ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 3, 1997 TAG: 9701030012
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: JOHN ROGERS ASSOCIATED PRESS
It's early in the morning, and his first in a day of back-to-back interviews hasn't begun yet. But director Rob Reiner is already wound up and ready to talk.
He's been watching the news and reading the papers, he says, and that's the problem. There's too much news. No, make that too many news outlets and not enough news to go around in this information-crazed society of ours. The result, he says, is that everybody starts ``making stuff up'' in an effort to find sexy new angles to relatively unimportant stories.
``I knew we were dead the day I saw in The New York Times, above the fold in a very prominent place on Page One a story about Hillary Clinton making $100,000 in the commodities market,'' he says after welcoming guests into a hotel suite where his breakfast of fresh fruit sits untouched.
Obviously, Reiner thought, the first lady had been caught in some nefarious scheme.
``Otherwise, why would The New York Times be doing a story on it,'' he asked, a tone of incredulity creeping into his voice. ``If Joe Schmo makes $50,000 in the stock market, that's not news. Unless there's something bad about it.
``So I'm reading, reading, reading. And there's nothing wrong,'' he says throwing up his hands. ``It even said there was no evidence of wrongdoing. And that's making stuff up, you know. It's a sad state of affairs.''
He goes on to rattle off several other prominent political stories of recent years and the way various media handled them.
But it's clear this admitted news junkie isn't about to quit reading his Times or watching his TV news shows. It was the news, after all, that led him to his latest movie project, opening today in Roanoke, the gripping, true-life drama ``Ghosts of Mississippi.''
It's the story of how a relentless young Mississippi district attorney named Bobby DeLaughter did what his colleagues said was impossible - convict white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith of the murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers 31 years after the fact.
It's a story that has been with Reiner much of his life. He was a student at Beverly Hills High School when Evers was shot in the back as he returned home from work one night in Jackson, Miss., in 1963.
``It was something that was certainly discussed in my house,'' Reiner says of the assassination. ``I remember it was very, very shocking because nothing like this had happened before.
``Here was a man who was a very moderate, intelligent, well-spoken person. He was not a rabble rouser. He was trying in a very decent, lawful way to get some civil rights for his fellow man. The idea that he would be gunned down for that in his driveway, in front of his wife and children, was very disturbing.''
As the turbulence of the 1960s unfolded from that point, Reiner's family, like others, often got caught up in the events.
He remembers his father, director-writer-comedian Carl Reiner, taking part in the Vietnam War protests of the early 1970s and his mother, Estelle, organizing the group Another Mother for Peace and designing its famous ``War Is Hazardous to Children and Other Living Things'' poster.
``You remember that?'' he asks proudly of the poster. ``She had a hand in that.''
Reiner, meanwhile, went on to TV stardom in the '70s playing Archie Bunker's son-in-law in ``All in the Family.'' By the '80s, he was directing a string of increasingly acclaimed movies, including ``The Princess Bride'' and ``Misery.''
But he never lost his connection to the activism of the '60s, and when he saw DeLaughter's efforts to reopen the Evers investigation on the news, he thought of a movie.
``Ghosts of Mississippi'' tells how DeLaughter, a white man from an Old South family, sees his personal life disintegrate under the pressure of his effort, which is met at first with skepticism from Evers' widow, Myrlie.
It's the same kind of suspicion Reiner himself faced when he decided to produce and direct the film.
``I worked very closely with Myrlie, and I think initially she had some legitimate misgivings,'' he says.
``I think every black person in this country, on the surface of things, might have misgivings about a white person portraying some aspect of their reality,'' he continues. ``But if you realize his motives come from a very good, decent, compassionate place, then those misgivings melt away. And in the case of Myrlie, that's exactly what happened.''
Just in case they hadn't, though, Reiner says he had agreed his company, Castle Rock Entertainment, would pull the plug if Mrs. Evers-Williams felt the story wasn't being told accurately.
Such a social conscience seems always to have been with Reiner, a large, friendly man who in middle age bears a striking resemblance to his father, the creator of television's classic ``Dick Van Dyke Show.''
The younger Reiner gained fame, after all, playing ``All in the Family's'' unfailingly liberal Mike Stivic, who was regularly derided by Carroll O'Connor's comically xenophobic Archie Bunker as ``Meathead.''
``I get that all the time, all the time '' Reiner says of passers-by who still shout ``Hey, Meathead!'' at him.
``Which is amazing to me,'' he continues, chuckling, ``because I look so different than I did on the show. I mean I'm an old man now. I've got a gray beard. I've got a bald head. How do they know me? My kids can't even recognize me.''
When he took the role, he worried about getting sidetracked because his real interest was in writing and directing.
``It turned out to be the best kind of sidetracked,'' he says now. ``I learned how to structure stories, what worked and didn't work with an audience, because we filmed in front of a live audience.''
He went on to make his debut as a movie director in 1984 with ``This Is Spinal Tap,'' an affectionate spoof of rock music documentaries.
Three of his films since then, ``Stand by Me,'' ``When Harry Met Sally '' and ``A Few Good Men,'' have been nominated for Directors Guild of America awards. And twice he won Emmys for his work on ``All in the Family.''
``But I used to make the joke that no matter what accomplishments I had I would always be called Meathead,'' he says. ``I could win the Nobel Prize and the headline would be `Meathead wins Nobel.'''
LENGTH: Long : 116 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Filmmaker Rob Reiner: ``I used to make the jokeby CNBthat no matter what accomplishments I had I would always be called
Meathead,'' he says. ``I could win the Nobel Prize and the headline
would be `Meathead wins Nobel.''' color.