Movie Quote of the Day (‘Stand by Me,’ on Friends)

The Writer [voiceover, by Richard Dreyfuss]: “It happens sometimes. Friends come in and out of your life, like busboys in a restaurant.”—Stand by Me (1986), screenplay by Raynold Gideon and Bruce A. Evans, adapted from the Stephen King novella “The Body,” directed by Rob Reiner

The coming-of-age drama Stand by Me was released 40 years ago today. Technically, its $52.3 million domestic box-office gross would not put it in blockbuster territory, but it earned a tidy profit because of its low $8 million, enabling Rob Reiner to make more and bigger films.

After viewing the finished product, King told Reiner it was the best adaptation of any of his films to that time. Audiences today are likely to respond with the same powerful emotion that the novelist did.

Though the main plot of the movie is set in 1959, its themes are universal: loss of innocence, family neglect, and, most poignantly, the transience of childhood friendships.

Even Facebook goes only so far in retaining early bonds: distance—in geography, stations in life, and, sadly these days, politics—serves as an aching reminder of all we have lost over the years.

But we have those friends when we need them the most, as we are sometimes thrown into confusion in growing up as we discover the world and start to discover ourselves. The quartet at the heart of this film are, then, just stand-ins for ourselves.

For an especially enthusiastic take on the film, see this 2017 guest post by Jessica Prescott on the blog “Hamlette’s Soliloquy.”

Movie Quote of the Day (‘The American President,’ on an Institution No Longer Around)

[Walking with each other before delivering his State of the Union address]

Sydney Ellen Wade [played by Annette Bening]: “How'd you finally do it?”

President Andrew Shepherd [played by Michael Douglas]: “Do what?”

Sydney: “Manage to give a woman flowers and be president at the same time?”

Andrew: “Well, it turns out I've got a rose garden.”— The American President (1995), screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, directed by Rob Reiner

It’s funny how seeing a movie decades apart can make you look at it in completely different ways. Case in point: The American President, which I viewed shortly after it came out in November 1995 and again yesterday afternoon, at a special Presidents’ Day presentation at the Barrymore Film Center in Fort Lee, NJ. (It featured an excellent introduction by Fairleigh Dickinson University Professor Pat Schuber on the evolving nature of the Presidency.)

When I heard the above exchange three decades ago, for instance, I groaned at lines so corny that even Frank Capra (such an obvious inspiration for the movie’s creators that he’s even referenced at one point) wouldn’t have served them up.

Yesterday, I groaned for a different reason: the Rose Garden that President Shepherd makes use of no longer exists, in the beloved form that Americans of both major political parties cherished. And all because of one man.

Years ago, I had decidedly mixed feelings about Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay, as I did in my few attempts to watch the TV show for which this film was, in effect, a dry run: The West Wing. It raised valid concerns about America’s polarized environment, the microscope under which modern Presidents exist, and the precious lack of personal privacy they enjoy.

But with its bad guys—all Republicans without a single redeeming ideological or social value—it created straw men that his heroes (liberal Democrats) could easily swat away. At least George Bernard Shaw, also given to long speeches in his plays, gave his devils their due, which made rebutting them all the more convincing.

Moreover, Sorkin's heroes possessed few complications, with their real-life inspirations bleached of their flaws when depicted in fictional form. In this film, as a centrist liberal facing a sex scandal promoted by the opposition, Shepherd had clear affinities with the President at the time, Bill Clinton.

Except for this fact: Clinton not only had to issue a false denial that only the most gullible believed about a past affair (with trashy entertainer Gennifer Flowers), but his campaign labored mightily to stamp out entire “bimbo eruptions,” while Shepherd was a lonely widower enchanted by a single intelligent, lovely environmental lobbyist.

Despite these shortcomings, time had raised my opinion of The American President from decidedly mixed to good, if not great. It was even better cast than I had recalled, with Samantha Mathis, John Mahoney and Wendie Malick in interesting supporting roles, and several lines and situations rang with unexpected prescience.

In his climactic speech, for example, Shepherd not only identified the divisive electoral strategy of his rival (an obvious Newt Gingrich stand-in), but the same one employed by the current Oval Office occupant for the last decade: “Whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it.”

