Billy Crystal and the late great Rob Reiner were cast as best friends before they became real ones. This Sunday night, Crystal got to pay tribute to his dear friend of almost five decades on the stage of the 98th Academy Awards, honoring the director and his wife, who were tragically murdered last year in their home.
After being introduced by Conan O’Brien, the show’s host and also a great friend of the Reiners, Crystal, who walked on stage to the song “It Had to Be You” from “When Harry Met Sally…,” recounted their first meeting, playing best friends on the set of Norman Lear’s “All In the Family” (specifically, in the 1976 episode “New Year’s Wedding”).
There they were, two Jewish men born in New York, who both spent their early childhood in the Bronx before Crystal’s family moved to Long Island and Reiner’s moved to California. They were both in their late 20s at the time, at what was just the beginning of two prolific, memorable careers.
They had a unique chemistry, even back then.
“It went so well, Rob said, you know, it was fun playing your best friend — why don’t we keep it going?” Crystal recalled on stage at the Oscars. “It was a thrill to see him evolve from a great comic actor to a master storyteller.”
Crystal went on to pay tribute to his friend’s oeuvre. He spoke of “Spinal Tap,” “The Sure Thing,” “Stand By Me,” “Princess Bride,” and “When Harry Met Sally…” (also giving a nod to his late co-star in that movie, Carrie Fisher). He commented on how Reiner could go from creating wholesome, funny and heart-warming movies to ones like “Misery,” which won Kathy Bates an Oscar. He also commented on Reiner’s more seminal films, like “A Few Good Men” and “The American President.”
“My friend Rob’s movies will last for lifetimes because they were about what makes us laugh and cry, and what we aspire to be, far better in his eyes, far kinder, far funnier, and much more human.”
Crystal then talked about how Michele, Rob’s wife, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, changed Rob’s life forever, becoming a driving force for his work and activism. The two worked tirelessly to make the decision for marriage equality across the United States a reality, a fact that elicited cheers and applause from the crowd in the Dolby Theater.
“It meant everything to him, that his work meant something to you,” Crystal told the crowd.
“For us who’ve had the privilege of working with and knowing him and loving him,” he continued, “all we can say is, what fun we’ve had storming the castle,” quoting his own delightful line from “The Princess Bride.”
In the movie, Crystal’s Miracle Max wishes Mandy Patinkin’s Inigo Montoya and the rest of his crew “good luck storming the castle,” flanked by his wife, Carol Kane’s Valerie, who then asks him, “Think it will work?” Miracle Max replies, “It would take a miracle.”
And a miracle it was, both the fictional storming of the castle in that inconceivably wonderful film and the rest of Reiner’s wonderful Hollywood adventures, for which we will always be profoundly grateful.
Crystal was then joined on stage by a myriad of actors who worked with Reiner, many holding back tears, some openly crying, including Meg Ryan, Patinkin and Kane holding hands, Bates, Fred Savage, Kevin Pollack, and many other iconic actors. They then turned around to look at a large image of Rob and Michele.
It was the most moving and devastating moment of an Oscars night full of moving moments, including Barbra Streisand’s tribute to Robert Redford and “One Battle After Another” director Paul Thomas Anderson’s heartfelt dedication of his Oscar to his kids with wife Maya Rudolph, whose relationship with her Jewish dad inspired one of the movie’s most memorable moments. Actor Sean Penn, son of blacklisted Jewish actor and director Leo Penn, did not accept his award for his role in the movie because he was spending time in Ukraine, where one of his now three Oscars lives in the home of his friend, President Volodymyr Zelensky, on loan until the end of the war.
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