‘Awards Chatter’ Podcast — Rob Reiner (‘LBJ’)

The 69-year-old reflects on growing up in his legendary father’s shadow, shifting his focus after ‘All in the Family’ from acting to directing and the 2016 presidential election (“I’m rooting for the gal that Meathead would’ve voted for,” not a “con man”).

“A man and a number — if you don’t have that [in your title], and you’re not making an R-rated sex comedy, then they don’t want it,” cracks Rob Reiner, the star of All in the Family (1971-1979) who went on to direct the instant-classics This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Stand by Me (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), When Harry Met Sally… (1989), Misery (1990), A Few Good Men (1992) and The American President (1995). These days, not even someone with a track record like Reiner’s can easily secure financing and distribution for a passion project, as he has been reminded with his most recent film, LBJ. He unveiled it at the Toronto International Film Festival shortly before we sat down there to record an episode of The Hollywood Reporter‘s ‘Awards Chatter’ podcast. A week later, it still is on the market.

Reiner, 69, is the son of Carl Reiner, the legendary comedy actor, writer, director and producer who is now 94 and going strong. “I wanted to be like him,” the younger Reiner recalls. “I wanted to do what he did. I looked up to him and I admired him so much.” On summer breaks, Reiner accompanied his father to the set of The Dick Van Dyke Show and studied what he did. “I was fascinated by it even then,” he says, although he kept his creative ambitions close to the vest until his senior year at Beverly Hills High School, when he signed up for drama class and landed a job with a summer stock company in Plymouth, Mass. He then enrolled at UCLA in the theater arts department, directing his first play at the age of 19. “That was the first time I got any kind of approval from my dad,” he notes.

“I knew that there were going to be comments about nepotism,” Reiner says of his decision to pursue a career in show business. But that was not enough to dissuade him, since he knew the truth: “I never asked him for help, I never asked him for advice.” While at UCLA, Reiner and classmates Larry Bishop (Joey’s son) and Richard Dreyfuss formed an improv group, The Session. Then Reiner and Bishop broke off as a double act. Then, during his third year at UCLA, Reiner began landing acting and writing jobs on top TV shows and dropped out of school. And then, when Reiner was 23, Norman Lear, an old family friend who had recognized talent in Reiner before his own father did, cast him in the part that would change his life: as Meathead, the liberal son-in-law of arch-conservative Archie Bunker, on CBS’ All in the Family.