Marc Shaiman Reflects on Working with Rob Reiner in New Book — Read an Excerpt! (Exclusive)

Acclaimed Hollywood composer and lyricist Marc Shaiman is releasing a memoir about his decades-long career, and one of the chapters features his reflections on his close friendship with the late Rob Reiner.

PEOPLE has an exclusive first look at the book, titled Never Mind the Happy, which was written before the tragic deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner on Dec. 14. The memoir will be published by Regalo Press on Jan. 27.

Shaiman first met Reiner when he was hired to score the director’s now-iconic 1989 rom-com, When Harry Met Sally. They went on to work together on over 20 projects, including Misery, A Few Good Men, North and The American President. Shaiman was included in the joint tribute statement released by a number of Rob and Michelle’s close friends following their death.

Shaiman’s memoir — which is part showbiz tell-all, part love letter to the creative process — looks back on five decades of triumphs, heartbreaks and professional collaborations.

Read on for an exclusive excerpt from Never Mind the Happy.

When Billy Crystal began filming When Harry Met Sally, directed by his best friend Rob Reiner, he asked what Rob was planning for the music. Rob replied that he needed someone who knew all the standards from the Great American Songbook. Billy, mensch that he is, told him, “Have I got the guy for you!

Billy likes to call me “Rain Jew,” comparing me to Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man for my ability to somehow remember and play just about every song that has ever been written. Some people have a photographic memory, but I guess mine is phonographic. I’m not even sure how I do it; I just somehow retain every song I hear. What can I say? I am a human Spotify.

So, Billy set me up for a meeting with Rob. I brought with me a Rodgers and Hart songbook I have had since I was a teenager (which, I’m afraid to say, I think I borrowed from a friend’s piano in New Jersey and never returned) because I knew the final lyrics to the song “I Could Write a Book” (“Then the world discovers/as my book ends/how to make two lovers of friends”) perfectly fit the movie.

Rob hired me, and while the job didn’t utilize my composing skills, working on When Harry Met Sally taught me how music is timed, recorded and placed into a movie. I worked alongside a great music editor named Scott Stambler, and he, Rob and I chose the songs and/or the recordings that were used in the film, many of them re-recorded with Harry Connick Jr.

In 1989, shortly after When Harry Met Sally, Billy Crystal made an HBO special called Midnight Train to Moscow. I enjoyed scoring its dramatic storyline in a cinematic fashion. Rob came to a screening and called me the next morning.

“Hey, buddy, you wanna score my next movie? It’s a psychological thriller called Misery.”

I didn’t try to talk him out of this idea, but I was bewildered he would think I had the chops to do such a thing — a sentiment that happened to be echoed by my brand-new agent, Richard Kraft.

While I was working on When Harry Met Sally and Beaches, the music contractor (who hires the musicians and takes care of payroll) was Sandy DeCrescent, a powerful figure in the Hollywood orchestra scene. She recognized I was suddenly getting all this work and asked, “How come you don’t have an agent? I’m gonna hook you up with Richard Kraft. He’s perfect for you.”

When I stepped into Richard’s office, he asked, “What do you want to do?”

I blurted out, “I wanna score movies. I wanna be famous like Paul Williams! I wanna be on talk shows and Hollywood Squares. I wanna be the gay Marvin Hamlisch!”

Based solely on the fact that I was getting work, Richard signed me, never having heard a note of my music. And then Richard had to negotiate with Rob Reiner for Misery. Even though he was representing me, Richard said to Rob, “You’ve only heard his arrangements, what makes you think Marc can compose an original film score?”

And Rob replied, “Richard, talent is talent!” So that became Richard’s mantra when negotiating on my behalf.

Billy Crystal had just finished City Slickers, which he starred in and co-wrote, and had suggested me to its director, Ron Underwood. All the top composers were up for the job, but Ron liked my spirit. Richard gave him Rob’s “talent is talent” spiel and he hired me.

In quick succession, I was hired to score the movies Misery, The Addams Family and City Slickers, without having written a single note of original movie music except for about five minutes in Billy’s HBO special. Where did I get the chutzpah to think I could do this?

But back to Rob’s thriller, which always reminds me of the joke, “Why don’t Jews drink? Because it interferes with their misery!”

Since Big Business, I had started purchasing all the equipment necessary at that time to score movies: synthesizers, computers and wiring that allowed me to compose on a real piano. I can’t work on an electronic or digital keyboard; I crave an actual piano under my fingers. So, with a TV set up on top of the piano and VHS tapes of the current edit of Misery, I started writing music.

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I was confronted with the “temp score” (temporary music that they place in a movie while they are editing it), which was made up mostly of soundtracks by the film-score giant, Jerry Goldsmith. Although Lord knows I wasn’t capable of copying him, it was like having a brilliant teacher coaxing me along. I began to see how orchestral music could have many groupings, each doing their own thing at the same time. Cellos and basses may be rumbling along on a frighteningly low melody, as the woodwinds are pecking like a riot in a chicken coop, while the high strings are sustaining a cluster of odd, disconcerting notes. I was learning as I was listening.

Rob started coming over to hear what I was up to and, amazingly, liked what he heard.

Up to this point in my career, I was an inveterate pothead. I smoked all the time and for everything. I smoked before a meal, I smoked before a movie, I smoked before sex, I think I even smoked before I smoked. But most of all, I smoked before arranging or writing music and lyrics. I truly couldn’t conceive being creative without getting a little high first.

But suddenly I was scoring this movie, which involved getting to work right after breakfast and working throughout the day and into the night. Film scoring requires finding the right tone, rhythm, notes and harmonies to play the emotions and plot of the movie, while figuring out the complex mathematics all of it involves. Not to mention it was the birth of using synthesizers and sequencers to write music directly into the computer, all of which I was learning at the same time.

