Comfortably Smug

It was heartwarming and jarring.

So he writes about a dinner he had in Toronto with them at a restaurant 10 years ago.

And I'm just gonna pull out a couple of highlights here.

We sat in a corner table.

We talked about what it meant to be part of a family with a serious addict, to be a parent, to be a sibling, to be the addict themselves.

The meal was a decade ago, but alive in front of me.

Directed by Rob and co-written by Nick, being Charlie, they were there to promote their movie that they did together, which we discussed yesterday.

Focuses on David, an accomplished actor now running for governor, clearly a Rob Reiner stand-in, and his drug-addicted son, who feels like he's being pushed hard to get clean so as not to be an embarrassment to his famous father, clearly a stand-in for Nick.

Nick was sober now, the Reiners said, and after some 18 trips to rehab since his teenage years, some of which he spent on the streets, this movie was going to provide the happy ending to all that sadness.

"'Can you believe this boy?'

Rob said as we sat down, beaming.

Nick smiled uncomfortably, saying nothing.

From the start, a kind of fatherly pushing was evident.

Rob wanted this story told, wanted, not surprisingly for a man steeped in show business, for the movie to succeed where therapy had failed.

But he also genuinely felt pride.

Nachas, as he said, using the Yiddish word for parental joy."

Nick seemed less game, a little almost like he didn't want to fully be there.

He goes on to say, it was tough at first to think, am I actually going to do this?

Nick said, after I prodded a little quote, I really wasn't sure if I wanted to do this.

Am I really going to get it out there?