Michael Barbaro

And Wesley Morris on why so many of Reiner's films are among the most beloved movies ever made.

It's Wednesday, December 17th.

Julia, I appreciate you coming in today.

I just want to say at the outset, perhaps this is obvious, but the death of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michelle, is a very gruesome and tragic situation.

And we do not want to linger on it for a long time in this conversation.

In fact, I hope we don't have to linger on it much at all.

But I do think...

we should briefly talk about what we know at this point about what actually happened.

Right, which was a shocking piece of information.

Right, making very official this genuinely horrible scenario in which a child had killed both of his parents.

The night before.

And what we all had to reckon with thereafter was that this huge force in Hollywood, this enormously successful and influential director and producer, who himself had quite famously escaped the shadow of his own father, had allegedly, as you said, been killed by his own son.

And I wonder if you can tell us that story of Reiner and how he became what he became.

How did he talk about it?

Didn't know him.

And yet there's also this deep undercurrent of love between them.

Right.

The son-in-law, Reiner, becomes, in a sense, the father, the parent of a suddenly quite openly wounded, although not self-aware of his wounds, Archie Bunker.

And for those who don't know that movie, it's quite specific.

And Reiner's in this movie.