The Rob Reiner 1980s Run The Princess Bride (1987)

Between 1984 and 1992, Rob Reiner directed seven features that constitute one of the most consistent directorial hot streaks of the era — a stretch comparable, in critical and commercial reliability if not in formal ambition, to Sydney Pollack's 1970s or Steven Soderbergh's late 1990s. The Princess Bride is the fourth feature in the run and the one most often described, in retrospect, as the run's emotional and tonal center.

The seven films

  1. This Is Spinal Tap (1984) — mockumentary; co-written with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer
  2. The Sure Thing (1985) — college road-trip romantic comedy; first collaboration with Mark Knopfler on score
  3. Stand by Me (1986) — Stephen King adaptation; Reiner's first wide critical success and first Oscar nomination (screenplay)
  4. The Princess Bride (1987) — Goldman adaptation
  5. When Harry Met Sally... (1989) — Nora Ephron screenplay; one of the defining romantic comedies of the era
  6. Misery (1990) — Stephen King adaptation; Kathy Bates won Best Actress Oscar
  7. A Few Good Men (1992) — Aaron Sorkin's first major screenplay credit; four Oscar nominations including Best Picture

Each film is a different genre exercise. The run holds together not by shared subject matter but by a shared directorial method.

"I wanted to do every kind of movie. Each one was a different genre. Spinal Tap was the mockumentary. The Sure Thing was the romantic comedy. Stand By Me was the coming-of-age. Princess Bride was the fairy tale. When Harry Met Sally was the screwball. Misery was the thriller. A Few Good Men was the courtroom drama. I was learning." — Rob Reiner, Vanity Fair (2012)

What the seven films share

Three things, repeatedly noted across reviews of the period and in subsequent retrospectives:

Actor-forward staging. Reiner trained as a sitcom actor and directs as one — long takes, generous coverage of reaction shots, a strong preference for two-shots that let actors play the rhythm of dialogue rather than cut around it. The Inigo–Westley duel is shot largely in two-shot for exactly this reason.1

A friendly camera. Reiner's cinematographers in this period — Andrew Laszlo on Spinal Tap, Robert Elswit on The Sure Thing, Thomas Del Ruth on Stand by Me, Adrian Biddle on Princess Bride, Barry Sonnenfeld on When Harry Met Sally and Misery, Robert Richardson on A Few Good Men — were instructed to favor warm light and clean compositions over expressionist effects. The visual style across the seven films is consistent in a way that suggests directorial taste rather than DP signature.

Earnestness inside comedy. Every film in the run takes a sincere subject and wraps it in a comic register that allows cynical viewers to enter the sincerity without flinching. Spinal Tap is about loving a band that has nothing to teach you. Stand by Me is about the friends you lose. The Princess Bride is about true love. When Harry Met Sally is about whether a man and a woman can be friends. A Few Good Men is about institutional honor. Each is structurally sincere; each is tonally protected by comedy.

"Reiner's gift was that he didn't condescend to either his audience or his material. He believed in the romance in Princess Bride exactly as much as he believed in the laughs in Spinal Tap. He directed both with the same affection." — A.O. Scott, The New York Times (2014)

Castle Rock Entertainment

In 1987 — the same year The Princess Bride released — Reiner co-founded Castle Rock Entertainment with Andrew Scheinman, Martin Shafer, Glenn Padnick, and Alan Horn. Castle Rock produced When Harry Met Sally, Misery, A Few Good Men, In the Line of Fire, The Shawshank Redemption, Seinfeld, and many other titles, and is itself a chapter in the history of the late-twentieth-century studio system.2

Reiner has said that The Princess Bride's soft theatrical opening was part of what motivated the Castle Rock founding — a desire to control marketing and release strategy that he felt 20th Century Fox had mishandled on the Goldman adaptation.3

Why the run ended

Reiner has continued to direct steadily after 1992 — North (1994), The American President (1995), Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), The Story of Us (1999), Alex & Emma (2003), Rumor Has It (2005), The Bucket List (2007), And So It Goes (2014), Being Charlie (2015), LBJ (2016), Shock and Awe (2017) — but the seven-film stretch from 1984 to 1992 is widely treated as a closed chapter. The films after A Few Good Men are mostly competent and a few are well-loved (The American President in particular), but none has the same critical-and-commercial certainty as the run.

Critics offering explanations have generally settled on three: Reiner's increasing involvement in political activism reduced his directorial bandwidth; the romantic-comedy and earnest-mainstream-drama markets that suited his instincts contracted as the studio system shifted toward franchise tentpoles; and the Castle Rock partnership ran into producer-directorial conflicts after Ted Turner's 1993 acquisition.4

"The 1984–1992 run is the run. Everything after is footnote. Which is fine. Most directors don't get one good run. Reiner got one of the best." — Mark Harris, Grantland (2012, archived)

Sources
  1. American Cinematographer — Adrian Biddle interview
  2. Castle Rock Entertainment — Wikipedia
  3. Vanity Fair — As You Wish: Oral History
  4. The Hollywood Reporter — Castle Rock and the Reiner era
  5. Rob Reiner — Wikipedia
  6. The New York Times — Cary Elwes revisits Princess Bride