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director’s chair Rob Reiner— Flipped H By IAIN BLAIR This filmmaker discusses editing, DI and the future of Hollywood. OLLYWOOD — Over the past three decades, director/pro- ducer/writer/actor Rob Reiner has made such seminal films as When Harry Met Sally,This Is Spinal Tap and Stand By Me.Now Reiner, whose last film was the 2008 hit The Bucket List, is back with a new film, Flipped, which stars Madeline Carroll, Callan McAuli- ffe, Rebecca De Mornay, Anthony Edwards, John Mahoney, Penelope Ann Miller and Aidan Quinn. A coming-of-age romantic comedy that tips its hat to Stand By Me, and set in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, Flipped tells the story of Bryce and Juli, who meet in second grade. Juli immediately knows it’s love, but Bryce isn’t so sure.As the story follows the pair for the next six years as they go from grade school to junior high, it lovingly details their triumphs and disasters, the family dramas, and ups and downs of first love. Here, Reiner, whose credits include A Few Good Men,The Princess Bride, Ghosts of Mis- sissippi and The American President, and who That’s the only way I can do it.When I read the book this is based on, it reminded me of the feelings I had when I was 12, of first love. It was very similar to the feelings I had when I did Stand By Me. It was almost the same kind of response.” POST: Where did you shoot this? REINER: “All around Ann Arbor, Michi- gan, because it gave us the right look.We needed a suburban rural place that looked like it was just starting to get developed during the late ‘50s. Michigan also has great tax incentives and breaks, which is so im- portant now.” POST: What were the biggest challenges of making this? REINER: “Keeping the points- of-view straight as I was shooting. You shoot out of sequence any- way, and then sometimes within a sequence we’d flip back and forth between the boy’s and girl’s point-of-view as we were shoot- ing in one direction, because of Warner-Hollywood studio.We were there about three months.” POST: Do you like the post process? REINER: “I love it. My favorite parts of the whole process are writing the script and then editing and post.The actual shoot is al- ways hard. It’s where all the money’s being spent, there’s a lot of pressure and aggrava- tion and so on. But the quiet of writing and editing is far more creative.You can take a breath and be reflective and think about the material and how you want to shape it.” POST: Flipped was edited by Robert Leighton, who has edited every one of your films. How does that relationship work? REINER:“We always joke that we spend Rob Reiner on set: “My favorite parts of the whole process are writing the script and then editing and post.” will always be remembered as Mike “Meat- head” Stivic on All In The Family, talks about making the film, his love of post and how Hollywood's changed. POST: How do you go about deciding what your next project will be and what made you choose this? ROB REINER: “I always look for some- thing I can connect with, with characters I can relate to, that are going through some- thing I’ve been through or am going through, so I can understand the emotions. 12 Post • September 2010 the light or whatever. I was being driven crazy! Even the script supervisor got lost sometimes.” POST: It’s interesting that you used the same director of photography, Thomas Del Ruth, as on Stand By Me. REINER: “I did it intentionally, and he gave both films this great, dipped-in-honey, slightly nostalgic gauzy look.” POST: Where did you do the post? How long was the process? REINER:“We did it all at The Lot, the old www.postmagazine.com more time alone together in a dark room than we do with our wives. After so many years we know each other so well. He doesn’t usually come on the set, except to visit once or twice.We start cutting during the shoot.We’ll watch dailies at lunch or later, and discuss what we like and don’t like.Then he goes off and cuts. “I don ‘t look at it unless he tells me there’s a problem and it’s not coming together — and that’s only happened once or twice in 30 years. So I wait until he’s done his rough assembly, and as the years have gone by, those rough assemblies have become closer and closer to what we wind up with. I do go over every single cut and we shave and massage each cut — and sometimes we make more significant changes. But we have such a shorthand and we’re so comfortable with each other’s taste and choices that it’s a very easy process.” continued on page 47