Imagine being a kid in the late 1990s, cruising down the street on Heelys and sporting a Global Hypercolor tee. You would have dreamed of joining the Brentwood Bunch.

These kids were living the life everyone envied.

While their Hollywood-famous parents were raking in millions, the children enjoyed a whirlwind of pool parties, sleepovers, and barbecues at sprawling mansions. Nestled in the posh Los Angeles area of Brentwood, these estates were hidden behind perfectly trimmed hedges and staffed with an army of butlers, housekeepers, and private chefs.

Actress Demi Moore, along with then-husband Bruce Willis, would often bring their three daughters from Beverly Hills to hang out with director Rob Reiner’s three kids, who attended the same high school. “Our kids grew up together,” Moore has noted.

Similarly, Arnold Schwarzenegger and then-wife Maria Shriver would make the trip down Sunset Boulevard so their four children could join the fun at the Reiner residence. It became a social hub for stars like Nicole Kidman and her ex-husband Tom Cruise, as well as Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Steve Martin, and Billy Crystal.

“Rob always welcomed everyone. He had an open-door policy and provided anything you needed,” a source familiar with the group revealed to the Daily Mail.

‘They have the codes to each other’s houses. You could walk in and pet Rob’s dog, see Rob reading the paper if you wanted to.

‘This is more than friendship – these families are their own universe. They have all, every one of them, reached a rarified place in Hollywood, so they understand each other and they understand fame and they understand what it’s like to raise children under that lens. These families are an ecosystem. They’ve survived Hollywood, especially in Rob’s case, for generations.’

But that blissful bubble has now exploded, in devastating fashion.

On December 14, Rob Reiner and his wife Michele were found dead in their Brentwood home, with their drug-addict son Nick, 32, now charged with their murders. He has pleaded not guilty.

The following month another member of their crew, actress Catherine O’Hara, died suddenly from a blood clot brought on by cancer at the age of 71.

And on Monday this week, Short’s 42-year-old daughter Katherine – close to O’Hara, and a childhood friend of Nick Reiner – would take her own life.

Now, the reeling remnants of this tight-knit group are left asking: What on Earth is going on?

‘To have the worst horrors you can imagine happen to this group of people, in this short space of time, is unimaginable,’ our source said. ‘You ask yourself why? Why?’

The thread that ties the so-called Brentwood Bunch together is, as with so many adult friendship groups, their children. They went to the same schools and grew up in and out of each others’ homes.

But of course, this being Hollywood, the film industry was another uniting factor.

‘Martin [Short] and Rob [Reiner] were very close. They were in each other’s inner circle, and they lived not far from each other,’ our source said.

‘There were holidays together, birthday parties, dinner parties and the kids were always around, always in each other’s company.’

Not all the members were born in the West LA area: a swathe of the gang – including Short himself – hail from Canada. But their work inevitably drew them to the district.

Short, 75, was born in Hamilton, part of the greater Toronto area, and forged lifelong friends in his homeland who would move with him to LA, becoming key members of this friendship circle.

Chief among them was Eugene Levy, who studied alongside Short at McMaster University.

The pair trod the boards in student productions and, on graduating, starred together in a celebrated 1972 Toronto production of Godspell. Short’s future wife, actress Nancy Dolman, was also in the cast.

Levy and Short both bought homes in the Pacific Palisades area of LA, bordering Brentwood: Short in 1986, raising his three adopted children in the home, and Levy in 2006.

Levy’s two children – actor and actress Dan, now 42, and Sarah, 39 – were both raised in Canada.

Another friend from Short’s teenage years, actress Catherine O’Hara, bought a home in Brentwood in 1994.

Short and O’Hara had met when he was 18 and collaborated on the Canadian sketch comedy series Second City Television, which ran from 1976 to 1984.

Levy, Short and O’Hara’s children were contemporaries. O’Hara’s two sons, Luke and Matthew, worked as set dressers on sitcom Schitt’s Creek, in which she starred alongside Eugene and Dan Levy.

Matthew, now 31, was in Nick Reiner’s class at Wildwood School.

And then there was Ottawa-born Dan Aykroyd.

‘I remember meeting Danny Aykroyd at Gilda’s birthday,’ said Short, referring to Gilda Radner, the Detroit-born comedienne who would go on to be one of seven original SNL cast members.

‘It was June 28, 1972. And we were rehearsing Godspell. And Danny Aykroyd and his then comedy partner Valri Bromfield played Gilda’s parents from Detroit, and stayed in character the whole night.

‘And I thought: ‘Who are these people?!’ And I was dating Gilda and I’d be driving her white Volvo and Danny and Valri would be in the back. And I’d deliberately get lost because they were so funny, I didn’t want to let them out.’

Aykroyd’s three daughters with American actress Donna Dixon were also at Wildwood School – Belle Aykroyd, now 32, was in Nick Reiner’s class, while Stella Aykroyd, 27, was a childhood friend of Nick’s younger sister Romy Reiner, 28.

Stella and Romy – who was also at school with the children of Steven Spielberg and Meryl Streep – are frequently spotted together to this day.

Josh Brolin’s daughter Eden, 32, was another classmate of Nick’s, as was her stepsister Eleanor Lambert: Eleanor’s mother Diane Lane was married to Brolin.

