In a heartbreaking ode to his departed friends Rob and Michele Reiner, Martin Scorsese expressed his “profound sadness.”
On December 14, the 78-year-old director and his 70-year-old wife were discovered dead in their Los Angeles home from “multiple sharp force injuries.”
Nick, their 32-year-old son, is allegedly receiving treatment for schizophrenia and has been charged with their murders.
“What transpired with Rob and Michele is a void in lived reality, an abomination.” Time is the only thing that will enable me to come to terms with it,” Scorsese wrote.
After first meeting in the 1970s and collaborating on films like The Wolf of Wall Street, the filmmakers had been friends for many years.
The renowned filmmaker claimed that he and Reiner had a “natural affinity for each other” in an article for The New York Times.
Scorsese wrote, “He was hilarious and sometimes bitingly funny, but he was never the kind of guy who would take over the room.”
“He had a great barreling laugh and a beautiful sense of uninhibited freedom, living life to the fullest.”
Scorsese remembered how, prior to Michael McKean reaching the punchline, Reiner burst out laughing when he was honored at the Lincoln Center.
Scorsese praised Kathy Bates’ performance in the cult classic Misery, which was one of his favorite films from Reiner’s discography.
As his first and final projects in his 40-year career, the mockumentary and its sequel, This Is Spinal Tap, received a salute from the Goodfellas icon.
Scorsese claimed that Reiner was the first person that sprang to mind when he was considering casting Leonard DiCaprio’s father in Wolf of Wall Street.
He was a genius at comedy, he worked well with Leo and the other guys, he could improvise with the greatest, and he grasped the human problem of his character: The man loved his son, he was delighted with his achievement, but he realized that he was bound for a fall, the director revealed.
In closing, Scorsese said that the “abyss” of this loss could only be healed by time and that he would prefer to picture them still alive and well.
He went on to say that he felt “lucky” to have known the late filmmaker and his spouse.
