Posted by Mr. Beaks

Rob Reiner is a film director.  Before that, he was a sitcom star.  He won two Emmys for his performance as "Meathead" on All in the Family.  His father, Carl Reiner, also won two Emmys despite a decade's worth of service on two of television's greatest comedies, Your Show of Shows and The Dick Van Dyke Show.  Desperate to move out from under the shadow of his brilliant papa, Lil' Reiner segued to the high-decibel sport of tractor pulling, where he won three consecutive National Championships piloting the legendary hauler, "Spread 'Em Wide, Esther".  Actually, that is a lie. Desperate to move out from under the shadow of his brilliant papa, Lil' Reiner segued to the director's chair where he quickly established himself as a capable craftsman on the strength of seven consecutive good-to-great pictures:  This is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally..., Misery and A Few Good Men.  Then he made North.  Shit happens.  He rebounded with the Aaron Sorkin-scripted The American President, which was followed up by Ghosts of Mississippi, The Story of Us and Alex & Emma. 

Initiated by Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney's Section 8 production company as a feature directing debut for screenwriter Ted Griffin, Rumor Has It... ran quickly aground in its first two weeks of principal photography. Griffin was out, and Warner Brothers production honcho Alan Horn's buddy Rob Reiner was in.  As a replacement director, Rob Reiner displays the same skill set evinced in his last several films. It also recalls When Harry Met Sally... for its not-entirely-necessary use of ellipses. In the below roundtable interview, Reiner discusses in cordial, carefully rehearsed terms how he was brought on to the project, what he did to fix what was apparently quite broken, and why he can't stop crying.

The big thing for you was that you weren’t planning to direct this movie.  It was in production. 

That’s right.

How do you direct in that kind of situation?

It was unusual for me.  I’ve never been in a situation like this before.  They had been shooting for two weeks.  They shut the production down.  They had some troubles.  I got a call on a Friday from Alan Horn, who’s the head of Warner Brothers and a very close friend of mine.  We’ve known each other for thirty years, we started Castle Rock together, and he said, “We’re in trouble.  Can you come and help out?”  I said, “Yes”, and (laughing) didn’t know what I’d gotten myself into. 

But to be honest with you, it worked out in a very nice way for me; it was oddly freeing.  I had never been in a situation where I had, initially, less of an emotional investment in something.  Normally, if you have pre-production, you go through a period of months, sometimes years developing a script, and you have a real connection with what you’re doing.  This one freed me up to basically not be obsessed.  I was not obsessed with it.  I had to just say, “Okay, let’s bring whatever skills I’ve acquired over the years to bear, and see if I can make a go of this thing and make it work.”  I did have to find my way into the project, though, and that was the toughest part for me.  Because the script was a bit disjointed.  There was some very good writing and very smart writing, but it didn’t have a dramatic throughline; there wasn’t a real emotional throughline to the film, and I had to figure out what that was.  And I only had eight days to do it.  I had an eight day pre-production.  But very early on, I focused in on Jennifer’s character as being obviously the main character in the film.  But I identified the movie as being this emotional journey to self-discovery.  Once I knew that this was about a very confused woman who had to understand who she was, get a sense of who she was in order to give herself over to the man she loved, I said, “Okay, then everything has to serve that arc”.  Then I kind of deconstructed the whole movie, and in three days we put up on cards… scenes that we felt would further that goal, and scenes that didn’t fell away.  And then the first five days after that, I just started writing on the scenes that I knew we were going to shoot in the first week.  We kind of worked as we went along; it was like being thrown into the deep end of the pool.  But if you have taken your swimming lessons over the years, you can dogpaddle your way until you find your stroke.

But they were two weeks into shooting the movie with a script.  When I heard that the directing wasn’t going well, I didn’t realize the script was being changed.

The script was there, but it had a very kind of diffused focus.  It wasn’t really about that.

Did it start the same way with them on the airplane going into the lavatory as a couple? 

Yes, but we changed what happened on the airplane.  Because you have such few days of production, you can’t start destroying sets and building new sets.  You can do some of that down the road, but you kind of try to use what sets and locations you have, and start reworking ideas around that.  So, yes, they were going to Pasadena for the sister’s wedding, but what happens on the plane – and we kind of rearranged things a little bit – it became more about her confusion about going back there and her upsetedness with herself that she feels not connected to her family, that she doesn’t feel connected to her sister – she should’ve been there to help her pick out her dress.  So we added a lot of that stuff in the scene in the bathroom where they try to have sex.

Could you use anything from the first two weeks of shooting?

No.  We threw away everything and started from scratch.

What was the feeling on the set when you showed up?

Well, it was good.  People felt that – good, bad or indifferent – I have a lot of experience, and they comfortable and secure that they would be in good hands.  That was helpful.  And we have professionals that have been doing this for a long time, they all have tremendous craft, and, in the circumstances, they all kind of pulled together.  They said, “Okay, we’ve all got to make the best of it, and make a go of it.”  But they trusted that I was able to reconstruct this thing. 

Back in the old studio days, directors often got pre-cast movies.

That’s the way it was done.

How does that feel as a director?

Well, I can tell you that, in the way in which I approach films, I would not want to have that to happen to me.  But I also will tell you that I wouldn’t have taken this picture on if I didn’t feel that the people they had cast in these main parts were suited to the parts.  There’s no way I’d get in there and go, “Oh, I can’t have that person!”  Eighty to ninety percent of the success of a movie is the script, and the rest is the cast.  Now, I did recast a few parts, which I was able to do, but the main people were suited.  And I was very lucky to get these people.  Beyond the four that you see in the poster, to have Mena Suvari and Richard Jenkins was a gift, they were absolute gifts.

Do you remember seeing The Graduate for the first time?

