By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
May 5, 1993
“Hana opened the car door and slid in behind the wheel. She sat silently, trying to sort out the conflicting emotions. She started to weep when she realized that the rage and anger she was feeling were for no one but herself. Against all the rules of her game and against her soundest judgment, she had fallen deeply and hopelessly in love with a married woman.”
–All Kinds of Love by Carl Reiner
All Kinds of Love isn’t the “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” that’s for sure. When Carl Reiner created the classic ’60s TV series, his married couple – Rob and Laura Petrie – weren’t allowed to sleep together in the same bed, much less dally with next-door neighbor Milly.
Quite a difference from the ’90s married couple depicted in the veteran writer-producer-director-actor’s latest novel, All Kinds of Love (Birch Lane Press, $18.95.). Dick and Sharon Cox not only share the same bed, but the same female lover – albeit unknowingly.
Oh, my God! What would Rob Petrie say?
“Rob Petrie would probably get a kick out of the book, because Rob Petrie basically was me,” Reiner says, laughing. “That show was about a young comedy writer working on a TV show. That was me. Dick (Van Dyke) just was a better me than me, which is why he starred in the show.”
Sitting down to a light pasta lunch at a downtown restaurant, Reiner certainly didn’t look like the kind of man who would be interested in reading, much less writing, a sexy book. This is Meathead’s father, for goodness sake. Wearing a conservative, muted suit and a dapper fedora, he looked more like a retired banker than a Jackie Collins-in-training.
Actually, that’s not a fair comparison because while Joan’s sister relishes revealing everything she knows about sex, Reiner alludes to the act more than delving into hygienic detail.
That said, there is a good deal of sex going on in All Kinds of Love. Independent film producer Fred Cox and his wife Sharon aren’t having sex with each other, but they do sleep and fall in love with their gorgeous Japanese language instructor, Hana Yoshi. Their 16-year-old son, Kevin, is having an affair with one of their twin Salvadoran maids. And Fred’s gynecologist brother, Dr. Dick Cox (Reiner swears he didn’t see the pun in this name when he wrote it), is having sex with everyone else. Even the grandparents share healthy libidos.
The sexy comedy is a natural to be parlayed onto the big screen. Reiner said while he’d enjoy seeing it adapted into a film, he worries the sexual aspects of the book will be played up too big.
“I think it would make a great movie because there are a lot of subplots happening, but I think (the filmmakers) would zero in on the sex, which I wouldn’t want to happen,” he said. “Personally, I don’t like seeing sex in films. I think it’s embarrassing and uncomfortable to watch.
“I know a lot of people aren’t surprised that the book is a comedy, because that’s what they know me from. But I don’t think people thought I had it in me to write a book that dealt fairly frankly about sex. Look at me – I’m a grandfather. People don’t expect me to have sex, much less write about it.”
Though the star of the book is a film producer, Reiner said he didn’t pattern Fred after himself.
Rather, he identified with Fred’s parents, Leon and Sarah Cox. It’s no coincidence the elder Coxes are the book’s most liberal-minded and sympathetic characters.
“It’s funny because I didn’t really see any similarities between them and me until the book was finished,” Reiner said. “I guess it’s true what they say about putting a little bit of yourself into your projects.”
All Kinds of Love comes 35 years after his first book, Enter Laughing. Why so long between books?
He joked, “I’m a slow typer.”
