Happy endings are common in the movies, but rare in real life. Sometimes they do happen. And sometimes they happen because of the movies.

That’s the only way to describe Carl Reiner’s final curtain call.

The fan-film version of The Princess Bride is a charity project that was shot piece by piece by dozens of performers while they were stuck at home during quarantine, with Juno and Up in the Air director Jason Reitman coordinating and assembling the segments. Early in the footage, which concludes tomorrow on Quibi, Rob Reiner himself, the director of the original 1987 film, appeared as the grandfather who narrates the tale of magic, romance, and adventure to his little grandson (played in that segment by Josh Gad). After each scene, the characters all swap to different actors.

When Rob Reiner talked to Vanity Fair on June 25, the day before the existence of the project was revealed, he was excited about Reitman’s plans for the final sequence. “I don’t know if you know this, but in the last one, my father’s going to play the grandfather and I’m going to play the grandson,” Rob said. He was looking forward to working on it together with his father, even though the two were quarantining apart. “He’s doing good. I just talked to him a few minutes ago,” Rob said. “For a guy who’s 98, he’s doing all right.”

Just four days later, Carl Reiner passed away. Rob made the announcement on Twitter with this message: “As I write this my heart is hurting. He was my guiding light.” Fans the world over grieved with him, but after a lifetime of making people laugh, it may seem appropriate that Carl would leave them with one last smile.

Three days before he died, he shot the footage and sent it through to Reitman. You can watch his final performance below, intercut with Paul Rudd as heroic Westley, and the only footage from the actual movie that the fan-film uses: the good guys riding off, and Westley and Buttercup’s history-making kiss.

Like many of Carl’s fans, Reitman was heartsick when he heard the news of the iconic comic and filmmaker’s death. “I was in shock at first because I felt like I had just seen him,” the filmmaker said. “It dawned on me: It was his final performance on not only a perfect career, but a perfect life. It felt like one more chance to see Carl Reiner. It was actually a scene about the love of a grandfather and a grandson. It’s a scene about storytelling. You can’t help but imagine Carl reading stories to Rob when he was a kid, and that this is what it looked like and what it felt like.”

Reitman waited several days before reaching out to the Reiner family. Then he sent not only condolences, but also the footage, and waited to hear back. If they preferred for it not to be used, he said he would have come up with an alternative. Reitman said the family was moved by the scene, and gave their blessing to keep it in the project. “At 98 years old, Carl Reiner understood every beat of that scene,” said Reitman. “His understanding of the writing, the performance, the pauses, the gestures, the hat, the look to camera, how to make an exit, were as sharp as any actor at any age.”

The relationship between Carl and Rob also had a personal significance for Reitman, who is the son of Ghostbusters and Stripes director Ivan Reitman. “The Directors Guild sends out an annual catalog, or at least they used to, that listed all their members and their members’ credits. And when my father used to receive his copy, I would immediately open it and turn to the letter R and follow the names down to Reitman to see my father’s name,” he said. “Just up the page from him, R-E-I-N, was Reiner. And there was Carl Reiner and there was Rob Reiner. It was the first example that I saw that the son of a filmmaker could become a director himself.”

As fans of The Princess Bride probably realize, there’s a hidden layer to this scene. The grandfather closes the book on the happiest of endings and says farewell. The grandson asks if he will come back again to read another one. “As you wish,” the grandfather says.

Earlier in the telling of the story, the grandfather revealed that the phrase “as you wish” is actually a secret code. Whenever characters say it to each other, what they really mean is “I love you.” Keep that in mind when you watch Carl Reiner’s final line delivery again.

“I think the joy of the project as a whole has been watching professional performers at home have fun, from the most comedic to the most serious,” Reitman said. “I’m a dad myself. I can only imagine how thrilling it is to bring to life a scene from your child’s movie, no matter what age you are.”

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