Yes.

What did you think, and what were the circumstances?

I was a young man, and I remember thinking that this is a film – like it did to many people – spoke to me.  It was in the zeitgeist of the time – kids graduating and not knowing what they wanted to do with their lives, the uncertainty kids had at that time.  And I identified tremendously with it at the time.  And then as a fledgling person in show business, I also admired the film technique of Mike Nichols and the way they put that film together.  It was very cutting edge, and, if you look back at it, it still holds up in a major way.  There’s a reason why it’s become one of the classic films of all time.

Could you talk about working with Jennifer Aniston?

Jennifer was an incredible pleasure.  She is the rarest of commodities in show business, where you find someone who is adorable and appealing and sexually attractive who also has the ability to play comedy and the emotional truth of the scene.  It is very, very rare.  I was very lucky to have her because that’s what this film requires.  It’s a romantic comedy, and there’s an oddball premise of using The Graduate as a springboard, but at the core of it there’s a very emotional movie about a person who struggles to find out who they are, and tries to make a way into being with a man who she loves.  Those scenes have to be done very honestly and very truthfully, and they have to evoke emotion.  I don’t think you have good romantic comedies unless there’s a good emotional foundation.  And this film had that, so she had to be able to play those scenes with Kevin (Costner), and Richard Jenkins at the end, and with Mark (Ruffalo).  Those had to come off.  Then you have to have the same actress who’s also able to play comedy and be sexually appealing and all of that.  That’s a rare combination, so I was very lucky to have that.

You had that in Meg Ryan, too.

Yes.  There are a handful.  You can count them:  Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, Reese Witherspoon… there’s a handful, but they’re rare.  And you don’t find people who have those abilities. 

What’s your favorite Shirley MacLaine memory from the production?

Shirley… she’s a pisser.  She is the most fun.  She’s an icon, she’s Hollywood legend, and she brings all of that to the set with her – not just as a performer, but also the fun of listening to her stories.  She has all of these great stories about hanging out with The Rat Pack, with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.  But, you know, the fact is Shirley’s lived many lives, so she could also dish the dirt about Shakespeare and Alexander the Great.  You get the dish from all eras with her.  (Lots of laughter)  She was a lot of fun. 

They always say that a hit movie has to be able to be explained in four or five words.  This movie is so complicated to explain, do you have any fears about going into the marketplace with it?

I don’t because, first of all, we have this great cast that is very appealing.  Jennifer Aniston, Shirley MacLaine, Kevin Costner, Mark Ruffalo – these are people that audiences like to see.  They you’ve also got this oddball hook of The Graduate.  Now, most people will not have seen The Graduate; I would think if you’re lucky you’ll get maybe twenty percent of the people in the theater who’ve seen The Graduate and understand the references.  So you’ve got to make a movie that works if you haven’t seen The Graduate.  I think you’re looking at a film where the way it’s marketed is key thing.  We’ve got these four great actors in the front, but you’ve also got marketing tools – the trailers and the TV spots – that I think are engaging.  They’re thought provoking and they pique your interest.  Just the title, Rumor Has It…:   it says, “What’s the rumor?”  There’s a secret that this family has, and this girl is going through this emotional journey to find out who she is.  That’s all out there, and that’s kind of intriguing, and I hope we’ll be able to market it.  But I know what you’re saying.  I think a lot of times, though, if you’ve got a film that you can describe in one sentence then maybe the film is not so interesting or complex.

Do you think your film will send people back to watch The Graduate?

Yeah, I hope so.  Listen, I watch The Graduate every few years anyway.  It’s a great film that you want to revisit.  I revisit that and Annie Hall. 

Do you have a favorite film of all time?

My favorite of all time is It’s a Wonderful Life, and the reason it’s my favorite is because… it’s this wonderful story of a man finding out how much his life was worth.  When I saw it as a young man, it seemed just very emotional – a wonderful Christmas story where the little guy triumphs over the big, bad, mean man Potter.  But as I’ve gotten older, I really started appreciating it more because you start valuing your own life, and you see how your life has touched other people.  Your life becomes more and more precious as you get older, so as I’ve gone back to the film it just grows more and more on me.  And I take on different aspects of it.

Was there any talk about having Dustin Hoffman do a cameo?

Yeah, I always wanted him to.  He didn’t want to do it, I guess, but I tried to throw it in.  You can’t even hear it; I think it got buried in all of the sound in the airport.  When they’re walking in the airport to greet the father, I threw in a voice over.  The P.A. says, “Mr. Gladstone to the white courtesy telephone”.  But I don’t think anybody hears it.  I think it got buried.

Is there a picture of you and Kevin Costner in the movie?

How did you notice that!  Here’s what happened on that, it’s an inside little thing:  we found pictures of Kevin Costner that we asked him to give us for the scene where she wakes up in the bedroom.  There’s a picture of him with Clinton and with Castro; we had one of him and Gore, too.  And then there was one of him and Hugh Hefner.  And we shot all of these pictures, but then we couldn’t get the clearance for the one of him and Hugh Hefner.  And I’d already shot it!

Why?

Hugh Hefner, for whatever reason, didn’t want to [clear it].  We got clearance from Clinton, and I guess Castro didn’t have a problem.  (Huge laughter)  But Hugh Hefner was a problem.  So I said “What are we going to do?  We already shot the thing?”  And somebody said, “Well, we can digitize and put your [image in].”  I said, “I’ll clear myself.”  That’s my cameo.

We’ve seen Kevin Costner in two big supporting roles this year – in this and The Upside of Anger, which he’s brilliant in.

He’s great in this, as well.  I think it’s going to be a resurgence for him, especially this role.  He’s so appealing.  I think people are going to rediscover him.