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January 4, 2002/20 Tevet 5762, Vol. 54, No. 16
'Ocean's 11' heist tempts Reiner
NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles
Getting cast in Steven Soderbergh's "Oceans 11," says Carl Reiner, was kind of like a scene from the Las Vegas heist movie.
In the film - a remake of the 1960 Rat Pack flick - crooks played by George Clooney and Brad Pitt recruit fellow con men by paying each a surprise visit. In a case of life imitating art, "Ocean's" producer Jerry Weintraub recruited Reiner by urgently ringing his Beverly Hills doorbell last year.
The legendary actor-writer-director was hosting a dinner party, but Weintraub - who'd produced Reiner's 1977 film, "Oh, God!" - said he had an emergency on his hands. "Ocean's 11" was scheduled to begin shooting in Vegas the following week, but cast member Alan Arkin was in the hospital. Would Reiner step in to play Saul Bloom, the eldest member of the heist team?
The 79-year-old Reiner - creator of "The Dick Van Dyke Show," straight man to Mel Brooks' 2,000 Year Old Man - wasn't actively looking for acting gigs. He'd quit directing since his last film, "That Old Feeling," starring Bette Midler, had wrapped in 1997. But then again, "Ocean's" was tempting.
There was the chance to work with wunderkind Soderbergh ("Traffic," "Erin Brockovich"). And the grumpy, rumpled, Rolaids-popping Bloom was too hilarious a role to pass up. "We first see him in the cheap seats at the dog track," Reiner notes. "He was probably a brilliant con artist in his day, but now he doesn't even have enough money to play the horses."
The fictional Bloom is one of two Jews on the "Ocean's 11" team (the other is a Liberace-esque ex-casino owner played by Elliott Gould). In the course of the elaborate casino scam, Bloom impersonates a wealthy European businessman of indeterminate origin.
"Soderbergh let me pick my accent, so I decided to be a Russian," says Reiner, who is so facile a mimic that during an interview he perfectly impersonates Stalin, Cary Grant and Edward G. Robinson.
The Bronx-bred Reiner - whom Brooks calls the "tall, bald Jew" - has been funny practically since birth.
"As a kid, I could always make people laugh, and I could perfectly tell and retell jokes I heard on the radio," he says. His first performance occurred when he put one leg behind his head and hopped on the other in front of his rapt kindergarten teachers and classmates. A smaller crowd watched his Orthodox bar mitzvah, which he says took place "on a Thursday morning before mincha (afternoon worship service), with just a minyan of old Jews."
By 1950, Reiner was writing and performing on Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows," where he met a short, outrageous fellow writer named Mel Brooks. "Mel Yiddishized everything," Reiner recalls.
While hanging out in the writer's room one day, Reiner made history when he turned to Brooks and ad-libbed, "Here was a man who was at the scene of the crucifixion 2,000 year ago. Did you know Jesus?" Brooks instantly lapsed into a thick Yiddish accent and replied, "Thin lad, wore sandals, came into my store, but he never bought a thing."
Over the next 10 years, Reiner shlepped a tape recorder to parties to capture their 2,000 Year Old Man shtick, though he says he and Brooks refused to cut a record because "We were afraid the accent would play into anti-Semitic stereotypes."
Reiner became a founding father of the TV sitcom when he created "The Dick Van Dyke Show," based on his home life during "Your Show of Shows."
In 1979, Reiner again made history by directing "The Jerk," the movie that would catapult Steve Martin to superstardom. He went on to direct three more films with the comic, who proved to be a very different kind of collaborator than Brooks. "Mel is loud, noisy, abrasive and hilarious, while Steve is quiet and hilarious" says Reiner, who is dad to director Rob Reiner. "But funny is funny."
The septuagenarian could say the same of himself. During the six-week "Ocean's 11" shoot, he regaled his young co-stars with amusing Hollywood stories. "Of course, while they knew who I was, they didn't really know what I'd done," Reiner confides. But he didn't mind. "The only thing I don't accept is people who don't know who Hitler is," he says.
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