Rob Reiner, director of A Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally, has been involved for quite a long time in the fight for marriage equality, concentrating his efforts on Proposition 8, which sought to ban same sex marriage in California.
Last year he directed a staged reading of Dustin Lance Black’s play, 8, about the court case that tried to get the proposition struck down, which starred Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Kevin Bacon, Jane Lynch, John C. Reilly, Chris Colfer, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Cleve Jones, George Takei, Yeardley Smith, Christine Lahti, Jamie Lee Curtis, Matthew Morrison and Matt Bomer (you can watch that in its entirety here). Now he’s talking up the idea of taking the play to the big screen.
He told Buzzfeed, “Well, we are working on it. Lance is working on a screenplay, and hopefully, when he finishes it, I’m going to direct it.”
Part of the delay is the current US Supreme Court cases that may rule on the constitutionality of Prop. 8 (although some think the court may throw the case out as a way of getting around having to make a ruling that might force gay marriage on states that don’t currently want it), which would affect the outcome of Black’s script, as while California courts have ruled it unconstitutional, re-legalising equal marriage in the state is still on hold while the appeals are going through.
On the Supreme Court cases he says, “Hopefully, we’ll win, and then the question is how broadly or narrowly they rule. If they rule in the broadest way, which we hope they do, that will open the door to marriage equality throughout the country. If not, then they might assign themselves with the White House’s [amicus] brief, which would open it up for eight more states, and that would basically start the ball rolling throughout the country. If they limit it to just California, then at least that’s an eighth of the country, in addition to the 11 states that already [have same-sex marriage]. It’s just a matter of time before we have marriage equality throughout the country. … We’ll know pretty soon. We’ll know by June.”