.
		And then they were off 13 weeks.
		So that 13 weeks, which was during the summer, we spent the summers together.
		And so, you know, it was probably I had more time with him than a lot of parents.
unidentified		Most people don't get 13.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		13 weeks in a row, yeah, to be with your dad.
unidentified		Very demanding when he was working, but when he was working, yeah.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		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 Gilbar, 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 up 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.
		And I said, that's comedy?
		They're making comedy in there?
		Sounds like they're killing each other in there.
		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 Enter Laughing, 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, we were incredible writers.
unidentified		When you think about it, when you put it like that, it's really actually remarkable.
unidentified		It was a magic time with a very unique group of people creating this media.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		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 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 the cable TV and you're looking at 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.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I think there is.
		And I think that if you look at 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 Arf, 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?
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		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, you know, go to the, you know, you know, 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 200 million, 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.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		It really is.
		It really, really is.
		I mean, there's so much out there.
		And 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 the 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 part of my talk that I've got to do.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		That's another discussion, yeah.
unidentified		Let's move now to from all in the family.
		Well, I mean, I want to back up and ask you one question.
		I referred to your character, Michael Stivick, as meathead.
		Does that bother you when people refer to this?
		Is that something you want to be proud of?
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		It doesn't bother me.
		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.
unidentified		That's the irony.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		But look at the source of where that came from.
		But then that was just accepted.
		I'm a meathead, you know, because that ignorant person called me that.
		I become that.
		And that was Norman Lear's father who used to call him that.
		That's where he got that.
unidentified		He said, but now it's a term of endearment.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		He said, you're a meathead.
		You're dead from the neck up.
		That's a nice father for you.
unidentified		But when people call you that now, it's a term of endearment.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		No, no, it's just they recognize it.
		And it's iconic.
		Yeah, that's fine.
unidentified		That's fine.
		So you acted in the early days.
		You still act some to this.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I just acted in a movie.
		I did a little part in a Martin Scorsese movie.
		It's called The Wolf of Wall Street.
		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?
		You determine that one.
unidentified		Very good.
		Yeah, excellent.
		Is that out yet?
		Not out yet.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		No, no, we just finished shooting.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		It'll be out probably the end of the year.
unidentified		Is it hard?
unidentified		Do you like acting still as now that you're really a director for?
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		I love to act.
		It's fun, you know, and I don't have responsibility.
		It's not as hard.
		I mean, directing is a lot of responsibility.
		I actually enjoy directing more, but acting is like fun.
		It's like a lark.
		I remember years ago, Ron Howard was making a movie called Ed TV, and he calls me up and he says, Do you want to act?
		There's a part in here if you want to act in it.
		And I said, Okay, I'll do it.
		And he says, Well, well, let me send you the script and see if you want to do it.
		I said, You don't have to send me a script.
		I said, If it stinks, it's not my fault.
		So I look at it that way.
		It's like, okay, I'm fine.
		I'll do whatever they want me to do.
unidentified		It's not my responsibility.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
		I did a Woody Allen film years ago called Bullets Over Broadway.
		And I don't say anything.
		I don't say anything to the director.
		I mean, because I know as a director, I don't want actors giving me grief.
		You know, I got too many problems.
		Just do your job.
		You know, just go in and do your job.
		I show up there and I look around.
		It's an outdoor scene.
		You know, I'm with John Cusack and Alan Arkin.
		And it's at night and outdoor.
		And I look at it.
		I said, you know, gee, if I don't, I don't know if there's, there must be some kind of film stock.
		I'm not aware of it because it's too dark.
		It'll never show up.
		But I'm not going to say anything because it's Woody Allen.
		It's Carlo de Palma, a great guy.
		I don't want to say anything.
		We do the scene.
		They call me the next day of the hotel room.
		We watch the dailies, the thing.
		It's a radio show.
unidentified		It's totally black.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		Not only that, so I should have probably spoken up then, but I didn't.
unidentified		You are listening to the Commonwealth Club of California radio program.
		We're talking with Hollywood legend and activist Rob Reiner about films, politics, and the future of marriage equality.
		I'm Dan Ashley, anchor of ABC 7 News, your moderator today.
		How do you pick a project when you choose a film to direct?
		You've had so many remarkable successes in several different genres in film.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		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 the where is my way into this story?
		What am I, what 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 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		For the first time, we said as moral citizens, we have to do what is right for our country.
		Our country is not always right.
		Nobody wants to be a failure, but I had failed in trying to protect the president.
alex jones ▲ ● ▼		And I knew that humor is the universal solvent against the abrasive elements of life.
mia love ▲ ● ▼		The America I know is grounded in the determination found in patriots and pioneers, in small businesses with big ideas.
pope francis ▲ ● ▼		Let us treat others with the same passion and compassion with which we want to be.
justice david souter ▲ ● ▼		The judiciary is an institution which is not a political institution.
unidentified		The whole point of it is not to be one.
david gergen ▲ ● ▼		What can we in the older generation do to make a better world for this country?
david gergen ▲ ● ▼		Before we leave the stage, what can we accomplish?
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		We do have a problem in baseball.
rob reiner ▲ ● ▼		And using steroids is not respecting the game.
unidentified		We were so curious, so excited about being at the moon that we are like three school kids looking into a candy store window, watching those ancient old creators go by.
charlie kirk ▲ ● ▼		Our current state of slow motion national decline is a choice.
unidentified		When I see the community that we can be and the strength that we do have, it makes me all the more passionate about joining that community and raising whatever I can do to help raise the voice to represent the people.
jane goodall ▲ ● ▼		Every one of us, not just the young people, but all of us have to remember that each day we actually do make a difference.
dick cheney ▲ ● ▼		It's time for America's leaders to stop pointing the finger of blame and to begin sharing the credit for success.
unidentified		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 strict positions because you find that the perfect is enemy of the good.
joe biden ▲ ● ▼		Post encouraged me to be better, to do more, to find out things I hadn't known.
unidentified		It was and is my home.
		Another notable figure who passed away this year was primatologist Jane Goodall, who studied chimpanzees and their habits for several decades, discovering that the primates were also capable of using tools as their human counterparts do.
		In the first few days of 2025, prior to her death in October, Mrs. Goodall was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by then President Joe Biden.
joe biden ▲ ● ▼		And for the final time as president, I have the honor of bestowing the Medal of Freedom on our nation's highest civilian honor, on a group of extraordinary, truly extraordinary people who gave their sacred effort.
joe biden ▲ ● ▼		their sacred effort. to shape the culture and the cause of America.

▲