By Wednesday of the first week, I realized there was no way I could score a movie after smoking a joint before 10 in the morning, which would make me want to quit for the day by noon. So, I decided to try to write music, and do all that math and press all those buttons, without smoking first. And I got through the first day! Then I figured I’d try another day, which led to the next day, and then suddenly it was the weekend. And I thought, Well, let me keep on this path. Therefore, it’s thanks to Rob Reiner that I quit pot cold turkey and freed myself from the misconception that I had to get high before creating.

On Beaches, fear of Garry Marshall’s big screen close-up of my hands on the piano cured me of nail-biting, and now Rob stopped my pot-smoking — all my bad habits were eradicated by America’s leading comedy film directors.

At the time, I was living in a rental house at the end of a spooky dirt road in Laurel Canyon, and while watching the scenes of Kathy Bates freaking out on James Caan, screaming and shaking his bed — over and over at high volume — I often wondered whether people walking their dogs past my window were thinking, What the fuck is going on in that house?

Once I had this music written with the rudimentary orchestral sounds the synthesizers of that time could render, a skilled, patient conductor and orchestrator named Dennis Dreith entered the picture. He was able to take the music I was writing in very irregular time signatures and make it conductible and sight-readable by an orchestra.

It wasn’t easy work. For example, during the final battle-to-the-death between Kathy and James, I followed the onscreen action and emotions by literally banging on my piano like a child having a tantrum. And then I figured out, moment by moment, how that banging could be turned into notes. I wrote every note of music in the movie, but without Dennis’ ability to transfer those notes from the computer and make them reality, my career might have self-destructed at the first recording session. Thank you, Dennis, for making Misery a delight!

My creative relationship with Rob would ultimately lead to scoring over 15 of his films, including the plum assignment A Few Good Men. What luck that my parents came to visit me in LA on the day Jack Nicholson shot the scene with the iconic line, “You can’t handle the truth!” We watched as he gave a full performance on every take, even when the camera turned away to film reactions by Tom Cruise and others. Moments like that really show why certain people become — and remain — stars.

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When Rob made The Story of Us with Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer, he told me that Eric Clapton had agreed to write some songs for the movie that would serve as the underscore. “Buddy,” Rob asked, “would you be willing to help him form what he is writing into underscore?”

“Work with Eric Clapton? Uh, yes.”

(What was I gonna say, “No, I’m holding out for Dylan”?) 

Two moments with Clapton stand out in my mind. One was the day he and Rob came over to my home studio to talk through the music. When we finished, I really had to get back to the other job I was on, the South Park movie. But Eric wanted to keep playing his guitar, looking to jam. I was really under the gun to deliver a cue to an orchestrator, and am not a good jammer, so, believe it or not, I politely told them to get lost!

The other Clapton moment occurred during the recording sessions for the film when I was rehearsing a string chart for Eric’s end title song. In one spot, I had the high strings forming a C-minor major seventh chord, which is very film-noir-ish and I thought matched the lyric well. But it had to be finessed, so a chord that could sound dissonant would blossom into something wonderfully evocative. 

Rob, fabulous guy that he is, can sometimes be a tad impatient. And when he heard the first read-down from the orchestra, he exclaimed, “What is that?” I explained I just needed a few minutes to find the right balance with the strings, but Rob kept pacing and rubbing his head, exclaiming, “What is that?”

I didn’t want to give up on my fancy chords, and things were getting rather awkward. Eventually, Eric came out from the booth, strolled over to me at the conductor’s stand, and said, “You know, Marc, I think those chords at bar 53 are just a bit too … attractive.”

What an elegant way to say, “Stop showing off, simplify it, and move on!”

A few years later, it was my good fortune to once again write music to accompany Jack Nicholson (and Morgan Freeman) in a Rob Reiner movie. This one was The Bucket List, a phrase coined by screenwriter Justin Zackham which became part of the lexicon. And I say good fortune because my agent, Richard Kraft, negotiated for me to take a small upfront fee and then get bonuses based on the box office results — not the studio accountant’s version of grosses, but what is reported in the trades each Monday morning. Although the movie was clobbered by critics, audiences loved it, and it turned into my biggest payday. Hooray Richard!

But the Rob Reiner film I hold closest to my heart is 1995’s The American President, a perfect romantic comedy. Its main title sequence is a montage of American presidents for which I tried to summon music that would evoke the appropriate respect. I was honored the Academy deemed the result worthy of an Oscar nomination, in a year that had me sharing the category with, among others, that giant of film music, John Williams.

Usually when you go up against John Williams, you’re pretty sure you’re going to lose to John Williams. But not this time! This time, I lost with John Williams (to Pocahontas). So, see? John Williams and me? We’re just the same!

In 2020, when Rob and I were both honored at the Sedona Film Festival, they showed a pristine print of The American President. It is among the few of my scores I don’t beat myself up over, and I’ll watch if I come across it on television. But it had been over 20 years since I had seen and heard it on the big screen. Since I had already gotten my honor the night before, it was my job after the movie finished to introduce Rob. I had planned to crack a few jokes, but the movie overwhelmed me. As I tried to express my gratitude for the opportunity to score such a stunning film, I lost it (yes, I am an ugly crier) and barely uttered a word between the gasps and foot stomping that are all I can manage when emotion gets the better of me. No matter, the tears spoke volumes; I was happy to let Rob, and the audience, know how much he meant to me.

I would add that if I’m ever asked to score a movie about the American president who won non-consecutive terms and isn’t named Grover Cleveland, I’ll simply write some circus music and leave it at that.

Excerpted from NEVER MIND THE HAPPY copyright © 2026 by Regalo Press. Used by permission of Regalo Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Never Mind the Happy will be published on Jan. 27, and is now available for preorder, wherever books are sold.