Last Sunday evening, I turned my phone to “Do Not Disturb” and went to bed early. I usually don’t look at my phone when I wake up in the middle of the night. But for some reason I reached for it.
It was 1 a.m. (which meant I fell asleep too early) and I saw dozens of messages with the terrible news. Rob and Michele Reiner had been murdered. And everything pointed to her 32-year-old son Nick being the perpetrator. My heart sank.
I knew Nick Reiner. Eight years ago, he came to my apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to record an episode of Dopey, the podcast I host.
Dopey, addiction and first encounters
I started Dopey: On the Dark Comedy of Drug Addiction in the fall of 2015 with my friend Chris O’Connor. Chris and I met at Mountainside rehab in rural Connecticut. We shared our crazy drug stories and a similar worldview. I was a big fan of The Howard Stern Show and knew we could adapt that unfiltered talk show style to a podcast about addiction and recovery. We produced 44 episodes by September 2016 when Nick Reiner came over for the first time.
Through my years of listening to Howard Stern, I had heard Nick and his father Rob Reiner talk about their new film, Being Charlie. It was a film Nick co-wrote with a friend from rehab, and it was all about drug addiction and recovery. I thought Nick would be a great guest for Dopey.
Film, family and expectations
“Being Charlie” felt like a thinly veiled exploration of Nick’s relationship with his successful and famous father, a Hollywood legend. Like most people in the country, I was a big fan of Rob Reiner. Watching “All in the Family” on TV felt like visiting my grandparents on a Sunday. I grew up on a solid Gen-X movie diet of The Princess Bride, Stand by Me, and A Few Good Men. I also worked (and still do) at Katz’s Delicatessen, the iconic restaurant on East Houston Street that Rob Reiner immortalized in his classic comedy When Harry Met Sally.
I believed Nick’s perspective and stories would be valuable to our listeners. At the same time, I was ecstatic at the idea of perhaps having someone of Rob’s caliber associated with our little show in some way. Nick was extremely excited to talk to us about drugs, addiction and silly stuff. He was a perfect fit for us, even though Chris and I were abstinent and doing 12-step programs at the time.
Different paths to recovery
Nick’s recovery was different from ours. He tried a mitigation approach. He admitted to smoking pot and drinking occasionally, but wanted to stay away from cocaine, meth and heroin. Nick also talked about the pressure of being a pure. The family’s Hollywood legacy stretched back to his grandfather, Carl Reiner. At the same time, he tried to build a creative career. Living up to the legacy was almost impossible. Even worse for Nick was the realization that many encounters were purely utilitarian, because people wanted to get closer to him in order to get to his father.
Oy vey and unintentional pressure
At the time, I was working on a parody fashion brand called Oy Vey. It was created before “Dopey” and was my first attempt to build something of my own sober. The idea was culture jamming: modified versions of well-known brands like Obey or Nike, turned into Oy Vey. The project failed. Nick was our first and only celebrity model. He wore a Drake-style 1-800 Oy-Vey t-shirt, as seen in a selfie he sent me in 2017.
I wanted his dad to see our Nike-esque Oy-Vey hat, assuming Rob would find it funny. Nick said he would pass one on and I was happy. I didn’t think about the fact that I was sending him down that painful path again – where people were more interested in Rob’s approval than in Nick himself.
More meetings and memories
A few weeks later we saw Nick again. He came over again and we had a casual, fun podcast, talking nonsense and laughing about stupid things we’d done. Nick impressed us with stories of impromptu basketball games on the legendary courts on West 4th Street. He also told an incredibly touching story about a bad LSD trip and how his father calmed him down. Nick described lying in bed with his father as the trip took a turn, then did a great imitation of Rob Reiner telling his son everything was going to be okay. It was incredibly touching.
After that I never saw Nick in person again. We wrote to each other occasionally and spoke on the phone a few times. It was only after Chris relapsed and tragically died of a fentanyl overdose that Nick returned to the show. At the time, he told his now widely publicized story about how he “went crazy on stimulants” and destroyed his parents’ guest house. Another time he called me privately when he was trying to get clean in New England. I offered him friendship and support in sobriety. We had a few more conversations and messages before he disappeared again.
The last contact
The last time we spoke was in August 2018, for Dopey’s first memorial episode for Chris, which we called “Chris-Miss.” Nick called and I asked him if he ever gave his father the Oy-Vey hat. Nick reacted very defensively. “No, I didn’t,” he said annoyed. “And I never will.” He didn’t sound sober and hung up hastily.
That was the last contact I ever had with Nick. Since then I have probably written him 150 messages and never received a response. I often regretted being one of the many who pushed him to seek contact with his father.
Review and open questions
At Dopey, I’ve talked about Nick many times over the years, always hoping that one day he would return sober and successful. Today, when people ask me if I saw any violent or unpredictable tendencies in Nick, the honest answer is no. He seemed like another drug addict trying to find his way in the world – like me or Chris or hundreds of our guests or thousands of dopey listeners.
The truth is, I never knew Nick well enough to say for sure. I got the impression that he wanted to be great – to create something the world would love and to show that he was worthy of the name Reiner. That pressure certainly haunted him. I recently read that his mental health may have been worse than I knew, and that in addition to his addictions, he also suffered from schizophrenia. Ultimately, it all became too much – for Nick and for the Reiners.