Harry Shearer Remembers Rob Reiner: ‘He Was a Mensch’

Harry Shearer has paid tribute to Rob Reiner, his longtime friend and This Is Spinal Tap collaborator, who was killed alongside his wife Michele on Sunday.

“Rob was a friend and collaborator through much of my life. He was funny, he was smart, he was a mensch,” Shearer captioned his tribute on Instagram, which included a photo of Rob and Michele Reiner. “When he came to see the comedy act I was in, and, later, the musical comedy I had co-written, his laugh was uproarious and audible around the block.”

While Shearer and Reiner were known for co-creating, co-writing, and co-starring in the beloved 1984 satirical rock mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap along with Michael McKean and Christopher Guest, the duo began collaborating as early as the mid-1970s, when they worked on a pilot for ABC called The T.V. Show starring Guest, McKean, and Tom Leopold, which was not picked up.

In an interview with Rolling Stone from September, Shearer discussed the origins of the the Spinal Tap crew. “What’s most amazing to me is that we are four very different people. We got together in the first place, really, by coincidence. Born out of the fact that Rob and I were doing this pilot for ABC, The T.V. Show, and it was a takeoff on everything that was on television at the time.”

Shearer also told RS how he went through a four-year process to regain the rights to Spinal Tap, which eventually led to Reiner arranging to get their sequel,  Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, made. It arrived in theaters in September.

“He was a great collaborator, and when the four of us proposed ideas for the films, he was the one who wrote them on 3×5 cards, and organized them into a movie,” Shearer continued in his tribute to his friend. “And Michele was a very good friend to my wife Judith. This is unspeakable, the stuff of Greek tragedy.”