We talk a lot about film-makers’ purple patches – those odds-defying hot streaks during which every project yields a jackpot – but none, surely, was ever purpler than the early days of Rob Reiner.
The New York-born director, who has died at 78, had a better first decade behind the camera than arguably anyone else’s in the modern era – the work was instantly popular, transparently brilliant, thrillingly wide-ranging, and even today remains cherished. After 18 years as an increasingly recognisable bit-part actor and writer on American sitcoms, between 1984 and 1994, Reiner directed This is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally…, Misery and A Few Good Men.
Note that there were no warm-ups, and no down-time. He simply knocked out, in order: one of the funniest comedies ever made, one of the great 1980s road trip movies, a small-town American coming-of-age classic, the quintessential (and most quotable) swashbuckling family fantasy adventure around, the film that invented the modern romantic comedy, a claustrophobic cabin-bound psychological thriller, and a military courtroom thriller that pitted Jack Nicholson against Tom Cruise. Like Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel, he turned his amp up to 11, and just kept thrashing.
