Carl Reiner’s refreshingly humorous take on being 95 years old is reflected in his new HBO documentary, “If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast.”
The doc’s title refers to Reiner’s daily ritual of waking up, grabbing the newspaper and … turning to the obituary page.
“I’ve been doing it for many years,” says Reiner, whose career dates back to the ’50s-era TV series “Your Show of Shows,” which Reiner followed by creating (and co-starring in) “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (as the combustible Alan Brady). “It starts at a certain age, when you read that somebody you know or an actor you admire has passed.
“So then you keep checking [the obits],” he says. “Everybody must read the obits. And I have a little agenda now: I look at the dates of people when they passed and say to each one, ‘I got you. I beat you.’”
But the hour-long documentary, hosted by Reiner, isn’t meant to be glib. It also takes a look at everyday nonagenarians and centenarians and what keeps them going. Profiles include Harriette Thompson, the oldest woman to run and finish a marathon (at age 93); 98-year-old yoga teacher Tao Porchon-Lynch, who recently took up tango dancing; and 95-year-old Jim “Pee Wee” Martin, who fought in D-Day and still parachutes to this day. “All you have to see is that woman running a marathon and the exercises she does to keep in shape,” Reiner says. “It’s amazing. And the woman who dances is inspirational. It’s also instructive: do it. Get off your ass.”
“If You’re Not in the Obit” also includes interviews with Reiner’s show-biz peers, including Dick Van Dyke (91), Norman Lear (94), Mel Brooks (90), Betty White (95), and Kirk Douglas (100).
‘I look at the dates of people when they passed and say to each one, “I got you. I beat you.”’
Reiner says he was inspired to make the documentary (produced by his nephew, industry vet George Shapiro, who co-produced “Seinfeld”), after reading Polly Bergen’s obit in 2014 — which included a black-and-white photograph of the actress posing with Reiner. “That was hysterical,” he says. “I see myself in her obit and I look over and what I thought to myself was, ‘My god, don’t they have a picture of anybody else?’ We did a couple of shows together, talk shows, but that’s about it.”
But the photo triggered in Reiner a desire to find out what makes people his age tick. “You have to have a reason to get up,” he says. “For instance, I couldn’t wait for … the graphic designer for my new book, ‘Approaching 96: The Pictures I Loved Viewing or Loved Doing’ … to get here and put the computer on and start loading it up. Dick Van Dyke is the essence of that. ‘Keep moving,’ he says. He’s got so many great-grandchildren he doesn’t even know all their names!
“It’s really the luck of the draw: who were your parents and what genes they gave you,” Reiner says. “The other thing that keeps you alive is having interests. If there’s something that interests you, you can’t leave until you finish it. And I can’t leave until I finish.
“After this project I said, ‘What am I going to do?,’ ” he says. “I realized that I wrote a book called ‘All Kinds of Love,’ which was the most complicated thing I ever wrote. It started with one line, ‘He didn’t realize that having a Japanese tutor would impact his marriage the way it did,’ and I didn’t know where it was going.
“It turned into a 300-page, very complicated book with dozens of interesting characters,” he says, “and I decided that my next thing is going to try turning it into a screenplay.
“That will keep me going for a while.”
“If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast” premieres Monday (8 p.m.) on HBO.