Except for an MLT, a mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean, and the tomatoes are ripe – they’re so perky, I love that.”

Oh man, Rob Reiner. I was surprised by how hard the news of his death took me – not just the fact of it, but the manner. I know plenty about parasocial relationships with celebrities but I’d never particularly thought I’d had one with him. But of course I have via his movies, two of which – The Princess Bride and Stand By Me – are part of my internal corpus of foundational texts, media I consumed in childhood which shaped me into the person I am and which continue to resonate with me today.

The Princess Bride was the first film I truly loved (shortly joined by Labyrinth, if we want to think about parasocial relationships – hi Bowie!). Westley is the first person I remember having a crush on, in the nebulous inchoate way of early childhood crushes, and I thought Robin Wright as Buttercup was the most beautiful woman in the world. It remained a favourite film as I grew up, and I remember that in the third year of my PhD, when I was having problems with anxiety and some days found it hard to get out of bed, that The Princess Bride came to serve a useful self-soothing function. You see, I knew the movie so well that I could run it in my head, and when I felt particularly panicky, I would roll the camera in my mind from the beginning, let the scenes unfold with their dialogue, and it would settle me enough to go to sleep or to get out of bed.

I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that before. Many years after that, I showed it to my daughter for the first time. I was a little disappointed, secretly, that she didn’t love it as much as I did – though I totally accepted her point that Buttercup is not the kind of kickass heroine today’s strong girls might expect – but I found myself newly moved by something new: the Boy’s relationship with his Grandpa.

It was the first time I had watched the movie since becoming a parent, and the quiet tenderness of the love between the grandfather and his grandson gave me a lump in my throat. Neither of them is entirely equipped to express their love – the grandfather perhaps because he was of a generation that couldn’t articulate tender feelings and preferred to show them, the grandson because he is a child and perhaps also because he’s a boy in the 1980s who is similarly hampered by gendered expectations. But they have a book to bridge the gap, and the book gives them a new language to express themselves. As you wish.

I watched Stand By Me again for the first time in years this summer, when I watched it with dear friends and their kids and my daughter. Once again the film felt different because I was looking at those children through the eyes of a parent, being struck in a newly visceral way with how deeply those children are failed by their parents, how they have to rely on each other for love.

Maybe the best way to end this is the closing lines of the script from Stand By Me, where the adult Gordie reflects on the life of his friend Chris:

 Chris did get out. He enrolled in the College-courses with me. And
	  although it was hard he gutted it out like he always did. He went on 
	  to College and eventually became a lawyer. Last week he entered a 
	  fast food restaurant. Just ahead of him, two men got into an argument. 
	  One of them pulled a knife. Chris who would always make the best peace 
	  tried to break it up. He was stabbed in the throat. He died almost 
	  instantly.

Son:      Dad, can we go now? 
Writer:   You ready? 
Son:      Yeah, we been ready for an hour. 
Writer:   Okay, I'll be right there. 
Friend:   He said that half an hour ago! 
Son:      Yeah, my dad's weird he gets like that when he's writing.

Writer:   <types:  Although I haven't seen him in more than ten years I know 
	  I'll miss him forever. I never had any friends later on like the ones 
	  I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anybody?>

Thank you, Rob. May you and Michele rest in peace.