Two things often happen in newsrooms when a famous person dies.

First, there is an attempt to localize the story, to make even the most tangential association the famous person had to the local community seem like something meaningful and more significant than it was.

Not trying to do that here.

Second is the respectful but dishonest erasure of anything bad or unseemly the person ever did. To mention character flaws or peccadillos in an obituary, is, in most cases, considered bad form.

Not trying to tarnish anyone’s memory either.

Ideas showcases stories, opinion and analysis about Hawaiʻi, from the state’s sharpest thinkers, to stretch our collective thinking about a problem or an issue. Email news@civilbeat.org to submit an idea or an essay.

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This is a story about Rob Reiner in Hawaiʻi that isn’t really about the famous film director or his connection to the islands.

In August 1993, Reiner was shooting parts of a movie called “North” on Kauaʻi.

One scene required a large group of locals to play extras in a lūʻau scene. About 250 people assembled under tents in a pasture on the east side of the island, somewhere near where Mark Zuckerberg now has his mysterious compound.

It started to rain, and not just drizzle, but that cold Kauaʻi rain that comes down in a sharp angle and pelts everything 8 feet inside the edge of a shelter. The extras reported to the shoot location late in the afternoon and waited hours under the tents for filming to begin, trying to keep dry and trying not to be bored.

By the time the rain let up and the set was ready and lights were in place, it was well past midnight. Everybody was tired and uncomfortable, and the ground was a muddy mess. As the group of extras trudged to the set, Reiner picked up his bullhorn and began screaming a tirade of expletives that went on and on, rising in a crescendo, yelling at the extras to move faster and quit wasting his time, but using much more profane, angry words. He pretty much lost it.

The crowd of extras sort of let out a low, “Whoa,” kind of like a class of high school kids when their teacher snaps and the temperature in the classroom changes. 

But then, filming began and went on for several hours with no further outbursts.

A day or two later, the story of Reiner’s foul-mouthed rage-filled rant got picked up by the Associated Press and was sent to news outlets across the country. Over 100 newspapers from coast to coast ran that little story.

“Director lashes out at island extras” was the headline in the Lansing State Journal in Michigan.

“Rob Reiner lashes out at extras during delay in filming on Kauai” read the Ventura County Star in California.

“Director snaps, curses at extras” was the headline in the Evansville Courier.

“Meathead cusses crowd of extras” reported the Montana Standard.

On and on. Everyone had a bit of fun with it.

The story came from me. I was working as a reporter on Kauaʻi at the time, and I had signed up to be an extra in the shoot just for fun. You can see about a quarter of my face for a few seconds in the luʻau scene. I sent the story to the Associated Press Honolulu office with no malice intended. I just thought it was an interesting little tidbit. From there, it got sent wide.

I remember I got a call from a Kauaʻi talent agent scolding me for making Kauaʻi look bad. I remember I got a call from a publicist attached to the movie claiming that what I wrote never happened. I figured I was on solid footing because it did happen just the way I said, and there were 250 witnesses. (This, of course, was well before cellphone videos. If it had happened in 2025, the tirade would have been live streamed.)

The tiny blip of bad publicity did not ruin the film. Nothing could. The film was a hot stinky mess from the get-go. 

When “North” was released in 1994, Pulitzer Prize winning movie critic Roger Ebert penned the most scathing review of his entire career, saying, “I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it. I hold it as an item of faith that Rob Reiner is a gifted filmaker; among his credits are ʻThis is Spinal Tap’, ʻThe Sure Thing,’ ʻThe Princess Bride,’ ʻStand By Me,’ ‘When Harry Met Sally’ and ʻMisery.’ I list those titles as an incantation against this one. ‘North’ is a bad film — one of the worse movies ever made.”

The New York Times recently recalled the movie as Reiner’s biggest career misstep and said that he handled the flop with humor.

So what can be deduced from this anecdote?

It is not some window into the true character of Rob Reiner, only a snapshot of how he behaved late one rainy night on the set of a movie he surely knew was lousy.

It’s not a broad statement about how Hollywood treats Hawaiʻi.

It’s more illustrative of how the media works and what sorts of stories get wide coverage. Of the thousands of stories I’ve written over the years, this one about Rob Reiner screaming at extras probably reached the widest audience, and that’s especially significant considering that it was published before the internet age. A gossipy little anecdote that I tossed off into the media meat grinder got more coverage than stories I sweated over for weeks or months.

People like stories about celebrities. People like stories about celebrities behaving badly.

That was true in 1993, and it is even more true in 2025. Back then, the story was filed under entertainment news. Today, it’s daily political coverage.