And, when Martin Sheen’s chief of staff A. J. MacInerney tells Michael J. Fox’s idealistic aide, “The President doesn't answer to you,” Fox could answer for today’s citizenry outraged by daily lies and civil liberty violations: “Oh, yes he does.…I'm a citizen, this is my President. And in this country it is not only permissible to question our leaders, it's our responsibility!”

Movie Quote of the Day (‘The Princess Bride,’ As Buttercup and Her Hero Face Danger)

[On arriving at the Fire Swamp]

Westley [played by Cary Elwes]: “It's not that bad.”

[Buttercup looks at him incredulously]

Westley: “Well, I'm not saying I'd like to build a summer home here, but the trees are actually quite lovely.”— The Princess Bride (1987), screenplay by William Goldman, directed by Rob Reiner

Quote of the Day (Rob Reiner, on How He’d Like To Be Remembered)

“Complete this sentence (fact or fiction are both acceptable): ‘I was born in THE BRONX, N.Y. and I studied MY FATHER AND MOTHER at HOME. I became world famous in SHOW BUSINESS and I hope I'll be remembered as MORE THAN JUST A MEATHEAD.”—American film director (and actor on TV’s All in the Family) Rob Reiner (1947-2025), completing “The Mel Brooks Questionnaire,” T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Sept. 28, 2025

I never thought, when I first spotted this quote, that I would be using it so soon on this blog. It’s a tribute to Rob Reiner that he had such an ability to laugh at himself—and to help others do the same in the often insane world in which we live.

I’m not going to talk—at least not right now—about the President’s graceless social media post about the tragic murder of Reiner and his wife Michele at the hands of their son Nick, following their unrelenting but unsuccessful efforts to save him from drug addiction and depression. I’d rather discuss what Reiner’s TV and film work meant to me.

As a tween, I came to know Reiner through his role as Mike Stivic, the liberal "Meathead" foil to bigoted father-in-law Archie Bunker on Norman Lear’s taboo-breaking Seventies TV satire All in the Family. 

Nowadays, some on the right might tag him as a “nepo baby” as the son of The Dick Van Dyke creator Carl Reiner. What I did know was that he was brilliant, richly deserving of the Best Supporting Actor Emmy he won before departing the show.

I have so many favorite episodes involving him (and, indeed, as far as I’m concerned, it never recovered after he and Sally Struthers left), but I urge you to view two in particular: “Gloria Poses in the Nude” (Season 4), when Reiner uses a twitch in the eye to signal his jealousy of his being painted by a friend of his, and “Gloria Suspects Mike” (Season 6), in which Mike nervously tries to fend off an attractive economics student (played by Bernadette Peters) who is coming on to him.

Even while appearing in All in the Family, Reiner was looking to write and direct. He did so on several episodes in the show’s first few seasons, and helped conceive the short-lived summer replacement comedy The Super, starring Richard Castellano.

A decade later, he had become a force in film, pushing from strength to strength with The Sure Thing, This Is Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally…, Misery, and A Few Good Men.

Dustin Hoffman joked that every actor has at least one Ishtar on his resume. The same applies to directors. I’m afraid that I was peripherally involved in what may well have been Reiner’s. 

In the early 1990s, while working in research at a nonprofit trade association, I was contacted by a staffer at Rob Reiner’s production company, Castle Rock Entertainment, for the names of some area enclosed malls that could be used for a scene in his next film, North. I provided a few names, and couldn’t wait to see the results.

In 1994, North finally appeared. It not only underperformed at the box office, but in the years since, it’s been listed among the worst movies ever made. Well, every decent film director is entitled to at least one misfire, I guess.

From what I can tell, however, no movie in Reiner’s considerable filmography as a director, producer, and writer was in bad taste. Quite simply, he respected the intelligence of audiences, like his father and Lear.

Rob Reiner grew up and flourished in a better time than the current moment. His life and work deserve celebration, not trolling by a barbarian and his all-too-easily-influenced horde.

Nearly 40 years after working with Reiner on Stand by Me, one of its child actors, Will Wheaton, now established in the industry, told CNN, upon hearing the news of the director’s death:

“The world knows Rob as a generational talent, a storyteller and humanitarian activist who made a difference with his art, his voice, and his influence. I knew that man, but I also knew a man who treated me with more kindness, care, and love than my own father ever did. And it is the loss of that man that is piercing my heart right now.”

(The image accompanying this post, of Rob Reiner at the German premiere of The Bucket List, was taken in Berlin on Jan. 21, 2008, by Franz Richter)