I met Carl in 1979 when I asked him to direct my first film, “The Jerk.” Carl was the go-to comedy director of the day, having made hits like “Oh, God!” as well as respected art fare like “Where’s Poppa?” Carl said yes, and I was thrilled.

Exhausted by my previous 10 years on the road and a bit personally lost, I would now get to hole up face-to-face with Carl Reiner while we worked on a movie script.

Minutes after I arrived, he opened the script and said, “Here’s the first thing I do.” He started going through page by page making occasional marks.

I said, “What are you doing?” He said, “I’m changing all the nights to days.” Carl was saving cast and crew the pain of unnecessary night shoots, where your body clock is severely whiplashed, as though you’ve taken a quick weekend round trip to China.

Carl had seltzer water in blue bottles delivered weekly by the last remaining seltzer-water delivery service in Beverly Hills.

I was expecting a lengthy discussion of motivation, character and possibly a discourse on comedy, but he said only, “Funny it up.” Not a Stanislavsky direction, but one I could understand.

At the end of the screening, Carl said to the cinematographer, Victor Kemper: “Great.

During my five or six creative years with Carl, we had lunch together almost every day.

I’ve heard several people say Carl was like a father to them.

Five years and four films later, I was a different person because of a subtle osmosis of traits from Carl to me.

Jack Benny, certainly, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Lenny Bruce, Steve Allen, Carl Reiner, too

Sometimes I deal with people in meetings, social dinners and plain-old conversation with a buoyancy foreign to me and realize, “Oh, that’s the way Carl would have done it.”

So Carl, I raise my glass of seltzer and flip through the Rolodex of words that apply to you: talent, energy, wisdom, humor