And Barbra Streisand, Brolin’s own stepmother, was close to Rob Reiner, describing how they ‘came up in the industry together,’ and calling him ‘a wonderful actor and a very gifted director,’ as well as ‘a passionate activist and human being.’

Key to many of this group’s careers – and connections – was the seminal 1992 film, A Few Good Men.

Produced and directed by Rob Reiner, the military legal drama starred Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson and Demi Moore, and would go on to be nominated for four Oscars, including best picture.

At the time of filming Cruise had been married to Nicole Kidman for less than a year, and had recently paid $4.7 million for a five-bed house in the Palisades, less than two miles from the Reiner home.

The couples would become close.

‘When Tom and Nicole were a happily married couple, they went on double dates with Rob and Michele Reiner as a foursome; they were remarkably in sync,’ a source told news website Heat World.

‘Tom met Nicole roughly around the same time Rob and Michele became a couple, and the early parts of both of those relationships followed a similar arc, including the timing of them all having kids.

‘Nicole and Tom really cheered on the Reiners as a couple, and Tom also just worshipped Rob as a person and as a filmmaker.’

When Rob was honored at the annual American Cinematheque gala, in 1994, Cruise and Kidman were there to applaud.

As their children grew, the Brentwood Bunch’s friendships solidified.

Billy Crystal was the life and soul of their gang – despite his two daughters, Jennifer, 53, and 48-year-old Lindsay, being older than the Reiner kids.

Steve Martin, Short’s longtime comedy sidekick, was another close neighbor, despite his daughter Mary, now 13, being of a different generation entirely.

Larry David’s daughter Cazzie, 31, was a contemporary of the Reiner and Short children; Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn were frequently seen with the crew.

But for some of the Brentwood Bunch kids, the challenges of fame became too intense.

Nick Reiner and Katherine Short had a ten-year age difference and went to different local high schools – Katherine was at Marymount – but they, out of all the children, formed a particularly close connection.

‘Katherine and Nick bonded over being the children of famous people, it was a connection they had because they both tried to overcome it, they both tried to find their own way in life and it was very challenging,’ a source told the Daily Mail.

‘Hollywood kids are often miserable, it’s common. They wanted their own identity, they didn’t want to be called so-and-so’s kid.’

Indeed, that may be why, in 2012, Katherine filed court documents to have her name changed to Katherine Hartley.

When asked what her reasoning for the change was, she wrote: ‘My father is a public figure. I am a psychiatric social worker. I am concerned about potential harassment from future patients resulting from my association with my father.’

And it may also be why a teenage Katherine chose to leave her native Los Angeles and attend college on the East Coast at New York University, before later returning to settle in the Hollywood Hills, a 30-minute drive from the family home.

By contrast, her two brothers chose to remain in the Palisades as adults.

Tallulah Willis, 32-year-old daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, and another of Nick Reiner’s classmates at Wildwood, also had her own struggles.

In 2023, she wrote for Vogue about being in psychiatric care to get sober from the age of 20; in rehab for depression and ADHD from the age of 25; and anorexic for the previous four years.

‘It wasn’t easy growing up in such a famous family, struggling as I did to find a patch of light through the long shadows my parents cast,’ she wrote.

Nick Reiner would certainly sympathize.

While his sister Romy was carving out her own successful acting career and his brother Jake writing his own screenplays, Nick ‘really resented his dad,’ a source told Page Six – adding that he felt overshadowed by his multitalented father and grandfather.

Carl Reiner is remembered as a Hollywood legend: the man who created The Dick Van Dyke Show, championed Steve Martin’s career and acted in the Ocean’s Eleven series.

Instead of being proud of his family, Nick, the source said, ‘hated himself for not being as talented, prolific or beloved as his dad or grandad.’

Their famous families tried to be understanding.

Rob and Nick Reiner worked together on a 2015 film, Being Charlie. Reiner directed and Nick co-wrote the semi-autobiographical tale of a successful actor with political ambitions and a son addicted to drugs.

In interviews to promote the project, they described the process as painful, but cathartic.

Yet Nick was already stressing how he wanted to stand on his own two feet.

‘I think for now, it’s best for me at least to be sort of independent,’ he said, when asked if he would work with his father again.

Of course, at the time of his arrest in December, Nick – who had been to rehab at least 18 times – was still living at home.

In October 2023, when Katherine Short was turning 40, her father assembled all their family friends for a celebratory dinner: Catherine O’Hara, Goldie Hawn and singer Joni Mitchell among them.

And before Christmas last year, when Nick was struggling once more, his parents brought him with them to their friend Conan O’Brien’s annual holiday bash at his Palisades mansion, less than two miles from their home.

‘Rob was in such a great mood, he was with all of his friends,’ a guest told the Daily Mail – noting that Reiner was chatting animatedly to Larry David and Sarah Silverman. ‘He and Michele stayed late talking to everyone, before making their way home around midnight.’

Hours later, they would be dead.

‘People say why them?’ our source said of the Brentwood Bunch’s recent misfortune.

‘These are well-meaning people who are proud of their work and their politics. There’s no scandal. They’ve been good parents, they’ve tried to do it right – as right as you can in Hollywood.’