I'm certain I've wandered from my proper timeline – forcibly evicted, perhaps?
Today I learned that Carl Reiner, patriarch of the golden age of comedy, passed away at his L.A. home in on June 29, 2020 at the age of 98.
And here I am, deep into the fourth crying jag of the day, wondering why the world hasn’t stopped, hasn’t sunk into a deep and consuming mourning over the loss of this pillar of classic comedy.
Apparently many people my age and younger don’t know Carl Reiner?
Shockingly, most women my age don’t idolize and aspire to embody the likes of Reiner, Mel Brooks, Jean Shepherd, Steve Martin, Mary Tyler Moore, Leslie Neilsen, Carol Burnett, Dick Van Dyke or Martin Short?
But hearing news of Reiner’s passing hit me hard, leaving me to sob to Michael that “all the good ones” – anyone I respect in comedy who can actually make me laugh – “are gone.” (Excepting Mel Brooks.)
Perhaps, I shouldn’t blame my out-of-place comedic proclivities on being lost in time and space. I suspect I should blame Nick at Nite?
Nickelodeon, and its more grown-up Nick at Nite programming, was the first cable television I ever watched when my family finally acquired cable sometime in the mid-90s. Compared to my preferred pre-cable lineup of The Price is Right, Action News and Fall Guy, my new cable-fed diet of classic sitcoms was pure, side-splitting, teary-eyed, formative comedic fodder.
Apparently, the television one consumes at that tender age of 11 really shapes a gal.
And so, according to Laura, you can’t get funnier, more classic, more iconic, more “Help me with the bags. You take the blonde, I'll take the one in the turban” than those comedic titans who haunted the Nick at Night airwaves. (I recently acquired a vanity license plate reading “Agent86” as homage to these golden years of my life.)
So, am I the only one to have spent today day teary-eyed and moping over a 98-year-old man she didn’t actually know?
But, in a way, I did know Carl Reiner - as well as any fan could. He created and produced my all-time favorite show, The Dick Van Dyke Show. Dick Van Dyke starred as Rob Petrie, a writer at a comedy/variety show called The Alan Brady Show, with Reiner portraying the fictitious Alan Brady.
I still remember the first time I saw the “Coast to Coast Big Mouth” episode – when Rob’s wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) accidentally reveals on a nationally aired game show that the famous, demanding, and vain “Alan Brady” is bald.
I crumpled in a ball, convulsing with laughter on the pool-blue carpet of our gray-wood-paneled rec-room basement during the scene where Alan knocks his collection of now useless toupees off the desk one by one with a cane. Immediately, Brady demands that his mousy assistant, Mel, “Pick it up, pick it up, pick it up!”
“Pick it up, pick it up!” became my new teenage catchphrase for the foreseeable future after that one. My family was thrilled.
Many people only know Reiner’s The Dick Van Dyke Show claim to fame, but his influenced can be felt in countless classic entertainment, beginning with his stint as a performer in the U.S.O. He then starred on Broadway, moving on to become actor (and sometimes writer) for Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, and then Caesar's Hour.
He and Mel Brooks created "The 2000 Year Old Man" in the Your Show of Shows writer's room one day off the cuff – a sort of ad-libbed private joke. Their banter in character went on for nearly 70 years, eventually winning a Grammy when they finally agreed to start recording and publishing their joke. (That's some amazing best-friend cred right there.)
Carl Reiner has appeared in the Ocean's Eleven (and beyond) movies and Parks and Rec; directed and acted in The Jerk (Steve Martin); and voiced characters for King of the Hill, The Adventures of Rocky Bullwinkle, The Cleveland Show, Bob's Burgers, Family Guy, American Dad – phew!
Perhaps my favorite of Reiner’s roles is when he voiced God (uncredited) speaking to Moses in Mel Brooks’ History of the World: Part I.
And then there is the jaw-dropping series of events regarding a novel contract that fell in his lap after he shared the first short story he ever wrote with a friend. A piece he only wrote for typing practice! That novel, Enter Laughing, was then turned into a movie (directed by Reiner), AND a Broadway show. Talk about the Midas touch.
And now he’s gone. And the state of modern American comedy is irrevocably altered – and arguably shittier.
I find modern written comedy too absurdist and terse, while movies tend to embrace uncreative gross-out or uninventive drug humor. Modern “comedy gems” like Superbad, American Pie, and This is The End don’t make me laugh, and their creators including Seth Rogan and his unimaginative ilk don’t hold a candle to those comedy legends who came before them. I predict that The Hangover will never be included in the monolith of immutable, classic comedy cannon that we humans will leave as an artifact for whatever comes after us.
So, yes, today I felt the very foundations of comedy - of my idealized golden past and the heroes who played a part in it - shake and crumble.
I'm sad.
But I’m also grateful.
I was lucky enough to have been able to experience Reiner’s art. To laugh and delight and snort, and double over in pain, watching Nick at Night or reading my copy of “The 2000 Year Old Man” through bleary, tear-stained eyes.
And Carl Reiner was pretty lucky too.
He was lucky enough to have thoroughly enjoyed his life: content with his home life; enjoying the strong tribe of friends and collaborators he cultivated; and fulfilled in his work and creative pursuits. Plus, he had fucking Mel Brooks as a best friend AND dining/movie-watching buddy until the very end.
And that’s what this ride is all about – to work, to create, to enjoy.
Only two days before he passed, he tweeted (being one of the oldest celebrities to have a Twitter account): “Nothing pleases me more than knowing that I have lived the best life possible...”
Reiner’s also pretty lucky because he was also able to cheat death.
He won’t just be a random relative known to only a generation or two of immediate family, or an unknown name that's uncovered on a sprawling family tree after sending a spit sample to a DNA identification company. His scripts, his jokes, his performances will live on in perpetuity in reruns and media archives. His books will continue to cram book shelves and his movie roles will continue to inspire chuckles.
No, Reiner’s work and gentle leadership in classic comedy won't soon be forgotten. One could imagine his influence, art and artifacts will continue on for at least the next 2000 years. Perhaps, after all these years, we have discovered that it was both Carl and Mel who are truly 2000-year-old Men!
God speed, Carl. I will remember you fondly with tears in my eyes - both from laughter and from sorrow of your departure.
Enter laughing, leave ‘em laughing.
What a way to go!
***
PS:
His My Anecdotal Life: A Memoir (2003) is a very informally written, but informatively entertaining read.