Martin Scorsese calls Rob Reiner’s death an ‘abyss in reality’

Martin Scorsese is remembering his late pal Rob Reiner and his wife Michele after their tragic deaths.

The Oscar-winning director opened up about the brutal murder of Rob and Michele in a new guest essay for The New York Times, and wrote, "What happened to Rob and Michele is an obscenity, an abyss in lived reality.”

“Rob Reiner was my friend, and so was Michele. From now on, I’ll have to use the past tense, and that fills me with such profound sadness," Scorsese began his essay.

Scorsese noted that he first met Rob and his ex wife Penny Marshall in the early 1970s at comedian George Memmoli’s gatherings in Los Angeles.

“Right away, I loved hanging out with Rob,” wrote the Killers of the Flower Moon director. “We had a natural affinity for each other. He was hilarious and sometimes bitingly funny, but he was never the kind of guy who would take over the room. He had a beautiful sense of uninhibited freedom, fully enjoying the life of the moment, and he had a great barreling laugh.”

Scorsese revealed that Misery is his favorite Rob Reiner film, praised This Is Spinal Tap, and recalled a “wonderful” Wolf of Wall Street scene where Rob played a “loving father, mystified by his son.”

“Now, it breaks my heart to even think of the tenderness of Rob’s performance in this and other scenes," he grieved.

The filmmaker ended his essay with a heartbreaking wish, he wrote "One day, I’ll be at a dinner or a party and find myself seated next to Rob, and I’ll hear his laugh and see his beatific face and laugh at his stories and relish his natural comic timing, and feel lucky all over again to have him as a friend.”

It is pertinent to mention that Rob and Michele were found dead in their Los Angeles home on December 14. Their son Nick has been charged with first-degree murder in connection with their deaths.