In a poignant reflection, famed filmmaker Martin Scorsese expressed his deep sorrow over the tragic loss of his close friends, Rob and Michele Reiner. He described their unexpected passing as “an obscenity, an abyss in lived reality,” capturing the profound void left in their absence.
Through an article published on Christmas in the New York Times, Scorsese shared his heartfelt memories of the couple. “Rob Reiner was my friend, and so was Michele,” he penned, poignantly acknowledging the shift to the past tense as a source of immense sadness, yet an unavoidable aspect of the new reality.
Rob and Michele Reiner were discovered deceased in their Los Angeles residence on December 14th. The incident has sent shockwaves through Hollywood, sparking a flood of tributes and remembrances from fans, friends, and colleagues who cherished the couple.
In connection with their deaths, 32-year-old Nick Reiner was arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department shortly after the discovery, further adding to the tragedy’s complexity.
Scorsese concluded with a somber acceptance of time’s role in healing, stating, “What happened to Rob and Michele is an obscenity, an abyss in lived reality. The only thing that will help me to accept it is the passing of time.” His words resonate with the deep sense of loss felt throughout the entertainment industry and beyond.
“What happened to Rob and Michele is an obscenity, an abyss in lived reality,” he said. “The only thing that will help me to accept it is the passing of time.”
In the article, he recalled how he met Rob Reiner through mutual friends in the early 1970s. The two bonded over being from the East Coast, with Reiner being from The Bronx, New York and Scorsese from Flushing, New York.
He said Reiner had “New York humor” and it was “in the air I breathed.”
“Right away, I loved hanging out with Rob. We had a natural affinity for each other. He was hilarious and sometimes bitingly funny, but he was never the kind of guy who would take over the room,” Scorsese wrote. “He had a beautiful sense of uninhibited freedom, fully enjoying the life of the moment, and he had a great barreling laugh.”
He recalled times where Reiner’s laugh bellowed through auditoriums during speeches and honors, and why he cast him in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
“I immediately thought of Rob to play Leonardo DiCaprio’s father,” he wrote. “He could improvise with the best, he was a master at comedy.”
He said it now breaks his heart to even think of the tenderness of Reiner’s performances.
“So, like all of their loved ones and their friends — and these were people with many, many friends — I have to be allowed to imagine them alive and well and that one day, I’ll be at a dinner or a party and find myself seated next to Rob, and I’ll hear his laugh and see his beatific face and laugh at his stories and relish his natural comic timing, and feel lucky all over again to have him as a friend,” Scorsese ended the piece with.
He was one of many big names to mourn the couple, which included Gov. Gavin Newsom and Elijah Wood among others.
