By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
July 9, 1995
In 1958, comedian Carl Reiner wrote his first novel, Enter Laughing. Now, thirty-seven years later, the sequel Continue Laughing (Birch Lane Press, $19.95) arrives.
That’s quite a gap, but Reiner hasn’t exactly been lying low in the intervening years.
Besides creating the “Dick Van Dyke Show” and winning eight Emmy Awards, he directed such feature films as “The Jerk,” “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” and “Sibling Rivalry,” wrote the 1993 novel All Kinds of Love, and fathered actor-director Rob “Meathead” Reiner.
Not necessarily in that order.
Reiner, who is in his early 70s, was in Chicago recently to discuss Continue Laughing, which is about a burgeoning comedic actor named David Kokolovitz.
Showcase caught up with him for a late lunch of pasta and salad at Tucci Milan.
Q. Continue Laughing is about a young comic who goes off to World War II and pines away for Mary Deare Prueitt, the woman he loves. How much of David (who uses the stage name Don Coleman) actually is you?
Reiner: Don/David is a bigger Don Juan than I ever was, but there’s a lot of me in him. Don/David is in love with Mary Deare, who is based on a girl who I was in love with but didn’t marry, and my wife Estelle, whom I married before going off to war. The other girl owned an airplane, just like the character, and was from a very rich family. Her father was an anti-Semite. I never met him, but I knew from what she said that he wouldn’t like me.
Q. Your book is full of letters that are both very poignant and funny. Did you copy letters you had written to your wife?
Reiner: I didn’t copy them, but the letters are good duplications of what I wrote to Estelle. It wasn’t hard to recall those feelings I had for her. There’s a section where David/Don writes 17 letters in one weekend to Mary Deare, and I actually wrote 17 letters to my wife in one weekend. On one Monday, she ended up getting 21 letters from me. We had only been married for a few months, and then I went off to war and didn’t see (Estelle) for 1-1/2 years.
Q. Davi/Don has raging hormones. Did Estelle ever read drafts of the book and get jealous?
Reiner: No, she knows me. We’ve been married 51 years. She’s usually flattered because she sees elements of herself in all the lovely women I write about.
Q. There are semi-autobiographical elements to all your books. Why don’t you just write an autobiography?
Reiner: I don’t want to do a real autobiography because, first of all, it can’t be as entertaining for me. I like to invent a little. But also, you don’t want to tell the absolute truth about everything because these people you want to write about may not want to be written about. I’m always upset with these tell-all books. It’s not fair unless you have permission to say that they slept with everybody in the world.
Q. You recently did a funny guest spot as Alan Brady (the character Reiner played on the “Dick Van Dyke Show”) on “Mad About You.” How did that appearance come about?
Reiner: I was actually at a benefit performance with Paul Reiser. . . . Paul came up to me, and I told him how much I love him and (“Mad About You” co-star) Helen Hunt. Paul said he had an idea and wanted me to be on their show. I told him that I had already done my stint in sitcoms and didn’t want to do anymore. And then he said, “We want Alan Brady.” I said, “Him, I know. I can get him.” That was a challenge, to see if I could still find the Mr. Hyde in me. I have that mean quotient in me that I never let out, which is why I enjoyed playing him so much on the “Van Dyke” show. It was a fun guest spot, because (Alan Brady) really is so mean and cranky.
Q. What are the chances that you and your son Rob will collaborate on a project together?
Reiner: I think that would be fun. He’s such a good director, I know he could make anything great. There might be a movie in this book. But it would be an expensive one because we have to find fighter planes from that era, and there are so many locations in the book. But now with the new technology, we could probably do a lot digitally.
Q. Finally, why did it take so long to write come up with a sequel?
Reiner: I would’ve written more books if the other projects hadn’t taken off. (Laughs.) Enter Laughing stopped the day the lead got on stage. I wondered what happened to that kid. I realized that what happened was the same thing that happened to me – well, a fictionalized version anyhow.
