Billy Crystal revealed the contents of his heartfelt final conversation with close friend Rob Reiner before his untimely death.
“We had spent the night before together, talking about our careers together,” Crystal, 78, solemnly said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday.
“We talked about the fact that you can’t control how a movie is going to do,” the When Harry Met Sally... star continued. “What you can control is the experience of making it. The experiences that we had together and that he had with the casts of his other movies were so extraordinary.”
The best friends and frequent collaborators, who first met on the set of All in the Family in 1975, had been discussing their movie industry friendship at Conan O’Brien’s Christmas party in December.
Reiner, 78, and his wife, Michelle,70, were killed later that night in their home, allegedly by their son, Nick, who has pleaded not guilty to their murders and awaits a return to court at the end of April.
“That’s something you always have,” Reiner told Crystal. “Hits are great to have, but it’s the people that you hold onto.”
“And so I kept that in my heart,” Crystal said.
The actor, who worked with Reiner on three films and a TV show, called O’Brien, 62, shortly after Reiner’s death to suggest an Oscars tribute based on the conversation.
Crystal noted that he and Reiner had just discussed the director’s first seven films, including This Is Spinal Tap, A Few Good Men, and The Princess Bride, each featuring extraordinary casts.
“If I can get the cast of those movies together to walk out with me, that would have made him really smile,” Crystal said during the call with O’Brien, who was hosting the Academy Awards for the second consecutive time.
Crystal ultimately led the night’s most emotional moment, standing before 16 of Reiner’s former cast members lined up across the stage, including Meg Ryan, Demi Moore, John Cusack, and Kiefer Sutherland.
“My friend Rob’s movies will last a lifetime because they were about what makes us laugh, and cry, and what we aspire to be,” Crystal said in the emotional tribute. “Far better in his eyes, far kinder, far funnier, and far more human.”
“Their loss is immeasurable,” he added, in his first public appearance since his friend’s death.
To Colbert, Crystal recalled a lifetime of friendship with Reiner.
“We could talk about everything. He was an uncle to my kids,” Crystal said, recalling how he still reaches for the phone to call Reiner to talk.
“In When Harry Met Sally... there are a lot of moments that Meg and I are really Rob and I,” he continued. “We were on the phone constantly, and there were moments of, we’d be watching a movie together like Casablanca, and we would do that and go back and forth."
“It’s a profound loss for—I’m just going to say—humanity, because he was the most human person that I ever met," Crystal concluded.
